13 Years of YouTube Knowledge in 46 Minutes

[Music] 54% of adults said that they would quit their job to become a Creator so if we were starting a YouTube channel today how would we do it we've been building YouTube channels together for over 13 years and we've interviewed hundreds of top creators at the end of the day if they don't click they don't watch actually I don't think I've ever told the story we had an actual playbook for how to launch a YouTube channel we're going to get really into the weeds in this episode everything from filming style which data you should track

short form video versus long form video everything we know about YouTube put into a seven-step framework you can follow so 13 years ago when we first started on our YouTube Journey we filmed everything with a Macbook like literally the webcam from our MacBook and we edited the videos and uploaded them all using one device it is the ultimate Creator tool so we decided we want to give one of you a brand new Macbook Air this is a 13-in MacBook Air with the Apple M3 chip it has 16 gigs of memory and 512 gigs of storage

call I feel like I should bid like it's the price come on down all you have to do to win it is click the link in our description and subscribe to our newsletter the publish press in our newsletter you'll get creater news faster than you would hear it on our YouTube channel and you'll get it delivered to your inbox three times per week we're going to be announcing the winner of this giveaway a week from now in the newsletter and if you're watching after the giveaway is already over we do these giveaways from time to

time so make sure you're subscribed we are also going to be giving away a first ofit kind press publish hat we've never done this colorway before that's going to going to be included in the giveaway that's literally the only one we have the only one all right and you could win it let's get into [Music] it I will say Samir in our over 13 years of experience there are so many years that we did not study YouTube and had we studied YouTube had we watched a video like this we would have been so much further

along than we are now I think literally we would have cut our time in half this is a moment where I absolutely don't want to make videos anymore absolutely don't want to make absolutely don't want to make videos anymore anymore yeah truly sorry I was like living in the past there were some hard times 13 years is a long time and it and it and it took us a while to get everything off the ground I also think the the landscape of YouTube is very different today there's this interesting stat from neelen that 10% of

watch time on connected TVs is occupied by YouTube and compare that to Netflix which is 8. 4% of watch time on connected TVs so basically YouTube is leading in watchtime hours on TVs YouTube is not cat videos which is what it kind of started as it is not Vlogs which is an era it went into it is becoming the thing that uh generations of people are watching on TV choosing to watch with other people it is like prime time so when you're thinking about starting a channel it's actually a pretty serious thing to do and

and you do need to take it seriously step one of our framework for starting a new YouTube channel implement the Super Mario effect now what is the Super Mario effect this is something we learned when we sat down for the first time with Mark Rober the Super Mario effect is basically like no one ever plays Super Mario Brothers or some video game for the first time falls into a pit and just like oh my gosh I fell into a pit I failed how embarrassing I never want to play this game again you're like no okay

crap there's a pit right there okay next time I'm going to come a little bit faster I'm going jump a little earlier you immediately learn from the failure and you're like stoked to try again and so that's very much my philosophy if you can gamify your challenges and think of them like a video game you can learn so much more you can have more success and have fun while doing it so what Mark is saying there is that you want to be going throughout your YouTube Journey similar to a video game which means that if

you fail you don't actually die you get to start again how do I interpret that get a job that is literally the first thing I would is like get a job or make sure that my finances are taken care of yeah truly like if I was to start from scratch I would go all right let me get my finances taken care of so that I can experiment on YouTube without the pressure of making it the job yeah and and experimentation or not I think anyone who comes to me and asks me about starting a YouTube

channel I think the the three things that I ask them about is number one how much time do you have which means like how much Financial Runway do you have can you commit the next three years to this and be okay that it takes three years or five years for it to take off two your relationship with failure and your ability to learn from it because it's going to happen a lot and three your relationship with making videos because all of that goes into becoming a Creator it's going to take a very long time for

it to get off the ground you're going to fail a lot you're going to have ups and downs and you're going to just have to keep making videos like you're just and so if you don't like making videos that's already a problem but this concept of like gamifying it and looking at it as like playing a video game where you can die and you have more lives actually think is a really cool way to think about it like how do you ensure that if you die you just restart the game okay step two of our

framework identify what you're optimizing for so make sure you understand going into your new YouTube channel what what does success mean are you looking for money are you looking for more time are you looking for experiences for me if I was to start from scratch I would want my new YouTube channel to align with one of my life goals right now which is like to get outside more often to have new experiences that would be one of the first things I would look at I think for me this this can get a little intangible for

people I think listening to this and one of the most important things to do is to make it extremely tangible and so so what that looks like for me is writing out start to finish what a dream day in your life looks like then doing that for a week and a year and saying what does this look like if it works like what does success mean tangibly in terms of what am I doing with my time what are some of the doors that this is unlocked is there a certain amount of money that I need

I want this to unlock I think one of the mistakes that people make when starting a YouTube channel is YouTube channels and the internet are this ever expanding space where anything is possible and if you don't put Frameworks around what you want out of it it's one of the fastest paths to like burnout confusion um and a really weird relationship with making YouTube videos yeah you've said this before but like success is just the opportunity to do more of what you're already doing so if your YouTube channel does become successful make sure that you like

what it is what it's about what the journey is because you will be spending a lot of time in that community and in that work all right number three this one starts to get way more into the weeds and it's actually from a conversation that we had with Matt Pat and Stephany we have like the most uptight process for launching a new YouTube channel that I've ever heard of we research every vertical that we go into we watch everything in that vertical we understand how the hosts talk talk to the audiences we understand the colors

they use how long they episodes are how often they post what their opening lines are whether they have a theme song or not what their titles include do their titles include punctuation do their thumbnails involve a white stroke on the outside of everyone's head whatever it is we know everything about the vertical before we even decide to go into it and then from there we decide okay can we play in this space where um where aren't people saying the things that we would like to say are there enough collaborators in this space that we think

we could be part of a community in this ecosystem and then from there it's like okay what would we actually say and we come up with literally a Year's worth of content titles and log lines if you don't have if you don't have and I mean maybe more than that it was like 100 titles and log lines and if you don't have 100 titles and log lines you don't have enough content to like think about launching this channel thumbnails to those or like a couple thumbnail mocks or like how do you do totally like you

do okay you you I mean you have to think about the audience that you want and what they're already watching so step three is what you would do really going into any business it's essentially you're performing a market analysis um or a niche analysis whatever you are whatever Community you are entering into on YouTube I think one of the most important things is that as you go into making a YouTube channel your product first product is attention attention is the currency in which the audience will pay you and that is something that is not created

in a vacuum something that Stephanie said there is the audience that you want and what are they already watching the reason for that is because of how YouTube Works in terms of Discovery there's there's a few ways audiences discover videos but the most common ways are browse and suggested browse means when someone goes on to YouTube they log on to youtube.com they open their mobile app they open their TV app and there's seven or nine videos that are sitting there that's browse they're browsing YouTube and they find a video that they want suggested is the

second way suggested means they just watched one of our videos and now on the right side there's a ton of other videos that are similar so when you think about how to start a YouTube channel this piece is by far the most important studying your community you will not gain audience in a vacuum you will gain audience within a pre-existing community so understanding the visual language of that Community understanding the timestamps understanding the uh tone of that Community everything all of it most likely your first videos will be viewed through suggested content yes so number

three perform a niche analysis it doesn't mean you should copy what's there it's actually the inverse which is number four choose your value prop it's about studying your Niche to understand how you can be slightly different how you can stand out and the value that you provide to that Community is singular is a little bit different so the way that I would approach this and and what I wrote out was I think you should essentially create the equivalent of like a Pinterest board right so take to Google Slides I love making Pinterest boards yeah but

but it's really it's a really important thing like I what do you make Pinterest boards about just a quick fashion tattoos I may get vintage cars I want to own okay so another part of working with you for 13 years is you have not stopped talking about getting a tattoo and you do not have one yeah but I do have a Pinterest board so it's the first step okay fine whatever the the concept that I'm saying here is like the tangible action that I would suggest you take is you make a Google slide deck or

you know whatever keynote slide deck and you go thumbnails and you scream shot a ton of thumbnails and you put those on a page then I think you go into comments and you read comments from the community you screenshot a ton of comments positive comments negative comments what do people like about the videos what do they not like about the videos most commented on comments like which comments are at the top that are developing the most conversation that's super important I would then go and look at first 30 second scripts so meaning look at in

your Niche whether so let's let's call it cooking how do people open videos in the cooking Niche what is the common way and maybe different ways that people are opening the first 7 seconds and then the first 30 seconds what do those feel like and I wouldn't be afraid to start this process extremely Niche I'll give you an example I I put myself through this process of starting a new YouTube channel and you know with number two right like understand your goals what success means for me it was getting outside and doing activities and I

thought okay in my actual life I would love to take more weekend car trips from LA and do activities I started right there I was like that's what I want more in my life like going to interesting beaches interesting homes airbnbs uh and doing activities I thought could I make a Channel all about day trips or weekend trips from LA and I started searching I found out that's extremely Niche yeah and there is not that much viewership um there's actually not even that much of a community so I started watching those videos and it led

me to Ryan Tran's Airbnb videos yeah which have like 20 million views right of him experiencing an interesting or unique Airbnb and then I thought what if I made a channel just for airbnbs that will give you an outdoor experience like interesting airbnbs that have cool things about them like maybe they're next to a national park or maybe they have a pickle ball court that's incredible like what if I just highlighted in every episode an incredible Airbnb that has an activity with it right so you get a tour of the house and then you get

to see me go through the activity that's where I landed so interesting though it's good comp because going back to early stages right the early stages are all lifestyle considerations stage one and two that we talk about and I think it is really important everything I know about doing YouTube for 13 years it is a thing that consumes your life so the format you select the topic you select is going to have a lot to do with how you spend your time and how you spend your life M and so in that one like the

interesting thing to think about is like again back to step two what are you optimizing for I'm optimizing to get outside yep that's okay that's a completely reasonable way to start a YouTube channel but if if you're optimizing for money I would say the other slide that I would put in this deck is take a screenshot of every brand partner every brand deal in these videos so if it's outdoor stuff like that who's sponsoring those videos are there common sponsors if it is um cooking who's sponsoring it right and I started watching a ton of

cooking videos because I was interested in this subject matter I noticed made in it's a uh brand that makes like uh cookware never heard of them but they sponsor a ton of cooking videos on YouTube so if I'm to enter the niche if I'm to enter this industry that's going to be a probably a common partner that comes up so I I like the tangible advice here is to build a slide deck that has images across your Niche or your market and I would also look at similarities are there formats that come up a ton

you know are there like this versus that is it cooking challenges what what is coming up a lot in this Niche that is a extremely common format and I would do this across devices so I would do this for mobile phone I would do this for connected TV and I would do this for desktop I like that a lot I will add that as you're doing this Niche analysis the one thing you should understand about storytelling in general is that it all involves conflict and contrast up all the way to the biggest Mr Beast videos

to a cooking tutorial it's all about conflict and contrast and that should exist in your thumbnail as well so as you're looking at titles as you're looking at thumbnails start to think about like you were even saying like the cheapest version versus the most expensive or whatever it is it's conflict and contrast so when it comes to step four and choosing your value prop and and how you stick out I think one thing that we take all of our students through in our um cohort Creator startup is an exercise called identities emotions and actions and

split up a page so take out a sheet of paper split it up into identities emotions and actions and write down the different identity groups of people who are in your audience so again again back to to cooking uh the Casual Chef uh the person who's like trying to to figure out how to cook stuff at home the college student the person who's trying to do it on a budget you know like basically write down all these different identities and then write down the emotions you want them to feel and it's totally fine if you

want them to feel um entertained or less alone like they can flip something on the TV and feel like you're you're you're part of their living room um educated uh there there's all these different emotions and then think about the action you want them to take do you want them to what would prompt them to comment what would prompt them to go out and cook a meal themselves is it a cook along with me type thing so if you split that up and you start writing that you will start to find where you sit from

a value proposition perspective who are these people and why do they watch is a question that I think a lot of people forget to ask so as an example if you wanted to make a casual cook feel safe and confident in the kitchen right a potential idea would be like 10 cooking mistakes to avoid or AE Avid I don't know you know what I mean there are ways that you can think about ideas and titles based off of the identity and the emotion speaking of titles yeah step five in our framework is write 100 titles

this is actually something I believe we both learned from Ryan Trahan spending time with him Stephanie just mentioned it Ryan Tran does this Ryan as far as I know when when we were hanging out with him he makes 10 ideas he writes 10 new ideas video titles every single day and I did that for 10 days and they're not all the ideas aren't great but at the end I have a hundred new ideas right and ideas are the engine for a YouTube channel if you don't have ideas and you don't have a huge surplus of

them it's going to be a lot harder to make a video and keep it consistent so develop something called an idea Bank this is this can be Google Sheets it can be in a notebook um some people do this in a notion and I I actually interestingly enough as I was doing this uh I I really struggled to come up with like net new ideas um I could come up with like five I could come up with six some days but 10 was actually really hard for me so I turned to uh uh AI to

support me uh spotter has a tool called title Exploder that really helped you know kind of like put in a title and then see a bunch of different variations and I would get tipped off with some word and I'd be like oh that's interesting I know some creators use chat GPT for this where essentially you're you can say like write me 10 YouTube titles based on uh cooking and you can at least start to get into practice of what a title looks like I write all of mine in a notebook and I actually intentionally don't

use AI because I want to put ideas down even if they're bad I think it's okay to put ideas down that are bad uh because they will often reveal to you what's good and that's also what AI does like AI if you ask for 10 titles you're actually looking for what's not good to reveal what is good I and I think like of course you want to start this on 10 days but if it's if it's cleaner for you to do five ideas a day and you can do that for 30 days like my suggestion

here is actually that to start a YouTube channel from scratch first you definitely need a 100 ideas to pick from like I I definitely think you need a 100 ideas to pick from um but as you continue going if you're committed to becoming a professional Creator this is going to be a huge piece of what you do so getting comfortable with something that you can commit to every single day like brushing your teeth I think is really important and I think you can also at the top of the page write out formats that you really

like um titling conventions and formats so again versus is a is a common one um $100 Thing versus thousand thing right like that is that is extremely common format that works across a lot of niches so you can start going that's something I can come back to I'll write three ideas like that in a in a day um and so this this is more about developing a practice but in the subject matter of starting from scratch you need 100 to choose from I would suggest when you when you look at those 100 you Whittle those

down to 30 and ideally every day you elevate like your favorite two right two to three you're like oh these are actually good seven of them can be bad but three of them you should be like oh I could probably develop that all right so now put yourself in the shoes of someone who has never done YouTube before but they're sitting and they're looking at 30 ideas yeah they're continuing to whittle them down how do you choose and how do you stress test which ideas you should actually try and make into a video and that

is Step six which is find a testing ground now this means you should find really low-lift ways to put your idea out into the world to the community you're trying to reach and see if it actually resonates so a perfect example of this again I don't like when I have to bring up your LinkedIn it hurts it kind of pains me because of how much you promote it and now it seems like I'm the biggest promoter of your LinkedIn but you did post on your LinkedIn about uh what what eventually became our hot ones episode

yeah so you posted a take on LinkedIn about the show hot ones could it survive without Sean Evans could it be the end of the show who should buy it why isn't it selling that took off on LinkedIn there was a lot of conversation and that proved to us that this would be a good topic to make a YouTube video about now uh if you're building from scratch I think the assumption is you have let's just assume you have no audience anywhere sure so you you might not even get that feedback somewhere right so finding

a testing ground could also mean in your Social Circle it could also mean sharing the ideas with friends and Mark Rober talked about this with us which was really cool that he gets a lot of his ideas in conversation where he's talking to people and he's like what about this and and seeing people's reaction hust minhaj called it the power of the PDF saying like the idea on paper when you tell it to someone when they read it does it Stack Up it does it resonate does it drive conversation yeah I think this also if

it's not conversation it could be starting with short form video because we've done that as well where it's like you know we don't want to make a 35 minute YouTube video but we can commit to a 60-second short we did this about squid game about the impact of squid game after it came out on Netflix we made a 60-sec short uh it absolutely exploded became one of our most viewed shorts and then we turned it into a long form video and that also did well another way to look at this and like explore it is

go on off platform Community hubs so that could be a subreddit or a Discord community and look at what people care about and if they care about the subject matter so if it's like cheap versus expensive um cookware again maybe you're looking at a a cooking subreddit and everyone's confused about this really expensive pan right so now you're like oh actually maybe is it is it worth it I mean specific example for us this week it was shared around in our slack a post from r/ cooking what happened to YouTube cooking channels yeah saying that

like they're not doing as well as they used to they're not as impactful and it was a conversation we started to have and we came up with a video idea around that topic they call out certain cooking channels and we thought oh could we interview these cooking channels and ask them about what's happened with the cooking Niche do they feel like uh something has happened uh and that's why people maybe aren't watching or just what's the health of that right yeah uh and that's a place where it's like oh people are already talking about it

because they're talking about on Reddit it's proven people like this and they want to talk about it yeah can we go from there so these first six steps are very much about like the the first phase is like understanding yourself what do you want out of this the second phase is understanding the community and the audience right and that those phases are extremely important and those typically get skipped over yeah and without them I think you it will take way longer for you to find success on YouTube so starting from scratch first thing deeply understand

your own motivations why you want to do this the lifestyle consideration of doing this then deeply understand the community how do they discover your work how do they engage with each other what do they care about what ideas resonate in this space all of that deeply matters okay so now in your new YouTube channel Journey you at the point where you have actually not even upload loed a single video but you have a ton of ideas you've identified some that have already started some conversation you choose one that you want to turn in to a

video and you're ready for step seven which is film edit upload repeat now this is very all-encompassing and we're going to get uh into the weeds of of what we mean by this and certain decisions we would make with videos and with a YouTube channel if we were to start from from scratch so the first thing is making the video in a document before you film time and time again every Creator we talk to if you do the pre-production everything gets easier so what does pre-production mean it's literally opening a Google doc putting the title

in big bold letters uh putting your thumbnail that you've designed or similar thumbnails that you want to emulate up top and then Ali abdal said this to us he said most YouTube videos are just title thumbnail list mhm so thinking about a list format of like it doesn't necessarily have to be like three things about you know X it could just be beginning middle end Hook is extremely important uh the beginning part of the video the middle part of the video the end now in this the time that we spend the absolute most time on

is the first 7 seconds and the first 30 seconds of the video so as you're developing these script documents I would identify from your list of 100 ideas let's Whittle it down to like 20 ideas that could be short form ideas 10 ideas that could be long form ideas now in both of those documents the hooks are going to be your most important pieces so meaning what are the first few words that are said in each video and that'll come up later when we talk about data that we tracking yeah and what matters in that

hook is whether it's a short or a long does the hook identify and meet the expectations of the viewer MH and does it then give something new they actually weren't expecting because that's what's going to keep them watching yeah right so specifically when it is like a title and a thumbnail for one of our episodes like hot ones we try and make sure that when you click yes we are going to touch on is this the end of hot ones but you're also going to get something new can the show survive without its host so

a lot of Storytelling and specifically on the internet is about unanswered questions constantly storytelling is always about unanswered questions so basically in your first few lines you want to make sure that you validate the video like you said and then you open up a new unanswered question and throughout your script document as you're writing out always look at it in your beginning your middle and your end is there an unanswered question and then at the end when that question is answered or the final question is answered the video's over yeah so write it out it

doesn't have to be word for word but you're making your video first on paper then on camera next if I were to start from scratch I would make sure that I have a really lean filming style I don't want to over complicate and add friction to the process and if you look at you know whether it's Marquez with his autofocus Channel again or you look at Ryan trean with his videos they're primarily shot with an iPhone right if if what you wrote is good and the script is good you should be able to execute that

idea with an iPhone yeah you can always go up from there but I think you should always be able to come back to the lowest common denominator and keep the process as frictionless as possible you also want to think of everything on a 52- we window not a onewe window so you look at it in the context of if I'm to start this YouTube channel today can I make a video every week for the next 52 weeks yeah right or 104 weeks um so you want to have a lean production style if you love making

stuff with your DSLR and you're like your Lifestyles you travel everywhere with your DSLR and no matter if you're on vacation or wherever you are you could make that video sure but go back to when everyone started from scratch look at marquez's first video again look at our first video we shot on a MacBook like everyone starts with a lean production style and that's because you're going to have to make a 100 videos before you truly develop your style you know you just are now to get to 100 videos quicker YouTube has changed in 20124

you can start with short form content yeah and I would say there's a couple things here about starting with shorts number one it is a good testing ground to see if your ideas resonate it's a great way if you add a call to action within your script to subscribe to the channel to drive audience and subscribers before you commit to LA long form and what we've seen is that when we eventually upload a long form video if we also upload a short that is about the same topic the long form video does well yeah does

better actually than if we don't so your shorts are obviously going to be 60 seconds or less right now when you're starting with shorts I I would say you don't want to go too far without making long form videos I think you should identify you know five shorts you want to make and think about making two to three shorts per every long form video in the beginning and when you look at your shorts um you know again when you look at that idea Bank you're going to naturally start to see which ideas go towards short

form content which ones go towards long form and the way to make this decision is actually when you look at video length right now on YouTube longer watch times are extremely common they're rewarded right the the base premise of YouTube is did the audience click did they watch and were they satisfied yeah the first two are very quantifiable by data that Google gives you and YouTube gives you the third is less you know explicit of are they satisfied but all of that is going to dictate how much your content surfac is and how much it

gets uh put up in the algorithm I think one of the biggest mistakes we made was making videos where we were clearly afraid people were going to leave yeah but if you have a good title and thumbnail that attracts the audience you want trust that once they click on that title and thumbnail you've already gotten them in the door trust that they are open to 20 to 30 minutes worth of this topic and this goes back to your Niche analysis because if most of your content when you're starting from scratch is going to show up

in suggested that means that whatever the general viewing habits are of that Community are probably going to be consistent so for us what we notice when we have a 2-hour long episode with Emma Chamberlain that's going to be a lot harder to drive um audience in browse than it is suggested because someone who is regularly watching podcasts is probably going to be interested in that now are they going to in one sitting go from a two-hour podcast to a two-hour podcast probably not but we are going to get fed into a world of people who

are like I regularly watch toour YouTube videos yeah most likely a 15minute Emma Chamberlain video may not be the biggest driver to our almost three-hour conversation right ex you would think oh of course someone watches an Emma video that's what they like they're going to go watch a three-hour podcast with her it's more so someone watches a bunch of podcasts or listens to a lot of podcasts and this one gets fed to them so I would look at your community and see what content is living in the 20 plus range now I think the 20

minute plus range is the ideal range today on YouTube of course there's people who make content that's shorter but look at the top creators right now look at Ryan Tran look at Mark Robert look at Mr Beast look at lwig like and remember that these videos are being watched on televisions it is no longer people just watching on phones it is increasingly more televisions and when you watch something on a TV you're committed to watching something long start at five minutes go to 10 minutes but I think you should be looking in a direction of

can I make a 20 minute long video okay now getting to that repeat part of this step of the framework Matt Pat said this to us he said that the expectation of the videos they make is that they will get to 85% of the way done that 85% is good enough to put out and I resonate with that a lot because if you don't have sort of a deadline or an end point to the video that last 15% you can spend weeks and weeks and weeks trying to make it 15% better but I don't think

you're going to get the return on that 15% yeah again this is a very long game you have to look at this on a 2year 5-year window I think a lot of creatives think about everything on a onewe window mhm but when you're in the YouTube business when you're working on a YouTube channel the channel is going to take years and so you want to be thinking about how do I keep things lean how do I get to a point where I'm like this video is good I'm gonna get it out and most creatives are

are really intense about their own creative work so I think the 85% rule is really help helpful now the second thing as a part of this what makes the 85% rule easier is when you look at your first 10 videos that you've made which one of those can be repeated basically like is there a part two part three part four part five to these videos because if there is then it's going to make it a lot easier for you to again copy and paste that script document and go what's the spin on this one I

already have a framework how could I make it better what's the uh what's the next chapter of this challenge what's the next chapter of this video tangible example two videos out of our last 10 that have done really well one of them is the YouTube video that broke Hollywood could we make the YouTube video that is there another YouTube video where we could have a description could we even go as far as the YouTube video that broke and then find another word for what the YouTube video Broke you know tell the stories of prominent YouTube

videos YouTube video that broke the algorithm right that we have a model for that now and we know that it will do well so you're you're searching in your first 10 20 videos you're searching for formats and actually that never ends yeah again most recent video fast approaching death of hot ones is there an opportunity with another show or entity where it's the fast approaching death of or the fast approaching something of because that's more likely to work yes all right data which data should you track to understand with your new YouTube channel if you're

doing well so again I I think it's so important to uh just like really put in bold letters how important packaging is and because of that you're going to live in a world of tracking clickthrough rate packaging for every Creator top Creator brand new Creator uh no matter where you are the title and thumbnail is the most important part of YouTube it's just like you cannot say it enough it's something that we talked about with Jimmy in our last interview do you get it I get it and maybe some of the people watching get it

but like most don't understand like how important I don't think I actually got it until recently and I know that sounds CRA the problem is you never actually get it because it's always more important than you realize it's more important than you me it's I'm constantly every other month going dang I forgot like just how important the title and thumbnail is and I like you almost have to like every day like sit in a corner and go the title and thumbnail matters more than you think and tell yourself that 10 times because if not like

it just it's you just I don't know because it seems so significant until you like really think about and you're like at the end of the day if they don't click they don't watch and that like you can make the best content ever but if they don't click you're dead yeah and even sitting and talking to him it's like yeah this is the most watched person on the platform and even he is just sitting there being like it's all title and thumbnail it's all title and thumbnail so with that in mind the first thing you're

tracking is Click through it this is going to track how well your ideas are resonating and also answer the question are you putting enough curiosity into the viewer for them to click mhm so clickthrough rate is going to be based on how many people saw this thumbnail what percentage of them clicked it the the the like a great clickthrough rate it's 10% anytime we've been over 10% it's like this video is picking off it really resonated this concept really resonated if we're in the like 14 to 15% yeah as many YouTubers say it's a it's

a banger it's a certified Banger who was it that said that certified Banger was that Mark Rober that's probably Mark Rober yeah yeah um I guess if you're new to you that's also a term you'll hear a lot yeah 10% or higher on launch means like it's it's it's really resonating um and I think as you look at it you want to track day of release so the day you release it and then seven days after and 30 days after and I would say a common kind of trajectory there is going to go 10% 7%

four to 5% 45% yeah and if you're if we at least speaking for ourselves if we're way below those uh we will at each sort of marker we will start to experiment with different packaging and we never stop yeah we a video came out years ago there's always the opportunity most likely we've learned a lot about titles and thumbnails since then uh in my free time I will often just look back at our catalog of videos identify a video where I'm like oh we would have never done that title in thumbnail today let me update

it yep again because of suggested browse and how people find your videos we sat with Chucky on Mr Beast team um somewhat recently and he was explaining to us you know the lift in a in an entire catalog on YouTube of a single thumbnail change can be really dramatic yes right because we Chang one of our thumbnails from a year ago that increases click-through rate 3% which means tons of new viewers are coming and they're going to watch another video in our catalog yeah and then they might watch another one and then they'll watch our

new video so that little shift in going from 4% to uh five or 6% can actually lift your entire catalog of videos and that is something that we uh very much track right is just like how is the entire catalog doing the next piece of data that we track a lot is first 30 second viewership so this is something that YouTube gives you in your back end um we if we're above 90% in the first 30 seconds that means that you clicked on the thumbnail and it is the thing you wanted to watch and we

re hooked you mhm right which is the goal that is the goal and most likely you know for us right this is a podcast some people are just going to be listening at this point but in those first 30 seconds most likely we have their eyes so we try and make it incredibly Visual and make sure there are new questions that need to be answered you know from a script perspective but also from a visual perspective yeah so it can get it's not that we can't have successful videos that are at 78% or 75% in

the first 30 seconds but this data that we're telling you that we track should also inform you what matters in your scripting process click through rate first 30 seconds viewership and then the next thing is going to be the average view duration so average view percentage and average view duration so how much of the video are people watching if they're only watching those first 30 seconds and then they leave that's that's not interesting that means you made a video first 30 seconds were great but then it wasn't what people expect it yeah and audience satisfaction

is a major thing that you're optimizing for so you want to be looking at this and going if it's a very long video let's say it's in the multiple hours like a lot of our shows eventually it'll be in the like you know 50% 40% range but if you're making a 20-minute video I think you want people watching more than 50% of that video yeah that's your goal so th those three I think are your first pieces of data to track you can make a little Excel sheet and go this video when I launched it

what was a click-through rate what was the first 30 seconds and what was the average view duration yeah how long were people watching now that's video to video taking a more macro zoom out perspective of the channel some of the things that we look at are average views per video is it staying somewhat consistent is it and is it continuing to rise uh the more that time goes on I think this is actually really important in terms of growing a business right which is sort of a whole other conversation but making sure that you are

like a trustworthy space uh with a consistent amount of audience that continues to come back over time is important how do you know if you're growing we look at new versus returning viewers yeah so if one of our videos really pops most likely we will look at new verse returning and we're going to see that there are a lot of new viewers in that video in that instance it's super important to make sure that we have a call to action to subscribe because it does make a huge difference if we have a video that pops

and we don't tell people to subscribe They Don't Really subscribe yeah but if we do it is drastic and then there are some videos that we make that don't get as much viral viewership but they hit more of our average and you'll find that's a lot of our returning viewers and I think it's okay to have a mix of videos that have different purposes yeah right it's okay sometimes to have you know uh that big swing that potentially viral pop that could reach really big scale and reach new audiences and then it's okay to have

ones that are for more of your core community and to set the expectation that there's going to be more returning viewers here as you continue and you have like a bigger catalog of of content the the two other things that I look at quite a bit are browse versus suggested traffic um to each video and then device average view duration so like based on the devices that people are watching on how long are they watching for so for us like for example art like TV makes up 46% of our watch hours and the average view

duration is 33 minutes so starting to deeply understand how your audience is consuming they're turning it on on a TV and leaving it on for 30 plus minutes so that helps you inform like where your content moves in the future right what's your video length what type of subject matter are you covering all of that is going to inform where you're going in the future look if you've made it to this point in the episode you are in the deep end you have made it very far hopefully you have learned a lot about either starting

a YouTube channel or your current YouTube Channel I imagine there's a lot of people watching and listening who are already deep into YouTube but I hope that helped the part at the end here data analytics there's so much that we could go into here and a lot of channels do that I think we gave a pretty decent like high level of what matters to us especially when you're starting from scratch yes um I do want to read this quote that I thought was was interesting and relevant here because I'm sure at this point you might

be thinking about monetization or collaboration or how do I get into the YouTuber community right the broader economy the Creator economy all this um Naval has this great quote where he says networking is overrated go do something great and your network will instantly emerge I really like that quote because I think in the beginning when you're starting from scratch you just have to put your head down and make great videos yeah you got to get to the point where you're doing something within a community that is different that was unexpected so that you are what

people are gravitating towards yeah and people you want to reach are reaching out to you exactly allow people to reach out to you that that's how it happened with us we had creators reach out to us we had Brands reach out to us we had um we we kept our head down and focused on making videos for six years and that Network value compounded greatly like you know the impact of that network over time yeah has been immense and a huge part of us you know being established and feeling safe in this career feeling like

we've had some success so patience patience is incredibly important when you're starting from scratch all right but but don't forget Pinterest boards I think don't overlook Pinterest boards everybody now if you've gone through all these steps if you're in the process of being a professional Creator and you want a little bit more on how to monetize your channel how to turn your YouTube channel in business we do have a 30-day cohort called Creator startup and that's Linked In the description if you want to find out more about that and again we are giving away this

MacBook Air this is a 13in MacBook Air with an apple M3 chip all you have to do is subscribe to our newsletter the published press and if we've already given this away we probably give away another one so make sure you subscribe the MacBook Air potentially the only tool you need to start a YouTube channel that was our seven-step framework if you guys have other notes on how you would approach starting a YouTube channel or if you have questions that you want us to answer put them in the comments here on YouTube make sure to

subscribe to the channel and we will see you next week [Music]