How the YouTube Algorithm Works 2025 (the FIIRE Method)

I've got camera camera and screen recording going and that's how you know this is going to be good pretend like you paid me $11,000 to show you this in fact I'm hoping that by the end of watching this video and applying it it's worth much more than that here is what I've been up to I've created a method called the fire method for understanding the YouTube algorithm and growing your channel like a fire I've been applying this process piece by piece to help creators like these and I am finally ready to share this method with

you today howdy howdy everyone Nate here let's set your channel on fire as you can see on my screen right here I've created a template both digital and physical that you can use to follow along with this video it's free and I put a lot of effort into making it as usable as possible for you so go ahead and get that with the link below and let's Jump Right In I want you to picture your channel and the content you're producing and Publishing on your channel like a campfire with the goal of attracting your audience

to your content so that they can enjoy the s'mores or whatever you're sharing around your campfire and for my International audience if you ever come visit hit me up and we're going to enjoy some s'mores together cuz they're delicious so what we need is a process to choose what kinds of content to put together to best serve your audience and of course by extension the algorithm now it's good to note here that in this algorithm video you're not going to hear me say the word YouTube algorithm very much you will hear me talk about how

it works and more importantly how to structure your content so that it does do well with the algorithm all right so the first step you're going to apply here is finding your Campground starting off with identifying where you want to play Campground is the word I'm using in this analogy to be the equivalent of your Niche or your playing field the area that you are producing content for with your channel if you're watching this video there's a very high likelihood that you've already identified at least on a surface level where you're going to set up

your campfire this first part can look as simple as identifying I want to build a Channel about growing a green lawn or to use an example from this channel you're watching right now I would say this channel is for Founders to build organic online audiences on on YouTube but we're not done with this first step the F in the fire method because a key component that is oft overlooked by many creators and businesses alike is you need to understand your Campground really well what we're going to do right now is take a tour of the

campground that you are looking to build a campfire in so go up here to this tab the campground Niche Tab and what you see right here are the different channels that you're going to be identifying in your Niche and understanding things about them with the channels that you want to keep the closest eye on being marked as urgent priority all the way down to low priority but we're going to come back to this in a moment what you and I are doing while we're touring our Niche on YouTube is we're exploring the content that's already

out there we're identifying other channels that are playing in our space we're looking at their campfires to see both what kinds of content they're producing for that fire and what kinds of audience they're attracting around that fire we're also looking at making friends with other channel owners and spending time with the crowds that they attract and with that we want to understand why that audience likes to spend time around that campfire why do they enjoy watching that channel creators content what are they getting out of it and what aren't they getting out of it for

an example what that looks like on this channel that you're watching right now I have to give a shout out to Marcus Jones Nick nimon and many others in the space that have been super awesome to collaborate and have conversations with as well as tools like vid IQ clickup and others the very best possible result you can have if you tour your Campground a effectively is that you are connected with other players in your space you know about their audiences and you understand how they are creating their content and you understand why those other audiences

are enjoying that content in fact the further you go into this the more well-known you are and it actually creates a residual effect where you become a known name in your Campground or in your Niche I'm going to include another video where I go more in depth on assessing your competition that you can watch after this but if you're following along in the template here you may be interested as as to what this over here is about what the heck are these Sparks Tinder kindling and logs well what you're going to be doing as you're

touring your Campground is writing down what these Dynamics are for each of the channels that you pull up now what do these mean well I'm glad you asked and that brings us to The Next Step the First Eye in fire stands for identifying your Sparks now Sparks is just a simple way to remember the things that ignite your content the things that make your content take fire and stand out and be memorable in your niche in fact I'm going to show you if you go to this tab right here called fuel every fire needs fuel

in order to burn and the fuel needs a spark in order to start burning so what I've done here and what you're going to do as you're watching this is start inserting some examples of these things for yourself so I put here thing you're passionate about thing you're really good at thing you're experienced at or unique angles or hot takes you have things that as you're touring your Campground you look around you say you know what no one else is looking at it this way or actually disagree with this this and this that the other

creators are saying that's an example of a hot take you would have and you would insert it right here by clicking add task down here now here is where it gets very interesting because of course we're going to go on and talk about the Tinder and the kindling and the logs Etc but with Sparks specifically I have seen many creators try to rely almost entirely on Sparks and maybe a couple of other types of content in order to grow their Channel but the reality is if you only rely on these Sparks or these things that

are unique about you and the content you're bringing to the table it can be extremely hard to grow because people in the campground don't know that they want your fire yet nothing's taking they don't know that they like your kind of content yet and on the flip side if you don't have any Sparks or unique things about your content it's really hard to be memorable which means they watch your video and then they move on you're forgettable you don't build a core audience so I know you're dying to know what the Tinder kindling and logs

are and don't don't don't you worry we're going to get to that here in a moment first however I want you to take action right now seriously right now and fill this out just write down some things that you're passionate about you're good at you're experienced at or unique angles or hot takes you have even if you haven't done an in-depth tour yet of your Niche just write some stuff down here because it will make the rest of this make much more sense let me give you a concrete example of this channel you're watching right

now I found that a thing that I'm good at is helping Founders build organic audiences and I've also found that I'm passionate about generating traffic for businesses and creators and I help people do this by identifying specifically what makes their stuff memorable like this like what I'm doing right now and take that traffic generation capability and make it in house so it runs perpetually even when I'm not there in fact for another real world example I've been working with a client Dylan not that long we've only published a very few videos and realistically we haven't

even gotten very many views yet however because of how we structured the campfire all the content on the channel Dylan has already been able to generate over $55,000 in Revenue that fires me up no pun intended so we're on to the action of this identifying Sparks step in the fire method here what I want you to do is start filling in these things in the template identify those Sparks within you and in the content you want to create and if you want to take this to the next level go ahead and ask a trusted person

in your life to just show them what you have done and say hey this is what I have what do you think how well does this describe me how excited do I seem when I'm sharing this with you now we are on to the next eye in fire fire the second eye stands for insert Fuel and you can replace the word fuel with content now this concept is one of the most Revolution AR things about this video I have never seen it described this way Elsewhere on YouTube I have broken down the different types of

content you can publish on your channel into three categories Tinder kindling and logs now if you've ever built a campfire you can see where this is going but let me explain in case you haven't when you build a campfire it typically starts with you putting down Tinder or smaller pieces of wood or highly flammable items that can light quickly that then catch the kindling on fire which are slightly larger pieces of wood that then generate enough Heat to light the logs on fire which are the large pieces of wood that keep your fire going and

generating heat for all the people enjoying the s'mores around your campfire for a long time now each of those three things represents a category of content that you can put on your channel and they accomplish different purposes let's start with the Tinder Tinder content is the type of content that is intended to get a lot of attention quickly so while you're following along with the template here you'll see this column right here of Tinder content and I put some examples in here news items current trends in your Niche or fresh interesting ideas your audience would

want when I shared those with you just now did you have some ideas come to mind I hope you did and if you didn't we take a moment pause the video for a moment and think of anything in your Niche your specific channel that could fit under those categories all right so you've thought of those things go ahead and hit add task and put them in right now this is awesome let me give you an example of another client I've been working with we spent months with really low views trying a variety of different types

of content and we've realized in retrospect that we were trying to create videos that were Sparks but not Tinder they were Vlog style of videos that were here's what's interesting about my life and let me share some personal stories with you but what we were in effect doing was trying to light a fire without any Tinder or other types of content that would actually make it catch and attract new audience that's why the important Distinction on this item right here is fresh interesting ideas your audience would want meaning they're aware that they would be interested

in it it's not a totally new idea so we've laid down some Tinder fuel now let's move on to the kindling kindling is where a lot of channels spend most of their time with their content and rightly so it's kind of a happy medium between the fast burn fast attention of Tinder and the difficulty of log videos which we'll get to here in a moment kindling content looks like this core Library content in your Niche small to midsize Concepts in your Niche follow-ups on Tinder videos if you have a Tinder video that does very well

you can do a follow-up that's a kindling video or a single happening or story now remember these are just pointers to point you in the the right direction of what types of videos to put in this category we'll be getting to these 3 per 3 months and 6 per 3 months these little tags here in a moment but first I want you to identify some of these kindling videos and write them in here kindling videos are most likely to be the videos that as you are touring your Niche you see them across a lot of

different channels like a similar theme across a lot of different channels that's a good indicator that it's one of these for an example of a kindling video on this channel I'm going to put another video here that you can watch after this just to see a demonstration of what it looks like and also an example of another client I worked with a while back we ended up needing to stop for a while because some personal business issues came up but the first video we published after we started working together was a kindling video that included

a lot of Tinder elements in it why because it was a midsize concept video showcasing how to do something in the niche but that concept was a brand new software that had just released therefore the Tinder aspect Okay so we've got the kindling let's move on to log content these are the types of videos that are big topics or long length videos or they can be Evergreen topics the types of videos that perform well in search for a long period of time they can also include tutorials or guides or full interviews or podcasts all right

and if you want an example of a log style of video well this video you're watching right now is a log style a video for action on all four of these things I want you to write down the categories that you're going to do on repeat for your channel so as an example on Tinder you could say updating on the latest new lawn care products that would be a category that I would put in right here so I know that is one of my Tinder items that I come back to again and again on my

channel and you do the same thing with the other categories so that when you go over here to the dashboard you have this pan right here of content by type and it gives you a breakdown of the different types of content that you're going to be publishing consistently on your Channel or putting in your campire so if I go here and I click or tap the logs it will then pull up and I know these are the log log category videos that I'm doing on my channel and I can do the same with these other

categories of content on my channel different channels including your channel are going to have a different mix of these content categories let's say your channel is heavily focused on news and Trends you're going to have a much higher ratio of Tinder style of videos and contrast that with the opposite extreme let's say you like to publish a really big video only once a month it would go to show that your ratio of log videos versus the other ones would be much higher in that case okay it's time to move on to the r in the

fire method the r stands for ignite or reignite the fire what we've done up to this point is identify the different parts that we're going to put in our content campfire and for most channels that looks like a balanced combination of these four things now it is time to put it into action it's time to ignite the fire or reignite it by putting these things into practice and this is where you can identify two things one is how often am I going to public this type of content you'll notice these tags that I put on

each of these categories you're able to go in and select a tag let's say this one I'm going to do three of these for every 3 months so a single happening or story I'm planning on publishing three pieces of content for every 3 months that pass on my channel of this category or let's say full interviews or podcast this one's not going to happen as much so this is one for every 3 months that means I'm going to do a full interview or podcast about once every 3 months on my channel you're able to go

in and change any of these tags to fit your specific needs but what this does is if you go to your dashboard you have this handy publish frequency battery indicator here where I can go in and see how often am I publishing each of these different types of content so this one three per three months I got five of them so if I click on it voila I see that these are the categories that I'm publishing this often on my channel and what does that do for me it keeps me on track for the campfire

that I've said I am going to build with my content the second thing you're going to be doing when you're reigniting the fire here is identifying specifically why your fire and I realized I could change this to why you are fire and that would have had a totally different meaning but what you're identifying here is why your audience wants to gather around your campfire and I put an example here let's say your channel is about Comfort healing and a feeling of belonging it also shares fictional stories that help people heal and it also does so

in a soothing voice with soothing visuals that is a really good reason for people to gather around your campfire or your channel in fact let me show you a client of mine that has done this very well this is Samantha Boer who does content as self described as welcome to the coziest corner of the internet where we escape into magical stories what Samantha has done is combined beautiful Artistry music and fictional storytelling of a place called haven Hollow to share stories and provide helpfulness healing and comfort for people and since working together we've seen some

phenomenal results both in terms of spread by identifying the campfire even clearer for the audience but also in terms of what we offer around the campfire as people are coming to this content what's being offered to help help them even further or have a better experience you remember earlier I partially jokingly mentioned the s'mores thing the reality is when you invite people to experience your content if you're a business for example and you already have a value proposition what you offer when they come to your fire is that value proposition it's your pizza it's your

s'mores in this example Samantha and I worked on these offers for the audience that were arriving at the content and we've seen some phenomenal results already and continue to see those results in fact some of the stuff we did I think was so well targeted for the audience that I think the upside is significantly further than what we've even reached yet it just fires me up I'm super excited by this kind of thing you know I got to say it I didn't actually put any fancy thing up on screen or anything on my piece of

paper here to to do that so I'm just going to say if this video is being helpful and you're following along and you're finding value in it I'd love if you would Boop the like button on it so that it can spread to more people thank you now we are on to the e in the fire method the E stands for expand the heat up to this point I have spoken very little about the YouTube algorithm's role in all of this here is where we talk about what the algorithm does for you for a fire

to burn it needs three things it needs fuel it needs heat and it needs oxygen the fuel is what you have direct control over it's the content we've been identifying thus far in this video the heat starts with you and your spark the passion and the energy that you bring to your content which by the way those unique angles and that unique passion has to be maintained for a period of time in order to ignite your content because sometimes you might have a wet log I need to say that again oh okay because sometimes the

wood for your fire might be wet meaning you might not be that good at making videos yet but if you apply heat for enough time over extended pieces of content those pieces of content or that Tinder kindling or log is going to get better it's going to get drier it's going to catch fire more easily and with the heat here once something has caught fire it is much much easier to keep that fire going and that nutshell is why it is so difficult in the beginning for most YouTube creators which brings us to the third

element that a fire needs or a channel needs in order to grow oxygen and that is what the YouTube algorithm provides the YouTube algorithm's job is to provide those little gusts of wind and oxygen that allow your Tinder to catch fire but I want you to think of it this way within a campground the oxygen is somewhat limited because there are a lot of campfires that are also using oxygen the algorithms in fluence is everywhere but for a small fire it can be a little bit more limited while it waits for you to provide the

Heat and the fuel sufficient to build a fire and sometimes when you start publishing that fire is very small and maybe can't even be seen above the top of the fire pit at the beginning your fire may only be visible to the people closest to your specific Niche the specific type of audience that you're trying to attract but as it grows your content becomes more and more visible to a larger audience of people that is what the algorithm does for you it can also send gusts of wind that either make your fire all a sudden

explode because you had just the right piece of content or put your fire out if you don't know how to handle a viral video but we can make an entire video just about that concept more on that in the future probably now there are a few more definitions that help this really land when you light a fire the Flames of the fire are attention attention is the thing that gets your content seen it's the Flames of the fire that allows people in the campground to see it from further away and be interested in it however

what do Flames do they also consume the fuel which is why an ongoing combination of these different content categories is important for growing the channel because you got to keep feeding the fire the other definition I want to land here is that of heat as being separate than Flames the heat in the fire of your content is the equivalent of attention from a core audience if you have an awesome core audience it keeps things warm and allows whatever types of fuel content that you put on your fire to catch fire more easily this is one

of the reasons why from an algorithm standpoint if you already have an existing audience you have a massive Advantage because there's more residual heat already there to consume your content or catch it on fire more quickly and this is why for businesses that want constant warm leads no pun intended it's really important to focus on building the organic audience underlying all the content that they're publishing not just sending paid traffic to individual pieces of content ah and there's one more thing with the campground here now that we know what the different fuel types are as

you're touring your Niche and you're looking at the different channels in your Niche you can put the name here and then a link to the channel but then you can identify and put in these text boxes here what their Sparks are what their Tinder is their kindling and their logs what kinds of content they're publishing on their Channel fill out each of these items to have a mini profile of what their campfire is and once you do that and you go back to your dashboard here you have a visual of which channels to pay the

most attention to from urgent high normal and low and again if you click through on these you can get a list of all of the channels that you have labeled as urgent or the highest priority to pay attention to to the lowest here it's just a nice way to keep a profile of where they are at so for Action here as you're expanding the heat of your campfire what you are doing is you are iterating you are testing different combinations of content categories you're trying emphasizing certain Sparks over other Sparks with your content and you're

also getting additional help when you need that which is why I provided the radical creators group to give this template as well as additional value and projects that I am creating to help your business and your content which is something I'm sure you would benefit from right so go ahead and join the group with the link I provided in the pin comment and the description on this video and let's get going let's get applying this and catching your channel on fire thank you for watching hater is watching Al L been a killer in the Zone

on the net real head SP like