I’ve studied and obsessed over YouTube strategy for over 50% of my life.

Here are 5 of my most important learnings in visuals.

1. Don’t lose track of what matters.
Analysis is often overthinking. This lesson is learned the hard way.

Analysis isn't pointless, but many creators fixate on the things that make tiny differences...

While neglecting the big picture.
YouTube and human interest is more than metrics and a spreadsheet.

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:
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

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.

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): 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?

“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🧵 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?

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: 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.

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: 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:

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: 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 shared our strategy with a tiny YouTube channel (5k subs).

Their first video went viral:

- 1m views.
- 230x their average view count.
- Next videos also banged.

So f**k it… here’s the strategy they used: Here’s the channel:

@ianlauerastro

He was a student in the last cohort of my YouTube accelerator program.

He deserves all the credit for his growth, but let me share what we did to help…

Another client passes the 1 million mark.

We have helped over 20 creators grow to 1m+ subscribers. This one only took a year.

Here are 20 growth lessons for YouTubers: 1. Give yourself a long time frame. You need 2+ years of posting consistently.

2. Internalize the idea that YouTube is a platform of ''click and watch'' platform, not just ''watch''.

3. Don't stress about strategy and metrics until you've posted 50 videos.

Our first video with this client got 1.8m views.

30x their average views at the time.

So f**k it… I'm going to break down the entire strategy behind it.

This will be the most useful thing you read about youtube this week: First of all, here’s the video.

It was the first video we consulted on with finance creator @ramit.

Ramit is one of the biggest finance authors in the world, but at the time his channel was averaging 30k-60k views.

So why did this video do so well?

We applied our strategy to this small YouTube channel.

6 months later:

- $500/month - $10k/month
- 200k views/month to 2m views/month
- 237k views average

So f**k it… Here’s the strategy they used: First of all, here's the actual channel.

They went through our accelerator, applied our strategy and ended up with basically 10x more views + revenue.

But what did we recommend that helped them grow so much?

Let's break this down into 4 main stages.

I grow the world’s biggest YouTube channels.

I have reviewed and given feedback on over 5,000 videos that have generated billions of views.

Here are 20 crucial notes I leave for my clients: 🧵 Let's start with notes on edits

1. Text is supposed to be read. What’s the point of flashing up something for a millisecond. Annoying.

2. Don’t put graphics/text in two different places at the same time.

3. Avoid generic b-roll from stock footage websites. Very 2019.

I have studied YouTube every day for over 10 years.

I have worked across billions of views and helped generate $10s of millions in ad revenue.

Here are my 12 steps to grow a youtube channel from scratch in 12 months: Establishment Phase (0 videos posted)

Step 1 - Find your niche using the triple venn diagram.

What is the intersect between what you're passionate about, what you're good at and what there is demand for (market) on youtube?

Let's focus on that niche.

Today I turn 28.

I have dedicated over 50% of my life to obsessing over YouTube strategy and audience growth.

100s of channels, millions of revenue, billions of views later…

Here are 28 lessons for YouTubers: 1. If starting from 0, give it 2 years of consistent posting and improvement.

2. Make 3 thumbnail options and 10 title options per video.

3. Don't agree to do brand deals in the first 3 minutes of your videos.

This YouTube video with a client got 18 million views.

So f**k it… I’m gonna break down the entire strategy behind it.

This will be the most useful thing you read about youtube this week: First of all, here's the actual video itself on the Red Bull official channel.

It's done more than 10x the channel's average views at this stage.

So what made it such an outlier for us?

If you want to grow your YouTube channel in 2024. Read this thread.

5 tips from someone who worked on billions of views last year: 1. Get really clear on audience this January

I like using a simple one pager like this.

Cluster = Similar channels
TAM = View ceiling
Personality = Kind of person your viewer is and isn't

Stupidly simple, but most channels don't give it this thought.

''I want do YouTube but I just hate making videos''

An 18-year-old follower recently sent me this message and I was left stunned.

I think there's a worrying culture emerging.

Here was my response:

If you just see youtube as a quick and easy way to make passive income: Don't do YouTube.

If you don't wake up and get excited about making videos: Don't do YouTube.

If you aren't willing to make videos for 2 years with no results: Don't do YouTube.

You don't have to do this. YouTube is not for everyone. Not everyone should have a YouTube channel.

Saying you want to do youtube but hate making videos is crazy.

It's like saying ''I want to be a soccer player but I hate kicking the ball''

Like bro... really examine why you want to do this... is it money and fame or is it real passion?

For me, if you want to do YouTube, you need to tick 3 main boxes:

- Passionate about making content
- Patient and willing to give it 2-3 years of uploading
- Willing to constantly improve and work on skills

Even if you don't become a full time YouTuber you will build the most important skills in the world right now and get hired.

So if you're one of those people, keep calm, carry on uploading and follow @PaddyG96.

If you're an 18 year old, the world's at your feet, don't try to do youtube just because some TikTok said it was an easy way to make $10k/month.

Share this message. ''What about big creators, they have a whole team to make their videos for them''

Not everyone loves editing or making thumbnails... delegation is part of a creator's progression.

You simply won't find a top creator on the platform who didn't start with a passion for content.

This is a video of mine that increased daily views by 9000%.

2 weeks ago, this was a completely dead video on my channel.

Then in the last few days, this happened. It was suddenly rekindled.

What do you think caused this?

It has gone from 200 views per day to 20k per day.

In a few hours, I'll reveal what drove these extra views.

In the meantime, I'll send all the video's ad revenue this week to someone who guesses correctly in the replies.

Even if it's $1,000 (it probably won't be but still!) Some great guesses flooding in.

Here’s another screenshot of the videos growth.

Will reveal the breakdown on why this happened in 1 hour.

Want to become a better creator? Study psychology.

9 biases and tendencies hurting your content.

(A visual thread): The YouTube channels I work with will do over 8 billion views this year.

My job is to help creators make better decisions with their content and data to grow their audience.

Basic psychology has helped me do this on another level.

Let’s go:

We studied 3.3 Billion views to decode the YouTube Shorts algorithm.

What makes a short viral?
How much money can they make?
Are they actually good for growth?

Here are our findings: This study was conducted across 33 YouTube channels in different niches with 5,400 shorts included.

Myself and my lead analyst Chris Gileta put a ton of work into this, and the results are interesting.

Let's start with a question: ''What length should my shorts be?''