It's 1:59am. I need to go to sleep. But in my stupor, I want to be valuable. So, here's what I think of successful patterns for 1M+ view YouTube videos.
The tl;dr for why you should believe me is that I've worked on more than I can count. Could just be bad at counting, of course.
How To Actually Make 1,000,000 View YouTube Videos.
Longform.
1. Create a bunch of blue ocean ideas that still sit within high supply-demand asymmetry pockets. That is, taking the first principles from outliers, then turning them into something completely novel.
A bunch won't work. But there's "throwing things and seeing what sticks", versus taking data-backed educational guesses, which are the equivalent of dipping your tennis ball in super glue and then maybe it'll stick to the wall.
2. Simple titles that convey a precise reason for watching. Don't overcomplicate things. It's the viewer psychology that's the most important thing here to be considerate of here. Titles are, like everything here, viewer-dependent. But, it's okay to be very specific. Specificity can still have broad appeal, if it is still understandable to most.
3. Thumbnails that ideally put a specific "spark" feeling into people's brains. This is extraordinarily hard to characterize succinctly. You know it when you see it. It's this peculiar combination of familiarity + unfamiliarity.
The reason for this is because familiarity has an implicit reward, but unfamiliarity leads to uncertain reward -> people can't help but explore in case the thing is *really* rewarding.
Some call this a "curiosity gap", but I feel like this term isn't great, because it masks the underlying mechanism of curiosity in the first place.
Understand concepts like: color blocking, composition, depth of field, lighting (and the basics of how light bounces off things), etc.
4. The right time. Not like, hours of the day. There are some concepts that need time for viewers as a whole to be interested in them.
An obvious example is that videos about journalling and changing your life will perform well at the end of the year/beginning of the new year.
A not obvious example is that spectacle had a certain time for its existence (which continues), more sincere content has its time right now, and maybe at some point in time we'll move towards heavy artistry/symbolism/abstraction etc. If you think about the evolution of music for example, it's followed this pattern of handel -> bach -> mozart -> beethoven -> chopin -> ravel/debussy/rachmaninoff -> more modern music. It's just the nature of humans, that we appreciate more and more complexity, or just different ways of feeling stuff.
5. Storytelling +++++++++++ (scriptwriting, recording, audio, presentation skills, etc.)
No matter what niche and video, storytelling is merely the act of 1. promising great things, and 2. delivering and ideally exceeding those promises, for 3. things that people genuinely care about.
There are a LOT of ways to make that happen. I've written a huge amount, accessible in my pinned tweet.
Great retention is a subset of a very well-made video. You can get great retention sometimes even if you merely focus on making a great video. Ironically, you can't get great retention if you purely focus on retention hacks. A nice meal starts with great ingredients, not great sauces.
If you had to choose between retention and satisfaction, go for satisfaction. To be honest, retention is a subset of satisfaction, so it's a false dichotomy anyway.
Also: presenting skills is the most important thing that you'll never get feedback on. For some reason, YouTubers don't concentrate on giving other people feedback delivery, maybe because you're criticising someone's voice, or because it requires a certain level of acting/vocal skill to be identify issues in the first place. Focus on: tone, pacing, articulation, words used, and finally higher level stuff like frequency of humor or how you deliver insights.
6. Compounding with consistency.
Big hits for small channels are possible. I've worked on many of these.
But, in reality, sometimes you've just got to work on your craft for years to get better and better at making videos.
It's because making videos that people want to watch, involves understanding viewer intents better than the viewer themselves. Steve Jobs sort of also thought his products in this way: people don't know what they want, until they actually see it.
7. Character (optional but recommended) and ideally Save-The-Cat scenarios (hero content).
Viewers are busy. They often don't have time or bandwidth to hold complex ideas about who you are in their mind. Thinking about your concept is valuable.
Who are you, in other people's minds?
No doubt, you are a complex human. But archetypes are helpful shortcuts.
Conclusion
741 words. It's 2:15am. That took 16 minutes to write by hand, though probably will take a few months for most people to implement if they haven't considered it before.
I may go more into depth on all of this, some day. Who knows. I should probably actually focus on my own YouTube channels.
In any case: good luck, especially to the studious. Anyone can make one million view videos. Absolutely anyone. But, it is a skill-based and reality-based game. YouTube is extremely meritocratic and fair like that.
I wonder if I'll wake up and read this tomorrow with regrets. It feels like sending a drunk text.
