How I Actually Make Viral Shorts

My shorts channel has over 20 million views  and many viral videos. But my recent shorts aren’t really doing well. Most of them stuck  after getting that first few thousand views, again, and again, and again.

I need  to break this cycle. So in this video, I will try to create a short  completely from scratch, get at least 1 million views, and show how  much money I made from it. Let’s dive in!

- What day is it? + It’s 7 august 2023 - We need to find Isaac… At the end of this video, you will have a  viral strategy to use in your next shorts, and a full guide on how to make it no matter your  niche, or experience. It’s not one of those “use chatgpt and canva to make 300 videos in 30  minutes”, or “use this website to make clips from interviews” kind of tutorial.

I tried all  of them, and trust me, they don’t work. AT ALL! You will end up getting 0 views after all the  effort you put in.

And even if you magically get 10 million views with those ai-generated  shorts, you can’t monetize it anyways! Because youtube doesn’t monetize repetitive content.  And well, posting 300 mass-produced videos, is repetitive as jeff!

Back to the video. So do  not expect a copy paste tutorial here. You need to put in the work and learn how to make a viral  short.

We will go from finding the video idea, to writing the script, voiceover, editing,  captions, music, sound effects, and. . .

BUT FIRST, we need a new strategy… This is my shorts channel. Where I make  videos about Marvel movies. And this is the viral recipe I’ve been using  to make my shorts.

It’s basically a list of patterns that I saw in my  high-performing videos. Even though it helped me get some viral shorts  before, it’s not as effective anymore. You know what Einstein says?

“Insanity, is doing the same thing over and over  again, and expecting different results”. And I’m not insane… Yet. So we need an update.

I’m gonna do  some research to find out what works on the shorts right now. I’ll be back soon. So, after 3  hours of serious research, here’s the new spell.

Now, let’s get to work. This was the first mistake I was making in my  old videos. And if you can’t make a viral short, that’s probably what you’re missing  as well.

If you have a bad video idea, you can’t make it go viral no matter how  good you write your script or edit. Well, how to pick a killer video idea? Just look  out for trends in your niche.

Or even better, implement a trend into your niche. Of course,  taking an old topic and adding your spice may work as well. But we’re trying to increase our  chances to the max.

A short about a new Marvel movie has a higher chance of going viral than  an interview with the Spiderman actor published six years ago. So, I’m gonna look to Google Trends  for a new movie that fans are excited about. Well, I don’t even need to look there, because I’m a fan  myself.

I know Loki Season 2 has a new trailer. That’s the advantage of being a part of your  audience. If you’re passionate about your niche, you already know what’s trending.

Wait!  You know this guy? He’s the guy from that movie (Everything Everywhere All At  Once).

I saw his speech at the Oscars. Mom, I just won an Oscar! Very emotional.

. . Anyways, we got the video idea!

Now, when it comes to scripting a short, I  always thought I should keep my scripts as short as possible. Like a boxer punching  his opponent and stepping back. Because if everything stays the same, which video will  get more views?

The one with a higher retention, right? But here’s the catch. Even if it  has a higher retention, YouTube is more likely to promote the longer one, at least in  my experience.

I don’t really know the reason, but it’s probably because it keeps the viewer  longer in the platform. And if they take retention as the main metric, people would just upload  1-second videos to get 1000% retention and go viral. Which is not what YouTube wants.

Plus,  YouTube shows longer shorts on the home page, where people are less likely to skip. Fun  fact, my most viewed short got 70% of its views from the home page. Alright, here’s the  actual data by this legend (Nate Black) that shows the duration of viral shorts.

What I’m  trying to say is, make your shorts longer. Take time to dive deeper into the details and  make it at least this long (half a page). Another thing that will definitely help,  is a strong hook, to make them curious, and stop scrolling.

For example: In Loki season 2, we saw this guy as a TVA worker The point here is, Loki season 2 isn’t  released yet. So that would make viewers like, “Dude, you gave me heartattack! I  thought Loki Season 2 got released” That’s exactly the reaction we  want to get with the hook.

Okay, maybe that was too specific, and may not  work for every niche. Here’s another one. Tom Holland knows more than you think (Jumpscare) Did you see what happened there?

The first line  made the viewer wonder, what does he know? And the jumpscare made them laugh. So they probably  stayed till the end.

Otherwise, (jumpscare). If you didn’t catch it, we’re making  a video about the story of this actor, Ke Huy Quan. Which is a story by itself.

But even  though it’s less than a minute, adding some kind of story to your shorts makes people watch to  learn what happens at the end. I’m too lazy to do the research, so I’ll ask Bing to write me  the whole career of our guy. AI automation, huh?

After taking useful parts and putting in  a story, here’s the next point. Hearing the story from only one person is okay, but  we can take it to the next level by adding another speaker. Get footage of someone  else to tell some parts of the story, or just add memes.

Remember the Oscar  speech? I’m gonna use it for my short. I just won an Oscar!

Still, very emotional Which leads us to the next key. Adding  some kind of emotion. It can be laughter, fear, motivation, happiness or  any emotion you can think of.

Don't question my sense of humor. Now you have two options. If you have a sexy  voice, just take a microphone and read through your script.

But I guess most of you are  interested in the second option. Using, AI. Alright, there are tons of text-to-speech  tools out there.

But the one I use is called, Elevenlabs. In fact, the voice you’re listening  to right now, is made by this thing. There’s a link in the description if you wanna check it  out.

Now all you need to do, is choose a voice, or generate a custom one, and paste  your script to generate the voiceover. In Loki Season 2, we saw this guy as a TVA worker. It’s fine, but we can take it to the next level. 

Use commas, exclamation marks, and capital letters to get different tones. And generating it a  few times also helps to get the best result. I will show this part in Premiere Pro, but you  can do the same in every editing software.

First, to make sure we’re on the same  page, drag the windows around, to get a similar setup. It should look like this  at the end. Or use whatever setup works for you.

Take the voiceover you generated  and import it to your project, then drag it to the timeline. Take the razor tool  and cut all the pauses. Now, overlap the clips to get a faster pacing.

Listen to see if it’s natural  or not. And repeat this for the whole voiceover. Nice job!

Now, we need footage to add on top. For videos,  go to YouTube, search for things related to your topic, and download them with a random website.  If you need more stock videos and images, use Pexels.

Then, take all that footage  and import to premiere. Cover all your voiceover with related clips. Don’t forget  to add 1 or 2 interaction clips to keep the viewers engaged.

Look at that! You  just made a rough cut for your video. Now the fun part begins.

First, resize  all your clips to fit the screen. Use keyframes to add zoom-ins, zoom-outs, and  camera movements. To make them smoother, click this button, click a keyframe, and drag  these handles closer to each other.

Basically, it makes the movement start slowly, go faster,  and then slow down again. Looks better. This guy says adding some graphics like  circles and arrows increases the engagement And actually the short I create in the  video now has over 38 million views.

Wow. So I added a bunch of things here and there,  and used keyframes again to track points. You can’t find a single short without this one. 

It’s a magical element that is stupidly simple, yet increases the retention so much. This  part is based on personal preference and branding of your channel. But to give you a  reference, I use yellow text on a black box, in 2 sizes.

One small, for regular captions,  and one big, for highlighting important points. Here are the settings that I use if you want  to replicate a similar style. But as I said, it’s nice to make a custom one for yourself. 

That way people can immediately recognize it’s your video, and stop scrolling. That’s not the  case if you’re using an automatic caption app or something. Because everyone else is using it too. 

That doesn’t make your channel SPECIAL, does it? So play around, make different variations, sizes,  colors, and once you’re happy with the look, choose all the effects, and make a preset  for each style to use it next time. Now, hold alt, drag it for each new text, and change  the words.

Done! But something is still missing… Sound effects is a different video topic by  itself, but if you have never used them before, and don’t know where to start, a free pack from  youtube would do the job. If you need more, search on YouTube, like tension sound  effect.

Whoosh sound effect. Cinematic sound effect. Laugh sound effect.

You got  the point. Once you added enough of those, and adjusted the volume, the  final touch is, adding some music. Using a trending song would be a nice  choice, but I like to go through the songs I personally listen to, and choose  the one that fits in the video.

Just be careful and don’t make it too loud.  Otherwise, you may get comments like It looks too dark and pale. The solution is  creating an adjustment layer.

It basically affects everything underneath. To play with the colors  of the whole video, cover the entire timeline, go to the effects panel, and search for lumetri  color. Drg it to the adjustment layer.

Now, make it BRIGHT AND COLORFUL! Maybe not that much.  Increase the exposure if it’s too dark, give a bit of saturation, contrast, and play around to find  what works for you.

Just don’t get too extreme. Before finishing, I like to add this light  effect on top of everything. I don’t know why Finally, we can export the final video It’s been 24 hours since I  released the short.

And it got… 5000 views. What? All that effort was for this?

5000 views? !  People are right.

It’s just luck. There’s no formula for success in shorts. Maybe  I should’ve chosen a better topic.

The editing wasn’t good enough. Why would  anyone even watch this piece of sheet? !

The goal was to reach a million  views. And now we’re here… - Having a bad day? + Yeah… I was just.

. . - I know… Don’t be sad, mate. 

It’s been only 24 hours. + Hey dow'd you know m. .

. - Rome wasn’t built in a day. Look at your old  videos.

Which one went viral on the first day? + None of them - None of them… Just give it a bit  more time before losing your hope. + Yeah, you’re right.

- And don’t just sit and wait there  for the result. Putting all your hope on a single video, is insanity.  And oh you’re not insane.

Right? + Einstein? - Yeah, but that's not the point. 

Look, you’ve got a solid formula. Keep making more videos. You’ll  improve your skills with each one.

+ Okay. I don’t know who you are, but  thanks man. I needed to hear that.

- You’re welcome, my man… Remember,  it’s a journey. Not a destination It’s been 30 days since I published  that short. And while waiting, I made 5 more videos with the same  formula.

So, did it get 1 million views? No, it didn’t… BECAUSE IT GOT 2 MILLION! ! 

After all that research, scripting, and editing, the formula actually  worked! But that’s not all. Remember, what I said about choosing trendy topics?

A short about a new Marvel movie has  a higher chance of going viral than an interview with the Spiderman  actor published six years ago Well, I was wrong. I made a short  about that interview. And it got 7 million views!

It’s now the highest-viewed  video on the entire channel. So we got 10 million views in less than a month.  Earned 5 times more revenue than the channel’s entire history, and  brought the channel back on track.

So here’s the recipe and everything I used, packed in a single video. Just adjust them  for your niche, and make your own list. However… The last short I published  was one month ago.

Views are going down again. The channel is losing  traction. I need to break this cycle.

But I guess, this time I'm not alone. So, let’s do it one last time.