- Welcome to Season three
of How They Got One Million Subscribers.
Stephen Sharer and sister Grace.
4 1/2 million subscribers?
- [Stephen] 4 1/2 million subscribers.
- [Tim] That's awesome, in how much time?
- [Stephen] Less than two years.
- [Tim] Awesome, and today we're gonna start
a new series for you guys sharing all their best tips,
tricks and tactics, all the behind-the-scenes stuff
that they did to grow their channel from zero
to 4 1/2 million subscribers.
(upbeat music)
Hey guys, welcome to Video Creators.
My name is Tim Schmoyer and this channel
is all about helping you guys grow your YouTube audience
so you can spread a message that reaches people
and changes their lives, and my kids,
mostly my son, is totally into your content
and I'm sure you're changing his life,
it was just with everything that he's, like,
consuming and watching from you guys.
Especially since you have this great mission:
share the love, right?
Tell us the backstory of your channel,
how'd you get started?
Where does it all come from?
- So it all started, I always was making YouTube videos
growing up, and then I eventually said,
hey, I wanna actually do YouTube professionally.
It was what, 2016,
November 2016 and so I said,
Hey Carter, do you want to do YouTube with me?
And he was like, yeah, maybe.
He was like, I just got a job building self-driving cars,
I don't know if I can leave it.
I was like, yeah but Carter if we actually
make it on YouTube and we actually, like,
are successful, like, this can be your job.
He was like, okay, but how can we be successful
on YouTube, there are so many other channels out there.
So I said, let's take a back-end approach.
Let's study what's made up of YouTube,
what YouTube's made of.
Let's study how you can get a video to perform well
and how you can keep a video performing well.
So we kind of, uh, we did that.
Carter used his analytical background,
I used my marketing and branding background,
we kind of combined out two forces together,
and, less than two years later, we're at over
150 billion views and, what?
4.5 million subscribers.
- No big deal.
You know, whatever, just like, little things.
(laughing)
That's awesome.
So, you guys, you're on the channel as well.
What's your role on the channel?
- I recently just joined back in May, so a few months ago.
- [Tim] Okay.
- [Grace] And I'm currently just a character on the show.
- So you two are doing, like, hot rod,
not hot rod, Hot Wheels stuff, like, together
and obstacle courses and all sorts of fun flips
and puns and all that great stuff.
- Yeah so my role's kind of like the tomgirl
that's still is like fun and cool to be.
- [Man In Video] Oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh
oh woohoo!
- So would you guys look back on how you grew
your channel past one million subscribers,
what was one of the first things you did
that felt like, you felt like
really contributed to that growth?
- First thing was definitely researching the market.
So, again there's so many YouTube channels out there
but how can you get your foot in the door?
Well, we kind of sat back and we said,
what are five channels that we would produce content
that's similar to, or what's five channels that we think
would relate well with our audience?
What are they making videos on?
How are they performing, and is there, kind of, a video
that we can make that's similar to that?
So that's kind of the first step we did,
it's kind of just research what was out there
and what kind of content we can make around,
like, our general audience.
- That's so smart, so were you actually targeting,
trying to become suggested to those big videos
that were performing well, and was your goal,
can I just ride on the coattails of these other big videos?
- Yes, we did, we kind of said,
well if we can relate well to these channels,
we'll be suggested with their viewers and go from there,
and then later on we actually leveraged trends
to grow our audience.
- Yeah, so how did that impact your content?
Did you just try to copy them and do the same thing,
or were you like, let's take what they're doing,
that's working and put our unique spin on it?
- I would say a little bit of both.
I wouldn't say anything's necessarily a copy
even if you do the exact same thing as someone,
it always has your own personal twist
and your own way of delivering a message
that it's, I don't really consider anything copying.
It's like an artwork, you may paint the same painting,
but your technique of painting it is different
than that other person's technique
and it all comes out, especially in video,
in a different form.
So although you're doing things on the same topic,
it's actually a completely different
way that it's delivered.
- And are you, is this something that you still actively do,
or is that just in the beginning, or is this something
that creators should be considering long-term, like,
always be watching what people in your niche are doing?
- Grace and I, we watch other people all the time.
- Mmm-hmm.
- We are constantly studying other channels
that are doing similar things.
A lot of other channels have better ideas than us
and, you know, we kind of play off their ideas
and go from there.
- Yeah, I feel like it's kind of a mix.
We study other channels to spark our own ideas
but also look at their ideas
and see what they're doing as well.
- You evaluate what's working, what's not--
- And what's working for them, and then like,
their ideas spark other ideas for ours that
no one else is doing and then we can also do our own ideas.
- Love it, so great.
Research is really important
but also doing some keyword research,
looking at the trends, those are also important.
What's coming next to video, click what you see here
on your screen and we'll keep going in episode number two.