- So, how do you effectively
monetize your channel in twenty-four hours?
Well, it's pretty simple actually.
You pick the richest company
in the world
and you exploit
the biggest tech search blind spot
I have ever seen.
I love case-studies like this.
Lets do this.
♪ VidIQ.com ♪
Weirdly, the story starts
with one of these,
the Samsung Galaxy Chromeboook.
I'm one of the few people
in the world who gets Chromebooks.
I love the fact that they're
super light-weight,
after years of use,
they never slow down,
and they are always on.
There it is.
In seconds.
That's an absolute deal-breaker for me.
So when Samsung announced the
Rolls-Royce of all Chromebooks,
with a 4K AMOLED display
and a stylus,
I was all,
"shut up and take my money".
Even at an eye-watering
nine-hundred and ninety-nine U.S. dollars.
And that's where there is a slight problem.
I don't live in the U.S.
I live here.
And while the said Chromebook is now
readily available in the U.S.,
alas,
we in the north,
apparently may never every
get to buy one.
Which leaves me to the biggest
and most irrelevant first-world problem
I have ever encountered.
I have a thousand dollars burning
a hole in my pocket right now.
And if I was Mr. Beast,
I'd tell you all to
Like, Subscribe, and Comment
and I'd pick a random winner,
but I'm not.
'Cause I'm selfish and it's my money.
And I rather tear it up
than give it away to you.
Stupid indestructible Canadian money.
So I want a light-weight computer
that doesn't slow down over time,
that wipes down every single windows computer
on the face of the Earth,
and I want something that's always on.
And if Chromebook doesn't have an answer,
who does?
I was always under the impression that
iPads were tablets.
These days, however,
Apple seems to touting them
as viable alternatives
to the traditional computer.
But I always thought computers
needed a keyboard
and at the very least,
a track-pad,
to give them the productivity you need.
And apparently,
this is Apple's answer: the Magic Keyboard.
A first-party accessory
that attaches itself
directly to the tablet.
Rolling in at a typically
Apple eye-watering price of
two hundred and ninety-nine U.S. dollars.
All right Apple,
you got my attention now.
I do see how this can turn itself
into a viable computer.
But I need to do the research here.
I'm not just gonna jump straight into this.
I'm not an idiot.
Three hundred dollars for a keyboard?
Yeah, I'm an idiot.
But if I am gonna do the research,
I'm gonna do what everybody else does.
I'm gonna search for it on YouTube.
And if you have to skip story-time,
shame on you.
Now, being a tech enthusiast,
I assume when I search for a product
such as the iPad Pro Magic Keyboard,
the usual creator suspects
are going to appear:
MKBHD, Unbox Therapy, Linus Tech Tips,
and so on.
And when you search iPad Pro Magic Keyboard
on YouTube,
the auto-suggestion list is prime
for all of the keywords and phrases
you might expect.
But on April the nineteenth,
this is what YouTube search presented to me.
A bunch of thumbnails from what looked to be
two-thousand and twelve
and not a single video
from a major tech creator
on the iPad Pro Magic Keyboard.
So that does look a little bit odd.
And I though to myself,
"oh, is the keyboard actually out yet?"
When I searched on the Apple website,
yes, it is available although,
there is a lengthy shipping delay
on it right now.
So what does Google Trends tell me?
Well, over the last thirty days,
there are two peaks.
The first presumably when Apple
first announced the product.
And the second,
when presumably the product
went on general sale
and people wanted to know more about
how to use it
or watch tech creators feedback
on the product.
But at the time when I did the search,
there were no videos from the creators
I know, love, and most importantly, trust.
So let's go back to YouTube search
and see what it did show me.
First of all,
from a VidIQ perspective,
we think this a fairly juicy keyword.
Increasing search volume
and not enough video competition
to keep up with demand.
And then we have the video results themselves.
These top three videos
are all from the same creator
and have all been posted in the last
forty-eight hours.
Well now,
this makes things really interesting.
No matter which way
you slice and dice it,
the launch of any Apple product
is a massive global event.
Who would have thought,
for example,
that those wireless air buds,
AirPods,
by themselves
would generate more revenue for Apple
than Spotify and Twitter combined?
Now, I'm not going to say that
the Apple Magic Keyboard is going to have
such an impact as AirPods,
but you're still looking at
tens of millions,
if not hundreds of millions of dollars
of revenue for Apple.
Which means it is a big thing
in the tech community.
So let's go back to YouTube search.
Who is this creator
with this keyboard?
Well the truth is,
up until April the nineteenth,
they were a nobody on YouTube.
Another channel of random content
from years ago with freeze-frame thumbnails,
and no real thought put into their titles.
They don't even have a channel banner.
But then,
out of the blue,
this TikTok-length video appears
on their channel
and it looks to be that Magic Keyboard
that every Apple iPad owner
is starting to get really excited about.
So then naturally,
you treat the video with some skepticism.
Is it a fake?
But no,
this looks like a genuine Magic Keyboard
and the Likes to Dislikes on the video
could confirm this.
And then you can see from the VidIQ
historical view count tool,
how the video quickly gained traction
over twenty-four hours.
So how does a twenty second video
from a creator nobody's ever heard of
get seventy-five thousand views
in twenty-four hours?
And jump to the top of the search rankings
for a very juicy Apple tech phrase?
Well again,
I think it's pretty simple.
The absence of options.
I think for a brief moment of time,
that video was one of the,
if not,
the first video of a genuine review
of the Apple Magic Keyboard.
And with that golden opportunity,
the creator did
what we always recommend you do,
double down on your best content.
There is a debate that often ranges
amongst YouTube creators,
and that is,
quantity verus quality.
Most will rightly argue that
quality should take precedence.
But this is a perfect example
where I would argue the opposite.
At least to a certain degree.
When you have everyone's attention,
because there is no competition,
you should push out
as much content as possible
because that window of opportunity
is not going to last long.
As we will see later.
So yes,
six videos in a twenty-four
to forty-eight hour period
may seem a little excessive,
but when you do a search
for that iPad Pro Magic Keyboard
and all of the results
at the top of the search engine
are from the same creator,
what videos are you gonna click on?
The videos themselves tell me two things.
First of all,
this creator really does like his computers.
And secondly,
sometimes all you need is a mobile phone
and something interesting to film.
Oh and apparently,
video tags don't seem to mean
diddly-squat anymore.
I think,
basically,
in this situation
this creator has two objectives
to serve their audience.
The first,
and its really simple,
give the audience more of
iPad Pro Magic Keyboard.
And secondly,
to read what his audience
is writing about his content
and make videos based on that feedback.
- Hey everyone.
Just another quick video here
since there's been a lot of questions.
So I'm just gonna...
I got a list of questions here
and I'm gonna go through them
one-by-one.
- As I continue to record this case-study,
MrExitStrategy,
now sits on over half a million views.
Which almost undoubtedly
will get him to four thousand hours
of watch time
and he also has one-thousand subscribers.
Welcome to the YouTube partner program.
It is a little concerning
that with half a million views
the channel only has
one-thousand seven-hundred subscribers.
But this is a symptom
of many tech and educational channels.
Where people just wanna get
the answers they want.
See what they wanna see.
They don't want to subscribe to the channel.
And to be honest,
the quality of their videos
does mean that the creator
is probably not using calls-to-action
or getting people to fall in love
and trust the creator
and subscribe to them for future content.
So you might see this as a smash and grab.
The opportunity was there
and the creator grasped it
with both hands.
So what's gonna happen
when all of the other tech creators
get their hands on this product?
Well, we can find out
because it's exactly what happened
halfway through recording this video.
The following day on April twentieth,
I did an incognito search
for iPad Pro Magic Keyboard,
so that my watch and search history
wouldn't influence the results.
And we have a brand new set of
well-established super popular creators,
such as The Verge, iJustine, and Peter McKinnon.
To find our hero of this case-study,
we have to scroll way down the list,
which is probably going to kill
the view velocity of these videos.
And lets be honest,
in a face-off between thumbnails,
which ones are you more likely
to click on?
When you no longer have something unique
to present to the audience,
quality is always going to win out.
What's also interesting about
all of these new videos
is when they were published.
All at exactly the same time.
9AM Eastern Standard Time
on April the twentieth, twenty-twenty.
Now the reason for this is because
all tech companies hate it
when information about their products
is leaked early.
And Apple is no exception
and is the biggest target for this.
So what usually happens is
that tech companies have launch events
before the product is released,
say a couple of weeks,
and they invite
all of the big tech creators
and journalists
to go and cover the event.
But right now,
there is something called Coronavirus,
which is stopping all of that
from happening.
Now what will also happen,
is that tech companies
will send out products early
to those trusted creators
and what they will ask them to do
is not release their content
until a certain date and time.
Almost like a release embargo.
So all of these creators
are probably making their
iPad Pro Magic Keyboard videos
over the last week or two
and waiting for that release embargo
date to arrive.
But that doesn't apply
to your average consumer
who orders a product off of a website
and just happens to get it before
the release embargo.
And again,
that probably comes down
to the unique challenges
that the Coronavirus is presenting
to tech firms when it comes to logistics.
Some people just have got their products early
and stick their videos on YouTube.
All of which has created the perfect storm
for a case-study on YouTube.
But all of this doesn't solve
my original problem,
what computer am I going to spend
a thousand dollars on?
Go on,
vote up here.
It'd be really helpful.
(soft electronic music)