- Hi guys, what's going on,
this is going to be my new YouTube webpage,
it's youtube.com/ninjashyper (record scratch)
- Hang on, hang on just a second.
This guy has over 17 million subscribers.
Eh? (robotic sounds)
♪ VidIQ, VidIQ, VidIQ.com ♪
- You know, the funny thing about the intro is
that we've been thinking about doing
this video for a couple of weeks.
And every time we look at a channel,
it's not where, it's got 15 million subscribers,
16 million, 17 million,
by the time this video goes live,
he'll probably have 18 million subscribers.
And by this time next month,
he'll have surpassed 20 million subscribers.
In the last month, Ninja has gained
one and a half million subscribers.
In the last six months,
his channel's grown by almost 14 million subscribers.
He's not just a YouTube megastar,
he is an internet social media phenomenon.
And that's the topic of today's case study.
Hello everyone, welcome to VidIq, my name is Rob.
If this is your first time in
these glorious YouTube surroudnings,
we are indeed the YouTube tooling channel
that aims to help you get more views in less time
by educating you on your YouTube journey.
Any of the YouTube analytics, graphs,
all tools that you see in this video,
that you're not familiar with, but like the look of,
come from our VidIQ Chrome Extension,
there is a link in the description.
And of course, it is free to download.
Tyler Blevins, otherwise known as Ninja,
this is his second YouTube channel.
Because, as he reveals in this video,
which incidentally has over 2 million views in itself,
he deleted his first channel.
If nothing else, this is an example of why it's fun
to keep all of your content on your channel,
instead of deleting it.
Because it tells you the whole
story of how Ninja went from this, to this.
(metal slashing)
(gunfire)
- This guy got a shotgun and was literally like,
(heavy breathing) "uh ah (screams)".
- Now, I'm not going to pretend to have a clue what's
going on here, as you already know,
my gaming knowledge and skills begin and end with
"GoldenEye" on the N64. (ding)
But for Ninja, Fortnite represents a current
white hot gaming topic, that draws in,
on average, 4 million YouTube views per video.
The channels gains around 6 million views per day.
175 million views per month, and somewhere in the region
of 50 thousand subscribers each and every day.
And this doesn't even represent Ninja's peak.
In March the channel gained more than
three and a half million subscribers,
and in May, his content was watched over 200 million times.
This kinda makes me want to tap into
the gaming audience here on VidIQ.
I just need to know which game we should play.
(snaps) (ding)
(beep) Let's get to the crux of why Ninja
is so popular on YouTube or any other platform.
And it's relatively simple, Liam Neeson puts it best.
- What I do have are a very particular set of skills.
Skills I have acquired over a very long career.
Skills that make me a nightmare for people like you.
- It's talent. Most sources suggest Ninja started
playing video games competitively in 2009.
But of course, all gamers know that to compete at any level
that involves prize money requires a lifetime's passion
and Tyler cites both his father and
brothers as major influences.
And yes, this is some of those family members
appearing on Family Feud.
You can look at pretty much any esport website
and it will tell you that Ninja has won competitions
over the last decade with prize winnings in excess
of at least 150 thousand dollars.
And while it may be Fortnite that's
catapulted Ninja into the mainstream,
it was games such as Halo3, among many others,
that helped hone his skills.
And you may disagree with what I'm about to say here,
but it is a generally accepted fact,
that video games are treated like sports
more than they ever have done,
and Ninja is, effectively, a professional athlete.
But he's a professional athlete who, for example,
in athletics, has gone from the hundred meter dash,
to two hundreds meters,
to the hundred and ten meters hurdles.
He has multiple skills in multiple disciplines.
And that is a very unique talent.
- Why do they want to watch you play?
- Um, I think that I offer a combination of
high game play, like high tier game play,
that they really can't get with a lot of content creators.
It's very difficult to be like one of the best
at a video game, in any game,
or at anything at all in the world.
- So that one that every video creator
struggles with at some point, that unique selling point.
The value proposition of your content.
What can you deliver that nobody else can?
Ninja understands completely, and delivers it
with everything that he creates.
Of course, what also helps is that being one of the best
gamers on the planet, on one of the
most popular games on the planet.
But that wasn't without it's risks.
This time last year, Ninja was posting YouTube videos
on PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds,
more commonly referred to as PUBG.
At the time, his videos on YouTube would average
five figures, sometimes six figures,
which is still fantastic.
On Twitch, each stream hovered around the
20 thousand view mark.
But then he decided to make a crucial decision,
and pivot to Fortnite, a game that at the time,
was still emerging.
It was a risk that according to this GameOnAir article,
appeared to backfire initially,
losing around 30% of his viewership.
But of course, sometimes timing is absolutely everything.
And Ninja's figures quickly recovered on Twitch,
and began to explode.
And that's exactly what happened on YouTube too,
with views jumping from the five figure average,
to six figures, and occasionally
breaking the million view barrier.
Now we've talked about creating content
just as a topic's about to trend, right here.
This was a very specific thing
in Fortnite that was occurring.
But what about when you create content that hits
the entire topic of Fortnite.
Well, this is what happens.
It was a pivot that paid off perfectly for Ninja.
Interest in Fortnite skyrocketed from Christmas onwards.
One of the key reasons for this being
that Fortnite is free to play.
So gamers can enjoy the video content
on their PC, PlayStation, or iPhone.
And then download it for nothing,
and become part of the experience.
PUBG, while still being an incredibly
popular game, is on the wane.
From a very simplistic viewpoint,
as "Forbes" magazine wrote "Fortnite has taken a massive
chunk out of the user base of PUBG"
Ninja chose the right side months before
any of us knew this was going to happen.
So, yes, you could argue that there was a
certain element of look involved.
Ninja chose something that blew up across the entire globe,
and his channel benefited from it.
But I always subscribe to the notion
that the harder you work, the more committed you are
to your goals, the more passionate you are about what you do
the luckier you end up being.
And here's the evidence.
In an interview for "Bud Light All-Stars"
Tyler said, "I'm not just sitting here playing video games
hoping I do good. No. You have to be better than
thousands of people. You have to be the best player
to even win money from tournaments.
What I do is very demanding, definitely.
As I continue to do it, my brothers, my girlfriend,
my family, they are starting to see how demanding it can be.
Now they are a lot more lenient with a lot of stuff.
It's a lot of give and take, and it's a lot of teamwork.
It used to be 'I have a game' and they will be upset,
and now they're okay with it. They're like, we get it."
So there is that sacrifice, and I'm sure,
we're all accustomed to that as video creators
when we throw ourselves into our latest video production.
But what does that sacrifice mean in Ninja's schedule?
Well it's pretty extraordinary.
In a recent H3 H3 podcast,
Ninja describes his regular day like such,
"The schedule is 9:30 is when I start in the morning
and then I play until 4,
so that's like six, six-and-a-half hours.
Then I'll take a nice three to four hour break with
the wife, the dogs, or family.
We have family nights too, and then come back on
around 7 o'clock central until like 2, 3 in the morning.
The minimum is 12 hours a day,
and then I'll sleep for less than six or seven hours."
I'm just exhausted reading that quote.
And is if to prove a point,
as I'm researching filming and editing this video,
I go to Ninja's Twitch, and he's live streaming right now.
So, Ninja is one of the best video game players in the world
He's playing one of the most
popular video games in the world,
and he's one of the most committed people
to what he does in the world.
Can you see how things are starting to add up here?
If you're still not convinced, we've got more.
Because what you see today is not only an expert video gamer
but also a very experienced, polished,
and skillful presenter of content.
Unlike the random thumbnails and terrible titles
that you see in Ninja's early YouTube work.
Remember, Ninja has been on YouTube for six years.
And it's only in the past 12 months
that his channel has started to blow up.
It has taken hundreds of videos and several reinventions
of the channel brand as we can see most evidently
through the thumbnails to get to where he is today.
And it's only in the last 12 months
where Ninja has really started to apply
two YouTube core fundamentals,
consistency of brand, and consistency of content.
His thumbnails are instantly recognizable,
and the audience knows from day to day what to expect,
and that is exactly what they want.
You are guaranteed to get the best Fortnite gameplay
from one of the best in the world.
And until such demand changes, Ninja will continue to be
one of the fastest growing channels on YouTube.
- And I also think I offer, I mean I'm very goofy.
If you've ever watched any of
my streams or my YouTube videos,
I do impressions and stuff like that all the time,
and just crazy shenanigans.
And I think that the combination of that,
it's like a hybrid, and it's just really fun to watch.
And a pretty positive environment as well.
♪ Who are you gonna call? Ghostbusters. ♪
♪ I think you better call. Ghostbusters. ♪
- [Rob] He's certainly goofy, as you can see,
but with that comes authenticity
and a true and honest connection with his audience.
You can see all of his video creating skills
evolving as you watch his content,
from the very first ones with almost no
video tags and questionable audio.
- Takes one shot, man top ready,
he jumped front red. Front red one shot.
- [Rob] To more confidence in front of camera,
and more confidence behind a microphone.
- Yes, please. Please, please, please don't creep up anymore
This is the perfect position to snipe from.
- [Rob] To a video creator who carefully considers
his titles, is able to rank for the biggest tags on YouTube,
and can snipe players on Fortnite
from a distance of 100 yards.
(gunshot) - I got him, oof.
- Now something we haven't really touched on yet,
is that YouTube is just one social media platform
that Ninja is a rockstar on.
Arguably, he is bigger on Twitch.
The numbers here are even more staggering.
This is just your typical day on a Ninja Twitch livestream
that is currently being watched by 75 thousand people.
If we take that as an average and multiply it by 12 hours,
the average amount of time Ninja
live streams every single day,
you get 900 thousand hours, or 54 million minutes,
or 102.7 years of watch time every single day.
(record scratch)
So I've just finished editing that graphic,
and the mind boggles, I don't know where to go from there.
I can not fathom such a figure.
The amount of watch time that Ninja gets
on his Twitch livestreams in a single day,
exceeds the lifetime of 99.9% of the world's population.
And what do all these people who are watching these
livestream do, other than this in the chats?
I'm lost for words.
In that case, let's go back to YouTube,
you can't just dump 12 hour videos
onto your channel every single day.
So what Ninja does is leverage the power of YouTube,
which is to take highlight games from the livestream,
which tend to be in the region of 15 to 20 minutes long,
and upload each one as a stand alone YouTube episode.
On Twitter, where incidentally,
he has over 3 million followers, he takes those videos,
and turns them into micro clips of around 30 seconds.
Again, leveraging the power of a platform
for fast mobile delivery of information.
And it's pretty much a rinse and repeat job on Instagram,
where he has just under 10 million followers.
Mostly micro video clips from Fortnite,
sprinkled with the occasional picture from his life.
All of which leaves us with yet more staggering numbers
to try and put into context.
18 million YouTube subscribers.
11 million Twitch followers.
10 million Instagram followers.
And over 3 million Twitter followers.
The only place that you may say he's had failure
on social media is Facebook,
where he's got a paltry 200 thousand Facebook likes.
Absolutely useless.
But I think it's fair to say that he has many
eggs in many different baskets.
And those baskets have been noticed by celebrity megastars.
- London, see if the studio in London too,
obviously got them everywhere.
- [Drake} Yeah, just working man, just you know
just trying to catch up lives, I was in Toronto
for like a minute, so I just, I had to come out
here for something, I just decided to
stay and work out here for a bit.
- The reason nobody calls you anymore Drake is because
you never answer your cell phone.
- I am flying through the air right now.
- All right, good, good, good.
- I am literally flying, I have a spaceship right now, dude.
This thing is insane.
- So this is your first time
ever playing this game, ever?
- This is literally my first time ever to play the game.
- Dude, we gotta give you a 100% win ratio.
- I just tossed out something out of my pocket
and it turned into a parachute.
And I'm about to land on top of the
building that you're inside.
- It's always nice to be able to collaborate
with a channel that has 35 million subscribers
on a video that gets over 30 million views.
Lovely little bit of exposure there for Ninja.
This is a waste of time.
(gunshots)
Yeah, I haven't really got anything
further I can add to this.
If you were to try and put this into some sort of YouTube
metaphor, Ninja has been hiding in plain sight
for five or six years, developing his YouTube skills
whilst being one of the best video
games players on the planet.
And then, all of the sudden, (snaps) He's everywhere.
He is one of, if not the YouTube story of 2018.
And as if to reinforce the myth of Ninja,
he's had a ninja style injury, almost losing an eye.
And back in July, there was a rumor he died.
But of course, that's an urban legend,
and since we started editing this video,
he's posted more on YouTube and gained probably
another 75 thousand subscribers. Phew.
You know I'd love to see what our
audit tool would make of Ninja's channel.
If anybody does know him, just give him a little nudge
and ask, "download the VidIQ Chrome extension,
it's free to download, click on that channel audit button,
and just take a look at those numbers."
Because the ones we've gone through in this
video are utterly astonishing.
To get full insight on his channel would be amazing.
But of course, you can do it on your channel right now.
Now I just wanted to give a big shout out to
VidIQ community member, Khaiser, who suggested
in our video comments to do a deep dive on Ninja.
We had a lot of fun doing research on this YouTuber,
as well as putting together a much
more detailed video than usual.
Let us know what you think of this approach
to video making in the comments below.
And if you'd like us to do another one,
of course, suggestions in the comments below.
If you're hungry for more video content about Fortnite
on YouTube, we've done a case study on how small
channels can have viral videos right here.
And if you're into gaming as a whole,
we've got a gaming playlist down here
on how to start gaming channels and grow your channel.
We'll see you on either of those videos,
enjoy the rest of your video making day.