Principle 1: Live Like A Student
You should live frugally. A room will suffice, so you can rent out the other rooms in your house (if you own one). If not, you can look for a shared apartment.
Being materialistic and associating success with materialistic things is the worst way to live your life.
Learning (reading books, listening to podcasts, and watching documentaries of the autobiographies of famous kings like Napoleon, Alexander, etc.) is actually what you should always love spending your time and money on whenever you are not working (in your downtime)
Remove all distractions (phone, laptop, etc.) when you are learning in your downtime. If you have a girlfriend, you should spend all the time you spend with her learning.
10,000 hours of practice are literally what it takes to become a master in any field.
Principle 2: Befriend The Algorithm
There is more money to be made on YouTube than TV, and in 5 to 10 years, it’s going to become multiple times bigger because it’s a subsidiary of the internet (aka Google).
It’s important before even starting YouTube to understand the algorithm and come to terms with it.
What YouTube wants is for users to spend more time watching and less time browsing, which means YouTube isn’t trying to show you 100 lame videos but rather just one good one. The YouTube algorithm is the shadow of what the audience wants. It’s set up in a way that it runs after what people like. The AI is literally aware of every minute thing you do on the website. So by studying the algorithm, you are actually studying human psychology.
That makes making viral videos a teachable or learnable skill, no matter how small your channel is. All the information is already out there, and the YouTube algorithm isn’t changing anytime soon. According to MrBeast, if you swap brains with him, you can get to 1 million subscribers in just 3 to 4 months!
Years of MrBeast’s research boil down to this conclusion: get people to click your video, get them to watch it till the end, and make sure they are happy. The more you do this, the better you get.
Success on YouTube is content driven, which means subscribers, likes, and comments literally don’t matter at all. These numbers are arbitrary and a vanity metric.
Views are everything, and you get views by making the best videos possible! Don’t blame or hate the algorithm if you didn’t get the number of views you were expecting. Blame your content; your video is not good enough to deserve that many views.
So in the end, the conclusion is that you should know your place in the YouTube ecosystem, don’t try to game the system, and come to terms with the algorithm. It’s also extremely important to read YouTube’s community guidelines, TOS, copyright rules, and Adsense program policies and align your content with them.
Principle 3: Find Your Tribe
According to MrBeast, most young YouTube entrepreneurs (creatorpreneurs? contentpreneurs?) have horrible friend groups because they don’t want to come across as freaks. In reality, you are not a weirdo; others just don’t have ambition.
It’s really important to find your tribe (a small mastermind group with 3–4 people) on the Internet early on in your career that does what you do and talk with them daily or weekly (or meet them in person). So look for creators and join meetups in your area (either online or offline).
There is no such thing as a perfect video. Have a never ending thirst for learning and a hunger for criticism from these people, who will tell you when your content is bad. You need people shitting on you and critiquing you so that you can improve video by video over 10 years. This goes both ways; always look out to help or mentor people without financial incentive, and you will learn more. Give at least what you take, and if you do that, people will always teach you stuff.
Mentorship is really effective! Just by surrounding yourself with trusted and relevant people in your space (people who you want to be), you will make your journey 70% easier.
If you want to create your own mastermind group, reach out to creators who you trust and aspire to be like.
Principle 4: Be Hyper Obsessed
“You are crazy until you succeed, then you are a genius.”
To get success on YouTube, you need at least 3–5 years of sitting in your room with no social interaction and just making the best videos possible. For crazy success in any field, you need obsession for decades. Forget about pulling any viewership in your first year and making lots of money in the first two years. That’ll most likely happen in the third and fourth years.
When starting out, your goal should be to obsessively make 100 videos. They’ll be terrible, but you’re still in the learning stage. You’ll improve video by video. Don’t think about the algorithm when making these 100 videos; think about how to make better content geared toward the viewer.
You don’t go from entertaining no one to entertaining millions in a day. It’s hard work and a slow, progressive workup, and it should be. Because if you got millions of viewers overnight, you wouldn’t know how to handle them.
Have laser focus by setting real goals, and then think of it as either you are gonna make it or die trying. Just wake up in the morning and don’t stop. Just work, work, work. Work 12–15 hours a day! Literally live where you work! There is no way back. Don’t take breaks. When you’re 100, you’ll regret taking too many breaks. Give into your impulse and just work all the time (for 8 to 9 days) until you are burnt out, and then take a day or half a day off to recharge (like watching anime). Don’t have a set structure. Don’t set boundaries.
“If you truly love what you do, why put boundaries on it? If you want to work, just work all the time.”
Hyper-obsession is a good thing; sometimes you really need 15 hours of work per day to blow up and succeed. However, this does not mean you have to produce sh*t content that no one would watch. Funnel your energy better and put in way more time and effort to create evergreen content.
“To become a super successful entrepreneur, you need to be either working or doing something that decompresses and recharges you so you can work again. If the things you are doing in your downtime don’t recharge you, you are screwed.”
It’s impossible to be unsuccessful on YouTube as long as you are innovating and adapting, have a relentless obsession, and reinvest everything.
Principle 5: Reinvest Everything. (Literally!)
According to MrBeast, this is yet another principle that young YouTube entrepreneurs don’t understand. They don’t understand the power of following. Attention is the most valuable currency.
When it comes to your YouTube channel (business), don’t think about it in “next 6 months” or “next year.” Always think in decades.
When starting out, spend every dollar you make the next month back into content creation (extreme outsourcing). The amount you invest will get bigger and bigger each month. Don’t care about anything else; just spend everything on scaling and making better videos. It’s not that crazy.
Reinvest intelligently; don’t spend money on things your business doesn’t need. Reinvesting everything will make it hard to fail.
Success is guaranteed if you are constantly learning (principle 1), working 12 hours a day (principle 4), and reinvesting every dollar you make. You’ll eventually come to the top.
Principle 6: Build A Strong Team
According to MrBeast, this is repetitive advice that most creators don’t get. If your content style is replicable, that means you can hire!
As the CEO of the YouTube channel, you just make the decisions, not work on them. (Personal Leverage). The whole reason to hire is so that you can have more time to invest in your core competence (for MrBeast that would be filming videos since that’s the only thing no one else can do on his channel) or learning.
The solution to burnout is hiring a team. Find someone to do the task that you don’t want to do in the next 5 months. Do things based on priorities. Work Week Analytics: Document literally everything you do in the day. With one marker, highlight everything that you hate doing, and with another color, highlight everything that wastes your time. Then hire someone to do the highlighted tasks.
MrBeast recommends hiring three types of people:
- Video Editors
- Writers (who write content that could triple retention)
- Brainstorming or creative thinkers
The OP part about hiring people is that you can only devote 20% of your time to video editing; if a video editor can dedicate 100% of his work time to it, he will be shitting on you because he edits way better than you, even if he has lower skill levels than you.
Always build a team once you have figured it out yourself. Build the foundations first. That will give you confidence to hire people. Your goal should be to create training videos and courses that you can provide to your employees.
To create a training video for the video editor, binge watch the most successful videos in your niche. Make a list of practices or elements that make their content pop, then use the Cleanshot app to capture those screen recordings and turn them into a gif. Put that gif into the training guide or a Notion mood board for video editors to implement in future content creation. It’s always useful to know what those particular types of effects, elements, or animations are called.
Make sure the training that you send to your editor is as detailed as possible; add every minute detail. Other great tools are Screenflow, Loom, and Frame.io (where the editors can upload the video).
Creatorpreneuer is a course that goes into depth on how to hire employees and create workflows.
Finding great people is the hardest thing you will ever do in your business. You can find your next employee anywhere, so always be on the lookout. When you are opening up new channels, hire the team of the top creators in that niche! So you can set the foundations right.
Always be specific with your hiring. Look out for these things:
- Are you coachable?
- Do you see the value?
- Do you believe in what I believe in?
Make sure the person you hire is coachable, hardworking, obsessed, and has the humility to have a beginner’s mind. Train them on content creation and production.
A recurring interview question you should always ask is:
What do you want to be doing in 10 years? (To pass, their answer should be making content on YouTube.)
Even though you are not working, always have the final say and pitch. The head guy sets the tone for everyone in the company. Always have a workplace culture to make your employees richer if they help you achieve your goals. Give suggestions, not facts, to your team.
If, for some reason, you have to fire them, never leave them without a testimonial.
After you reach a certain level in your business, you will have to scale a team, and for that, you just have to experiment:
- Hire a person a month for the next 5 years and train them up.
- Rent a 2–3-room office space.
- Clone Yourself: Hire a shadow to do high-level things, Pay him to follow you around for two years and study everything you do.
Principle 7: Know Your Viewer
Never make videos for
- Yourself
- Your Viewer
- Virality
Find a middle ground between the above three: your passion, your ideal audience, and viral content. When starting out, it’s important to know who you are making the videos for. You have to recognize your core audience (your loyal followers or superfans) and do everything possible to understand everything about them before scaling to a more general audience. Viral videos will damage your channel in the long term, so focus on building an audience based on your content and your personality first.
The persona is your viewer, your avatar, and your target audience. You have to know everything about this person! To do that, create your viewer’s persona breakdown in Google Docs.
- List your viewer persona’s demographics: age or generation, gender, income range, education, geographical location, relationship status, and children’s status.
- List your viewer persona’s psychographics: beliefs, motivators, values, attitudes, lifestyle choices, fears, vulnerabilities, goals, aspirations, and passions.
- List your viewer persona’s online behavior: types of media consumed, content consumed for personal interest versus entertainment, and channels they subscribe to.
- List your viewer persona’s offline behavior: buying behavior, habits, hobbies, and where they spend their time offline.
The data makes it 100% accurate that these are your people. Use community polls, discord servers, typeforms, Google Forms, etc. to gather even further data about your viewers online behaviors. Go to Reddit and other forums to find out what your viewers are interested in. (You can promote your video there as well.)
An important thing to note here is that your audience can change over time (for example, younger or older), so you have to pivot your content style and type accordingly.
You can even use a persona breakdown to create prompts to write video scripts for your ideal viewer.
For example, “Write an engaging YouTube script for a 22-year-old young man looking to improve his life.”
Use persona breakdowns to create content and write video scripts for your viewer with the help of ChatGPT.
For a small YouTuber, it’s very important to reply to all comments and create new content from viewers suggestions in the comment section.
The more you create content for your ideal viewer, the more YouTube will recommend your videos in its algorithm.
You’ll know you are building loyal followers when your AVPV (average views per viewer) goes high. Their experience with your every video should be so good that they will watch more. They shouldn’t feel like that’s enough for you today; that’s the effect you want.
Principle 8: Research What Works
Stop watching YouTube for entertainment; instead, start watching to learn. Study YouTube. Literally watch YouTube like a student. Don’t watch movies or TV shows for entertainment. One movie translates to 20 YouTube videos! If you are not obsessed with learning YouTube, you are never going to be successful, period. There is something you can learn from every video you watch, especially if it has a million views. There is a reason it got a million views. Become a student of the data; becoming an expert in data analysis is essential for long-term YouTube success.
How to study?
Research at least 10 of the most successful creators in your niche. Take note of what they have in common.
Choose 6 to 10 most viewed videos in the last year per channel and make notes on titles, thumbnails, video views, likes and dislikes, and video duration.
Take a notepad and just write down what’s happening in the video. Take note of the hook (first 30 seconds), what the pacing feels like, and how they are edited. Make notes on reengagement throughout the video, calls to action, video descriptions, and comments.
Example: 40 seconds in: over 12 scene changes, intro of new information every 6 seconds, twist by 40 seconds. Etc.
Ask what similarities you see among the different videos and across different channels in your list. See if and how they engage with their communities, both in the video comments and on the Community tab. Read the comments on their most popular videos. Look for patterns in content creation and audience behavior. This practice is all about the response and interaction of the viewer with the content.
Don’t be blind! Micro-analyze everything! There’s a reason why a video has 1 million views. If you consume enough viral videos, you can train your brain to find patterns. Then there will come a time when you will have a YouTube sixth sense. YouTube’s sixth sense is intuition about what will work and what wont.You unlock this ability after analyzing successful content and knowing your audience for years. Always be in reconnaissance (discovery mode) mode when watching YouTube.
Principle 9: Get Them To Click
“The difference between 1 million views on YouTube and 30 million views isn’t 30 times the effort; in fact, it’s just 3 times the effort, but a really great idea.” Idea is so fucking important”
Just think about it: it’s much easier to get 5 million views on one video than 100k in 50 videos. ONE GREAT VIDEO will get more views than 100 mediocre ones!
According to MrBeast, the way to get 100 million views is to do something 100% original, unique, creative, and never done before. You need a constant stream of ideas to go viral. You have to be different! Don’t do what everyone else is doing, and you will get noticed.
How do I get ideas? (IDEATION)
- Intake inspiration, and then see what pops up in your head or what your brain outputs. According to MrBeast, this is the most effective way to come up with killer ideas.
- For inspiration, MrBeast flips through the dictionary, finds a random word, and then attaches a crazy number to it to create an absurd video.
- MrBeast also mentioned getting ideas from dreams.
- Anime is also a great way to grow creatively. Always love taking inspiration.
- MrBeast has 10 people spending 10 hours a day brainstorming an idea.
- Choose video topics that appeal to broad markets.
If you want your videos to get discovered in a sea of millions, keep this thought at the forefront: make data-driven decisions but always optimize for humans.
Your viewer lives in micro-moments. They check their phones 150 times a day. These moments are defined by intent: they want to know something, go somewhere, do something, or buy something. Don’t miss the opportunity to put content in front of their faces.
The click-through rate (CTR) is one of the most important statistics for a video’s success. The other two are average view duration (AVD) (watchtime) and surveys (the most important one), which you don’t really see in your YouTube studio. Which means to grow on YouTube, you just need people to click on your video and watch it.
10% better video is four times the views: If you get people to click on your video 10% more and watch it 10% longer than mine, you don’t get 10% more views; you get four times as many views.
The thumbnail and title have the same importance, if not more, than the video itself.
THUMBNAIL
Our brain takes 13 milliseconds to process thumbnail images and 1.8 seconds to process the title, which makes the thumbnail more important than the title. If Thumbnail is the protagonist, Title is the supporting character. You have to tell a story without words in a thumbnail, which the title provides context for. So, when designing a thumbnail, always ask yourself, “How do I explain what’s going on without words?”
You can browse Netflix for thumbnails; their thumbnails are the best in the business. Thumbnails perform better with people’s faces in them, especially when they show a lot of emotion.
Progression thumbnails are the best way to tell a story in your thumbnail. They can be either two or three panels. Each color has its own meaning, so use the right color combinations in your progression thumbnails; choose either complementary or contrasting colors. Use polarization (cross for wrong, check for right), and always put before on the left and after on the right. Use clipart (red arrows, circles, hand gestures, and emojis) to redirect the viewer’s eyes where you want them to see. You can also change the perspective (big and small, short and tall, etc.). If you entice curiosity and the feeling of “I can’t look away” in your impressions, you will gain the click 100% of the time. Do the blink test and see whether your eyes go where you want them to go. Never design for desktop, and always design for mobile. The thumbnail should be clear and simple and shouldn’t have much clutter, so Don’t put too much text in, and only use text to amplify.
Discard your thumbnail if
- You can’t see the objects because they are too small.
- You can’t easily distinguish things.
- You do the blink test, and the thing that grabs your attention first isn’t what you want.
Always brainstorm and sketch out 3 or 4 possible thumbnail ideas for each possible title (3 titles) and have 2 or 3 final variations of each thumbnail concept so that you can quickly change it in time. That is why you should hire an expert thumbnail designer from Fiverr who works with Midjourney and can do multiple revisions.
TITLE
A great title should be easy to remember, simple to explain, easy to share, and give context to the thumbnail. The title needs to satisfy the why (entertainment, education, inspiration, relaxation) and the what (what is the solution to their problem?). What would encourage them to click? To make a clickable title, you must satisfy the why by providing value in the what.
A great title is also just so intrinsically interesting that it’s going to fuck with them if they don’t click on it. The title should be short, simple, and so freakin interesting that if someone reads it, they have to click it. It should provide a good segway to the content and should represent the length of the video. It should all make sense.
Think differently and make your video titles sound absurd. The more extreme the opinion, the higher the click-through rate. For example, instead of “Fiji water stinks,”, use “Fiji water is the worst water I’ve ever drunk in my life”, but then you have to deliver on the promise.
The higher the number, the higher the click-through rate; however, past $100,000, it doesn’t make any difference.
Always make your ideas extreme (climbing a mountain) rather than generic (running a marathon).
You need an original and strong opinion, so be extreme. Instead of “I like bananas,”, use “Bananas are the best goddamn food on the planet!
You need people to say, “What the fuck?” and click. “If I don’t click that, I won’t be able to sleep at night!”, “What the fuck did he say in that video? I need to know!”
Always use an active voice and capitalize the first letter of each word in your title, or use all caps when necessary. Here are some examples of great titles:
- Be relevant, trending, and topical. Elon Musk Helped NASA Astronauts Become Cool Again
- Use questions (both open-ended and closed-ended): How Would YOU Survive on Mars?
- Include numbers for listicle video titles: 5 Extreme FACTS about Black Holes
- State a problem and offer a solution: Elon’s Satellite Internet Is a Mess. This Is How You Fix It!
- Create urgency: We Need to Colonize Mars NOW Before It’s Too Late!
- Use a trusted source: NASA Says Pluto Is NOT a Planet
- Address the viewer: Chinese and Russians Will Beat SpaceX to Mars Space Tourism: You Can Book Right NOW!
- Use emotional drama or polarizing words: Not Made on This Earth, Pentagon Reveals UFO Findings
- Capitalize your titles or words: LIFE ON MARS? Neil deGrasse Tyson Thinks So
Amplify with attention-grabbing words: Ultimate, Worst, Best, Faster, Insane, Crazy, WOW, or I Cried.
Attention-grabbing words for educational channels: DIY, Easy, Step By Step, Simple, Amazing, Quick, and Now
Use tools like
- Tubebuddy (for research and optimization)
- VidIQ (for more robust SEO features and competitive analysis tools)
- Kickass Headline Generator (for brainstorming and auto-generating headlines)
- Portent Content Idea Generator (for thinking differently)
Your titles should also be less than 50 characters, because if they’re more than that, they will go… (incomplete). Put your main keyword as close to the front of the title as possible.
Make sure your title is relevant and it connects to other videos in that bucket.
You should spend days trying to come up with a clickable title (yes, it’s that important), and if that’s not possible, then abandon the video!
Make a Google Doc for title ideas and add every variation you can think of. There are no dumb ideas in brainstorming. Brainstorm 10 new title ideas for your next video. Then narrow it down to three possible titles. Brainstorm and sketch out three or four possible thumbnail ideas for each title.
Think about your potential viewers and what would motivate them to click. Imagine how your viewer would talk to other people (with friends or family, on omegle, on forums, etc.) about your video. Discard the title if it doesn’t pass this test.
Get human feedback on these ideas from your mastermind group. Act on the suggestions and make changes!
There are satisfaction signals that train the AI what to suggest or not. Youtube AI uses Google’s cloud vision, and it uses OCR to detect what’s in the thumbnails of the videos. The AI then detects what’s going on in the video and categorizes it, so make sure the title and the description align with the words used inside the video.
Always optimize your videos for the homepage and suggested feed because that’s how you will reach the most people. Newer videos from other channels will outrank your videos in the search results.
UPLOAD
Uploading is the start, not the end. Always schedule the videos so you can work on uploads and not be a slave to the clock. Use TubeBuddy to streamline your upload process. If you are not super confident about your video being a banger when you upload it, it will most likely fail because of your intuition.
Description: Above the fold (200 words) is the most important part of the description; write like a human and use the right keywords. Below the fold, put links to other videos, social media, relevant tags, and timestamps. Never use the exact same description over and over again. Include a timestamp of the key points in your video; that way, you will see a more engaging graph.
Tags: Use tags from the keyword in your video’s title and description. Put relevant tags (primary, secondary, and other relevant keywords). Stay under 300 characters in your tags. Tubebuddy is great for showing your relevant tags. Use the default profiles on Tube Buddy to save tags and descriptions; it will save you hours of your life. Just tweak it in every video.
Cards: Don’t use cards in the first third of the video, and suggest videos in the same buckets for better connection.
End Screen: Use the “best for viewer” endscreen and promote just one video.
Closed captioning: Use CC but not the auto CC, pay services to do it, or use open AI whisper; CC will help your watch time.
PROMOTE
Don’t buy ads (on the face marketing); in fact, grow organically (permission marketing). You need the right viewer to come in quickly after you upload. Don’t push your content to the wrong viewers, push it to the right viewers, which will help the algorithm. Go to online forums in your niche and promote the video there.
Collaborate with channels that are on the “other channels your audience watched list. Pay them for a shout-out or endscreen in their older content. Look into your analytics to see what other videos your audience has watched. Make a list of 5–10 creators you would like to collaborate with.
Launch multiple channels to feed the audience to the main channel. For example, you can make channels in multiple languages to appeal to even more people. YouTube is a global platform. It appeals to a global audience as well, not just the United States. On those channels, you will find a completely new audience. Less than 10% of the world speaks English, so 90% of the people can’t even enjoy your content. Make your channel in all the top 10 languages on YouTube. You can use Google Trends to see whether or not your niche is popular in that country. Popular options are Spanish, Russian, Hindi, Japanese, German, Portuguese, and Indonesian. India has a lot of potential because India is YouTube’s number-one audience. You have to build your fanbase in India since it’s the future. Dubbed videos in new languages will also do well and connect with audiences. You should find celebrity voice actors to dub since their voices are already heard by that country’s masses.
Start a shorts channel, not for the money but to gain an audience. Make shorts very similar to your long-form content. Shorts promote your long videos in the algorithm. Put both shorts and long videos in one channel. Make unique shorts, not clips. Short-form content is very easy to make and go viral. Sub-1 minute vertical content will go viral on TikTok, shorts, reels, Facebook, Reddit, and Twitter. One form of content can go viral everywhere. Subscribe to social media management software so you can upload to all the places at once.
Analyze and adjust
To find baselines or averages of your CTR and impressions (real-time baselines), have at least 10 videos, choose a traffic source, and then divide by 10. Repeat this for all traffic sources for all metrics. If you have video buckets, do the same thing: group them together, find their averages, and probably create a Google Sheet. Never compare your metrics and data with those of other creators. Focus on your data and metrics only.
You will get CTR data after 2–3 hours of uploading. Check the data. Now, compared to the baselines you have established, if you have:
- Low CTR + high impressions = don’t change anything yet.
- Low CTR + average or low impressions = change the thumbnail first, then maybe the title.
Don’t overwhelm or confuse yourself by looking at this too much, you will learn to compare with the baseline over time. Just make CTR your priority in real time (this is important).
Have 3–4 thumbnail options ready to change once you have uploaded the video and its CTR is underperforming. Every second after the upload, you are losing the freshness factor, and you won’t get this opportunity again.
Use tubebuddy for subtle Thumbnail split testing (like color change), to look at which thumbnail performed better and where the traffic comes from. Small Tweaks: Change in this order: Thumbnail B > Title > Thumbnail C > Thumbnail D. Look at existing videos with highest CTR’s, find patterns and then create exactly like that.
Principle 10: Get Them To Watch
“Attention is the most valuable currency in the world. If you could post something and everyone in the world would wanna watch it, you’d be one of the most profitable man on earth.”
BUILD A COMMUNITY
Build a community around your content. Content that has a community built around it is significantly better because humans are attracted to communities; they want to belong somewhere and be a part of something. Read the books Primal Branding and Superfans for more details.
Seven of Primal Branding’s fundamentals for community building are: Creation Story, Creed, Icons, Rituals, Sacred Woods or Lexicon, Nonbelievers, and Leaders.
Creation Story: Just because it’s a company or business doesn’t mean it can’t be personal. People want to know about the origin story of things like apples. Write down your thoughts, values, passions, and your Why. By the end of the video, the viewer should knew exactly where we had come from, why we were here, and how they could become a part of our passionate community. It should go from my vision to our vision.
Creed: It’s an organic process that can change over time, but you get a better one. Use the words your followers use to describe your brand.
Icons: Hire a graphic designer to create memorable icons and put them everywhere!
Rituals: It’s the process of your company — how we roll.
Sacred words or Lexicon: Create a Google Doc of my Lexicon, borrow from forums in your niche, and/or create your own words. When outsiders ask, “What does this word mean?” in the comments section, it helps spread brand awareness. Create a ritual for others and a vocabulary or language for your own community.
Non-believers: There will always be haters, and that’s actually great because when people hate, people defend. People become more invested in the content when they have defended it.
Leader: A strong leader who will be the voice of the brand is necessary.
Distribution: Go where your people are; don’t push your content where they aren’t. Promote your videos on forums.
Superfans (The Ninth Fundamental): These are the people who will be obsessed with your content and will do anything to spread it far and wide. You have to recognize them, or they will disconnect. You can recognize and reach out to some of your most loyal followers and ask them to be your channel moderators.
Using your viewer persona, develop a plan to build a community with your most loyal followers. Ask yourself: How will you engage with your audience monthly? What action steps will your community take each month?
Tell a Story
Everything comes back to retention; what’s the point of making a video if no one’s going to watch it? If your retention rate is below 70%, figure out how to get it higher. How do I get higher retention? By telling a story.
All good videos follow a pattern (a story arc): they grab your attention with a hook, hold your attention with reengagement strategies, and leave you with a payoff or unexpected surprise at the end (like the great Darth Vader revelation in The Empire Strikes Back).
The good thing about stories is that you can tell them again and again; there are no specific ifs and buts. A story is a story.
There is something about us humans that makes us naturally drawn to stories because they make processing information easier. We are surrounded by stories, be they in stand-ups or movies that we watch.
To get good story ideas, take inspiration from other YouTube channels, Reddit, and online forums, create a Google Doc, and write what pops up in your head (output).
One-sentence test: Your storyline should be clear and simple. If you can’t explain a video concept in one sentence, scratch it off.
Each story arc should hook the audience with a bold and simple hook, re-engage them throughout, and weave multiple storylines that converge in the end.
There should be a clear setup, an unpredictable climax, and a goosh for the bonus content or the hidden gem.
YouTube is different from traditional media in that the content is made with inferior cameras, is unscripted, and is imperfect. Because the audience doesn’t want you to be perfect and wants you to just be yourself (authentic). Be genuine in front of the camera and have genuine interactions. MrBeast has a trust factor with his audience; they do what he says because regular entrepreneurs don’t talk like that with their audiences. If you have told a good story with good opinions and if your viewers are emotionally connected with you, at that point they will click on any CTA (call to action) you throw at them in the end to support you. When you want to sell something, everything remains the same except that you make content with a problem-solution formula in mind. Explain a relatable problem and offer a solution, then back it up with credibility.
Take your influence seriously and do something meaningful with your content and your power. “We don’t need random acts of kindness or a month of impact. We need deliberate, intentional acts of compassion as a lifestyle.” Write out your finish line (your goal) and put it somewhere you will see it daily. Don’t lose sight of why you’re creating, especially in hard times. It all boils down to messaging, and getting your message across should be your number one priority, so always focus on your message. When you want to sell something, it’s essential to give importance to the message first and the content second. However, if you are making content for entertainment, content comes first and messages second. Never divert from your core message. Just listen to your followers and feed them what they want.
Analyze the videos using this figure to see if they use a story arc. Identify the hook, reengagement, setup, climax, and the goosh and then create your next video using the story arc.
HOOK
“The best compliment you can get as a YouTuber is “you got me hooked.””
The hockey stick effect happens when there is a disconnect between the title and thumbnail and what the viewer expected to see in the first 15 seconds. The hook creates enough curiosity for the viewer to want to know what the episode or video is going to be about.
Your title and thumbnail set expectations, and it’s crucial that you meet those expectations at the very beginning of the video and then exceed them. The video should start with you delivering on the promise of the title and thumbnail. You have to assure people that what they clicked on is what they are getting and then blow their minds — but you are also getting this all. That’s how you lower the dropoff; it takes 20 seconds for you to meet the expectations. The first 10 seconds of the video are extremely important; they should give you everything you need with no wasted words and be short and concise.
There is no structure when it comes to optimizing an intro and hooking people; there are a million different ways to hook.
The most important part is to get people to immerse themselves in the content (hook) and hold them there. You don’t have to try as hard in the back half of the video as you do in the front. So spend more time editing and thinking about the first half of the video, especially the hook.
Make sure your hook and storytelling are on point, like Hamza’s.
REENGAGEMENT
Once you get them hooked, you keep them watching by sharing the personal touches: your backstory, your beliefs, and other engaging elements. If the video is longer or has multiple topics, then it’s essential to include side stories so they don’t get bored.
Look up what your viewers are searching for and all the questions in the comments section, create a list of FAQs, and use these questions as “but you are also getting this all”, That way, you are making the viewer more curious and providing more value than asked for.
It’s extremely important to know where your viewer is coming from so you can understand them better. Each traffic source has an independent algorithm whose aim is to increase the likelihood that people will click and watch videos.
Pop culture is the collection of music, movies, fashion, and other trends that most people in a society like and talk about.
To appeal to a more general audience, you can use pop culture references, like an Infinity Gauntlet analogy, to explain things because the mainstream can understand this. This video is a good example of how Ali Abdaal uses a Harry Potter analogy to explain things. He uses pop culture to break down complex topics quite often on his channel. You can look up a list of all the mainstream and most popular things and use them in your video. You can even use ChatGPT to write scripts using mainstream pop culture analogies.
Note: First, build your niche audience, then appeal to pop culture to reach a broader or more general audience.
SETUP
Set up the coming climax and another point of reengagement with the viewer. Be careful not to go straight for the climax at this point because you have to keep teasing the viewer.
Say things like, “Don’t miss the bonus tip at the end of the video,” not, “That’s it for now.”
CLIMAX
Tittle’s topic should grip the viewers entire attention till the end, where you have to deliver on the promise of the title and thumbnail (payoff) and tease a follow-up video.
GOOSH
The bonus element that every great piece of content has is what will keep your retention up because your viewers will watch your videos till the end expecting this, just like in the MCU.
WRAP UP
Wrap up with the original topic or theme you introduced to the viewer at the outset of the video. You should keep your endings and outros short. End the video quickly. As soon as the story’s been told and the video is over, end it. If you drag, you are already making your retention worse at that point.
Don’t just push the things you want to sell at the end of the video. You want people to have multiple chances to see the product, so include a CTA in the first minute as well, but always include it in the story. The goal of the outro should be to direct the viewer to watch another video of your channel so that they can go down the rabbit hole, so have a verbal call to action, a pinned comment, an endscreen element, and a description.
The last 8–10 seconds of the video should just be a verbal call to action to watch the target video.
IMPROVE RETENTION
Add fast pacing.
Every video is your competitor, so you have to keep putting in the effort to keep your content relevant and competitive. Viewers have to pick between videos every time they go to YouTube, and they’ll choose the better video without a second thought. Make your video the better video. Don’t copy; be similar, but put your own spin on it, or you won’t succeed. You should spend a ton of time deciding how long every second of your content should be and providing quality and value.
Edit your videos with continuous re-engagement in mind to maximize your retention and pattern of narration. Have tension the entire time of the video. You have to make a lot happen every few seconds. Change camera angles (have a b cam and a c cam), framing, and music every 5 to 10 seconds.
Use pattern interruptions and reengagement strategies in your video valleys.
Use comic relief (say something funny).
change camera positions
camera work (zoom, pan, and shoot from different perspectives; do quick cuts and fast paces)
Change camera angles (have a b cam and a c cam).
editing techniques (use fast-moving visuals and custom animation)
Say something funny.
Add juxtapositions, like a clip of something else.
new information that teases what’s coming later in the video,
Add sound effects.
Clap your hands.
Change your voice.
Remove Every Dull Moment
After your editor has edited the video, watch it from the perspective of your demographic. Watch the video multiple times through the lens of your ideal viewer and think about where the drop-off is. When you watch your YouTube video, imagine how your ideal viewer will feel and respond to every aspect of the video, and then validate that with data.
The basic information-gathering questions that will help us connect with our audience are The four Ws: who, where, what, and when Look at the videos you have released in the last 90 days. Write down your top-performing videos and analyze each one using the Four Ws. Look for patterns among them. Human and Data Feedback: A Winning Combo
Become emotionally detached from your content and cut the parts, or implement a pattern interrupt where you are bored and start to disconnect. You should be wow’ing the entire video.
Your threshold should always be “Do I find it entertaining?”, or “Do I watch it? But also keep your demographic in mind.
Make your 10 most critical people Watch the video and roast it. To make the video really fast-paced, do 20 revisions of everybody and remove what’s not entertaining.
Pay people to record themselves watching your video. Watch their reactions. Notice when they pick up their phones, when they get bored, etc.
The basic information-gathering questions that will help us connect with our audience are The four Ws: who, where, what, and when. Look at the videos you have released in the last 90 days. Write down your top-performing videos and analyze each one using the Four Ws. Look for patterns among them. Human and Data Feedback: A Winning Combo
Don’t ask for feedback from anyone except your ideal viewer. Create a Discord group or ask for feedback through your YouTube community posts.
Analyze and adjust
The slow burn effect occurs when the viewer gradually decreases. You want the line to be flat.
The ideal way to respond to a video that’s doing badly is to look at it objectively, unemotionally, and then move on. Remove emotion from the equation, and then figure out how to improve the next one. Take out the emotion and put on your thinking cap to observe analytically. Break free of the “analysis paralysis” — don’t be afraid to look at negative results. Make yourself more obsessed with the analysis process than you are with your view count.
If you don’t immediately course-correct based on the analytics, you will never succeed on YouTube.
Ask, ‘How can I make my videos better?” every single day for a year to succeed. Every six months, you should look back and hate your videos; if not, you are not learning quick enough. If a video from your channel from six months ago doesn’t make you want to barf because of how much better you are at making content now, you’re doing it wrong. I can’t even stand watching my videos from six months ago because I am so much better at making content now. I can see how bad my old videos are. They could have been so much better! I’m depressed even thinking about those videos. Make 100 videos and improve something each time. Trust your intuition and make your videos for your audience. What will they like?
Your goal is to find patterns and improve future content.
Check your AVD in the video’s first hour after upload, the first day, the first week, the first 30 days, and longer.
In your relative audience retention, notice what’s going on in the engaging points of your video and do more of it in the future.
The 50% Rule: You literally just lost half of your viewers, so it’s extremely important to figure out why.
The 30% Rule Find where you lost the first 30% of your viewers (usually in the first 30 to 60 seconds).
Review your three best videos when it comes to AVD and AVP. Analyze using the 50% and 30% rules: how would you make your video different knowing what you know now? Notice the bumps and drop-offs in your videos and see if you can find a pattern.
Find out why people left: Did you say a trigger word or phrase? Did you give them the promised payoff before the end, so they had no reason to stay? Trigger phrases can re-engage or disengage your audience, so make sure you do the former. Say things like, “Don’t miss the bonus tip at the end of the video,” not, “That’s it for now.”
Ask yourself what happened in the most engaging parts of your video. Did you use a call to action? Did you say or do something funny? Did you add an endscreen, suggest another video, or use an interesting filming or editing technique?
Also, there are many things that hurt retention, like peeing. Learn from these things and improve your future content for the long term. The longer you do all of this, the more masterful you become.
Average view duration (AVD) and average percent viewed (APV) are the most important baselines for long-term observations. To find baselines or averages, have at least 10 videos, choose a traffic source, and then divide by 10. Repeat this for all traffic sources and all metrics. If you have video buckets, do the same thing: group them together, find their averages, and probably create a Google Sheet.
The AVD and APV baselines are available 48 hours after upload. Then find patterns where you lose viewers and where you are getting more engagement, and then adjust for future videos.
In analytics > Reach > Highest traffic course for the last 7 days, 90 days, and year
Even though browse features (loyal followers) are good, you can do small tweaks that, over time, get you higher in suggested traffic. You want some videos to show up in the suggested list, while others are for browse features.
CONTENT STRATEGY
To create a killer YouTube content strategy, you need to combine Part 1 (Strategizing for Your Audience) and Part 2 (Strategizing to Leverage the Algorithm) content strategies. If you don’t do Part 1, Part 2 can never happen, and vice versa.
Strategize to leverage the algorithm.
Create a rabbit hole. Think of search as a repeat customer funnel for your other videos on the same topic that will show up in recommended. Add videos together in a playlist so that the videos get recommended. Playlists are powerful because playlist viewers bring in the most watch time. Put your top-performing videos as endscreens and cards on related videos. Every little thing helps the algorithm bind your viewers together and help you find them faster. Provide links to other videos and playlists in your video descriptions. Use community posts to promote older videos, sell products, ask for ideas, and reach new people or non-subscribed viewers.
Don’t have an upload schedule too close together, as that will cause a traffic jam and take attention away from the video that’s already doing well. Use a tent pole strategy: mark what regional, national, and worldwide events will be happening that year and time the content surrounding them.
Break down your channel into video buckets (categories). Label the group of similar videos together by topic (these have become buckets). People will get bored if they keep watching one type of video. The videos in the same bucket should have similar metadata (titles, keywords, descriptions, and tags). The videos should be similarly structured (the framework, pacing, and editing should follow specific patterns).
Analyze the videos in your buckets using the four Ws. Analyze your titles and thumbnails in each bucket by looking for patterns among the ones with the highest CTR and AVD. Plan, create, and upload a new video that will fit into one of your buckets.
Strategize for your audience.
Be consistent, predictable, and have that “same channel, same place vibe” like you see in any YouTube channel you follow. Plan videos 3–4 months in the future. Work on multiple videos at a time.
Ideally, you should upload twice a week (every Thursday and Saturday). Follow a consistent schedule of uploading in order to show up on YouTube recommendations.
Optimize your videos for a mobile experience and make recommendations.
Don’t mass produce; build a library over time as you learn. Think about the micro-moments while creating and being different in your niche. Create a content calendar that is simple.
It’s far better to create one great video than 10 mediocre ones because the great video will be evergreen, and YouTube will continue to promote it in its algorithm against competitors even after 2 years. Create evergreen content so that it will continue to be relevant and produce results for years to come, allowing YouTube to still recommend and rank it. Upload less but with high quality; it’s much easier to get 5 million views on 1 video than 50,000 views on 100 videos, which takes way less effort.
Principle 11: Diversify Like A King
Einstein believed that our ability to identify problems was in direct proportion to the quality of the solutions we generate. He said, “If I had an hour to solve a problem I’d spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and five minutes thinking about solutions.”
You need to find a way to make more money with less time and with diverse streams of income. Don’t think of solutions, think of the problem. When you focus and obsess on the problem, the solution will present itself.
Success is all about acquisition and retention of clients and having them come back wanting more. You got the acquisition down. But how is your retention? How many clients pay you monthly?” You’ll always have ups and downs and sleeplessness without retention. Figure out retention — how you can keep them wanting more, and you can figure out success.
Think bigger, have huge Goals and be creative, innovate, Leverage and diversify. Always think of your channel as a business. There is no business without customer acquisition. Start seeing your viewers as customers. your goal should be to keep the loss (churn) rate as low as possible and growth rate high.
Have Laser Focus on making the best videos possible and the rest of the sub businesses will follow through since everything revolves around your youtube channel, it’s your main marketing channel. Being focused is all that matters, everything else supports it. stop starting side projects.
For Sub businesses, Mobile games/ software are infinitely better physical products. You can build a really kickass app under 1 million dollar (Only do that once you are at a certain level).
MrBeast, as a creator, obsesses over 90% of his daily time to create the best videos, Night Media (Reed) (MrBeast’s management company) obsesses over how to manage all the businesses. There is so much work and sub brands that you need to find a CEO to work on them each (Leverage).
Merch CTR’s get 30% more traffic than other features like banner links, annotations, and description links that’s why it’s important to capitalize this opportunity. Mugs, and T-shirts are always in demand. Be creative with your merch like Partner with a brand to make a product specific to your channel. You can Use Famebit to find Sponsors.
Focus on your passion and the money will follow when it comes to YouTube, never divert away from your passion. Your channel can create a domino effect to loads of different Business opportunities. Watch Creator support podcast to learn more about this. When people like your content for its authenticity, they will like your products too!
Don’t forget to do Omnichannel distribution so you can track what’s better more accurately. Don’t rely on guesswork and waste your time and money, use Tracking systems and Omnichannel distribution.
You should also focus on making long term relationships with companies or sponsors and grow together. Don’t work with brands that don’t give you Artistic elements and freedom.
After few years or whenever your YouTube business has took off, its a good idea to move and live in low a tax country and instead fly to places you like.
CPM (Cost per mile): How much the advertiser paid per thousand impressions.
CPM goes up during holidays or big events.
RPM: How much you can make.
Creators in preferred program are on a different league when it comes to generating adsense money.
Five Signals that feed the P-score: Popularity, platform, passion, protection and production.
In short, the YouTube formula is know your goal, create a plan, execute it, analyze how it was received, and adjust your approach moving forward.