My best piece of YouTube advice

Wassup?

I woke up this morning super early (like 5 am) and couldn’t get back to sleep. Does that happen to you, too? So I found myself right back here on my laptop, working on random things and watching YouTube (my favorite past time)

So here I am writing this email, and I wanted to share a quick win and a MASSIVE piece of advice about growing on YouTube.

Marketers making $50K/month read this daily

Stacked Marketer is a free, daily newsletter that delivers curated news, trends, tactics, and actionable advice from the digital marketing world. 

It’s consumed in less than 7 minutes. And it keeps you on top of the industry.

Sign up for free.

_{*sponsored post}

Check out this screenshot…

I really need to come up with a name for this case study, but this is the YouTube case study channel that I started waaaaaayyyy back in the beginning of April.

And in about 20 days, we finally crossed 500 subscribers. 526 to be exact, as of me writing this email.

I did this with only 10 videos, NO shorts, and NO promotion outside of YouTube comments.

So, no, I didn’t use my existing audience. I wanted to show that this wasn’t luck.

But these last few weeks have shown me one crucial thing that I want to share with you right now.

Nothing matters more for YouTube success than these 3 things: Idea, Thumbnail, and Title.

But they are not all created equal; the IDEA is where it all matters.

Most of us are not celebrities, we cannot just depend on our stardom to get views, we have to be more strategic. The best way to be strategic with growing is to find topics your target audience wants to watch.

If the idea is not good, the thumbnail or title won’t matter.

In fact, a good idea could make up for a poor title and bad thumbnail.

Coming up with good ideas is the exact reason why this channel is growing quickly.

For context, the very first YouTube channel I started way back in 2016 took 9 months to get 100 subscribers and almost a year to get 1,000. So, the fact that this channel has 500 in a few weeks is pretty wild.

Here are a few ways to come up with ideas:

1. Spy on your competitors. This is a pretty tried and true strategy, but it can be overused. If Google Search has taught us nothing, you must create unique content that adds to the conversation. Not just regurgitating what is already out there.

2. Steal ideas from neighboring niches. This is really what has blown things open for me. I find niche channels that are in the “bigger” and more mature audience and take ideas that are there and bring them over to the niche of my channel. I heard this being called “Niche Comparison Theory.” I’ll talk more about that in future emails.

3. Making a massive Idea list. I have a list of at least 500 video ideas. As I find them scrolling YouTube, I jot them down. If I have a random creative note hit me on the head during the day, I write it down. Then when it’s time to come up with a video idea, I have a list to pick from the best.

After I do all of that, I create the content.

I do obsess over the title, thumbnail, hook, and intro of the videos and those are all separate arguments for separate emails, but if you don’t get the idea stuff right, nothing…. else…. matters…

Look, I am having to teach myself YouTube all over again to keep up with these young kids that are really taking over… but I got some fight!

I think you can do it as well. This stuff really excites me, and I think that is why I’m leaning this way instead of other ways to get traffic to our sites.

By the way… 1of10 is still one of the best places I’ve used to get ideas for videos and thumbnails. Check it out now, you won’t regret it!

Chat soon,
Chris Myles