Paddy Galloway Profile picture
Jun 19 19 tweets 6 min read Read on X
We gave our new strategy to a tiny channel (1.3k subs)

Their video went viral.

- 350k views in a tiny niche.
- 280x their average view count
- Then repeated it multiple times

So f**k it…. Here’s the strategy he used: Image
Image
First things first, here’s the creator and his break out video.

@ollie_kirk8

Before we gave him our accelerator strategy:

- 1.3k subs
- Struggled to get any traction
- Recent videos under 1k views Image
Enter our new approach to YouTube.

A few years ago I realised all the tips, advice, podcasts are f****ng useless.

Unless you understand these 3 simple concepts.

Let’s break them down step by step so you can apply it to your channel: Image
1. Audience-strategy mapping

Most creators blindly follow mainstream advice:

- Bright thumbnails with colors
- Fast Paced Editing
- MrBeast style delivery

But if that doesn’t match your audience, it won’t work.

It’s a huge reason many stay stuck, including Ollie.
You need to map (match) your strategy to your audience.

We need to ask:

- Who is our audience?
- What do they value in a video?
- What do they like/dislike?

I like using this template to get a good idea of this. Image
This was covered in week 1 of the accelerator.

In his own words Ollie was “doing everything right on paper”

But he had an audience strategy mismatch.

65 year old cruise ship watchers don’t care about flashy edits or click on overly bright thumbnails. Image
It sounds so simple… but so many creators get this wrong.

They serve the wrong execution to their audience.

Ollie studied Golf, Gardening, cleaning channels.

But the next part was crucial to this all working…
2. YouTube pendulum position

Ok so we understand the audience match for our channel ✅

Next we need to find our position on the YouTube pendulum.

Why? So we can figure out where to get maximum leverage for our time. Image
A huge mistake I see is people not realising what phase they are in.

You could be in phase 1, but think you’re in phase 2.

Result: You’re trying so hard to Ideate and make thumbnails when your videos aren’t even watchable!

See how important knowing your position is?
The reality is you can’t fix everything at once.

Strategy = fixing and working on the most important thing right now for results.

Ollie realised he was in phase 2.

He had passed out of phase 1 (for his audience).

This sounds simple but is SO key. Image
So many “experts” would tell Ollie…

- You camera is low quality
- Look at shadow behind you
- You’re too low down
- Background boring
- You’ll never succeed like this

Can this shot be better? Of course! But it’s not what he needed to focus on. Image
3. Execute on leverage

Ok so we:

- Have audience match ✅
- Pendulum position ✅

Now we can easily identify where we can get the highest leverage on our time…

What are the levers that are going to lead to the biggest jump in performance?
Ideation was the first lever: we taught Ollie to look for:

Adjacent niches - study channels w/ similar audiences to yours.

Outliers - Look for videos with more than 3x a channels average.

CCN fit - Look for videos that can hit the core, casual & new viewers for your niche.
Just look at the difference between what he was doing right before finishing the cohort.

And compare to the after.

He put time into ideas. Since this idea he’s managed to double down and repeat it again with 150k views. Image
Thumbnails were the next lever.

Ollie has been putting a ton of focus into improving thumbnails.

He makes them:

- Clear, simple, less than 5 words
- Bright but not overly so
- Clearly shows cruise ship(s)
- Text creates a curiosity loop.
- Tiny details to add drama Image
He actually just changed a thumbnail on an under-performer…

And this is happening to it.

Why? He’s focusing on the highest leverage area of improvement for him: ideas and thumbnails Image
This shows what’s possible, even for small channels.

It’s obvious in hindsight, but shoutout to Ollie for being able to execute so well.

He deserves all the credit.

He’s literally just getting started. I bet he’ll be at 100k this time next year.
If you want this kind of help…

We’re running our next accelerator cohort in July.

- 8 weeks
- World Class YouTube strategy
- Direct support and feedback

Apply here before official launch tomorrow: accelerator.paddygalloway.com
And f**k it

One person who likes and retweets the top tweet gets a free scholarship.

Last time @itssarahamira won from a simple retweet!

Let’s see who’s lucky this time ❤️

• • •

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More from @PaddyG96

May 10
Today I turn 29.

For over 50% of my life, I’ve been obsessing over YouTube strategy.

Billions of views, 10s of millions in revenue, 100s of channels later…

Here are 29 lessons for YouTubers:
1. If starting from 0, have a two year horizon of consistent posting and improvement.

2. The vast majority of your growth (90%+) will come from one idea, be an ideation machine.

3. Great channels are built on turning that one outlier idea into a repeatable format.
4. Don’t ever join a MCN. Or a company that tries to tell you they aren’t an MCN. They are.

5. It’s better to over milk an idea than under milk, don’t worry about being “repetitive” with a banger format.

6. Don’t do the MrBeast model of running on 1% margin, you’re not him.
Read 12 tweets
Apr 17
This tiny channel (930 subs) made this viral video:

- 7.1 million views
- 2,000x their average view count
- 11,500 new subscribers

But then…

Their next video only got 3.5k views. Another struggled to break 1k.

Here’s the crazy story (and how we turned it around): Image
This is one of the most fascinating case studies you’re ever going to see with a YouTube channel…

The creator: Liam Stevens

In 2022 he was a small snowboarding creator, slowly growing.

Then he uploaded the most viral video his niche had ever seen. How? Image
The answer is simple. Liam made a video that was destined to go viral…

- Unique and novel idea
- Amazing packaging
- High effort video
- Delivered, high satisfaction

Liam told me he worked for hours on this thumbnail to get it just right… Image
Read 16 tweets
Apr 4
“YouTube is too saturated”

This video was uploaded to a channel with 0 subscribers.

It just passed 750k views…

New channels are blowing up right now🧵 Image
Here’s the video, uploaded by a close friend of mine.

Some facts

- First video on the channel
- 100% organic views
- 0 paid ads
- 0 promotion from other channels

How insane is that? Image
Luck? Survivorship bias? No.

It’s an unfair skill advantage. This creator has repeated this multiple times.

Once you truly master the skill of making viral videos… it’s so transferable to new channels.
Read 11 tweets
Mar 26
The world’s biggest creators hire us to grow their YouTube channels.

We charge big $ to work directly with them and we get insane results.

The truth? We have a secret method.

And f**k it, it’s time I shared it: Image
Our secret method isn’t:

- Better ideation
- Improving retention
- Getting better CTR
- Making beautiful thumbnails
- Improving editing

All of these matter… (well except for the CTR one lol)

but they aren’t the biggest factors between success and failure.
You see the reason we are able to post up the numbers we do with clients

- 100% success rate for clients
- 400%+ avg increase in views
- 10 billion client views a year

Is that I figured out how to consistently pick channels that will blow up with our strategies. Image
Read 16 tweets
Jan 27
We gave our YouTube ideation strategy to a smaller creator.

They made a video that got 7.9 million views. In a week.

Here’s how we consistently blow up YouTube channels: Image
I’ve been doing YouTube for almost 20 years.

People say it’s “too late” all the time.

I argue that with the right strategy, more channels are blowing up than ever before (I’d love to collect more data on this).

Just look at these numbers from channels we’ve worked with: Image
The reality is the channel in the first tweet, and practically every channel we’ve ever helped blow up, understand three things.

1. 80% strategy rule.

2. The optimization pendulum.

3. Our ideation framework.

In this thread let’s walk through each:
Read 19 tweets
Jan 9
It’s insane what can happen when we apply our strategy to a struggling channel.

And I have some good news to announce…

🎉 We are now opening up applications to my next 8-week YouTube accelerator cohort!

Here’s why it works so well: Image
First of all, what is the YouTube accelerator?

- 8 week group coaching program
- 3 hours of live teaching/week
- All teaching lead by me
- 50-100 monetized creators
- Assignments & feedback
- Exclusive Community

You can read more on the site (linked below) but basically…
We take creators who pass our application process (only about 5-10% do, we’re like Harvard) and give them:

- All the info they need to grow
- Our systems for viral videos
- Personalised feedback
- Accountability + encouragement
Read 15 tweets

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