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| 4 million video views. 2,792 subscribers. Yep, I'm "doing it wrong"! |
I bet you are thinking this blog is off to a good start, and it is. I'm probably one of the few people who isn't going to lie to you about this topic or try to sell you a book.
A lot of people write blog posts about how, if you just use their ten point plan for success, you too can be as well known as RayWilliamJohnson or smosh, even if you don't have a money hose for spraying dollars at marketing campaigns. Even some big name Youtubers like Freddie Wong have written blog articles saying such things.
I've read those blogs. I wanted to believe those blogs, because I sure as hell don't have a money hose. And I've done pretty much everything they have said to do and I am here to tell you it aen't that simple. Everyone is using the same strategies, and that's why they aren't working for the majority of people who try them; there is simply too much competition.
The honest truth is that much of the success of the big folks depended on having been early adopters of Youtube and the methods they used to become popular no longer work. (This is due to two factors; firstly, Youtube no longer uses the same algorithms for 'Search' and 'Related Video Feeds', and secondly because there is way more videos on Youtube today than there was in 2006-2008. This makes it a lot harder to get your video seen inside Youtube, forcing you to rely primarily on traffic from third party sources like Facebook, Twitter, Reddit and networks of blogs).
I too had videos with hundreds of thousands of views back in 2006-2008. It was easy to get views on Youtube back then, but not all of us saw the value in it as we do now. Like many, I didn't capitalize on it, I focused instead on college, and by the time I woke up to reality the easy Youtube success sailboat had shipped. I wish I had done things differently, so that today I could focus on video production full-time rather than needing to work another job to support myself and my projects.
What I've learned over the years is that most people with large subscriber pools are as surprised as anyone that they developed fanbases. They basically don't know how they did it, they got lucky. That might sound insulting but it really isn't, it's the truth.
There are two main ways people who previously had no fanbases become famous on Youtube:
1) For whatever reason, the specific combination of keywords in their video title, description and tags was picked up by thousands and thousands of searches and the Related Video feed algorithm on Youtube, and that is what created the awareness of their videos.
(Some will suggest simply making videos that have titles corresponding to whatever is hot on 'Google Trends' and 'Google Insights for Search'. The problem with this line of thinking is that a lot of other people have the same idea, so ultimately your video will be competing with thousands -- perhaps even millions-- of other videos with the same trending keywords.)
This still happens today. Every now and then the Related Videos feeds zero in on someone and drives a ton of traffic to their videos, but it is pretty difficult to get your videos to have the precise keywords and initial traffic boost to make that happen. It is like trying to get the stars to align.
2) Someone with a large audience came across their video on Youtube and gave them a plug on their website.
Charlie Bit My Finger is such an example. That video had been uploaded months before it went viral. It would probably still be buried on Youtube if it hadn't been posted onto CollegeHumor.com, and then continued to receive media coverage for years and years.
Don't get me wrong, 'Charlie Bit My Finger' is funny and entertaining. But there are hundreds of thousands of funny and entertaining videos on Youtube that have anywhere from a few hundred to a few thousand views, not millions upon millions like that video. The only difference is that 'Charlie Bit My Finger' developed awareness because CollegeHumor.com posted it, and then other people shared it like crazy. 'Charlie Bit My Finger' tapped into an already existing audience, and that is where the difference lies; it gained awareness.
(Also, full disclaimer: clearly the people who have been able to take advantage of their initial popularity and continue to build up their fanbases have some talent in marketing. But they didn't start that way, and a lot of it was probably assisted by the thousands of dollars they earned from their videos. Many mid-range successful Partners who get 100k-200k views per video tend to re-invest their earnings into AdWords campaigns to further increase their traffic. AdWords is too costly for the majority of Partners to use and I will explain why in a future post).
Anyway, this blog isn't going to tell you how to be successful on Youtube. Instead I will be sharing the experiences I've had over the years trying to market my videos, what hasn't worked and why I think it hasn't worked.
You might be wondering what the benefit to you is, since I don't have a magic formula for being successful. The answer is this: I can tell you what won't work so you don't waste your time on it.
I can give you advice on how to avoid uncomfortable things like inciting troll communities to click bomb your channel-- and better yet, if you are click bombed I can tell you how to survive it without losing your Partnership.
I can also help you avoid being IP banned from certain website forums that would be beneficial to you in marketing your videos, as I've been banned from a few just for being a'bit too obvious that I'm marketing my videos there.
Not all my efforts have been worthless. I've had mild success at times. I once had a video with half a million views, and I currently have a few that are around 100k views. I'll try to talk about the circumstances surrounding these successes as best I can without breaking any terms of service agreements I have with third parties, because some of those agreements don't like us talking about this stuff openly.
There are people who might think it is a bad idea for me to talk so openly about the mistakes I've made trying to market my channel. To this I simply point to any highly successful person. A few names that come to mind are Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, Thomas Edison, Theodore Roosevelt and Steve Jobs. These are all individuals who you have heard of before, and know as highly successful people in their fields. Yet they made a lot more mistakes than successes. You can see the same thing in movie directors; George Lucas is primarily known for the 'Star Wars' and 'Indiana Jones' series, and not so much for 'Willow' and 'Howard the Duck'.
I do not think that speaking about my failures proves that I am a failure. It merely means I have yet to succeed, but as I narrow down the list I of possible strategies I believe I will be successful -- and when I am, by reading this blog you should be able to get a more firm understanding of how marketing Youtube videos works and how to emulate my successes while avoiding my failures.
The last thing you might be wondering is what I intend to get out of this. After all, most people who make marketing blogs are doing so because they want to sell you something. It's natural to assume I also have some hidden agenda, and I suppose in a way I do: I suck at marketing. I want to get better. There is no way to get better if you don't first figure out what doesn't work and narrow the list of things down.
This blog becomes that list of things that didn't work, for me and others to comb through to figure out what will work. I hope you will get something out of this.
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