The Problem With YouTube Advice

you want to succeed on YouTube so you type How to Succeed on YouTube into the search bar on YouTube wow that's kind of a lot I don't know if I have time for all this maybe I don't really want to succeed on YouTube but hang on how to get more views in 2 minutes so you watch this video by Marcus Jones and after some filler and a pretty straightforward explanation about how to understand an audience retention graph you reach the big reveal of how to get more views in just 2 minutes and it's use the

editor function in YouTube Studio to cut Parts out of a video that you've already uploaded Yes you heard that correctly this magical hack to get more views in 2 minutes is to go into a video you've already uploaded and delete Parts out of it but okay maybe I'm being a little unfair to Marcus Jones and it would also be unfair to say that watching videos from channels such as think Media or vid IQ or Roberto Blake or film Booth or tube Sensei is a total waste of time because there is a lot of good advice

on how to succeed on YouTube on YouTube and some of it has been personally useful to me but once you understand the basics I think you quickly run into a problem of diminishing returns and if you feel like you're running into diminishing returns by consuming free YouTube advice you might be tempted to sign up for one of the seemingly millions of paid online courses that claim to offer a sure fire path to YouTube success which I personally would not recommend but we'll get to that let's go back to Marcus Jones and his two-minute hack for

more views in the example Marcus uses he shows how his video Mr Beast being a YouTube genius for 10 minutes straight was not performing as well as he had hoped and looking at his analytics he realized there was a worst than normal retention drop off during the intro of the video and so he went into the YouTube Studio editor and just cut that part out along with a few other sections that were also showing retention drop offs after that audience retention started to improve and eventually the video gained momentum and skyrocketed to several million views

now I have no real reason to doubt that this hack did indeed work for Marcus and it's actually kind of a clever idea because I don't think most people ever think to go into a video that they already uploaded and delete Parts out of it using the YouTube Studio editor but Marcus goes on to claim that this is a trick that can be used by any channel big or small with the potential to dramatically boost a video's views and I think that is a bit misleading see the video that he applied this trick to was

a compilation of various Mr Beast interviews so removing the intro and several parts in the middle did not affect the overall flow of the video it just tightened it up a bit which is great if you're doing a compilation Style video but understand that the YouTube Studio editor only allows you to cut parts out of the video you can't rearrange parts or add new parts so in order to use this supposedly amazing trick to get you more views in two minutes you have to be able to edit out low retention parts of your video without

completely screwing up the overall flow and narrative in the process what I'm saying is assuming this trick does indeed have the potential to work it would only work on very specific types of videos the other issue is that in order for the YouTube algorithm to continue to update its data on a video's audience retention performance that video needs to be getting at least some views the video Marcus used this trick on was still able to reach around 10K views before he edited it but in my experience as a small YouTube channel a lot of times

when a video doesn't perform well it will completely Flatline and get virtually no views after its initial release if no one is watching the video in the first place there's no way for the algorithm to update its retention info and start recommending the video to more people but look this is not intended to be some scathing critique of Marcus Jones I've watched some of his other content and I think there's plenty of reasonable advice to be found on his channel but it's important to remember that the nature of YouTube content in general is that a

lot of videos are framed very hyperbolically for example one of Marcus's most popular videos is this one 21 YouTube settings that small channels now looking through this it's a pretty simple rundown of how to navigate some of the various settings you can choose when uploading a video or configuring your channel in my opinion none of this is too difficult to understand but it is somewhat useful info however when you see this title and thumbnail as a small channel it's easy to think to yourself wait a minute is the reason my videos aren't getting as many

views as I know they should be just because I'm using the wrong settings am I my channel now I am not a YouTube expert by any stretch of the imagination but I do feel confident in saying that none of these settings are fing your channel if you upload a YouTube video and leave pretty much everything on its default settings I am 99% sure that video will do just fine and hopefully most people who watch this video understand the title is just a bit of clickbait and that this video won't actually reveal that all your failures

on YouTube are just because you used the wrong settings but because this video currently has 3.6 million views I do think it's important to talk about the first setting he mentions in it the first setting that Marcus talks about is a box that is checked by default when you upload a video published to subscriptions feed and notify subscribers now most YouTubers would probably never usually think about unchecking this box because why would you not want to notify your subscribers that you posted a new video people who have notifications turned on are often your biggest fans

and want to know as soon as you publish a new video if you have notifications turned on and are here because of that thank you but Marcus makes the case that if you're publishing a video that's quite a bit different from your usual content something your subscribers might not be interested in you should uncheck this box he uses the example of a hypothetical Star Wars focused Channel suddenly posting a video about Spider-Man the rationale is that because videos are first promoted to subscribers and frequent viewers of your channel if that audience doesn't like a video

it will send negative signals to the algorithm and the algorithm will then not go on to promote it to a wider audience but supposedly if you uncheck this box the video will grow more slowly at first but eventually be shown to a different audience and ultimately have a greater chance of success now this all sounds fine on paper but after looking into it more closely it's actually extremely misleading paraphrasing from a post on the official YouTube blog because most subscribers watch videos that are recommended to them on their homepage as opposed to clicking notifications or

browsing their subscriptions feed unchecking this box won't actually stop subscribers from being shown your video it will just stop them from getting notifications about it additionally performance in one traffic Source also tends to affect that specific traffic Source search affs search home affects home so Subs not seeing it in notifications or sub feed or clicking in and out quickly wouldn't really affect performance on the homepage either so the bottom line is that unchecking this box probably makes virtually no difference whatsoever other than the fact that people who would normally get notifications when you upload the

new video won't get those notific ations but the reason why I find this so frustrating is again it's presented as a setting that could F your channel and also that it does in fact touch on a topic that is often relevant to many small channels but doesn't actually offer any sort of real solution I can speak to this personally because as a video essay Creator I enjoy trying to make videos on a variety of different topics but since I released my video about why I'll never be a famous YouTuber and gained several thousand subscribers from

it it really does seem like videos specifically focused on the topic of YouTube do much better than videos I make on any other topic now all this could lead into a lengthy discussion about finding your Niche and how to deliver value for your audience but to make a long story short the prevailing wisdom seems to be that in general the best strategy for succeeding on YouTube is naturally to publish videos that your audience is interested in and it shouldn't come as too much of a surprise that if you publish a video that is very different

from your usual topics it won't perform very well however I've also heard it said that even if you make a video that is outside of your normal range of topics if that video is really exceptionally good there is still the potential for the algorithm to eventually find a different audience to show it to and for that video to go on and get millions and millions of views or I don't know maybe just 10K and the thing is in other videos Marcus himself does discuss this exact dynamic in a more nuanced way so it seems like

he understands the underlying principle but still wrongly suggests that unchecking a single box when you upload a video can drastically affect its performance but despite the fact that I've now spent roughly 1,700 words talking about his content this is not intended to be a scathing critique of Marcus Jones because while I could just keep going over specific pieces of YouTube advice that I think are misleading or just flat out wrong I think there is a more General problem with the entire [Music] genre in theory the formula for Success on YouTube is not that hard to

understand you need to create good titles and good thumbnails and then pay them off with good and engaging content that delivers value to an audience whether that be education or entertainment or some combination of the two this is not hard to understand in theory but it is hard to do in practice as you embark on your YouTube Journey you can drill down on all the various components of making a good YouTube video and find content to help you improve the those skills you can learn how to write better titles design better thumbnails edit your videos

to be engaging and compelling sound uh confident on camera but in my view underneath all of that what you really need to discover is what makes you unique what makes you stand out from the crowd because everyone's unique formula for success is going to be a little bit different if you have an amazing skill to demonstrate on camera or an amazing story to tell you don't necessarily need a lot of fancy editing techniques or some brilliant thumbnail you just need something that draws people in and look I'm not saying this as some incredible Insight that

you've never heard before this is probably the type of advice you can find on any number of YouTube advice channels including my good friend Marcus Jones's but the thing about all these YouTube education channels is that in order for them to stay successful they need to keep turning out more and more content and because the general formula for Success on YouTube is pretty simple you end up with endless different spins on the same basic advice perhaps there are certain evolving aspects of YouTube that are important to keep up with but I think by and large

what it takes to succeed on YouTube hasn't really changed that much in the last several years so a lot of the videos that claim to show you how to specifically Master the 2024 YouTube algorithm aren't really teaching you much that you couldn't have learned in 2023 there's a quote by philosopher Alan W Watts that says if you get the message hang up the phone uh now if you know who Alan Watts is you may realize that the context of that quote was quite a bit different than what we are talking about but all the same

I think it's a good metaphor maybe it goes without saying but once you do understand the basics of How To Succeed on YouTube I think your time is much better spent simply putting your head down and focusing on making as much good content as you can as opposed to mindlessly consuming hours upon hours of more and more you YouTube advice content but rather than have you hang up the phone what a lot of these YouTube advice channels would like you to do is stay on the line and pull out your credit card I recently got

recommended a cool video titled YouTube is a game these are the cheat codes by magnets media I was impressed by the very high production values and I thought the advice given in this hourlong presentation was actually pretty useful and changed some of my perspectives about my own channel so that's all pretty cool once you reach the end of this video however the Creator quickly launches into a lengthy sales pitch for his online YouTube course now just to be clear I have not signed up for this course and I have no reason to suggest it doesn't

contain useful information but there are a few things that you might want to consider before handing over $2,000 for it to start with while the YouTube video promoting this course was visually stunning and very well edited the website it directs you to is is uh not that it reminds me of a scammy website you end up at by accidentally clicking on a banner ad for a company you've never heard of but perhaps that can be forgiven after all magnet's media is claiming to be a YouTube expert not a web design expert so one of the

claims he makes about this course is that the end goal is to make you a double YouTube millionaire which means 1 million subscribers and $1 million in revenue and I will admit that that sounds pretty nice of course if you scroll all the way down to the very bottom of this seemingly endless website there is a line of text noting please remember I'm not suggesting my results are typical or in any way guaranteed and if you click just below that you can read a carefully worded earnings disclaimer just to make sure he is not actually

liable if you fail to earn $1 million from YouTube after taking this course which is probably a smart thing to disclaim now John the founder of magnets media admits that of course you could find all of this information via free tutorials if you have the time to search around for it but who has that kind of time it would be much better to just pay $2,000 to have all of this information conveniently packaged together in one place he also explains that this is really essentially several courses all wrapped into one and if he wanted to

make more money he could sell each course individually but he's generous so he's not going to do that and on the website he makes clear that you're actually getting a highly discounted price down from 5,997 to 1,997 but this is really just one of the oldest online sales tricks in the book and means virtually nothing in practice perhaps one of the better selling points since it's probably not something you could find for free online is that by signing up to the course you get connected to a whole community of like-minded creators and even to John

himself to help give you advice and answer your questions JN advertised is that you can submit whatever questions you have and I'll answer them I normally charge over $1,000 per hour for my time and yet you can ask me whatever you want but it's not really clear what he means by this further down in the FAQ there is a question as to whether he offers one-on-one coaching and the answer is no but you will get my personal attention and support within the course and he goes on to say you can literally request me to make

a specific training for you or answer any questions you have this is much more costeffective for you than paying $1,000 plus per hour for a call okay so you can request specific training be made for you and you can submit questions but no one-on-one advice because that would cost either $11,000 an hour or some number above $1,000 an hour depending on which part of the site you're looking at he adds it also means you'll get access to answers I given to other course members so the course just gets more and more valuable in short the

only way to get direct communication with me is through buying this course so this is all a bit confusing but my guess is that you can submit questions probably via some sort of online portal which hopefully he will answer publicly and if you request that specific training that doesn't already exist be made he might make that for you but if you're hoping for any personalized attention whereby he looks over your specific Channel and gives you direct advice about how to improve you're out of luck now I could go on but I think you get the

idea and I'm not saying that you shouldn't take this course under any circumstances after all it does also claim to offer a money back guarantee so maybe there's actually nothing to lose but still a lot of bold claims have been made and if you read the fine print it's probably very similar to many other YouTube courses out there and did I mention there are a lot of other YouTube courses out there think media is one of the bigger YouTube education channels and they offer two different courses vid IQ is an educational YouTube channel that also

offers a proprietary Analytics tool as well as coaching and the vid IQ Academy Roberto Blake has his own awesome Creator Academy and you can even book a one-on-one 90-minute coaching call with him for just $700 which sounds like a steal compared to the hypothetical $1,000 plus dollar an hour phone call magnets media kept going on about film Booth offers a proven 90-day system for explosive YouTube growth and yes Marcus Jones has a course of his own for only $297 YouTube courses aren't just offered by specifically YouTube education focused channels either popular productivity YouTuber Ali abdal

has his own part-time YouTuber Academy popular minimalist YouTuber Matt diela has his own Master YouTube course and this is just barely scratching the surface of what's out there now again I have not personally taken any of these courses and I'm sure many of them do offer a lot of useful information even if that useful information is available for free elsewhere in a video about Creator courses YouTuber Tai from 99 does sign up for think media's video ranking Academy and he doesn't have many nice things to say about it it's actually the worst course I've ever

taken he also goes on to review Ali AB doll's part-time YouTuber Academy which he has mixed feelings about and highlights one part where Oli readily admits that all the info in his course are things you can easily find on Google for free Ty from 99 concludes his video by showing the Staggering amount of money Ali made just in 2022 from selling this online course so is there any reason to ever take one of these courses well for me personally the answer is no although there are many things that I wish I had known at the

beginning of my YouTube Journey that probably would have saved me a lot of time and maybe I should have spent more time looking up useful advice before diving straight into YouTube I've always kind of been the type of person that likes to just figure things out on my own so that's what I've done and more or less that's what I'm continuing to do but if you're the type of person that thrives in a more structured learning environment I could see a course being somewhat useful because all of the information is collected in one place and

it gives you modules and a pathway an order in which to take all of it in and if you've paid 2,000 or more dollars for the privilege that's a pretty good incentive to actually follow through and complete the course from start to finish the other component that at least sounds good on paper is being connected to the other course participants who are on a similar Journey as yourself and with whom you can share your work and receive useful feedback from and if there's the possibility of receiving additional advice directly from the creator of the course

themselves that certainly also seems useful but because this element of the courses seems highly variable in the way it is offered I would try to vet that component as carefully as possible before you sign up and if you'd like to find community of aspiring YouTubers to connect with without paying for an online course there are plenty of free options on places like Reddit and Discord you could look up as well the thing about making a video about the problem with YouTube advice is that I am still essentially making a YouTube advice video and again just

to be 100% clear I am not by any stretch of the imagination any kind of YouTube expert but I really do strongly believe that there is no one single formula for Success on YouTube and if you want to succeed on YouTube you need to find the right formula that works for you which is something I am very much still in the process of doing myself and I actually do recommend that you consume at least some YouTube advice content because if you don't it's very easy to fall into the Trap of just posting video upon video

into the void and never really realizing what you're doing wrong or what you could be actively improving on but of a video title promising to show you the one thing you can do to blow up your Channel right now sounds too good to be true it almost certainly is and as with everything in life you should probably take it with a grain or maybe a handful of salt anyway please subscribe and turn on notifications so that you can be alerted the moment I announce my upcoming YouTube success course