How do some Youtubers get so many views/subscribers in a short amount of time?

[Splinter]

You´re missing the fact that nobody is actually saying that Marketing isn´t powerful. I´m simply saying Content is King. People HAVE TO like what they´re watching. If you look like a fool and there´s nothing original or interesting about your videos, you can promote them all you want, you´re still not gonna build a fan base.

Btw: A lot of popular Youtubers don´t really have any sort of marketing plan. They make videos, some people watched them, shared them because they were good and they became popular.

But popularity on Youtube goes way beyond Marketing or Quality. Popularity is the result of so many factors that i can´t even list them all. Timing, for example, can be even more powerful than Marketing. A lot of Youtubers are popular because they started making their videos at the best possible time. They took advantage of the fact that the competition was low and there was plenty of room for certain type of videos.

Imagine that you started a gaming channel in 2014 and you didn´t have success. You´re not bad, but nobody watches you. If you were to start that same exact gaming channel, with that same exact characteristics in 2008, probably you would have had success. That´s timing. A gaming channel in 2014 is bad timing. In 2008 it was great timing.

 

[SomeGuyDude]

Wow that got ugly quick.

Anyone claiming marketing isn't critical hasn't dug too deep into things, or doesn't really have a grasp on any medium. Remember "marketing" means more than just advertisements, it also means how you sell your content VIA the content itself. It means GEARING your content toward what people will want to see. You market your videos IN THE VIDEOS to a very real extent. "Marketing" and "content" are not mutually exclusive concepts.

Think of it like pop radio. Those songs aren't genuine expressions of the singer's soul, they're carefully crafted tunes that follow certain criteria that tested well with focus groups, sung by someone whose visual style is designed based on what's trending. The content markets the person. You can enjoy it, you can say it's "good content", but the fact remains is that the content is, to a real extent, the marketing tool.

The best content creators are people who pay close attention to what people WANT to see. They're not auteurs doing content that only they care about. Lets Players play games that get requested a lot, Vsauce answers questions people fire at him, they structure the videos to be more appealing and thus attract more people. This isn't a BAD THING, mind you, but the fact is that "marketing" and "content" crossover quite a good bit.

Stachu is also correct that unless your content can FIND people (and vice versa) then it doesn't matter how good your videos are. If you were to take two channels, one with bad content but amazing promotion and one with amazing content but zero promotion, the former is going to be more successful. That's just reality. There could be someone on YouTube with the most incredible channel in the world, but if they have no idea how to promote it and spread the word then they're going to languish with few subs. On the flipside, I have seen utter tripe out there with tens of thousands of subscribers. Genuinely bad channels.

None of this is me being bitter, mind. I'm languishing in low sub counts and that's largely my own fault, but I'm learning as I go. I can definitely identify these factors, but making it happen is a much different story.[DOUBLEPOST=1423178681,1423178373][/DOUBLEPOST]

People HAVE TO like what they´re watching. If you look like a fool and there´s nothing original or interesting about your videos, you can promote them all you want, you´re still not gonna build a fan base.

This is true at the HIGH levels. You'll never get a 5mil subscriber channel unless it has amazing content, but it is absolutely doable to have a junk channel with 20,000 subs. I've seen it. Many times. With as many people as there are out in the world, you can have a channel with nothing new to offer but push it hard enough and well enough and you can definitely amass a fanbase. And that's going to get you a much bigger base than someone who focuses solely on content and puts no effort into spreading their name around.

 

[VictoriaFlamel]

I disagree that content is not king. Good marketing is useless if the content is not good. The problem is that people find it difficult to objectively judge the quality of people's content, including their own.

I had a quick look at JackTheBridge's channel and here are a few comments:


-His thumbnails are excellent, particularly the text and fonts.
-Good lighting in his videos.
-He seems to be using a DSLR and that depth of field along with the good lighting = good quality video.
-The guy has charisma, confidence, humour, higher than average looks and is clearly very comfortable in front of a camera.
-I'm not at all his target audience but he seems to understand what his target audience is and what they want.
-He understands social media, particularly Twitter.

The 2 negatives about his channel I could find were: the audio wasn't great / he talks too quickly and he didn't upload very often in the beginning but he seems to be uploading more regulary now.

Conclusion: Not a big surprise he is doing well.

Hey!

I am usually a big fan of your posts. But I think you need to take a closer look at his channel. He has 12.4 k subs. Of all these subs (most of which he has gotten during the last MONTH!) only 1.6 k has seen his newest video which has been up for around 5 days now. That is almost as low as 10 % view rate. Which is especially bad considering he has gotten all the subs so recently.

So it is clear that something fishy is going on.

The reason I am writing this is because I see so many Youtubers getting discouraged when they see how fast some Youtubers have gotten subs. Which gives them unreasonable expectations. The truth is that a lot of the current newer growing Youtubers clearly cheat, by which I mean buy subs (and sometimes views). To make them look more popular than they actually are.

I hope I don't come off as someone who has been bitten by the jealousy bug. It's just such a shame that people get discouraged in this Youtube ''race'' due to cheats out there (And there are extremely many). As someone who spends a lot of time in the Youtube comment section I probably know more about upcoming Youtubers than most, and the sad truth is that a lot of the ''successful'' ones simply cheat.

 

[Splinter]

Wow that got ugly quick.

Anyone claiming marketing isn't critical hasn't dug too deep into things, or doesn't really have a grasp on any medium. Remember "marketing" means more than just advertisements, it also means how you sell your content VIA the content itself. It means GEARING your content toward what people will want to see. You market your videos IN THE VIDEOS to a very real extent. "Marketing" and "content" are not mutually exclusive concepts.

Think of it like pop radio. Those songs aren't genuine expressions of the singer's soul, they're carefully crafted tunes that follow certain criteria that tested well with focus groups, sung by someone whose visual style is designed based on what's trending. The content markets the person. You can enjoy it, you can say it's "good content", but the fact remains is that the content is, to a real extent, the marketing tool.

The best content creators are people who pay close attention to what people WANT to see. They're not auteurs doing content that only they care about. Lets Players play games that get requested a lot, Vsauce answers questions people fire at him, they structure the videos to be more appealing and thus attract more people. This isn't a BAD THING, mind you, but the fact is that "marketing" and "content" crossover quite a good bit.

Stachu is also correct that unless your content can FIND people (and vice versa) then it doesn't matter how good your videos are. If you were to take two channels, one with bad content but amazing promotion and one with amazing content but zero promotion, the former is going to be more successful. That's just reality. There could be someone on YouTube with the most incredible channel in the world, but if they have no idea how to promote it and spread the word then they're going to languish with few subs. On the flipside, I have seen utter tripe out there with tens of thousands of subscribers. Genuinely bad channels.

None of this is me being bitter, mind. I'm languishing in low sub counts and that's largely my own fault, but I'm learning as I go. I can definitely identify these factors, but making it happen is a much different story.[DOUBLEPOST=1423178681,1423178373][/DOUBLEPOST]

This is true at the HIGH levels. You'll never get a 5mil subscriber channel unless it has amazing content, but it is absolutely doable to have a junk channel with 20,000 subs. I've seen it. Many times. With as many people as there are out in the world, you can have a channel with nothing new to offer but push it hard enough and well enough and you can definitely amass a fanbase. And that's going to get you a much bigger base than someone who focuses solely on content and puts no effort into spreading their name around.

So, are you suggesting people will subscribe you even if they don´t think the content is interesting to them?[DOUBLEPOST=1423180036][/DOUBLEPOST]

Hey!

I am usually a big fan of your posts. But I think you need to take a closer look at his channel. He has 12.4 k subs. Of all these subs (most of which he has gotten during the last MONTH!) only 1.6 k has seen his newest video which has been up for around 5 days now. That is almost as low as 10 % view rate. Which is especially bad considering he has gotten all the subs so recently.

So it is clear that something fishy is going on.

The reason I am writing this is because I see so many Youtubers getting discouraged when they see how fast some Youtubers have gotten subs. Which gives them unreasonable expectations. The truth is that a lot of the current newer growing Youtubers clearly cheat, by which I mean buy subs (and sometimes views). To make them look more popular than they actually are.

I hope I don't come off as someone who has been bitten by the jealousy bug. It's just such a shame that people get discouraged in this Youtube ''race'' due to cheats out there (And there are extremely many). As someone who spends a lot of time in the Youtube comment section I probably know more about upcoming Youtubers than most, and the sad truth is that a lot of the ''successful'' ones simply cheat.

If they cheat, they´re not successful. They´re just projecting that image. There is no cheat in the world that can build you a real fan base. People either like your videos or not. You can´t manipulate that. You can only manipulate the way you´re perceived.

 

[SomeGuyDude]

So, are you suggesting people will subscribe you even if they don´t think the content is interesting to them?

I'm not and you know I'm not.

What I am saying is that with so any people out there that almost ANY channel has a potential audience of several thousand people (your channel would have to be positively atrocious for ten thousand out of a few billion wouldn't like it) and the path there is by marketing. Proper marketing can find an audience for ANYTHING.

There's the old phrase: "he could sell an icebox to an Eskimo." A good enough self promoter can convince tons of people to buy his wares even if they wouldn't want it otherwise.

I would argue that the early days of any channel are pure marketing. Once you get into the high numbers it turns into a fight for good content because at that level you have YouTube doing work for you and you've spread the word around that the channel can grow organically.

Remember also that if someone searches for whatever and the videos they find are mediocre but they're what shows up first, that's what people will watch. Almost no one goes to the second page of search results. That's been proven. So if someone has amazing SEO and taggin skills and gets their videos on the top, they'll get the views and since that person was looking for videos of that kind, they'll stick around even though there were BETTER ones done by someone further down.

Just basic stuff here.

 

[Stachu]

He has 12.4 k subs. Of all these subs (most of which he has gotten during the last MONTH!) only 1.6 k has seen his newest video which has been up for around 5 days now. That is almost as low as 10 % view rate. Which is especially bad considering he has gotten all the subs so recently.

So it is clear that something fishy is going on.

I totally agree on that.

What I've found interesting is that they both have a lot of followers on Twitter (around 35 000). Maybe they are just popular for some reason?

 

[SomeGuyDude]

I totally agree on that.

What I've found interesting is that they both have a lot of followers on Twitter (around 35 000). Maybe they are just popular for some reason?

Twitter is super easy to cheat. Look at their follower count then look at how man retweets and favorites they get. You'll find some people with like 20,000 followers and their tweets get no activity.

Usually it's either bots they purchased or sub4sub situations. You'll see people like that where they follow over 10,000 people. It's obvious what they're doing.

 

[Stachu]

Look at their follower count then look at how man retweets and favorites they get.

That's true. I've noticed that when they tweet their videos to all 35 000 followers, the number of views on this video is way much smaller then 35k.

I wish these guys know some magic trick but I guess most of the followers and subs are fake.

 

[Splinter]

I'm not and you know I'm not.

What I am saying is that with so any people out there that almost ANY channel has a potential audience of several thousand people (your channel would have to be positively atrocious for ten thousand out of a few billion wouldn't like it) and the path there is by marketing. Proper marketing can find an audience for ANYTHING.

There's the old phrase: "he could sell an icebox to an Eskimo." A good enough self promoter can convince tons of people to buy his wares even if they wouldn't want it otherwise.

I would argue that the early days of any channel are pure marketing. Once you get into the high numbers it turns into a fight for good content because at that level you have YouTube doing work for you and you've spread the word around that the channel can grow organically.

Remember also that if someone searches for whatever and the videos they find are mediocre but they're what shows up first, that's what people will watch. Almost no one goes to the second page of search results. That's been proven. So if someone has amazing SEO and taggin skills and gets their videos on the top, they'll get the views and since that person was looking for videos of that kind, they'll stick around even though there were BETTER ones done by someone further down.

Just basic stuff here.

There are absolutely many channels that could never get 10 000 people out of 2 billion(YT doesn´t have 2 billion users) to follow them. Why? Because by now most of those people have already subscribed channels of all topics they´re interested in, and most people have no interest in following 100 channels about the same topic. Right now, i´m following around 5 channels about movies. I´m not subscribing any more channels about that topic, simply because i don´t need to. I will ony subscribe "your" movie channel if you offer me something really special.

And this is one of the problems. By now, most people have already seen everything. You gotta give them something special in order to get their attention. And who´s creating something special? Show me a newbie creating something really special and worth following. There are almost none. Most are just redoing stuff.

 

[SomeGuyDude]

There are absolutely many channels that could never get 10 000 people out of 2 billion(YT doesn´t have 2 billion users) to follow them. Why? Because by now most of those people have already subscribed channels of all topics they´re interested in, and most people have no interest in following 100 channels about the same topic. Right now, i´m following around 5 channels about movies. I´m not subscribing any more channels about that topic, simply because i don´t need to. I will ony subscribe "your" movie channel if you offer me something really special.

And this is one of the problems. By now, most people have already seen everything. You gotta give them something special in order to get their attention. And who´s creating something special? Show me a newbie creating something really special and worth following. There are almost none. Most are just redoing stuff.

You're missing a lot of very real facts about YouTube. For one, how did you find those five channels? Did you look at videos from a thousand movie channels and select the five best? No, chances are you searched for something you were interested in and those were what you found first. Honest question, how many "newbie" channels do you check out? You said you'll only subscribe if they offer something special, but how often do you look? How much time do you spend combing through new channels?

For another, YOU might be someone who sticks with channels and never changes, but this is not the greater trend. Someone once made a chart of Markiplier's subscribers and on a day when he missed uploading, meaning literally ONE DAY he didn't upload a video, he lost TEN THOUSAND subscribers. Did ten thousand people leave his channel? No, but YT subscribers tend to be fluid, and on that day he didn't have his usually x+y subscriber gain to offset the -x subscriber loss.

Look up Game Theory's video on how PewDiePie conquered YouTube. They aren't insulting the guy or saying his videos aren't great, but it's undeniable how much of his meteoric rise was thanks to YouTube's internal mechanisms. The guy gains like a million subscribers a month, and that isn't purely because his content is so superlative, a lot of it has to do with the fact that he's promoted on EVERY Lets Play channel and his videos show up in the featured box CONSTANTLY.

But here's the thing. I am in no way, shape, or form denying the importance of making good videos. Hell I do not promote myself at all, but I put a lot of time and money into my videos. I save up to get the best microphone I can, a good camera, I'm working on learning Adobe's Creative Cloud, I'm constantly critiquing myself and trying to improve. Am I perfect? Not by a damn sight. But I'll get better, and maybe some day I'll learn how to promote, too.

And in fact, I'll back up a bit and say it like this: you gain subscribers via promotion, but you keep them via content. For most of us here, I'd say the majority of you guys make awesome videos, but the struggle is in getting your names out there, and FINDING that audience. And this is DOUBLY true when you're starting out, because YouTube rewards popular channels with further promotion and advertisement, but small channels get nothing. It's easy to get subscribers when you have subscribers, and easy to get views when you have views, but GETTING them is the really hard part for a lot of people.

Anyway, back from the gym, got some editing to do. Trying new stuff, probably won't work, but we'll see. Kinda done with this thread, I don't like making stuff a big ol' argument. Let's all just make the best videos we can, but begrudgingly accept that unless we can market ourselves no one will see them, yeah?

EDIT: I'll say this, too. Yeah maybe 2008 was a better time to start a gaming channel because it was less common then, but 2008 was a better time to make ANY YT channel. It was a smaller market. However, it's never a bad time to start. There are new games every day, new movies, new music, new styles, new trends, new things to talk about and new sketches to write. It's harder now to get noticed, but it's never a bad time to make content.