[Music] 54% of adults said that they would quit their job to become a Creator. So, if we were starting a YouTube channel today, how would we do it? We've been building YouTube channels together for over 13 years, and we've interviewed hundreds of top creators. At the end of the day, if they don't click, they don't watch. Actually, I don't think I've ever told the story. We had an actual playbook for how to launch a YouTube channel. We're going to get really into the weeds in this episode. Everything from filming style, which data you should track, short-form video versus long-form video. Everything we know about YouTube put into a seven-step framework you can follow. So, 13 years ago when we first started on our YouTube journey, we filmed everything with a MacBook. Like, literally the webcam from our MacBook. And we edited the videos and uploaded them all using one device. It is the ultimate Creator tool. So, we decided we want to give one of you a brand new MacBook Air. This is a 13-inch MacBook Air with the

Apple M3 chip. It has 16 gigs of memory and 512 gigs of storage. Call. I feel like I should bid like it's the price. Come on down. All you have to do to win it is click the link in our description and subscribe to our newsletter. The Publish Press. In our newsletter, you'll get creator news faster than you would hear it on our YouTube channel, and you'll get it delivered to your inbox three times per week. We're going to be announcing the winner of this giveaway a week from now in the newsletter. And if you're watching after the giveaway is already over, we do these giveaways from time to time, so make sure you're subscribed. We are also going to be giving away a first-of-it-kind Press Publish hat. We've never done this colorway before. That's going to be included in the giveaway. That's literally the only one we have, the only one. All right, and you could win it. Let's get into [Music]. It. I will say Samir in our over 13 years.

of experience. There are so many years that we did not study YouTube, and had we studied YouTube, had we watched a video like this, we would have been so much further along than we are now. I think, literally, we would have cut our time in half. This is a moment where I absolutely don't want to make videos anymore. Absolutely don't want to make, absolutely don't want to make, videos anymore, anymore, yeah, truly. Sorry, I was like living in the past. There were some hard times. 13 years is a long time, and it took us a while to get everything off the ground. I also think the landscape of YouTube is very different today. There's this interesting stat from Neelen that 10% of watch time on connected TVs is occupied by YouTube, and compare that to Netflix, which is 8.4% of watch time on connected TVs. So basically, YouTube is leading in watch time hours on TVs. YouTube is not cat videos, which is what it kind of started as. It is not Vlogs, which is an

era it went into it is becoming the thing that uh generations of people are watching on TV. Choosing to watch with other people. It is like prime time. So when you're thinking about starting a channel. It's actually a pretty serious thing to do and and you do need to take it seriously. Step one of our framework for starting a new YouTube channel. Implement the Super Mario effect. Now what is the Super Mario effect. This is something we learned when we sat down for the first time with Mark Rober. The Super Mario effect is basically like no one ever plays Super Mario Brothers or some video game for the first time. Falls into a pit and just like oh my gosh. I fell into a pit. I failed. How embarrassing. I never want to play this game again. You're like no okay. Crap there's a pit right there okay next time. I'm going to come a little bit faster. I'm going jump a little earlier. You immediately learn from the failure and you're like stoked to try again and so that's very much my philosophy if you

can gamify your challenges and think of them like a video game. You can learn so much more, you can have more success, and have fun while doing it. So what Mark is saying there is that you want to be going throughout your YouTube Journey similar to a video game, which means that if you fail, you don't actually die, you get to start again. How do I interpret that? Get a job. That is literally the first thing I would is like, get a job or make sure that my finances are taken care of. Yeah, truly, like if I was to start from scratch, I would go, All right, let me get my finances taken care of so that I can experiment on YouTube without the pressure of making it the job. Yeah, and experimentation or not, I think anyone who comes to me and asks me about starting a YouTube channel, I think the three things that I ask them about is number one, how much time do you have, which means like how much Financial Runway do you have? Can you commit the next three years to this and be okay that it takes three

years or five years for it to take off two your relationship with failure and your ability to learn from it because it's going to happen a lot and three your relationship with making videos because all of that goes into becoming a Creator it's going to take a very long time for it to get off the ground you're going to fail a lot you're going to have ups and downs and you're going to just have to keep making videos like you're just and so if you don't like making videos that's already a problem but this concept of like gamifying it and looking at it as like playing a video game where you can die and you have more lives actually think is a really cool way to think about it like how do you ensure that if you die you just restart the game okay step two of our framework identify what you're optimizing for so make sure you understand going into your new YouTube channel what what does success mean are you looking for money are you looking for more time are you looking for

experiences. For me, if I was to start from scratch, I would want my new YouTube channel to align with one of my life goals right now, which is like to get outside more often to have new experiences. That would be one of the first things I would look at. I think for me, this can get a little intangible for people I think listening to this, and one of the most important things to do is to make it extremely tangible. So, what that looks like for me is writing out start to finish what a dream day in your life looks like, then doing that for a week and a year, and saying what does this look like if it works, like what does success mean tangibly in terms of what am I doing with my time, what are some of the doors that this is unlocked, is there a certain amount of money that I need, I want this to unlock. I think one of the mistakes that people make when starting a YouTube channel is YouTube channels and the internet are this ever-expanding space where anything is

possible. And if you don't put frameworks around what you want out of it, it's one of the fastest paths to burnout, confusion, and a really weird relationship with making YouTube videos. Yeah, you've said this before, but like success is just the opportunity to do more of what you're already doing. So if your YouTube channel does become successful, make sure that you like what it is, what it's about, what the journey is, because you will be spending a lot of time in that community and in that work. All right, number three. This one starts to get way more into the weeds, and it's actually from a conversation that we had with Matt Pat and Stephany. We have like the most uptight process for launching a new YouTube channel that I've ever heard of. We research every vertical that we go into. We watch everything in that vertical. We understand how the hosts talk, talk to the audiences. We understand the colors they use, how long their episodes are, how often they post, what their opening lines are, whether they have a theme song or not, what their

titles include do their titles include punctuation. Do their thumbnails involve a white stroke on the outside of everyone's head? Whatever it is, we know everything about the vertical before we even decide to go into it, and then from there we decide, Okay, can we play in this space where um, where aren't people saying the things that we would like to say? Are there enough collaborators in this space that we think we could be part of a community in this ecosystem? And then from there, it's like, Okay, what would we actually say? And we come up with literally a year's worth of content titles and log lines. If you don't have, if you don't have, and I mean maybe more than that, it was like 100 titles and log lines. And if you don't have 100 titles and log lines, you don't have enough content to like think about launching this channel. Thumbnails to those or like a couple thumbnail mocks or like, How do you do totally like you do, okay, you, you, I mean you have to think about the audience that you want.

and what they're already watching. So step three is what you would do really going into any business. It's essentially you're performing a market analysis, um, or a niche analysis, whatever you are, whatever community you are entering into on YouTube. I think one of the most important things is that as you go into making a YouTube channel, your product, first product, is attention. Attention is the currency in which the audience will pay you, and that is something that is not created in a vacuum. Something that Stephanie said there is the audience that you want and what are they already watching. The reason for that is because of how YouTube works in terms of discovery. There's a few ways audiences discover videos, but the most common ways are browse and suggested. Browse means when someone goes on to YouTube, they log on to youtube.com, they open their mobile app, they open their TV app, and there's seven or nine videos that are sitting there. That's browse. They're browsing YouTube and they find a video that they want. Suggested is the second way suggested means they just watched one of

our videos. And now on the right side, there's a ton of other videos that are similar. So when you think about how to start a YouTube channel, this piece is by far the most important: studying your community. You will not gain an audience in a vacuum; you will gain an audience within a pre-existing community. So understanding the visual language of that community, understanding the timestamps, understanding the uh tone of that community, everything, all of it. Most likely your first videos will be viewed through suggested content. Yes. So, number three, perform a niche analysis. It doesn't mean you should copy what's there. It's actually the inverse, which is number four: choose your value prop. It's about studying your niche to understand how you can be slightly different, how you can stand out, and the value that you provide to that community is singular, is a little bit different. So the way that I would approach this and what I wrote out was I think you should essentially create the equivalent of like a Pinterest board, right? So take to Google Slides. I love making Pinterest boards, yeah, but, but it's really. It's a really

important thing like I what do you make Pinterest boards about just a quick fashion tattoos I may get vintage cars I want to own okay so another part of working with you for 13 years is you have not stopped talking about getting a tattoo and you do not have one yeah but I do have a Pinterest board so it's the first step okay fine whatever the the concept that I'm saying here is like the tangible action that I would suggest you take is you make a Google slide deck or you know whatever keynote slide deck and you go thumbnails and you scream shot a ton of thumbnails and you put those on a page then I think you go into comments and you read comments from the community you screenshot a ton of comments positive comments negative comments what do people like about the videos what do they not like about the videos most commented on comments like which comments are at the top that are developing the most conversation that's super important I would then go and look at first 30 second scripts so meaning

look at in your niche. Whether so let's let's call it cooking. How do people open videos in the cooking niche? What is the common way and maybe different ways that people are opening the first 7 seconds? And then the first 30 seconds. What do those feel like? And I wouldn't be afraid to start this process extremely niche. I'll give you an example. I put myself through this process of starting a new YouTube channel. And you know with number two, right? Like understand your goals. What success means. For me, it was getting outside and doing activities. And I thought, okay, in my actual life, I would love to take more weekend car trips from LA and do activities. I started right there. I was like, that's what I want more in my life. Like going to interesting beaches, interesting homes, Airbnbs, and doing activities. I thought, could I make a channel all about day trips or weekend trips from LA? And I started searching. I found out that's extremely niche, yeah. And there is not that much.

viewership. Um, there's actually not even that much of a community, so I started watching those videos, and it led me to Ryan Tran's Airbnb videos, yeah, which have like 20 million views, right? Of him experiencing an interesting or unique Airbnb. And then I thought, what if I made a channel just for Airbnbs that will give you an outdoor experience? Like interesting Airbnbs that have cool things about them, like maybe they're next to a national park, or maybe they have a pickleball court. That's incredible. Like, what if I just highlighted in every episode an incredible Airbnb that has an activity with it, right? So you get a tour of the house, and then you get to see me go through the activity. That's where I landed. So interesting, though. It's good comp because going back to early stages, right? The early stages are all lifestyle considerations, stage one and two that we talk about. And I think it is really important. Everything I know about doing YouTube for 13 years, it is a thing that

consumes your life. So, the format you select, the topic you select, is going to have a lot to do with how you spend your time and how you spend your life. And so, in that one, like the interesting thing to think about is like, again, back to step two, what are you optimizing for? I'm optimizing to get outside. Yep, that's okay. That's a completely reasonable way to start a YouTube channel. But if you're optimizing for money, I would say the other slide that I would put in this deck is take a screenshot of every brand partner, every brand deal in these videos. So, if it's outdoor stuff like that, who's sponsoring those videos? Are there common sponsors? If it is cooking, who's sponsoring it, right? And I started watching a ton of cooking videos because I was interested in this subject matter. I noticed Made In, it's a brand that makes like cookware, never heard of them, but they sponsor a ton of cooking videos on YouTube. So, if I'm to enter the

niche if I'm to enter this industry that's going to be a probably a common partner that comes up so I I like the tangible advice here is to build a slide deck that has images across your Niche or your market and I would also look at similarities are there formats that come up a ton you know are there like this versus that is it cooking challenges what what is coming up a lot in this Niche that is a extremely common format and I would do this across devices so I would do this for mobile phone I would do this for connected TV and I would do this for desktop I like that a lot I will add that as you're doing this Niche analysis the one thing you should understand about storytelling in general is that it all involves conflict and contrast up all the way to the biggest Mr Beast videos to a cooking tutorial it's all about conflict and contrast and that should exist in your thumbnail as well so as you're looking at titles as you're looking at thumbnails start to

think about like you were even saying like the cheapest version versus the most expensive or whatever it is it's conflict and contrast so when it comes to step four and choosing your value prop and and how you stick out I think one thing that we take all of our students through in our um cohort Creator startup is an exercise called identities emotions and actions and split up a page so take out a sheet of paper split it up into identities emotions and actions and write down the different identity groups of people who are in your audience so again again back to to cooking uh the Casual Chef uh the person who's like trying to to figure out how to cook stuff at home the college student the person who's trying to do it on a budget you know like basically write down all these different identities and then write down the emotions you want them to feel and it's totally fine if you want them to feel um entertained or less alone like they can flip something on the TV and feel like

you're you're you're part of their living room um educated uh there there's all these different emotions and then think about the action you want them to take do you want them to what would prompt them to comment what would prompt them to go out and cook a meal themselves is it a cook along with me type thing so if you split that up and you start writing that you will start to find where you sit from a value proposition perspective who are these people and why do they watch is a question that I think a lot of people forget to ask so as an example if you wanted to make a casual cook feel safe and confident in the kitchen right a potential idea would be like 10 cooking mistakes to avoid or AE Avid I don't know you know what I mean there are ways that you can think about ideas and titles based off of the identity and the emotion speaking of titles yeah step five in our framework is write 100 titles this is actually something I believe we both learned from

Ryan Trahan spending time with him. Stephanie just mentioned it. Ryan Tran does this. Ryan, as far as I know, when we were hanging out with him, he makes 10 ideas. He writes 10 new ideas video titles every single day. And I did that for 10 days. And they're not all the ideas aren't great, but at the end, I have a hundred new ideas, right? And ideas are the engine for a YouTube channel. If you don't have ideas, and you don't have a huge surplus of them, it's going to be a lot harder to make a video and keep it consistent. So develop something called an idea Bank. This is, this can be Google Sheets. It can be in a notebook. Um, some people do this in a notion. And I, I actually, interestingly enough, as I was doing this, uh, I, I really struggled to come up with like net new ideas. Um, I could come up with like five. I could come up with six some days, but 10 was actually really hard for me. So I turned to, uh, uh, AI to support me.

spotter has a tool called Title Exploder that really helped. You know, kind of like put in a title and then see a bunch of different variations, and I would get tipped off with some word, and I'd be like, Oh, that's interesting. I know some creators use ChatGPT for this, where essentially you can say, Write me 10 YouTube titles based on cooking, and you can at least start to get into practice of what a title looks like. I write all of mine in a notebook, and I actually intentionally don't use AI because I want to put ideas down, even if they're bad. I think it's okay to put ideas down that are bad because they will often reveal to you what's good, and that's also what AI does. Like AI, if you ask for 10 titles, you're actually looking for what's not good to reveal what is good. And I think, like, of course, you want to start this on 10 days, but if it's cleaner for you to

do five ideas a day, and you can do that for 30 days. Like my suggestion here is actually that to start a YouTube channel from scratch. First, you definitely need 100 ideas to pick from. Like I definitely think you need 100 ideas to pick from. But as you continue going, if you're committed to becoming a professional Creator, this is going to be a huge piece of what you do. So getting comfortable with something that you can commit to every single day, like brushing your teeth, I think is really important. And I think you can also, at the top of the page, write out formats that you really like, titling conventions, and formats. So again, versus is a common one. $100 Thing versus $1000 Thing, right? Like that is an extremely common format that works across a lot of niches. So you can start going, That's something I can come back to. I'll write three ideas like that in a day. And so this is more about developing a practice, but in the subject

matter of starting from scratch you need 100 to choose from. I would suggest when you, when you look at those 100, you whittle those down to 30. And ideally, every day you elevate like your favorite two, right, two to three. You're like, Oh, these are actually good. Seven of them can be bad, but three of them you should be like, Oh, I could probably develop that. All right, so now put yourself in the shoes of someone who has never done YouTube before, but they're sitting and they're looking at 30 ideas. Yeah, they're continuing to whittle them down. How do you choose and how do you stress test which ideas you should actually try and make into a video? And that is Step six, which is find a testing ground. Now, this means you should find really low-lift ways to put your idea out into the world to the community you're trying to reach and see if it actually resonates. So a perfect example of this, again, I don't like when I have to bring up your LinkedIn. It hurts, it kind of pains me because of how much you

promote it. And now it seems like I'm the biggest promoter of your LinkedIn, but you did post on your LinkedIn about what eventually became our Hot Ones episode. Yeah, so you posted a take on LinkedIn about the show Hot Ones: could it survive without Sean Evans? Could it be the end of the show? Who should buy it? Why isn't it selling? That took off on LinkedIn. There was a lot of conversation, and that proved to us that this would be a good topic to make a YouTube video about. Now, if you're building from scratch, I think the assumption is you have - let's just assume you have no audience anywhere, sure. So, you might not even get that feedback somewhere, right? So, finding a testing ground could also mean in your social circle. It could also mean sharing the ideas with friends. And Mark Rober talked about this with us, which was really cool, that he gets a lot of his ideas in conversation where he's talking to people, and he's like, What about this? and seeing people's reaction. Hasan Minhaj called it the power.

of the PDF saying like the idea on paper. When you tell it to someone, when they read it, does it stack up? Does it resonate? Does it drive conversation? Yeah, I think this also. If it's not conversation, it could be starting with short-form video because we've done that as well where it's like, you know, we don't want to make a 35-minute YouTube video, but we can commit to a 60-second short. We did this about Squid Game, about the impact of Squid Game after it came out on Netflix. We made a 60-sec short. It absolutely exploded, became one of our most viewed shorts, and then we turned it into a long-form video, and that also did well. Another way to look at this and explore it is go on off-platform Community hubs. So that could be a subreddit or a Discord community and look at what people care about and if they care about the subject matter. So if it's like cheap versus expensive cookware, again, maybe you're looking at a cooking subreddit and everyone's

confused about this really expensive pan. Right, so now you're like, Oh, actually, maybe is it worth it? I mean, specific example for us this week. It was shared around in our Slack, a post from r/cooking. What happened to YouTube cooking channels? Yeah, saying that like they're not doing as well as they used to, they're not as impactful. And it was a conversation we started to have, and we came up with a video idea around that topic. They call out certain cooking channels, and we thought, Oh, could we interview these cooking channels and ask them about what's happened with the cooking niche? Do they feel like something has happened, and that's why people maybe aren't watching, or just what's the health of that, right? Yeah, and that's a place where it's like, Oh, people are already talking about it because they're talking about it on Reddit. It's proven people like this and they want to talk about it. Yeah, can we go from there? So, these first six steps are very much about the first phase.

is like understanding yourself what do you want out of this. The second phase is understanding the community and the audience, right? And that those phases are extremely important and those typically get skipped over, yeah, and without them, I think you, it will take way longer for you to find success on YouTube. So starting from scratch, first thing, deeply understand your own motivations, why you want to do this, the lifestyle consideration of doing this, then deeply understand the community, how do they discover your work, how do they engage with each other, what do they care about, what ideas resonate in this space, all of that deeply matters, okay? So now, in your new YouTube channel journey, you're at the point where you have actually not even uploaded a single video, but you have a ton of ideas, you've identified some that have already started some conversation, you choose one that you want to turn into a video, and you're ready for step seven, which is film, edit, upload, repeat. Now, this is very all-encompassing, and we're going to get into the weeds of what we mean by

this and certain decisions we would make with videos and with a YouTube channel if we were to start from scratch. So the first thing is making the video in a document before you film time and time again. Every Creator we talk to, if you do the pre-production, everything gets easier. So what does pre-production mean? It's literally opening a Google doc, putting the title in big bold letters, putting your thumbnail that you've designed or similar thumbnails that you want to emulate up top. And then Ali Abdal said this to us, he said most YouTube videos are just title, thumbnail, list, mhm. So thinking about a list format of like, it doesn't necessarily have to be like three things about, you know, X. It could just be beginning, middle, end. Hook is extremely important, the beginning part of the video, the middle part of the video, the end. Now in this, the time that we spend the absolute most time on is the first 7 seconds and the first 30 seconds of the video. So as you're developing these script documents.

I would identify from your list of 100 ideas, let's whittle it down to like 20 ideas that could be short form ideas, 10 ideas that could be long form ideas. Now, in both of those documents, the hooks are going to be your most important pieces. So, meaning, what are the first few words that are said in each video. And that'll come up later when we talk about data that we're tracking. Yeah. And what matters in that hook is whether it's a short or a long. Does the hook identify and meet the expectations of the viewer? Mh. And does it then give something new they actually weren't expecting? Because that's what's going to keep them watching. Yeah, right. So, specifically when it is like a title and a thumbnail for one of our episodes, like Hot Ones, we try and make sure that when you click, yes, we are going to touch on Is this the end of Hot Ones? But you're also going to get something new. Can the show survive without its host? So, a lot of storytelling and specifically on the

internet is about unanswered questions constantly. Storytelling is always about unanswered questions. So basically, in your first few lines, you want to make sure that you validate the video like you said. And then you open up a new unanswered question. And throughout your script document as you're writing out, always look at it in your beginning, your middle, and your end. Is there an unanswered question? And then at the end, when that question is answered or the final question is answered, the video's over. Yeah, so write it out. It doesn't have to be word for word, but you're making your video first on paper, then on camera. Next, if I were to start from scratch, I would make sure that I have a really lean filming style. I don't want to overcomplicate and add friction to the process. And if you look at, you know, whether it's Marquez with his autofocus Channel again or you look at Ryan Trean with his videos, they're primarily shot with an iPhone, right? If what you wrote is good and the script is good, you

should be able to execute that idea with an iPhone. Yeah, you can always go up from there, but I think you should always be able to come back to the lowest common denominator and keep the process as frictionless as possible. You also want to think of everything on a 52-week window, not a one-week window, so you look at it in the context of if I'm to start this YouTube channel today, can I make a video every week for the next 52 weeks? Yeah, right, or 104 weeks. Um, so you want to have a lean production style. If you love making stuff with your DSLR and you're like your lifestyles, you travel everywhere with your DSLR, and no matter if you're on vacation or wherever you are, you could make that video, sure, but go back to when everyone started from scratch. Look at Marquez's first video again, look at our first video. We shot on a MacBook. Like everyone starts with a lean production style, and that's because you're going to have to make a 100

videos before you truly develop your style. You know you just are now to get to 100 videos quicker. YouTube has changed in 20124. You can start with short form content. Yeah, and I would say there's a couple things here about starting with shorts. Number one, it is a good testing ground to see if your ideas resonate. It's a great way if you add a call to action within your script to subscribe to the channel to drive audience and subscribers before you commit to LA long form. And what we've seen is that when we eventually upload a long form video, if we also upload a short that is about the same topic, the long form video does well. Yeah, does better actually than if we don't. So your shorts are obviously going to be 60 seconds or less. Right now when you're starting with shorts, I would say you don't want to go too far without making long form videos. I think you should identify, you know, five shorts you want to make and think about making two to three shorts per every long form video.

in the beginning, and when you look at your shorts, um, you know, again, when you look at that idea Bank, you're going to naturally start to see which ideas go towards short form content, which ones go towards long form, and the way to make this decision is actually when you look at video length. Right now on YouTube, longer watch times are extremely common, they're rewarded, right? The base premise of YouTube is: did the audience click, did they watch, and were they satisfied? Yeah, the first two are very quantifiable by data that Google gives you and YouTube gives, the third is less, you know, explicit of: are they satisfied? But all of that is going to dictate how much your content surfaces and how much it gets, uh, put up in the algorithm. I think one of the biggest mistakes we made was making videos where we were clearly afraid people were going to leave. Yeah, but if you have a good title and thumbnail that attracts the audience you want, trust that once they click on that title and thumbnail, you've already gotten them in.

the door trust that they are open to 20 to 30 minutes worth of this topic. This goes back to your Niche analysis because if most of your content when you're starting from scratch is going to show up in suggested, that means that whatever the general viewing habits are of that Community are probably going to be consistent. So for us, what we notice when we have a 2-hour long episode with Emma Chamberlain, that's going to be a lot harder to drive audience in browse than it is suggested because someone who is regularly watching podcasts is probably going to be interested in that. Now are they going to in one sitting go from a two-hour podcast to a two-hour podcast? Probably not, but we are going to get fed into a world of people who are like, I regularly watch to our YouTube videos. Yeah, most likely a 15-minute Emma Chamberlain video may not be the biggest driver to our almost three-hour conversation, right? Ex. You would think, Oh, of course someone watches an Emma video, that's what they

like they're going to go watch a three-hour podcast with her. It's more so someone watches a bunch of podcasts or listens to a lot of podcasts, and this one gets fed to them. So I would look at your community and see what content is living in the 20 plus range. Now I think the 20 minute plus range is the ideal range today on YouTube. Of course, there's people who make content that's shorter, but look at the top creators right now. Look at Ryan Tran, look at Mark Robert, look at Mr. Beast, look at lwig. Like, and remember that these videos are being watched on televisions. It is no longer people just watching on phones. It is increasingly more televisions. And when you watch something on a TV, you're committed to watching something long. Start at five minutes, go to 10 minutes, but I think you should be looking in a direction of can I make a 20-minute long video. Okay, now getting to that repeat part of this step of the framework. MatPat said this to us. He said that the

expectation of the videos they make is that they will get to 85% of the way done. That 85% is good enough to put out, and I resonate with that a lot because if you don't have sort of a deadline or an end point to the video, that last 15%, you can spend weeks and weeks and weeks trying to make it 15% better, but I don't think you're going to get the return on that 15%. Yeah, again, this is a very long game. You have to look at this on a 2-year, 5-year window. I think a lot of creatives think about everything on a one-year window. Mhm, but when you're in the YouTube business, when you're working on a YouTube channel, the channel is going to take years, and so you want to be thinking about how do I keep things lean, how do I get to a point where I'm like, this video is good, I'm gonna get it out, and most creatives are really intense about their own creative work so.

I think the 85% rule is really helpful. Now, the second thing as a part of this, what makes the 85% rule easier, is when you look at your first 10 videos that you've made. Which one of those can be repeated? Basically, like, is there a part two, part three, part four, part five to these videos? Because if there is, then it's going to make it a lot easier for you to, again, copy and paste that script document and go, What's the spin on this one? I already have a framework. How could I make it better? What's the next chapter of this challenge? What's the next chapter of this video? Tangible example, two videos out of our last 10 that have done really well. One of them is the YouTube video that broke Hollywood. Could we make the YouTube video that is there another YouTube video where we could have a description? Could we even go as far as the YouTube video that broke and then find another word for what the YouTube video broke?

you know tell the stories of prominent YouTube videos. YouTube video that broke the algorithm, right that we have a model for that now and we know that it will do well. So you're you're searching in your first 10-20 videos, you're searching for formats and actually that never ends, yeah. Again, most recent video, fast approaching death of Hot Ones. Is there an opportunity with another show or entity where it's the fast approaching death of or the fast approaching something of because that's more likely to work, yes. All right, data which data should you track to understand with your new YouTube channel if you're doing well. So again, I think it's so important to uh just like really put in bold letters how important packaging is and because of that you're going to live in a world of tracking click-through rate packaging for every Creator top Creator brand new Creator, uh no matter where you are the title and thumbnail is the most important part of YouTube. It's just like you cannot say it enough. It's something that we talked about with Jimmy in our

last interview do you get it. I get it and maybe some of the people watching get it but like most don't understand like how important. I don't think I actually got it until recently and I know that sounds CRA. The problem is you never actually get it because it's always more important than you realize. It's more important than you me. It's. I'm constantly every other month going dang I forgot like just how important the title and thumbnail is and I like you almost have to like every day sit in a corner and go the title and thumbnail matters more than you think and tell yourself that 10 times because if not like it just it's you just. I don't know because it seems so significant until you like really think about and you're like at the end of the day if they don't click they don't watch and that like you can make the best content ever but if they don't click you're dead yeah and even sitting and talking to him it's like yeah this is

the most watched person on the platform. And even he is just sitting there being like, It's all title and thumbnail. It's all title and thumbnail. So, with that in mind, the first thing you're tracking is Click-through. It's going to track how well your ideas are resonating and also answer the question: Are you putting enough curiosity into the viewer for them to click? Mhm. So, click-through rate is going to be based on how many people saw this thumbnail, what percentage of them clicked it. The, the, the like a great click-through rate, it's 10%. Anytime we've been over 10%, it's like this video is picking off, it really resonated, this concept really resonated. If we're in the like 14 to 15%, yeah, as many YouTubers say, it's a, it's a banger, it's a certified banger. Who was it that said that, certified banger? Was that Mark Rober? That's probably Mark Rober, yeah, yeah. Um, I guess if you're new to you.

that's also a term you'll hear a lot. Yeah, 10% or higher on launch means like it's really resonating. Um, and I think as you look at it, you want to track day of release. So, the day you release it, and then seven days after, and 30 days after. And I would say a common kind of trajectory there is going to go 10%, 7%, four to 5%, 45%. Yeah. And if you're, if we, at least speaking for ourselves, if we're way below those, we will at each sort of marker, we will start to experiment with different packaging. And we never stop. Yeah. We, a video came out years ago, there's always the opportunity, most likely we've learned a lot about titles and thumbnails since then. Uh, in my free time, I will often just look back at our catalog of videos, identify a video where I'm like, oh, we would have never done that title in thumbnail today, let me update it. Yep. Again, because of suggested browse and how people find.

your videos. We sat with Chucky on Mr. Beast team somewhat recently, and he was explaining to us, you know, the lift in an entire catalog on YouTube of a single thumbnail change can be really dramatic, yes, right, because we changed one of our thumbnails from a year ago that increased click-through rate 3%, which means tons of new viewers are coming, and they're going to watch another video in our catalog, yeah, and then they might watch another one, and then they'll watch our new video. So that little shift in going from 4% to 5 or 6% can actually lift your entire catalog of videos, and that is something that we very much track, right, is just like how is the entire catalog doing. The next piece of data that we track a lot is first 30-second viewership. So this is something that YouTube gives you in your back end, um, if we're above 90% in the first 30 seconds, that means that you clicked on the thumbnail, and it is the

thing you wanted to watch, and we're hooked you, mhm, right, which is the goal, that is the goal, and most likely, you know, for us, right, this is a podcast, some people are just going to be listening at this point, but in those first 30 seconds, most likely, we have their eyes, so we try and make it incredibly Visual and make sure there are new questions that need to be answered, you know, from a script perspective, but also from a visual perspective, yeah, so it can get, it's not that we can't have successful videos that are at 78% or 75% in the first 30 seconds, but this data that we're telling you that we track should also inform you what matters in your scripting process, click-through rate, first 30 seconds viewership, and then the next thing is going to be the average view duration, so average view percentage and average view duration, so how much of the video are people watching, if they're only watching those first 30 seconds and then they leave, that's that's not interesting that.

means you made a video. First 30 seconds were great, but then it wasn't what people expect it. Yeah, and audience satisfaction is a major thing that you're optimizing for, so you want to be looking at this and going, If it's a very long video, let's say it's in the multiple hours like a lot of our shows, eventually it'll be in the like, you know, 50%, 40% range. But if you're making a 20-minute video, I think you want people watching more than 50% of that video. Yeah, that's your goal. So, those three, I think, are your first pieces of data to track. You can make a little Excel sheet and go, This video, when I launched it, what was a click-through rate, what was the first 30 seconds, and what was the average view duration? Yeah, how long were people watching. Now, that's video to video. Taking a more macro zoom out perspective of the channel, some of the things that we look at are average views per video. Is it staying somewhat

consistent is it, and is it continuing to rise? Uh, the more that time goes on, I think this is actually really important in terms of growing a business, right, which is sort of a whole other conversation, but making sure that you are like a trustworthy space, uh, with a consistent amount of audience that continues to come back over time is important. How do you know if you're growing? We look at new versus returning viewers, yeah, so if one of our videos really pops, most likely we will look at new versus returning, and we're going to see that there are a lot of new viewers in that video. In that instance, it's super important to make sure that we have a call to action to subscribe because it does make a huge difference if we have a video that pops and we don't tell people to subscribe. They don't really subscribe, yeah, but if we do, it is drastic, and then there are some videos that we make that don't get as much viral viewership but they hit more of our average, and you'll find that's a

lot of our returning viewers, and I think it's okay to have a mix of videos that have different purposes. Yeah, right, it's okay sometimes to have, you know, uh, that big swing that potentially viral pop that could reach really big scale and reach new audiences, and then it's okay to have ones that are for more of your core community and to set the expectation that there's going to be more returning viewers here as you continue, and you have like a bigger catalog of content. The two other things that I look at quite a bit are browse versus suggested traffic, um, to each video, and then device average view duration. So, like, based on the devices that people are watching on, how long are they watching for? So, for us, like, for example, art, like TV, makes up 46% of our watch hours, and the average view duration is 33 minutes. So, starting to deeply understand how your audience is consuming, they're turning it on on a TV and leaving it on for 30 plus minutes. So, that helps you inform, like, where your

Content moves in the future, right? What's your video length? What type of subject matter are you covering? All of that is going to inform where you're going in the future. Look, if you've made it to this point in the episode, you are in the deep end. You have made it very far. Hopefully, you have learned a lot about either starting a YouTube channel or your current YouTube channel. I imagine there's a lot of people watching and listening who are already deep into YouTube, but I hope that helped. The part at the end here, data analytics, there's so much that we could go into here, and a lot of channels do that. I think we gave a pretty decent, like, high level of what matters to us, especially when you're starting from scratch. Yes, um, I do want to read this quote that I thought was interesting and relevant here because I'm sure at this point you might be thinking about monetization or collaboration or how do I get into the YouTuber community, right? The broader economy, the Creator economy, all this um.

Naval has this great quote where he says networking is overrated. Go do something great, and your network will instantly emerge. I really like that quote because I think in the beginning when you're starting from scratch, you just have to put your head down and make great videos. Yeah, you got to get to the point where you're doing something within a community that is different, that was unexpected, so that you are what people are gravitating towards. Yeah, and people you want to reach are reaching out to you. Exactly, allow people to reach out to you. That's how it happened with us. We had creators reach out to us. We had brands reach out to us. We had um, we kept our head down and focused on making videos for six years, and that network value compounded greatly. Like, you know, the impact of that network over time, yeah, has been immense and a huge part of us, you know, being established and feeling safe in this career, feeling like we've had some success. So, patience, patience is incredibly important when you're starting from

scratch all right but but don't forget Pinterest boards. I think don't overlook Pinterest boards everybody. Now if you've gone through all these steps, if you're in the process of being a professional Creator, and you want a little bit more on how to monetize your channel, how to turn your YouTube channel in business, we do have a 30-day cohort called Creator startup, and that's Linked In the description. If you want to find out more about that, and again, we are giving away this MacBook Air. This is a 13in MacBook Air with an Apple M3 chip. All you have to do is subscribe to our newsletter, the published press, and if we've already given this away, we probably give away another one, so make sure you subscribe. The MacBook Air potentially the only tool you need to start a YouTube channel. That was our seven-step framework. If you guys have other notes on how you would approach starting a YouTube channel, or if you have questions that you want us to answer, put them in the comments here on YouTube. Make sure to subscribe to the channel, and we will

13 Years of YouTube Knowledge in 46 Minutes

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Colin and Samir are YouTube Creators based in Los Angeles with a long history of working with Creators large and small. They got their start working on their first project, The Lacrosse Network - A YouTube sports network dedicated to lacrosse. Today they tell stories about creators and are fans of YouTube news and culture. 

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