SunnyV2 went from being a failing Fortnite streamer desperately handing out flyers asking
for subs, to having over 1 and a half million Subscribers averaging 3,200,003 views per video.
Let’s explore the story of SunnyV2 and how he managed to reverse engineer the
YouTube algorithm to grow his channel to incredible heights in what seems to be a
short time… But first, we need to understand where he started his humble YouTube journey.
I’m the Internet Anarchist, and this is “How SunnyV2 Rigged the YouTube Algorithm”.
The journey of SunnyV2 started on the 22nd of May 2015 when a fresh out of high school Sunny
would create a YouTube channel under the name Might of Sun. It wouldn't be until 2
weeks later that Sunny would publish his first YouTube video. Whilst the video itself wasn’t
significant it would mark the beginning of his run on YouTube. Sunny’s content consisted of
Old School RuneScape gameplays which grew him a small yet supportive audience of 400 subscribers.
Fast forward 29 videos and Sunny would drop off
the surface of YouTube leaving his audience begging for him to return…
2 years later, Sunny found himself back from his hiatus and posting Fortnite videos, Sunny
constantly posted for 6 months gaining no success whatsoever with most of his videos sitting around
50 views with high dislike ratios due to his Runescape audience not liking the content shift.
On the 12th of December 2018, Sunny would post his final Fortnite video on the Might of Sun channel.
After finishing uni, Sunny went on a trip to Asia which would serve as
a life-changing moment as Sunny realised Youtube was exactly what he wanted to do.
He dedicated days to researching the algorithm and figuring out what it would
take to gain success, at the time gaming was a huge trend and many creators were finding
success in the Fortnite niche, so with Sunny’s newly acquired knowledge he would take another
shot at Fortnite content but on a new channel under the name we all know today, “SunnyV2”.
Sunny would go on to build a niche audience who would not only enjoy his videos due to
the 2,200 wins he had amassed but also because of his charismatic and humorous personality,
which would allow the viewer to feel like his friend despite no real connection being made. In
May 2019 Sunny hit the monumental milestone of 1000 subscribers.
Throughout the rest of 2019 Sunny would consistently post videos and host live
streams tripling his stats to 3,000 subscribers, whilst on the outside things appeared to be going
well for Sunny, deep inside Sunny was growing tired of Fortnite and felt he had more to offer,
this led up to the 25th of October Sunny would post a video titled “New Things are coming boys”
a video where Sunny would explain how Fortnite is limiting his content from a creative aspect.
Whilst some of his audience were disappointed that he wasn’t going to be making videos on their
beloved game, the majority supported Sunny with his new style of content. As a comment
from a guest btw stated: Sunny began making self-help
content helping his audience understand just how valuable their lives are and what positive changes
they can make. Sunny would also begin giving financial advice in an easy to digest way.
Each video amassed a couple thousand views but never much more,
even with the consistent videos Sunny struggled to push past 4,000 subscribers which could
have resulted in the video where Sunny put a letter in 2000 letterboxes asking for a sub.
Not much change was seen up until the 9th of March 2020 when Sunny published his first viral
video titled “Boogie2988’s Garbage Mindset” in this video Sunny would utilise his self-help
and philosophical outlook to deconstruct the toxic mindset of YouTuber Boogie2988. Although at first,
this video didn't blow up, over time it would come to gain upwards of 900,000 views. It was
at this point that Sunny realised one of the key content strategies that lead to his swift rise...
Trend hacking: Trend hacking can be
defined as “The capitalization of pre-existing trends with intention of personal gain”.
A skill Sunny would learn to master when continuing videos
discussing the mindset of celebrities such as Narwaur, WingsofRedemption and
penguinz0. Not only was Sunny now covering topics new viewers would find interesting,
he completely stepped up his editing game propelling his videos into further virality.
This style of content continued up until the 7th of April 2020 when Sunny would create
his first “rise” style video covering Australian comedian FriendlyJordies.
Sunny found his place on YouTube in the commentary “Edutainment” niche.
Sunny’s previous years of experience came in handy when creating his rise
and fall videos as it would not only allow him to understand the 3 key factors of a video’s success
(Topic, AVD, CTR) but also allow him to utilise his self-help and psychology knowledge to dissect
the subject matters of his video in a respectful manner allowing even the fans of creators he spoke
about to take the video in a positive way such as on his Ice Poseidon video where Ice commented:
The strong logical cases Sunny built allowed him to distinguish himself from
drama channel commentary channels and instead be labelled as an educational commentary channel.
There was just no reason not to like Sunny, and within months he had amassed
a grand 100,000 subscribers. With dozens of millions of views coming in each month,
all Sunny had to do was stay consistent and improve his content. The polarising change in
quality in his videos made each video feel fresh and encouraged subscribers to return
to his videos in order to see just how good his new videos are and due to this, within
just 5 months of hitting the milestone, his subscriber count would reach 200,000.
It was clear that Sunny wanted to master his craft
and continue his growth at all costs. This led to September the 18th,
2020 when Sunny released a video titled “How to Make a Video Go Viral” he explained that
watch time is a much more important metric in comparison to the retention rate of the video…
With Sunny keeping up the consistency, his sub count would continue to
grow over 2021 by continuing the documentary-style commentary videos. By the end of the year,
Sunny had achieved over 800,000 subscribers.
With Sunny’s catalogue of videos ever-expanding,
it had become almost hard not to see a video of his pop up when browsing YouTube. What made
Sunny unique is that he had a video for almost any demographic to enjoy with videos ranging
from Elon Musk to Ricegum there was only one clear big audience he wasn’t reaching… Tik Tok…
On the 10th of February, 2022 Sunny would publish a video titled “The Scumbag TikToker Who Faked
Tourettes For Clout”, the video covered the disability faking fraud TicsandRoses. This
video was surprisingly successful for Sunny with it reaching over 6 million people and would serve
to introduce his channel to a whole new market barely touched on YouTube. Sunny followed the
video up with 3 more Tik Tok related videos in a row, utilising his phenomenal storytelling
ability he was able to find topics his primary audience wasn’t interested in and transform them
into engaging videos allowing him to average an impressive 3.8 million views per video.
The Tik Tok videos helped Sunny reach 1 million subscribers, but his growth didn’t stop there.
Sunny remained consistent with his uploads allowing the views to continuously snowball.
The pure freedom that Sunny has with his content makes every video feel unique despite each
following the original core aspect of rise and fall that he had learned to create years prior.
Sunny has managed to pave the way for YouTubers wishing to follow in
his footsteps with creators such as Patrick CC and InternetAjay finding
success in creating exceptional content in the documentary commentary style with Patrick
focusing on hip hop and children's tv and Ajay revealing polarising internet personalities.
Sunny is growing rapidly and will continue to as time passes,
currently Sunny has 1,560,000 subscribers... As an experiment, go search up his channel
and comment on how many subs he has at the time you're watching this video.
If you enjoyed this video,
you will love my last video “The Dark Rise of Tuv: The Loneliest YouTuber”