How to Get 1 Million Views on a Single Video

ApexTV

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Hello everyone, I would like to share with you how I managed to get over 1.5 million views on my most popular video. It isn't as hard as a lot of people assume it to be.

Find a Trending Topic
The first step is to make a video on a topic that is trending. Also, make sure that the trending topic correlates with your channel's niche.

Promote Like Crazy
The next step is to promote the video you have made. Share your video on Facebook groups, related forums that allow video sharing, Google+ Communities, StumbleUpon, Digg, Pinterest, Twitter, and Reddit.
(Remember that most of your views will not be coming from thw promotion itself. The act of promotions is just to kickstart the video to be picked up by YouTube's search algorithmm)

Get Into Suggested Videos
This is the most crucial step. To get into the "suggested videos" of a popular video is a necessity in most cases in getting your video to a million views. To do this, find a couple viral videos that are similiar to yours and research what tags they used. Now put similiar tags onto your video. I'm not saying to copy every single one of their tags, but to rather use the most essential ones.

Now here is how this all works. You first promotw your video and it begins getting it's views that way. Our viral video got maybe a little over 1,000 total views by way of promotion. Once YouTube's algorithm detects that a fair amount of time is being spent watching the video, it may feature your video in related video's "suggested videos" category. This is where your tags come into play. There is quitw a bit of luck involved, so taking part in these instructions only increased your chances.

Also, your title does not have to be the same as other popular video's titles. We chose a completely unique title that didn't even mention the category of the video. We mentioned that by way of tags.

Best of luck to all of you!
 

newage

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Where do you find your trending topics from?
 

ApexTV

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Where do you find your trending topics from?
First off, we find other channels that make similiar videos as us. We subscribe to them so we can keep up to date and see what the latest trends are. Also, we visit websites that write articles about similiar topics and seeing what is the most popular.
 

PositivelyBrainwashed

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What is your suggestions for trending viral videos that weren't tagged properly? Would you just not use that video to model?
 

markkaz

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Or, you steadily grow an audience, provide content that has value for the viewer, and you can have over 100 million-view videos...
 
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ApexTV

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Or, you steadily grow an audience, provide content that has value for the viewer, and you can have over 100 million-view videos...
That's not what this tutorial was about. It wasn't entitled "how to build an audience " but rather "how to get 1 million views on a single video".[DOUBLEPOST=1467138300,1467138236][/DOUBLEPOST]
What is your suggestions for trending viral videos that weren't tagged properly? Would you just not use that video to model?
These viral videos usually have good titles, so you can incorporate those keywords into your tags.
 

PositivelyBrainwashed

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These viral videos usually have good titles, so you can incorporate those keywords into your tags.
Well I really appreciate the advice, and I think this thread is being overlooked. I realized one of my videos that's getting a lot of constant views is coming from one or two really big videos and I appear high in it's suggested list. I also happen to just accidentally have very similar tags, and somewhat similar title. My video's appeal is that the big video is a lecture that's over 1 hour long, and mine summarizes it in 5 minutes. So I guess some people jump to mine to save time.
 

xingcat

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Was that a specific goal for that video, or is it something you learned from trial and error?
What is the difference between your 1MM+ video and the others on your channel, and do you have strategies for how you'll refine the process?
 

ApexTV

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Well I really appreciate the advice, and I think this thread is being overlooked. I realized one of my videos that's getting a lot of constant views is coming from one or two really big videos and I appear high in it's suggested list. I also happen to just accidentally have very similar tags, and somewhat similar title. My video's appeal is that the big video is a lecture that's over 1 hour long, and mine summarizes it in 5 minutes. So I guess some people jump to mine to save time.
That's awesome! Sweet channel by the way![DOUBLEPOST=1467144905,1467144726][/DOUBLEPOST]
Was that a specific goal for that video, or is it something you learned from trial and error?
What is the difference between your 1MM+ video and the others on your channel, and do you have strategies for how you'll refine the process?
We learned this completely through trial and error. Now that we know how it works, we try to apply it to every video we upload and will further refine this process by seeing what works and what doesn't.
 

xingcat

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We learned this completely through trial and error. Now that we know how it works, we try to apply it to every video we upload and will further refine this process by seeing what works and what doesn't.
That's fantastic! Now that you have a plan, it'll be interesting to see how well the technique works and how to refine it. I hope you report back as you learn and grow!