Unf**cking your YouTube videos is actually (a lot) easier than you think...

so one of the most frustrating things on YouTube has to be posting a video that not only gets no views but that is similar to a bunch of other videos that are getting tens or maybe even hundreds of thousands of views it just adds so much more insult to injury because their content doesn't seem to be all that different from yours why is the algorithm rewarding them and not you well I actually came across this channel super interesting I wanted to show you so it's called jpark this dude super smart makes videos about studying but

what I particularly found interesting one month ago he posted this video titled how to study so fast that it feels illegal almost 2 million views in one month but if we come down here we can see this video learn so fast as a student that it feels illegal only got 8.6k views despite being posted 3 months ago now I know I say only there and if you have a really small Channel don't worry this video will still be very applicable to you as you'll see in a second but only 8.6k views compared to 2 million

especially when these videos are about basically the exact same topic like learning and studying as a student and not only that but they're by the exact same Creator like why did the algorithm choose to push this video over this one well I spent a little bit of time nering out about this and I thought I'd take you guys on that Journey with me because what I uncovered applies to so many channels regardless of what Niche they're in and even if you have zero subscribers and it'll help you get more views now the first thing I

noticed was really interesting cuz it reminded me of something I learned when I was working at a marketing agency which I did for 4 years and one of the things I did was run those annoying Google ads that show up if you search for like brick Brick Layers near me if I had a brick laying client I'd run Google search ads so their website showed up top and after spending literally hundreds of thousands of dollars on Google ads I found something pretty interesting and that was usually the closer the Google ads headline to the thing

people were searching for on Google the more people would click on my ad so for example if people were typing in Brick laying for Garden Wall I would get a better clickthrough rate on my ads if my ad said hire the Garden Wall Brick laying experts as opposed to just higher brick laying experts and a marketing Mentor I look up to summarize it like this details equals desire the more closely you can specifically articulate exactly what it is that people want in the moment they encounter your ad the more of them would click and I

found that the same principle translated over to YouTube now if we look at these two videos right we have the dud video and the viral one now they're both about the same topic but the viral one's title is how to study so fast feels illegal now the D one is told learn so fast as a student it feels illegal but when students are thinking about learning they're not thinking I have to learn this topic they're thinking I need to study this topic so the term studying is closer and more specific to the internal dialogue these

students have when they're looking for a video like this and that's one of the reasons this video with study in it resonated far more strongly now another thing that's interesting in marketing is humans have a negativity bias like it doesn't matter how good of a thing you come across if you look up and see a saber-tooth tiger instantly your focus is going to be 100% on the Sab tooth Target the bad thing and that's because good things are nice but bad things can kill you and so the human mind has evolved for a sort of

negativity bias for example you're much more likely to click on a video that's like these YouTube settings will you compared to a video that says these are the best YouTube settings and when we look at these two videos here what you'll notice is negativity bias is actually working in favor of this video when you think about studying usually you think about long grinding hours usually drudgery and Oblivion most normal people don't want to study it's just something you have to do to pass your tests on the other hand the sentiment around learning is a bit

more positive people want to learn things and so because the word study has more negative connotations inherently within it it's more likely to be the video that's going to attract the attention now another thing I want to talk about efficiency of communication if we go word by word through these videos like we look at the first word the second word the third word by the time you get to the third word of the Highly Successful video you pretty much know what the video is about and who it's for it's a tutorial on how to study

and studying is pretty much just for students on the other hand this second video learn so fast it's still a bit more vague and ambiguous you have to get six words in before you realize oh okay this is a study video for students the first video communicates the value it provides much quicker which is one of the reasons why it's got more views so in summary these are just points that relate to the title of these videos here but the principles are very applicable to any small YouTube channel first if people are interested in a

certain topic the closer it is that your video appears to be usually the better results you're going to get the other thing negativity bias if you're looking at a topic and you can position it in a more negative light as opposed to a positive one often you'll see better results if your title are always very positive see if you can take advantage of some negativity bias and lastly try and efficiently communicate the information in your title now there are some exceptions to this where you're trying to be quirky or unique or tell a story but

in the case we're looking at here where these two tiles at least the very beginning of them try and structure your wording as efficiently as possible but we've only just got started because now that we've dissected the titles let's analyze the these thumbnails to uncover the hidden tactics that made one of them get 250 times more views than the other but before we get into that when you blow up your videos you might want to start growing your brand and earning more money you can do that by creating an online store and that's where today's

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first year with my link and code below so build a better brand sell more and join the world's top creators with today's sponsor do store domains but now let's get back to analyzing J Spark's two videos specifically what he did in his thumbnails to go from 8,000 views to 2 million so these are the two thumbnails of these videos and something I want to point out with our low performer here it's making the big mistake I call wasting screen real estate so let's imagine you're out you're flirting with a girl and you say to her

you look really cute tonight you look really hot she's going to be like well that's kind of weird why' you just say the same thing twice in different words and then she's going to throw a drink in your face everyone will laugh at you and you walk home alone four guys jump you and when you wake up you're in the middle of the road with a black eye so to not end up in the middle of the road with a black eye you need to use your conversational real estate more effectively instead of saying the

same thing essentially in two lines say something different you be like hey you're looking really cute tonight I love your dress same overall topic you're complimenting her but you're saying something different you're actually adding something new to the conversation and the problem with this video the title says learn so fast and the thumbnail says learn fast it's saying the same thing twice and wasting real estate compare that to our other thumbnail where it shows this sort of statistical comparison thing that actually adds a brand new element or angle to this video's package and in your

videos try to do the same thing now another obvious one here is that out a dis this thumbnail is really kind of hard to see what's going on the text Blends into the background the images chosen just don't stand out you guys probably picked up on that but those are things that you would want to fix now last thing I want to mention before we actually jump into the video content here and this is more specific to Authority or education channels but essentially if you're teaching someone something or showing off your Elite skills in a

certain area you need to convince people of your credibility that you can actually deliver on what it is that you say you can deliver on now there's three big ways to sort of encapsulate that the first is to build build a reputation it's essentially the Mr Beast effect if you put a Mr Beast face in a thumbnail it's more likely to do well than if it's just like a random person but that one's quite hard to do because you sort of have to become a very well-known personality in your Niche to leverage that so the

other two are more practical the first one is you can sort of hijack someone else's reputation by talking about or to them or by sharing things they've done and the other one is to share data or objective facts that even though people have no idea who you are back up why it is people should trust you now this bad thumbnail lacks a lot of credibility even if you can see what's going on we don't know if this guy's actually doing these things well like anyone considered a piano pretend to be punching someone and read a

book that's not much of a flex on the other hand here we're showing a statistic spend 20% of the time to get 99% of the grade now the statistic is made up obviously but some people might not realize that and so it's like okay this guy's promising I can spend 20% of the time to get 99% of the grade that is an objective data point this person is sharing with me let me give them a go and also this can work with sort of large Milestone esque numbers that would be hard to fake if you

made a video titled how I reached 10,000 followers on Instagram in 7 Days sharing that data is going to get you some credibility cuz people will look at the video and think well surely they didn't lie about that like if they lied about getting 10,000 followers in 7 days then the whole video is fake and most people aren't Brash enough to just blatantly lie now entertainment creators this doesn't matter as much although you do want to try and make sure the content you're teasing your videos seems believable to to viewers it's less about getting them

to trust you as an authority and more about getting them to trust that you show them exactly what it is that you say you're going to show them in the title and thumbnail and hopefully you're starting to see now it's not that the algorithm hates you it's that often there are these little tweaks that someone with maybe less experience might not notice that's causing you to think your videos are exactly the same as someone else's that are blowing up when in reality there are a bunch of things they're doing that you're not aware of that's

getting them the better results and if you apply the things I just talked about plus the things we're going to talk about from a retention side chances are you'll be getting a lot more views very soon now let's talk about the video itself first let's watch the intro of the low performer see if you can figure out what it is that made the video tank whether it's you now as a student and you have to learn your Concepts equations formulas subjects or it's you later down the line when you have your own kids oh my

back my back's been blown out you need to like learn about the new trends what the [ __ ] is a sigma what the [ __ ] is this [ __ ] bro what the like the brand new technology that's come out V girlfriend 2.0 what the [ __ ] we can all agree that learning and being a lifelong student is crucial you see so 24 seconds in the intro of the video is sort of semic concluded even though the actual intro continues to go on for another 35 seconds is now something here I want

to point out immediately and you might have noticed this we talked about digital real estate not wasting space repeating yourself too many times in a really short span now what I found was basically after watching this full intro in a nutshell J Sparks essentially just talking about why learning is important but think about that I'm a viewer I've read the title I've seen the thumbnail I want to know how to learn and now you've just told me why I should want to know how to learn for a minute straight like bro you're preaching to the

choir also this video is targeting students who want to learn how to study more efficiently and yet a big portion of the video's intro is talking about why learning is going to be crucial to you down the line as an adult these people just want to discover how to learn more efficiently so they can pass that stupid test next Friday like yes the skits were funny but it doesn't actually empathize with what it is the viewer cares about why they clicked on this video in the first place and another big thing we talked about social

proofing credit ability at no point does J spark even subtly convey why he's an authority on this topic and why you should even listen to a word he has to say there's no social proof or credibility going on the only thing I can see him being an expert in right now is pop culture memes I guess which is not helpful in this context but now let's look at the viral video the number one reason that students don't get top grades is because they don't study obviously but the number one reason that students don't study is

because studying just takes too long and they so we're only 10 seconds in here but I feel like I can already pause the video cuz there are a bunch of things he's done really really well here in the beginning 5 Seconds he's essentially said what took him 24 seconds in the previous video he's sort of assured viewers that like hey I understand what it is that you're looking for and you're in the right place cuz I'm going to teach you exactly that but beyond that something he's done here that's really genius is you might notice

he didn't start off the video by saying he how to study he started off by talking about how to get good grades which when you think about it is so smart because why does someone actually want to study they want to get good grads now yes studying might be the thing at the Forefront of their mind in this very moment but if you can share with them like hey I'm going to show you how to study cuz I know you want to get a good grade people are like ah I am understood but then beyond

that if we go on to watch the rest of this intro which goes for about 50 seconds a bunch of different interesting things are actually covered first we talk about good grades and why studying is the gateway to them and then he shares the number one sort of study killer which is procrastination and then he shares what causes procrastination then how to rewire your brain to combat this and then Hees makes a very good move by showing his GCSE scores which objectively give him credibility and prove that he's smart because the scores are very good

and then on top of that he sweetens the deal by showing how he got these crazy results by actually doing less work so look at how much more value and interest is created in this intro compared to the first one we looked at where essentially just says you should learn for like a minute straight you can see there just way more objective value here and so if we're to take the things we just learned and apply them to the bad video and these are things you could think about doing two first make the beginning of

your videos more interesting both through covering more interesting topics but also being very aware of not laboring on about the obvious next try to briefly pinpoint what it is the viewers actually want like their deeper desires again in this case studying is sort of the thing we want to lead with cuz that's top of mind for his viewers but beyond that they're studying so that they can get better grades and quickly calling that out shows you have a very good understanding of their situation and empathizes with them and then lastly add social proof again if

we look at this video you can see there's a big spike in retention right here when he shows the results he got and there's also another Spike up here and spoiler alert this is where he shows the results he got again I used to be kind of mediocre average until I made a change and that led me to get these results I've being very harsh both of these videos are good the editing is entertaining the personality is fun we've identified good topics in both of them I'm just nerd ranting here about some more specifics but

moving on from the intro there's something important about the rest of the content itself you need to know now I won't make you watch all these videos for the sake of time but I have and in summary the content in both of these videos is structured and presented in a very similar way but I noticed one key thing so for example in this viral video there was a particular point where he revealed his study process and it was super practical he said first you're going to identify the things you're weak at and the things that

are going to get you the most marks and you got to focus almost all of your study time just on those things instead of doing the things that you're good at which most people like to do because it makes you feel more accomplished so it's a very quick practical tactic that people could take from this video apply to their lives and get a quick win and news flash people are lazy as hell they want the quick wins on the other hand the L good video talk to a lot more about principles and concepts for example

we talk for over 2 minutes about why it's okay to make mistakes which is true but it's far from a novel Concept in this day and age and so two things you can take away from this is one quick practical tactics and wins people really appreciate that in education content and two novel information if you talk too much about things that people think they already know about even if they don't actually know about them they still probably just going to skip or leave which means you're going to get a lot less views and it could

be the difference between you getting 8,000 views or 2 million views but before you go and apply all those things you need to actually have a good video idea to work from in the first place if you don't have a proven video idea like we talked about earlier all this stuff I just talked about is going to make no difference to your views cuz you're essentially going to be polishing a turd I know it sounds mean but it's the truth so check out the video on screen before doing all of this it's going to show

you how to find a good video idea you can then find a good video idea come back here apply everything you learned and if you found this video useful and you get more results because of it let me know down below I'll do more reviews cheers