Do you think there's an ultimate formula to Youtube success?

You wanna hear my take on how I just grew by 88 (and growing) subs in the last 28 days? Follow trends as they start.

I love Zelda, and always wanted to make videos about it anyway, but before E3, I just started working on some of them, and then come E3, I talkes Breath of the Wild, its most of my recent videos.

Then I talked about one of two things:

1) If I could bring something new to the discussion, the popular and most searched BotW theories, or for non-Zelda, maybe talk about the important topics in your field, or align topics with bigger Youtubers for search result joy (And I'm not saying copy. That's dumb. What I'm saying is do the same basic topics. For example my Breath of the Wild Timeline Theory will come up if people search for other BotW timeline theories)
(Examples of this for are my Timeline Placement theory and the one on Calamity Ganon)

2) Theories that are new, i.e. No one else covered it yet (though something which will get searched still), and thus I am the only Youtuber to have a video on this topic, so if anyone else gets curious, I'll be first on the search results, and if anyone else happens to cover it later, then I can get a boosted result from that!
(This is my Steppe Talus theory, for example)

The three examples given are my most viewed videos actually, making over 7k views total, which is crazy with my total views under 10k, and only (currently) 131 subs!

So, really think about what you can make, and what will be searched for and try and follow trends, and that will give you views. Or just make what you love and the views will come. I guess I'm lucky that mine align so well!
 
There is nothing more you can do than to make good content. Think for yourself, why should people subscribe to you, what do you have that others don't have?

Apart from that, YouTube is also based alot on luck, you get noticed, or you don't. There's nothing more you can do than make good content and trying to get it out there by decent promotion.
 
viewers and subbers are people, and we will never fully understand people. Therefore we cannot clearly predict what they will love, and what will go viral.

BUT
you are a people.
so focus on what you love and find funny/interesting, and work on gaining a following of like minded people :)
 
Lightsen said:
viewers and subbers are people, and we will never fully understand people. Therefore we cannot clearly predict what they will love, and what will go viral.

BUT
you are a people.
so focus on what you love and find funny/interesting, and work on gaining a following of like minded people :)
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Haha, completely agree with you, I really like the way you think about it - it didn't occur to me ^^ I guess that's the way to go though for most things :)
 
Ultimate formula for YT success? --> Yes
Is it luck? --> NO!

I have read the word "luck" here many times. I don't believe it's luck. YT is not Lotto, it is not random. Video selection and channel promotion is guided by a 1 million line of code algorithm that takes several hundred factors into account. It is not luck, it is C++ code.

I can only speak from our experience, and the (detailed) research I have done on several other successful channels and their breakout videos.

Formula for success = Being in suggested videos of other big channels. 61% of our traffic for the last 90 days is from suggested videos. Our most viewed video (hello kitty giant egg with 1.7 m views) has been in over 10 suggested slots from different channels, from 200k subs to over 1 million subs. That is where traffic comes from. Our other videos derive most of their traffic from suggested of smaller channels, 10k - 500k subs. There is a tiered progression in the algorithm. Once your video hits certain benchmarks, it gets suggested on higher sub channels.

Ultimate formula for success is to make videos targeting high search terms with low competition in trending topics, preferably something that other high sub channels have done already, but you bring a different flavor to the keywords.

During our first 3 months we hardly had any traffic. It was not because we were "unlucky", it was because I did not have an understanding of how the YT algorithm works, how video selection happens, and hence we were not making videos that were searched for. Over the last 3 months a friend and I have had detailed discussions and we've come to a good understanding of the algorithm and how certain aspects of it work. I have targeted videos as a result of that, and our traffic increased. It's not luck, its detailed research and analytics and analysis.

If you believe in luck on YT, then your chance of success is probably the same as Lotto.

suggested.jpg
 
KiddieToysReview said:
Ultimate formula for YT success? --> Yes
Is it luck? --> NO!

I have read the word "luck" here many times. I don't believe it's luck. YT is not Lotto, it is not random. Video selection and channel promotion is guided by a 1 million line of code algorithm that takes several hundred factors into account. It is not luck, it is C++ code.

I can only speak from our experience, and the (detailed) research I have done on several other successful channels and their breakout videos.

Formula for success = Being in suggested videos of other big channels. 61% of our traffic for the last 90 days is from suggested videos. Our most viewed video (hello kitty giant egg with 1.7 m views) has been in over 10 suggested slots from different channels, from 200k subs to over 1 million subs. That is where traffic comes from. Our other videos derive most of their traffic from suggested of smaller channels, 10k - 500k subs. There is a tiered progression in the algorithm. Once your video hits certain benchmarks, it gets suggested on higher sub channels.

Ultimate formula for success is to make videos targeting high search terms with low competition in trending topics, preferably something that other high sub channels have done already, but you bring a different flavor to the keywords.

During our first 3 months we hardly had any traffic. It was not because we were "unlucky", it was because I did not have an understanding of how the YT algorithm works, how video selection happens, and hence we were not making videos that were searched for. Over the last 3 months a friend and I have had detailed discussions and we've come to a good understanding of the algorithm and how certain aspects of it work. I have targeted videos as a result of that, and our traffic increased. It's not luck, its detailed research and analytics and analysis.

If you believe in luck on YT, then your chance of success is probably the same as Lotto.

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Hmm, that is definitely interesting to know. Thanks for the in-depth explanation, I guess it also depends on what kind of content are you publishing and who's your target audience. In my case, I'm doing something unique and thus I do not have any other channel to take as reference, since it's never been done before. Hopefully I can get some tricks from here and there and improve it though, for sure :) SEO optimization has always interested me anyways and I think it's one of the key factors to be successful in Youtube, just don't really get how it works altogether, just barely ^^
 
I've moved your thread to the strategy / technique forum. :)

Honestly the bottom line is CONTENT, but that's often not the advice that new YouTubers / smaller channels want to hear because it frustrates them. People seem to want to believe in deep dark secrets that only big channels know. But that just isn't the case.
 
I think rather than a formula, you need an ability.

The ability to make clickbait thumbnails and titles that when people see it, they HAVE to click on it and when they click on it they still don't feel cheated(aka content worthy of being clickbaited or so shockingly bad people would leave an interaction whether positive or negative). That way you get viewers attention, their click on your video and you still get the sweet sweet watchtime with it.

Basically you need a good thumbnail, title and content. Not everyone has that ability from the beginning, so improving that would be very beneficial for the channel.

Then there's the SEO which should also be learnt for the benefit of the channel which mostly gets your video ranked with similar videos on youtube or even shows your videos in search engines other than youtube.

TL;DR you need clickbait-y thumbnails and titles with content worthy of the lure + learning SEO.
 
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KiddieToysReview said:
Ultimate formula for YT success? --> Yes
Is it luck? --> NO!

I have read the word "luck" here many times. I don't believe it's luck. YT is not Lotto, it is not random. Video selection and channel promotion is guided by a 1 million line of code algorithm that takes several hundred factors into account. It is not luck, it is C++ code.

I can only speak from our experience, and the (detailed) research I have done on several other successful channels and their breakout videos.

Formula for success = Being in suggested videos of other big channels. 61% of our traffic for the last 90 days is from suggested videos. Our most viewed video (hello kitty giant egg with 1.7 m views) has been in over 10 suggested slots from different channels, from 200k subs to over 1 million subs. That is where traffic comes from. Our other videos derive most of their traffic from suggested of smaller channels, 10k - 500k subs. There is a tiered progression in the algorithm. Once your video hits certain benchmarks, it gets suggested on higher sub channels.

Ultimate formula for success is to make videos targeting high search terms with low competition in trending topics, preferably something that other high sub channels have done already, but you bring a different flavor to the keywords.

During our first 3 months we hardly had any traffic. It was not because we were "unlucky", it was because I did not have an understanding of how the YT algorithm works, how video selection happens, and hence we were not making videos that were searched for. Over the last 3 months a friend and I have had detailed discussions and we've come to a good understanding of the algorithm and how certain aspects of it work. I have targeted videos as a result of that, and our traffic increased. It's not luck, its detailed research and analytics and analysis.

If you believe in luck on YT, then your chance of success is probably the same as Lotto.

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Click to expand...

very well said, I think the "luck" aspect comes from sources outside of youtube.

For example, one of my most popular videos for it's first week, has only a 4% suggested videos . 45% from an embedded player.
being featured on a website that gets a ton of submissions daily, is quite lucky. or posting a pokemon video at the same day a new pokemon game is announced.

another video that was mostly subscription views it's first week didn't do as well.

Suggested video views only start to roll in later on in a video's life, it does for me anyways.

last 90 days of views is 61% suggested, same as yours, (last upload was 4 months ago)
so I'd say the algorithm does most of the work for a channel long term, whereas trends and timing of your upload, as well as external promotion is more random/luck based.
 
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