I Posted 1,500 Videos. Here’s What Actually Gets Views transcript

So, if you're struggling to grow on YouTube, and you're struggling to get views on YouTube, and you want to build your personal brand or your business on YouTube, this video is for you. My channel is about to hit 200,000 subscribers in just 12 months. And I've been on YouTube since 2009. During this time, I built multiple channels. I've helped multiple creators grow their channels, and I have learned a lot. In this video, as some sort of celebration of hitting 200,000 subscribers on this channel, almost hitting 200,000 subscribers, I wanted to make this kind of raw video where I don't edit the video at all, maybe just cuts, and that's it.

And what I want to talk about in this video is everything I have learned about YouTube. And not just YouTube, but about the internet in general, because growing on YouTube is not just about learning how YouTube works. It's actually more about learning how the internet works, how people's mind work on the internet, and stuff like that. So, it's way deeper than just click-through rate and thumbnails and video editing and whatever.

Now, as I've said, I've been on YouTube since 2009. That's when I created my first YouTube channel, actually my first three channels. Now, none of these channels had any success. This was just me fooling around and playing with YouTube and dreaming about becoming rich and famous and changing my life and these channels are going to change my life. That's what I used to think at the time. I think one channel had like 80 subscribers.

The other channel had like 500 subscribers, and the other channel, I don't even remember. And the reason one of the channels had 500 subscribers is because back then, there was this trend where you could go to popular channels and go to their popular videos and comment sub for sub, and people would just subscribe to you and you would subscribe back. And I used to do that. I would wake up in the morning, go to a popular video and just type sub for sub, and I would get two subscribers that day.

And I would do that every single day until I reached 500 subscribers. And what's funny is that I really believed that this is going to make me rich. Like I found the secret. I'm just going to do this until I get 1 million subscribers and I'm going to be rich. I really believed that at the time, you know, I was just a teenager. So, spoiler alert, it didn't work. The channel is stuck at 500 subscribers. And by the way, if you do this today, YouTube is going to terminate your channel.

This is against YouTube's policy. So, you're not allowed to do sub for sub. So, don't do sub for sub, especially because it makes no sense. You You're getting subscribers who don't care about you. But, I just wanted to share this memory because I think it's valuable to understand why him and where I come from. But, as time passed, I have learned more and more about YouTube and more about the internet. And that's when I created my first successful channel called Dub Step Gutter.

You can go ahead and search for it. I'm going to leave a screenshot over here. This is a faceless channel. It's a music brand channel and a label. And there's even a video with myself on the channel. Back then, I didn't have tattoos, like neck tattoos, but you can see the similarity. That's literally me on the channel. So, that was the first successful channel I've created and it has a 6 million subscribers right now.

Now, after I created this channel, I have created two more music channels, one animation channel, and two documentary channels. They're all faceless. And I personally prefer to keep them private. Not only that, but besides these faceless channels, I've also created two vlogs channels. Now, all of these channels are and have been quite successful. But, you have to understand, it took more than 10 years to grow them. So, growing all these channels wasn't something that happened overnight.

And during this period of more than 10 years of building different channels in different niches and working with different creators, I have learned a lot about YouTube, about the internet, and about how people's minds work when it comes to spending time online. This is also one of the reasons why this channel you're watching right now, Danny Wy, has grown to almost 200,000 subscribers in less than 12 months. Now, for some of you, 200,000 subscribers might not seem like a lot, but given the niche I'm in, which is educational, the people who watch my videos are not kids and they're not teenagers.

So, I'm going to share the analytics on the screen of my viewers average age. Not only that, but the people who subscribed to my channel usually have millions of subscribers. For example, I'm going to share over here the analytics of some people who are subscribed to Danny Wy. So, what I'm trying to say is that 200,000 subscribers in my niche is a lot of subscribers. And by the way, the reason why I'm showing you all of this is not to flex on you, is simply to show you who I am and what I've done.

Because as I've said in the beginning of this video, the purpose of this video is to help you grow your YouTube channel, your personal brand on YouTube, or your business on YouTube. And I just wanted to make sure you understand that I know what I'm talking about. With that said, let me show you everything I know about growing on YouTube and all the mistakes I've made and all the mistakes I see other people make and so on.

It's going to be a pretty long video, so you might watch it as a podcast, as a one-person podcast. Watch it while you're driving, while you're eating, before you go to bed. So, let's begin. I want to start off with the biggest mistake I have made and I see other people make over and over and over. And by the way, this mistake is also the reason why people don't grow in general. Let me tell you a story so you can better visualize what I'm trying to say.

Let's say you buy a plant from the supermarket and you want to plant it in your garden. And this plant comes with instructions. So, you go to the supermarket, you buy the plant, and it comes with instructions. You go home, you go to your garden, you unpack the plant, and you read the instructions. And the instructions are telling you exactly what to do. They're telling you how to take out the plant, how to dig a hole in the soil for your plant, how to put the plant, how to prepare the plant, how to prepare the soil, and how to water the plant.

Basically, all the instructions on how to grow this plant are at your fingertips. And these instructions are basically set in stone. They are the system, right? They are the thing that actually works. If you don't respect them, the plant is going to die. So, what you do, you read the instructions, you put the plant, you do everything right, and now you have the plant. And the instructions say that you should water this plant every single day in the morning.

So, what you do is you water the plant, the next day you go and you water the plant again, the next day you go ahead and you water the plant again. And let's say you do this for a week. You water the plant every single morning for a week, but you don't see any progress. The plant isn't really growing. It actually has one leaf that is kind of dying. It's kind of becoming yellow. So, you start to get a little bit frustrated.

You start to worry a little bit. Now, you're still not affected by it. You still wake up the next day, and you still water the plant. And you do it for another week. But, the plant is still not growing. At least you're not seeing the progress. You're not seeing the feedback. And because you're not getting this feedback from the plant, especially when you're following the instructions, you bought this plant and it came with instructions, which promised you that the plant will grow.

What happens? One day, you're going to wake up, and you're going to be busy to work, or you're just going to have something to do, and you're not going to water the plant that day. You're just going to tell yourself that this isn't growing. I'm just going to water it tomorrow. And tomorrow you actually water the plant. And then you water the plant the day after tomorrow. But the plant is still not really growing. The leaf that was yellow is almost falling apart.

So what happens, you end up not watering the plant for 2 days because you start to get even more frustrated and you start to tell yourself that it's not going to work. You followed the instructions but the plant is not growing so I'm just going to forget about it for 2 days because I'm sad, I'm anxious, I'm angry, I'm frustrated. And so what happens, you develop this pattern where you water the plant less and less and less to the point where the plant actually dies.

And after this experience, you're going to tell yourself that plants are just not for you. You're never going to buy plants again because they're just you just can't grow them. They they just hate you. That's what you're going to tell yourself. But here's the thing. As you were watering the plant, the plant actually was growing. It was growing its roots in the ground. Because before the plant starts to grow for you to actually see it, it has to create the core.

It has to create its roots. So every day when you were watering this plant, the plant was actually growing. You just wasn't seeing it. And this happens because the plant has to grow at its own rate. You can't force external things to grow faster just because you have instructions. But because you don't see the growth, because you don't see the feedback, and you become impatient, and you start to develop anxiety, and you start to kind of hate yourself, you start to neglect the plant.

And eventually the plant dies. Well, that's exactly how growing a YouTube channel is, how growing a personal brand is, and how growing a business is in general. When you first start out, every single video you make, every single post you make, every single adjustment in your business you make, everything you learn about YouTube or your business or your personal brand is building the roots. You don't see them, but they're building.

Now, you might be asking yourself, what exactly is the lesson here? Is the lesson just that I have to never give up? Actually not. The lesson here is actually way deeper, and it's something I have learned about myself and I see in other people. You see, it was never about the plant. It was never about the instructions. You see, the plant was actually growing. The instructions on how to grow the plant also worked. So, the problem wasn't the plant or the instructions.

The problem was you. The problem is you. And this is the biggest mistake I see people make when they want to create their own personal brand, their own business YouTube channel, their YouTube channel, their business, whatever they want to create. They focus so much on the external thing without focusing on them. What do I mean by that? Well, you can learn as much as you want about thumbnails, about click-through rate, about retention, video editing.

All those things are the instructions on how to grow the plant. But, if you don't learn how to control your emotions, how to control yourself, how to deal with these feelings of frustrations and anxiety, you will always quit when you don't get feedback. And I've noticed that in myself as well. Some of the successful channels I talk about didn't grow overnight. The journey was actually kind of rough. What happened? I created a channel, I posted videos for 3 weeks, I didn't really get subscribers, and I quit.

But, lucky for me, a few months later, I started again, and I posted more videos. But, I still didn't get enough feedback, but I did get some extra views and some extra subscribers. But, because it wasn't enough, it wasn't enough feedback for for I also quit again for a few months. But again, lucky for me, I always came back and I always came back and I kept working on the channel and improving to the point where it actually started getting momentum and it's starting working.

So basically, what was happening during this time was I wasn't actually learning so much about the channel as I was actually learning more about myself. I was learning that if I actually don't quit and I put in the time and I evolve and I improve, eventually it should work out more or less. And I personally believe it was really important for me to talk about this because I think this is the most important thing when it comes to growing on YouTube or your business, whatever.

You need to learn about yourself first. You need to learn about your emotions. You need to learn how to control your emotions because if you're not able to control yourself, if you're not able to control your emotions, you will always quit. You will always make decisions based on emotions. And because of this, you end up killing the plant. Now, I know a lot of you who have clicked on this video were hoping for me to say something like, "Use this keyword in your title and you're going to get more views." The thing is, I felt it was necessary to start a video by talking about this because it doesn't matter how much you optimize your thumbnail, your click-through rate, your retention, your video editing skills, whatever, if you don't work on yourself, your business will never succeed.

You first have to work on yourself before you work on your business. Now, as I said, a lot of you probably clicked on this video because you were hoping for me to give you like a system, like the specific thing that is going to get you more views, and I do have a few of those. They're more general and they're something I have noticed in the past 10 years that everyone is doing, whether consciously or unconsciously, and it grows their channels.

These are basically some patterns I've observed on my channels, on other channels, and they seem to always work. No matter how many algorithm changes there are, no matter your niche, no matter your topic, no matter your style, no matter who you are, these patterns have always worked on YouTube, on my channels, and on other channels. So, in this video I want to talk about these patterns, so you can better understand how you can grow your channel in a practical way.

Now, by the way, they're all super simple. Like, when I'm going to talk about them, you're going to be like, "What? This is a secret?" Yeah, this is literally the secret. You either listen to me, or you just think you're super smart and leave the video, right? But if you really want to grow, listen to this, no matter how simple it sounds. And for this first pattern, which I use on my own channels, and I see other creators use, and it works really well.

Like, when you use this pattern in your videos, you almost always get more views and get more subscribers. And I want to tell a story about it, so you can better understand how it works before I actually show you the pattern. So, last year, for example, in real life, there was a trend about chocolate. For years, people have always eaten chocolate, right? But last year, a very specific type of chocolate became popular.

And it was this Dubai chocolate, which was a little bit different. Had different stuff inside, right? And everyone was talking about this chocolate. And so, imagine there are two online stores, online websites, who sell chocolate. One of them was aware of this trend with Dubai chocolate, and it started selling Dubai chocolate. Because of that, the sales went bazooka. Okay? It just started selling way more. And the other store decided not to sell Dubai chocolate.

They were like, "Nope, I'm not going to sell this." This is super basic, right? The reason why the store who started selling Dubai chocolate sold more was because Dubai chocolate was very trending. Everyone was talking about it, and so everyone wants to try it. Not because it's better, not because it's different, just simply because when everyone talks about something, people will want to try it out. And it's so simple, right?

This is such a simple thing. When someone talks about something, it becomes a trend. And if you create videos about that trend, or if you create a business around that trend, chances are your business is going to grow much faster. And it actually is. Like whenever there's a trend on YouTube, if you're able to incorporate that trend in your videos, you are going to grow faster. And this is this first pattern that always seems to work.

It's trends. If you're able to understand how to incorporate trends in your videos without leaving your niche, without going too far away from your niche, you are going to succeed on YouTube. And I want to give you a few examples of how this works. For example, let's say the movie Shrek 5 is coming out at the end of this year or next year, I don't know, but a lot of people are waiting for it. So, how can you incorporate this in your videos?

Well, let's say you record and prepare a video to post 2 weeks before the movie gets out. And let's say you're a cooking channel. What can you do? Well, you can make a cake that looks like Shrek or his entire family. And you record the entire time lapse of creating this cake, and you make a story around it. You're still inside your niche, which is cooking, but you're using something popular everyone is talking about to incorporate in your video.

Now, let's say you're a Minecraft channel. You can create a Shrek painting inside Minecraft. Or you can recreate the entire Shrek village inside Minecraft. And you say, "I recreated a Shrek 5 village." And you post it right before the movie gets out. So, you can be creative and find your own ways to incorporate something that's trending in your own videos. Now, if you simply can't, for example, maybe your niche is very specific and you just can't incorporate Shrek in your videos, don't worry because Shrek is not the only thing trending.

There are always lots of things trending on the internet. You just have to find the one that fits with your niche, with your channel, and add it in your videos, and keep doing that. And every single time you do that, you will just boost your channel a little bit more and a little bit more. And if it doesn't work out this time, let's say you do the Shrek 5 one, and it doesn't work out, it's okay. Try another one next month, and another one next month until you actually reach that one viral video, which will boost your channel, which will create that momentum in your channel.

I know it sounds so simple, but what's crazy is that I have a community with people where I help them grow, and I see almost no one do this. And even with people who are subscribed to my channel over here on Deny Why, I look at your comments, I check your channels sometimes, and none of you are doing this. None of you have no idea how to run trends, right? How to add trends to your channel. And this is the first and most important pattern I have seen on YouTube to work for more than 15 years.

Every time you implement this pattern the right way on your channel, you're almost always going to grow. And if you go to your favorite YouTubers, such as Mr. Beast, you will see that his most popular video is about Squid Games because Squid Games was a very popular series on Netflix, and so he made a video about it. YouTubers with 50 million views who do vlogs for kids, you'll always see them recreate popular things from Roblox that are trending inside Roblox, and so on.

Once you understand this, you will see it all over YouTube. For example, a Faces documentary channel will sometimes create a documentary that gets 10 million views in just 2 weeks. For example, when the Donald Trump shooting happened, you had 3D history channels create documentaries around it already showcasing how it happened or whatever. And I know a lot of you watching this are like, "This is so basic, like trends." But you're you're still blind to it and you don't see it.

Once you open your eyes and you see it, you will realize that the entire YouTube is built around trends. Every single successful channels, every single successful channel is using trends to grow. Now, you don't always have to use trends in every single video, but when there is a trend, use it because it's going to boost your channel. This is way more important than click-through rate and thumbnail and retention because these things are just analytics.

They do represent how much people spend on your video, but if you want people to spend time on your video in the first place, you must get them interested. But how do you get them interested if you have just 10 subscribers, your videos are a little bit shitty, and in your videos you just talk about yourself, or you talk about things you think people are going to be interested. So, you see how you're making it so hard for people to watch your channel.

First of all, they never saw your videos before. They have no idea who you are, so there's no trust built there. There's no connection with you. Second of all, they have so many other options, so many other creators making the same videos you're making, and they're probably better than yours. So, it's like why should anyone click on your video, right? Well, if you use trends, at least people are interested in the trend.

And if you have a nice personality, or if you have a unique editing style, or if you just get lucky and people click on your video first instead of clicking on other video, your video might be the one that actually gets viral. That is why trends are like the core of growing on YouTube. I know it sounds completely basic, and that's because it actually is basic, and it works. It is what it is. Now, there is a second pattern I have discovered that works really well, and basically, if you use this first pattern and this second pattern, you will eventually grow.

Now, the second pattern brings us back to the plant. If you're able to work on yourself, if you're able to control your emotions, if you're able to just be unemotional about your channel, about your personal brand, about your business, and just do it. Just continue to do it, you will basically activate this second pattern. And what the second pattern is is basically taking care of that plant until it actually grows outside as well, not only the roots.

So now you're probably asking yourself, what is this second pattern? Is it consistency? I just have to keep watering the plant again and again? It's not really consistency. It's not about consistency. It's about evergreen content. Right? So think about this plant I've talked about in the beginning as evergreen content. Once it grows, it's just going to continue to grow. Every now and then rain is going to fall on it, so it's going to get water without you watering it.

It's going to get better at getting nutrients from the ground because the roots grow a lot. So what happens, it becomes autonomous and evergreen. The plant just sits there and lives there. And this is exactly how evergreen content works. Instead of spending one day on creating one quick video, spend two weeks or three weeks or even one month on a video. Even if you post that video and it gets zero views, just be unemotional about it and continue to make these types of videos.

Because if you use the first pattern and the second pattern, eventually it's going to work out because what happens, based on my own experience, you create evergreen content. And for those of you who don't know what evergreen content means, it's basically content that will continue to grow 5 years later, 10 years later, and so on. So evergreen content is basically rewatchable content and also content that is always relevant, right?

You can make the video today, but people are going to want to watch it even 5 years later. But the problem with evergreen content is that it doesn't get views instantly. It's content that slowly grows, just like the a But the thing is, when you make one video, two videos, three videos, four videos, and you do it for 3 4 years, you're going to get like a catalog of evergreen videos that are slowly going to grow and grow and grow.

And your channel is just going to go faster and faster and faster. And that's how these channels end up having 2 million, 5 million, 10 million subscribers because they use these two patterns. One of them is evergreen content, so you just build a catalog on your channel of quality content. You don't care about the views. You don't care how many views you get this month or this year on that video. You just think about the video itself.

You want it to make sure it's good, it's rewatchable, it's relatable, it's up-to-date every time, it stays evergreen. And if you have that, and then you use the first pattern to sometimes create videos around trends, you basically have the formula of growing on YouTube. That's it. Now, don't get me wrong. It This doesn't mean that thumbnails don't matter or click-through doesn't matter. They matter, but they don't matter as much as they're being pushed.

First of all, those things changed. Whatever you might learn about thumbnails this year is going to change next year, right? And this is basically the last thing I have learned about YouTube, which is also incredibly important. You need to understand that every single advice on YouTube is general. For example, if I'm going to tell you a type of titles, what type of thumbnails work for my channel Danny Wy, it's most likely not going to work for your channel.

And the confusing part here is that my advice is going to be good, right? Because it works for me. The type of thumbnails I create for Danny Wy, the type of titles I create for Danny Wy, they work for me. So, I have proof it works. So, here, take it. It works. But, the thing is, it's not going to work for you. You have a different channel, a different niche. It's just advice on YouTube is very general. And what happens if you're going to listen to advice from him and her and me, you're going to have this confusion in your head and it's going to be like you don't know what works anymore.

And the thing is, and the beauty about YouTube, by the way, is that once you spend enough time with your channel and you apply these patterns so you grow a little bit, you will slowly learn what actually works for you, what type of viewers actually watch your channel. And once you understand that, you'll know exactly what type of thumbnails you should make for your channel. Not only that, but you will learn how to improve your thumbnails for your channel.

Like, listen, this right here is probably the most important thing I'm going to say in this entire video. Do you think I go on YouTube and watch tutorials about click-through rate and retention and how to improve my thumbnails? I don't. The reason why I'm able to make thumbnails people click, the reason I'm able to have a good click-through rate, is because I have learned my own channel and my own audience. And I just know what works for me.

I have no idea if other channels inside my niche, which are competitors, have higher click-through rate or if they have higher average view duration. I have no idea. And honestly, I don't care because I know what works for me, I know what are my numbers, and could they be bigger? Could they be lower? Yes, but the thing is it works and I discovered that myself for my channel. If I go ahead now and I watch some person telling me how to improve my click-through rate, chances are my click-through rate is actually going to drop because I know my channel much better than a random guru on YouTube does.

So, if you want to grow on YouTube, you need to study you, right? Your channel, you. Not other people's channel, not some guru telling you what's working for him because what's working for him, it's working for him. What's working for you is going to work for you. But now you're probably going to ask yourself, wait, so why should you listen to me if I shouldn't listen to other gurus? Because in this video, I'm not talking about click-through rate.

I'm not talking how to improve your thumbnail. What I'm talking about it's much deeper. These are patterns, these are behaviors, these are things that simply seem to work. This is not a system. I have no idea how you should incorporate the trend on your channel. That's something you have to find for yourself. I can't tell you that. All I can tell you is that this is what works. So, just do this. Just do these four things.

I don't care what click-through rate you have. I don't care how your thumbnails look. Just do these four things. Take care of yourself and improve yourself first. Understand trends and how to incorporate them in your own videos and then create just evergreen videos. Just create evergreen videos even if they don't get views. 2 years later, 3 years later, they are going to get views because they're evergreen. Literally one random day, the YouTube algorithm will be like, "Let's just give views to this video." And you'll be shocked.

You'll be like, "Whoa, I literally forgot about this video and out of nowhere it's getting 200,000 views." And then, study yourself. Look at yourself. Look at your channel. Look at your subscribers. And all those four things, they work with each other and they're like a symbiotic thing. So, I hoped this helped. Now, if you're still struggling to pick your niche and create ideas for your YouTube channel, you might want to watch this video over here because inside this video