- Of course, MrBeast gets over 100 million views every video
because YouTube loves him, but it hates you.
The algorithm's against you, right?
Well, yes and no. (fire crackling)
(water splashing) (fire extinguisher hissing)
Let's put things into perspective.
Yes, absolutely, having a bigger channel
has three distinct advantages,
which we'll mention later on,
but not for the reasons you're thinking of.
And this guy, Todd from YouTube, who's on Twitter a lot
is gonna tell us why.
But first, I need to tell you a little short story.
So close your eyes and imagine this scene.
Imagine you're watching your kid's basketball game
at school, and at the end of the game, they call up all
of the parents to shoot some hoops.
The parent with the most points lands their kid
a brand new PS5.
So you walk down to the court feeling all excited.
I mean, you've been going
to the courts every Saturday morning since you were a kid.
A three pointer is nothing to you.
You've totally got this.
All the parents on the sideline are cheering
and you're feeling great.
And right as you're about to put your foot on the court,
you look up and figure out in a second
why everyone is cheering.
Nope, it wasn't for you.
Apparently, Michael Jordan's kids goes to the same school
and there he is towering over you.
Okay, stop right there.
With that in mind, let's get back to Todd and YouTube.
So Todd, in your own words,
how does the YouTube algorithm actually work?
- The main job of the algorithm
is to serve the user when they show up.
A lot of creators think
about things from the creator perspective.
Oh, well, I make a video and then YouTube pushes it out
to a bunch of people.
For the most part, recommendations and search
don't get pushed out, they get kind of pulled from viewers.
- Oh, so what Todd is saying
is that the algorithm recommends videos and channels based
on them proving to be of value, which means
that as a new channel, there is absolutely no hope
of finding me a spot in the recommendation system, right?
Incorrect. Here's why.
- When we have absolutely no behavioral data,
we're going to probably rely more on the metadata,
the data that we have
in terms of the title and the description.
- Ah, I have two takeaways from this clip.
First of all, it's invoking extreme anxiety.
Given the camera angle,
I don't know if there's enough headroom
between Todd and the fan.
Please don't stand up.
It looks lethal.
Second of all,
as a completely brand new channel with no watch history,
no subscribers and no views, I can still get recommended?
Yes, absolutely.
We always talk about the huge importance
of your thumbnail, title and to a lesser extent, description
and the transcript of your content.
They're not just there to raise curiosity
and look attractive enough for people to click on.
They actually give signs and indicators
to the YouTube algorithm on what exactly the video is about
and who can benefit from them if they search for this topic.
Speaking of search.
- And I would say search is probably the first place
for fresh videos.
You upload a brand new video around Minecraft,
we're going to consider that video when somebody searches
for Minecraft based on the title and description.
- Okay, Todd, so what you're saying
is as a brand new channel,
I should be focusing on search to get discovered.
The problem is when I do that,
all of the big channels seem to dominate all
of the search terms I'm going after anyway.
So why is that happening?
- As you can imagine, there's millions of Minecraft videos.
It wouldn't be a great viewer experience
if we gave every single Minecraft video a bunch
of impressions at the top of the Minecraft search results.
Most of those videos are not gonna be as good
as the top 10 Minecraft videos of all time
or the top 10 Minecraft videos that have been made
by really strong Minecraft creators who've honed their craft
over years and have established strong audiences.
So I would discourage creators from trying to like compete
in the most competitive spaces in the world.
- Back to the basketball court.
So you look up and you find Michael Jordan there
and everyone in the bleachers has their eyes stuck on him.
He shoots, he scores, he shoots, he scores again.
Out of the 10 shots, he misses just once.
Every single person in the audience is staring
at Jordan and the crowd goes wild with every shot,
even sharing clips as he sinks another basket
on their social media platforms of choice.
And then you're up next, doing exactly the same thing,
shooting hoops, scoring maybe five out of 10
but only about 1/10 of those in the bleachers
are watching you, while the rest
are still following Michael Jordan's every move.
Well, he obviously won
and he got all of the attention, but what do you think?
Was that a fair game?
Well, I would say yes.
He obviously has an advantage.
He's been playing basketball
for 3, 6, 10 hours every single day for decades.
He's played against the elite many times
and won in clutch situations.
He has built a career out of basketball
and created a massive following beyond.
So yes, he has an advantage.
Not only does he have tremendous skill
but tons of experience to go along with it.
And Todd will tell you the exact same thing.
He'll just use a different world-renowned athlete
for his metaphor.
- You're out there and you decide,
"Hey, I want to be an Olympic athlete,"
you're not gonna wanna run out there
and go against Usain Bolt on your first run.
You're gonna wanna train,
you're gonna wanna maybe find a particular race
that plays into your strengths.
- YouTube is super competitive, we all know that.
So you don't just need to work hard,
you also need to work smart
because right now,
you're probably not ready to go one-on-one
with the Michael Jordans of YouTube.
So what do you do instead?
- And so rather than go after like the Minecraft query,
for example, you might wanna find a niche
that isn't already being served
by a million other other videos.
And so I'd say look for the opportunities
that are not, you know,
as you search around, maybe use Google Trends, vidIQ
and other tools to kind of identify
what are some potential topics
that people might be searching for.
Spend time looking at what viewers see.
Where can you kind of produce the best video
for that kind of user intent that's gonna be better
than what's already there
because that's where the opportunity is.
- You know, I think there's a word that encapsulates all
of this that we've said many times before: niche.
But let's stack it on top of everything else we've learned.
Find a niche within a searchable topic
that isn't oversaturated.
Now, yes, Minecraft is a massive topic,
very searchable, but highly competitive.
Unless you know where to look.
Pretty much every week when we do channel audits,
we find a channel within the Minecraft topic, that is small
but growing because they've found
their perfect little corner of that video game.
And it's often through a fresh perspective
or with content that is better executed than anyone else
within the topic.
So yes, big channels have three distinct advantages
we've talked about throughout this video.
They have the experience, they have the data,
they have the followers to ensure
that every single video appears to be a success,
at least from your perspective.
But you have a new hunger, you have a fresh perspective
and YouTube will give you an opportunity.
There are channels out there, which given time
through their first videos get thousands of views.
Sometimes they go viral.
It is possible.
And once you have initially succeeded
with some search-based content
and got into people's watch history,
then you can target browse and suggested traffic.
Less search, more emotion.
This is how you do it.
(screen beeping)
And this is what you do when you need another seven seconds.
(timer beeping) (hands rubbing)
(bomb exploding)