How Jenny Hoyos Actually Makes Viral Shorts

I know a couple of creators who literally make a million dollar per sponsored short I have like probably one of the best strategies that I haven't seen anyone do I think that a shorts Creator can make just as much money as a long form Creator today we are diving into the world of YouTube shorts with one of the fastest rising stars on the platform Jenny Hoyos Jenny is by far one of the top creators making shorts on YouTube averaging about 10 million views per short in this step-by-step breakdown Jenny will be sharing her best strategies

around ideation hooks storytelling Analytics monetization and more and by the end of my talk with Jenny you should be left with a crystal clear blueprint for creating High performing shorts first things first what do you feel like your overarching strategy is and the mindset that like enables this level of consistency is I think the biggest overarching thing is treating YouTube like a business so I'm just like making sure that I'm very like on top of my schedule like all my content is scheduled all my content is on a calendar I make sure that no matter

what there is a YouTube video posted on Saturday at 10:00 a.m. EST so I I think for me it's making sure that I do quality quantity so I want my videos to be quality but I also want to make sure that I'm uploading consistently even at the age of 18 Jenny has made the decision to treat her YouTube channel like a business she's investing so much time and effort to not only grow the business but also make it profitable in order to be profitable as a business you need to go out and find yourself a

potential customer or in Jenny's case a target audience one of the things you mentioned recently was that as creators we want to be in a blue ocean as opposed to like a red ocean how do you deliberately like position yourself in a space with little competition which is basically what the analogy is sorry to spoil it when I think of blue ocean I think of having your own unique twist so granted we're all going to have Idols or steal like an artist but at the end of the day you should still have your own unique

thing that makes you unique what's your unique Advantage what are things that you're skilled at things in your situation that help benefit you basically is the way I like to see a blue ocean I was always like into entrepreneurship and business so I knew I wanted to make videos about Finance or money and at first I was actually copying Graham Stefan like one for one I kid you not the exact same style like the exact same like everything basically I've unlisted those videos cuz it's very cringe like that's just like a red ocean cuz everyone's

trying to be Graham Stefan but then I looked at like everyone else in the money Finance industry and I noticed that like there's no one doing it for kids so I knew that there was a gap in the market essentially and I had to do it well I would say she bridged the Gap just fine coming from a family of extreme moneys Savers she picked up tips and relatable humor from them in other words she took an experience that was unique to her life and used it to make content that other people could relate to

but what's equally significant here is that her being a younger Creator made it so that she could relate to other young people who wouldn't normally think about saving money and if you want to attract an audience of people who wouldn't normally think about saving money you need to make sure that your hook is spot on to get them to stop scrolling immediately so let's talk about hooks for a little bit walk me through like the process for you for coming up with like an incredibly catchy and effective hook so a good hook is concise no

more more than 3 seconds it needs to be very visually pleasing very visually appealing it needs to be so good that you can be watching the video on mute and still understand what the video is about so I try to make sure that the composition's good what I mean by that is like everything's centered and framed I try to make sure there's no more than three objects in the frame it needs to be so good that you can use it as a thumbnail on one of your long form videos I think the most underrated thing

in hooks is foreshadowing so a good hook not only stops your scroll but also make sure you get to the end of the video you should fores Shadow what is to expect at the end some things that are very easy to apply is like here are three reasons why X so now we know the video is going to end on three so it doesn't need to be too complicated or my favorite example is I started a video by giving my grandma a $5 Christmas present and showing her reaction so I started with the cold open

of her reacting to this $5 gift but the thing is you don't see what the gift is until the end of the video I hope you can appreciate that the tips Jenny is giving us here are pure gold grabbing an audience's attention to get them to stop scrolling rolling is everything when it comes to YouTube shorts it's important to note though that's not the only thing because you also need a good average view duration you need people to watch the whole thing and in order to do that you need to tell stories now I know

some people kind of feel like they have a natural ability to just tell stories but if you're anything like me it's something that is a bit intimidating fortunately though for you and me this is something you can learn this is a skill you can develop so what storytelling Frameworks and like techniques are you using I'm going to start with the simplest ending with the hardest retention tactic so the simplest one that anyone can apply is but so storytelling so it's basically setting up conflict and then resolving the conflict and then setting up new conflict so

imagine a story where you say oh I wanted to go on a walk so I went outside it started raining and I didn't know what to do I so I went back home it's it's like okay it's a story I guess but when you use button so it just sounds more entertaining like I was at home but I got bored so I ended up going for a walk but it started raining so I ended up trying to figure out what to do I was looking for an umbrella but I couldn't find one so I had

to go back home so it's like the story just seems so much more engaging when you use those words I probably like repeat myself so many times on these shorts but every time I say but like it stops someone from scrolling it's like but what so that's one method and the second thing I love to do is dual narrative storytelling so with shorts you want to keep your videos very concise and it's very hard to do that because you probably want to get across multiple different messages but you only have like 60 seconds to do

that so what I do is this technique where I tell two stories at the same time I tell one story through my voiceover or whatever I'm saying and the second story is told in what I'm showing so an example of me doing this is I wanted to give my grandma a $5 Valentine's gift present but the reason why I was doing that is because you know it was the first year she didn't have a valentine because my grandpa passed away I'm like that's way too much context and it's also almost like too sad I feel

like people are like it's going to scroll if I say that so instead I talked my voice over was me talking about me making the present for her but I never said the additional context instead I showed pictures of her with to my grandpa to almost show to the viewer that this is the reason why I'm doing it without telling them that Jenny has admittedly studied these big creators for thousands of hours to come up with these strategies so you can rest assure these are tried and tested by the best out there Ryan Tran is

a prime example of using visuals to add context but you may have noticed that Jenny and Ryan shorts are packed with info but very carefully you never want to overwhelm an audience in your YouTube shorts It's all about finding a rhythm and a pacing what are like some of your best practices around structure and pacing my favorite pacing when it comes to like structuring pacing since it's very similar is quick hook medium paced middle and probably like a peak in somewhere in the middle like a funny joke back to medium pacing and then quick ending

you want to make sure that it's almost a roller coaster of emotions there's multiple theories that back this up so one that I want to get into is peak and theory and it's this theory that people only remember their favorite part of a movie or whatever they're watching and the ending like you never think of like oh I remember when this boring thing happened which makes sense but that's like the whole point I think because creators are forced in shorts to keep their videos under 60 seconds long and keep their energy up a lot of

their ideas kind of get rushed through oftentimes the videos can lose their flow and confuse the audience do not talk fast just talk more concise and try to get the message across in the least amount of words possible usually you'll give like that concise quick action-packed value and context and then right after like giving so much context you need to let it breathe so that they can understand the context that they just heard once you finish making a video that you're very very excited to share it's difficult not to just go ahead and hit publish

but before you do a good practice here is to take a step back and ask yourself a few questions imagine for a second that you're the viewer of this video does it make sense is it captivating does It capture the right emotion because you should absolutely be making it a priority to understand how the audience is going to feel when they watch your short I don't care if it's shorts or Longs connecting with your audience is everything how do you get insight into your audience's like mindset and preferences I feel like the best way to

do it is literally to send your videos to your avatar if possible so like for me it's very simple to just send it to a younger family member or like also my parents but if you don't have that utilizing your analytics is very important I try to look at the retention graph not the percentage you look at the retention graph and you see like oh this joke just did not hit or I talked way too long for that and you just kind of have to like come up with your own assumptions and like figure that

out and apply to new videos but as for what content to make and content strategy I'm looking for videos that are a bit old but performing in the last 48 hours because like for example right now my last 48 hours is one video from a year ago and then a bunch of them are videos from like last month but then what's interesting is like why is my number one performer a video from last year and that's how you understand like what videos are actually the ones you need to recreate and what is actually resonating with

your audience for example I'll look at oh what's my average duration of videos that are my top performers that's how I know my best videos are 34 seconds so I'll usually just like toggle as many analytics as possible and see if there's any patterns there yes understanding your analytics is great for helping to increase your views and watch time and find Trends within your content but the real win lies in making content that people love when you watch something that you love from a Creator you go back and you want to watch more of it

that's how you build a community and grow on YouTube what else do you intentionally do to build loyalty and get viewers like coming back habitually buckets is probably like 90% of like creating returning viewers so buckets are repeatable formats and I try to keep mine very similar titled for example my bucket would be $1 fast food item versus restaurant so it would be like $1 burrito $1 Boba $1 everything basically and because everything is titled and structured and formatted and the video is very similar like all the videos are metad datally linked YouTube can easily

be like oh the viewer liked when she made $1 pizza oh they're going to like when she makes a $1 sandwich or a $1 Burger it's very easy for YouTube to understand what your view viewer is going to want to watch next so the goal with returning viewers on shorts is to make videos that your viewer is probably going to watch next and you do that through structure format and metadata such as title if you're uploading once a week I think two to four buckets is really reasonable even though making shorts is awesome and all

this advice is really helpful there is one glaring issue when it comes to shorts and that is your return on investment honestly are shorts even worth it I'm sure you've seen like the AdSense on shorts for most creators is very small but you yourself are some who's admitted to everybody I love money how can somebody who's like getting into shorts and seeing a bit of success like Leverage them to make money shorts is totally a viable way to make money I don't know who like thought that it's N I think that a shorts Creator could

make just as much money as a long form Creator maybe not as much ad Revenue but you can make the same money I average like 50 to 100 million views per month on shorts so because of that it ranges between 5 to 10K per month in ad Revenue versus like if I was doing long form and I was getting those views what the heck I'd be like at what like 100k a month like so theoretically ad Revenue wise it's it's much worse but if you have products courses sponsorships that's where the money is to be

made I know a couple of creators who literally make a million dollars per sponsored short I'm just saying so and they get less views than me or probably about the same you just got to be a good businessman good businesswoman good business person I can say firsthand we've witnessed a huge surge in channels that are exclusively making YouTube shorts but a lot of the creators we've spoke to have a business-minded plan of eventually branching out into longer form content expanding your reach with long form videos is easier said than done but not impossible what would

you tell someone who's enjoying a lot of success on their shorts but they're struggling with long form when I say that I I think of you as somebody who can get 10 million views in a short in your sleep and then you know you post a long form and you're not enjoying those same views on average what would you say to someone who's kind of feeling the same way it really sucks I think you have to see it as like two different games like they're two completely different challenges to me with long form every second

doesn't matter as much as it does in shorts because 1 second on a short is over 1% retention but on a long form 1 second isn't even 1% retention so if you lose 1 second percentage wise it's not huge but with shorts it's like everything is so exponential my strategy to convert from shorts to long form is to literally make very similar feeling content what I mean by that is bit based videos essentially creating 30 second shorts until it adds up to an 8 minute video for example I easily have like 20 shorts where I

recreated fast food items so imagine a long form where I did like I recreated 100 fast food items and it's basically the same thing cuz I know my shorts viewers watch that I mean and that sounds like a fantastic way to keep like a shorts viewer like potentially hooked on a long form video but as as I'm sure you're well aware of a lot of people struggle with this getting people to watch if I created my own YouTube channel All Eyes would be on me and I would make every puny human YouTuber disappear off this

platform getting people to watch your long form videos who watch your shorts is almost impossible how are you handling that challenge and what you what are you seeing in your data so for context my shorts average 10 million views per video but my long forms range between 50 to 500k it's a very wide range but like my top performing videos on long form are like literally almost all returning viewers so what I am identifying is yes people are converting from shorts to long form and the retention is actually great in fact even when I link

a long form from my short like with the related the new related feature like my retention is like crazy high on my long forms even though they're coming from shorts and I think the reason is because the feel is just like very similar let's be real growing any type of Channel on YouTube is challenging shorts Longs algorithms analytics it's all too much so that's why we've made a video packed with 150 tips for small channels to grow fast on YouTube