I'm going to tell you how I got from
fifty subscribers to twenty five
thousand subscribers in two months
I'm gonna break this now into three
sections the first section is what
happened I'm gonna tell you exactly what
videos I posted and how many subscribers
I got and then the second section how
did it happen
I'll go more into details into
explaining we're on YouTube and which
videos actually brought me two views
which eventually led to subscribers and
then finally the most important part why
it happened which I'll explain my
thought process in each video I made and
also the strategy die executed and how
it paid off now before I start this
video I just want to say that my growth
is not a hundred percent merit I use a
lot of unfair advantages but on the last
section which is why it happened I
talked about a lot of fundamental
concepts that you should understand if
you want to grow your YouTube channel
alright are you ready
I'm gonna go pretty fast on December 1st
I start with 50 subscribers I haven't
touched my count for months I was
gaining about maybe one or two
subscribers a week I only had two videos
uploaded but that was because I was
waiting for one thing that happened and
that thing to happen was a collaboration
with another youtuber so on December 7th
when Yuko published our collaboration
she posted a video that was about how to
get an internship and I posted the video
that was an interview with her at that
time she had 60 thousand subscribers so
the moment she posted that collaboration
I got 178 subscribers on that day and
the next day 102 subscribers so
basically within two days I went from 50
subscribers to 345 subscribers and then
for the rest of the month I was gaining
on average 30 subscribers a day which is
a huge leap for my one to two
subscribers a week I also posted a video
called how I got an internship at
Citadel on December 23rd so with the
momentum gained by my UCO's collab and
decided to split into two shows one the
startup series which is a mockumentary
about a fake startup on creating and two
the tech show which is to teach people
how to get into Silicon Valley and get a
successful career out of that this piece
is kind of important to remember when I
go through the Y section of this video
On January 1st I hit 1000 subscribers
and I released my fifth video which is
the second video
of my startup series right after I
release it I gained 100 subscribers that
day and then for the next few days I was
averaging around 100 subscribers also
but later on on the house section of the
video you'll quickly realize that it's
not because of that video it was
actually because of something else even
though that timing seems right it's not
because of my startup series on January
8th I celebrated my 1000 subscribers by
making a video about air pot giveaway
and that did not help at all but gave me
Instagram and Twitter followers and then
three days later I made a video called
how I got an internship at LinkedIn and
then on January 18th many things happen
I posted a video called engineers answer
your si s questions and I also started
live-streaming regularly and I made this
core channel in the following week my
live streams 7 times in 5 days between
January 1st and January 23rd I average
about 110 subscribers a day which got me
to 3400 subscribers at the end but that
was right before the most successful
video I've ever posted On January 24 I
posted a day in the life of a Facebook
engineer and that video skyrocketed my
growth the day I posted I gained 180
subscribers and then 5 days later
because of that video I was gaining
about 2300 subscribers a day so within 5
days I already reached 10,000
subscribers and during that time I kept
live-streaming
a lot on February 1st I posted my third
startup episode that actually didn't do
much at all because most of my
subscribers still came from that day in
the life video but my growth was slowing
down and I was gaining about 1000
subscribers a week as the growth was
slowing down I published a second day in
the life video so that bumped me back up
to around 1,000 subscribers a day so
from February 1st I had about you know
14 subscribers and now I only took 10
days to get to 25,000 subscribers
because I was averaging about 1000
subscribers a day and there you have it
25,000 subscribers in two months now
it's all good to know what happened and
usually it would be pretty obvious to
see which video actually caused the
increase in subscribers but let's
dissect the growth a little bit more
all right so one fundamental concept
that's pretty obvious but you still have
to keep in mind is that to grow your
subscriber count you have to have
non-subscriber views meaning you have to
reach new audiences so let's look at
which video start reaching new audiences
and how let's start with the Medeco
video so why was my interview with my
Yuko getting so many views the first
thing is that she had a huge audience
she had 60,000 subscribers you know it's
bound to happen that some of her viewers
will be curious enough about me because
I'm in their video to search me up and
to look at my videos but additionally my
Yuko added an end card and that was
vital to my growth so that end card
linked to my video the interview with
her so if you look at the analytics as
you can see for the first few days I got
my views mostly from end screens and
channel pages but then as you see as
time goes by if I look at the week later
I was getting more views from suggested
videos and even recommended videos from
the home page that's what they call home
browse features the reason is because
people watching my UCO's video like our
collab started watching my video right
afterwards because of the endcard but
then later on YouTube figured out that a
high percentage of people watching her
video went to my video right after so
then because of that they boosted my
video up next category of her video so
then I didn't need to depend on the end
cards anymore because I became the up
next video that also started happening
with all her other videos so that is how
I was growing at 30 subscribers a day
and then on January 1st if you remember
I was suddenly growing at 100
subscribers a day now you might think oh
maybe it's because of the start up
episode 2 but let's see what really
happened so if we break down 2 videos
the number 1 video getting the most
views and growing fastest is still my my
Yukos interview so how did it suddenly
spike up
well if you look at the traffic source
of that video you see that the initial
spike came from suggested videos and if
we dig into that if we click suggested
videos you see that
Mei Yuko just released her get ready for
2018 video and then my interview
happened to be the up next video and
then after that that's when YouTube
started promoting that video to people's
home page so that's what the Browse
features are now let's talk about the
one video that
skyrocket in my channel the day in a
life video that video was posted on
December 24 so how did they get so many
views alright let's look at the first
month from December 24 to December 26
for the first two days it did really
well with my subscribers and started
promoting it on people's home page in
addition I was able to get up to the up
next video of another day in the life
video at that time I already consider it
as a successful video because in three
days I accumulated 4.8 thousand views
however after that and blew up even more
because you know YouTube decided to
shove my video to everyone not even
subscribed to me under recommended
videos in addition to that my videos
were getting suggested on other people's
similar video and then that's how I got
to 25,000 subscribers because that one
video oh and by the way this video
format I just took it from my Yugo so I
once again thanks my Yuko now on to the
next section this section is actually
the most important because I actually go
through the concepts and how you to
think about hello now if you are a
subscriber you probably just see me as a
engineer who had too much time on his
hands and decided to make some fun
videos for the internet but what really
happened was an execution of a plan that
I started back in August 2017 even
before I made my first video so let's
get into it I was still in New York at
that time and I saw a video and my
recommended videos and that was my Yukos
day in the life video now I didn't watch
it but after a week I saw that the views
increased by maybe 10 times and it was
still my recommended videos I looked at
her channel and she had nothing else so
I knew I had to contact her it was the
perfect opportunity she was still new
such that my email wouldn't get buried
but she's also growing such that it's
gonna give masse results so while I was
waiting for her to contact me back in
parallel I knew that I had to make a
whole new channel dedicated to tech
because that's where she was in reason
number one I wanted my Yuko to agreed to
collaborate me reason number two when
the viewers are coming from her channel
the likelihood that they subscribe is
higher if it's a tech channel because
it's relevant I looked at all my skills
and my competitive advantage and I
realized that
two of the best skills I have was one I
had a ridiculous amount of internship
experience and two I had filmmaking
skills those were my two most valuable
assets as a creator so I found my niche
and I thought about two distinct series
one the textual and one the startup
series an entertainment show now this is
another important concept I want you
guys to understand for a channel there's
three main purposes for a video one
reaching new audience to converting
viewers to subscribers and three to
engage your current subscribers to
increase their affinity with you now the
third one didn't really matter to me
because I didn't even have any
subscribers to begin with so the tech
show was meant to give tips and tricks
for people who want to work at Silicon
Valley as you can see this is obviously
for purpose number one reaching a new
audience because when you're new you're
not going to reach any audience the only
way you can get a new audience is being
searchable and being relatable from
other kind of videos so what are people
searching for try searching for how to
get internships and I have the knowledge
for that so for my startup series
these were to convert viewers into
subscribers because there were a lot
higher quality videos and they were
entertaining so basically in some ways I
reeled them in with knowledge and I keep
them with entertainment so one month
later my uucle finally contacted me and
she agreed to meet at this point I
didn't have any videos but I sold her on
a dream on creating a new wave a
youtubers in tech fast forward a month
that's when I made my two first videos
and then just waited for the collab to
come up and the reason for these two
videos is that it increases the ratio of
viewers to subscribers and the reason
why is if you had an empty channel and
you just had that collaboration they
don't know if you're gonna keep posting
videos so there's no reason for them to
subscribe but if you already have two
videos they know that you're serious and
they know what value add to them so that
will increase the likelihood for them to
subscribe all right now let's talk about
why I decided to choose to make an
interview as a collaboration with my
yuko but before that there's a second
concept I want you to understand and
this is how do I get my videos to the up
next so a rule of thumb on how to crack
these algorithms these YouTube
algorithms is to put yourself in
YouTube's shoes imagine if you run
YouTube what would you like users to do
or to behave on your platform
I mean I personally if I owned YouTube I
want people to spend as much time as
they can on YouTube and one of the
features is up next so I asked myself
what kind of videos do I want to put
their videos that are relevant so maybe
they have the same tags or kind of
similar titles but I think we can do
better than that so once I get enough
people watching this video I want to
know which videos are most likely to be
watched right after this video and that
is how I will choose what videos to put
on the up next section so back to the
Manuka interview why did I choose that
video because one thing I saw is that
people who watch my Yukos video loved my
yuko people are very interested in her
personally and she did not fill that
void in her videos so I made this video
I had completed the void
I made this interview such that it was
personal and the reason why I did that
is because I know that right after they
watch a video about my yuko they want
more and then if my video can provide
that they will click that video right
after and that is how I got into the
suggested videos for all of our videos
so as you can see I was very dependent
on the up next category but when I grew
to 2,000 subscribers it was time to
change plans and that is to get on the
homepage
on the recommended videos so here we go
this is the next concept I want to talk
about how do you make you to promote
your videos onto the homepage for your
nonsubscribers once again let's pretend
we're YouTube again and what do we want
we want to increase time spent on our
website which should we put should we
put the most popular videos or the
videos from your subscribers list I mean
those are good but I think we can do
better and to talk about this I'm going
to use a concept that product managers
use often called the user funnel so this
is what the YouTube is choose your
funnel it looks like so what does this
user phone will have to do with getting
onto the home page well as a YouTube
product manager I want as many users to
reach the end of the funnel which is to
you know watch as many videos as
possible or like binge watch videos so
how do i optimize that where every user
has to start from the top and that is to
click a video and to see how successful
a video is is to look at the CTR aka
click-through rate which means how
likely are they going to click that
video so no matter how good your video
is if nobody clicks or video you're not
going to watch it they're not gonna see
it so it doesn't even matter so that's
why we call it the top
the final next bucket of the funnel is
if they watch your video so if your
video is good you'll generally get a
good wash time on your video so how does
YouTube measure that they measure it by
your average video watch time and then
lastly the last bucket the thing that we
care most about is that they start binge
watching videos so basically they want
to answer a question does your YouTube
video increase the time span of the user
on this website and that can be measured
by session time we can't really see this
but it means right when they click on
your video how long do they stay on
YouTube the higher that number the
better it is
because it means that your video was the
catalyst of this binge washing session
so what YouTube does is they will first
take the people who are most likely
going to watch your videos and show it
to them so most likely your subscribers
and then once it performs well for them
it will show to people who are less
likely going to watch it and then
they're going to see how it performs
with them and then you're gonna keep
doing this until they realize your video
has no more marginal benefit for them so
how do you make these videos that are
promoted by YouTube so looking back at
the funnel you have the last part and
then how do you increase that last part
broadridge through race there's one you
increase the CTR your video which means
the click-through rate so that means
thumbnail and title and then you want to
have a good video that they finish
watching which means you want to make
sure that you increase your audience
retention and also your watch time
artist retention is kind of tricky
because it depends on how long the video
is so just focus on having a average
watch time that is high and that you can
just do by having better videos or more
engaging videos in the third one
increasing session time that is a little
bit harder because you're not really in
control of what they're gonna watch next
but if you have a lot of good videos and
to recommend it on your own videos then
they could start binge watching your
videos so you could single-handedly
increase session time all right finally
let's wrap it up so how do you turn
those views into subscribers now and the
reason why subscribers are important
because they're the ones that are going
to see your videos first and they're
going to be the judge of them and
YouTube are going to take signals from
them to this site if they should promote
your video more or not alright for the
things I'm going to talk about next I'm
going to use another user funnel but
this time it's not YouTube's user funnel
it's my user funnel my channels user
funnel so as you can see the end of the
funnel is not
subscribers the end of funnel is
actually engaged users we usually talk
about getting more and more subscribers
but I don't believe that numbers
represent everything because I see a lot
of people with a hundred thousand
subscribers but only getting maybe 1000
views for each video and I also see good
accounts that have a hundred thousand
subscribers but they're getting fifty
thousand views per video so there's a
big difference there so this is why I
think the bottom of the funnel should be
engaged users but there are a lot of
different proxies to kind of measure
that one way I measure it is I look at
when I post a new video how many views
do I get into first 24 hours that are
from my subscribers so those are the
most engaged users that have there are
other proxies like how many people are
in your live streams or how many people
start following on the Instagram those
are your engaged users all right so now
I'm gonna talk about my channel strategy
and how I use the user funnel to decide
on what videos I make so obviously it's
best to increase the top of the user
funnel because if you increase 10% the
top of the funnel then it's the biggest
pie so at the end you're gonna increase
10% of engaged users so top of the
funnel we got to increase CTR now how do
we do that we want to get good
thumbnails and good titles and for
people to have reasons to watch your
video so this is why I make videos like
how I got an internship day-in-the-life
videos and all those click Beatty videos
my startup series
the ones I put the most effort in they
actually don't do that realm CTR because
they have no context to what it's about
but this series serve another purpose
which I'll explain later
so the problem of increasing the top of
your funnel is that YouTube does not
give you CTR metrics so that's a little
bit hard to see if you're doing well or
not but there are things that can give
you indication for example my video a
day in the life of a facebook engineer
obviously I put Facebook there for
clickbait I was getting a lot more views
on the first day compared to my other
videos so I would guess that people are
clicking more often because once you
publish a video YouTube does not know
who's interested in it so they would
probably send it to the same amount of
people as previously all right so let's
say once they click the video probably
75% of them actually watches more than
10 seconds of it you can look at this
using audience retention on your videos
all right so another concept I need to
bring in is about benchmarking and
that's just the fancy word to say
preparing yourselves to other people and
see how you fall so what I'd like to do
is I look at my other videos and also my
friends videos to see what kind of
metrics they get and then depending on
the metrics that they have it gives me
an indication to think about oh is this
even possible to move like this metric
so back to the 75% I think that's pretty
hard to improve because I've looked at
every other channel and not a lot of
them got more than 75% so I'd say once
they've reached a 10 seconds of the
video maybe 60% of them or 50% of them
actually finish your video depending on
how long your video is of course I
wouldn't worry too much about how many
people finish your video but I would
worry about your average watch time on
your video that's important because
YouTube would probably be using that as
a signal to see how high-quality your
video is and will boost it accordingly
so to increase that that's just about
content quality so I can't really help
you out there
all right so next part of the funnel is
having your viewers watch more videos or
visit your channel so this is just you
know if you have good videos they will
watch more of it and a way to measure
that is by looking at your suggested
videos on your analytics to see if you
get a lot of traffic coming from your
own videos if you do it means that a lot
of people are coming from your videos
and then they want to watch more and
they're binge watching your videos now
finally getting them to subscribe so my
current strategy is to reel them in with
knowledge like how to get internships
and stuff like that and make them stay
for the entertainment which is my
startup series even if you have one
viral video if your channel is not high
quality and has or has nothing to do
with the viral video people will not
subscribe make sure people have a good
idea on what they're subscribing to or
what your channel is about so how do you
know if you're doing well in converting
them to subscribers you have to look at
your ratio of new subscribers divided by
number of unconnected views unconnected
meaning nonsubscribers that ratio tells
you what is the percentage of people
watching your video that decide to
subscribe once again you should
benchmark look at other youtubers
account and see what their percentage is
this is not going to be a perfect
approximation because what you're
looking at is their daily subscribers /
daily amount of views so you can't
really get
non-subscriber views so how you do this
is you gon sociably you type an account
that you want to compare yourselves to
usually compare yourself with someone
with a similar subscriber count' and
also similar topic and then what you do
is you look at how many views they have
and you look at how many subscribers
they have on a daily average and then
you divide those two and you see the
percentage usually I think 5% is a
really good one now it's not over yet I
want to make sure that my subscribers
don't get bored of me and that is where
consistency comes in and I care about
engaged users not just subscribers some
people subscribe to over 50-plus
channels and they don't actively watch
all of them they might watch maybe you
know at max 10 of them actively so you
have to work really hard to reheat their
favorite youtuber the way you do that is
by being consistent and you upload often
that way you don't become irrelevant and
I eat live stream a lot because I can't
post every day but I can livestream
pretty much almost every day and then
that's how I keep my subscribers engaged
alright so that was super long and I
hope that was useful and that some of
these concepts will stick to you and I
think those are good frameworks to think
about how to make videos and how to grow
your channel but if there's only one
thing I want you guys to leave with is
remember that if you have an opportunity
or if there's an opportunity that rises
you better take it and then once you
take it you should double down on it so
this can be in a form of a collaboration
or of a viral video make sure you just
do that thing again so I hope you
enjoyed this data science approach to
growing a YouTube channel I actually
have a lot of other tips and tricks but
this video is already way too long so
I'm gonna keep that for maybe on there
time alright good luck and thanks for
watching
please
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