- How does a channel get more than 300,000 subscribers
in two weeks for around about 10 minutes work,
whilst at the same time
views on a channel absolutely collapse?
It's a fascinating story.
So sit down, settle in, and I'll tell you all about it.
(invigorating music)
The Streamy Awards,
it's like the Oscars for content creators
and you'll find names like Mr. Beast,
Emma Chamberlain, FaZe Clan,
and Ryan's World nominated for multiple categories.
And this year our good friend, Jake Fellman,
made the list in the short form section.
That's pretty cool, right?
If you're unfamiliar with his work,
Jake Fellman makes 3D animation YouTube shorts
on popular games and culture.
And in a space of a single year,
he has gained 6.7 billion views
in a shade under 8 million subscribers.
And it's that next diamond milestone
that's almost impossible to ignore at this point.
This phenomenal success story is in large part
thanks to the birth of shorts,
YouTube's answer to TikTok.
And whether you love it or hate it,
it's definitely here to stay.
However, what I'm sharing with you today
has almost nothing to do with YouTube shorts whatsoever.
Jake Fellman,
who I've nicknamed the Algorithm Killer,
has figured out YouTube all over again.
This is Jake Fellman's daily view counts
over the last year,
which he has kindly shared with us.
And yes, those are indeed millions.
He made 100 animation shorts
on the super popular "Among Us" video game
and then transitioned to Minecraft
for a hundred more shorts.
Like any channel, it has its peaks and troughs
and right now, we're seeing a little bit of a downturn.
There are a couple of reasons for this.
Jake isn't posting on a daily basis
like he was early on in the year
to protect himself from burnout.
And he recently pivoted his content
from Minecraft to Squid Game shorts.
A very shrewd move in my opinion,
but that's going to lead to a bit of view lag time.
But hey, if the largest creators on the platform
are jumping onto this trend,
you can't really afford to ignore it.
Stepping back into Jake's analytics,
here are the daily subscriber accounts over the last year.
And yes, these are indeed tens of thousands.
The pattern is pretty similar to the view counts
until we get to the end
where instead of a subscriber slump,
Jake is enjoying a subscriber surge,
which doesn't make any sense, does it?
How can views be well down
but subscriber accounts remain very healthy?
Well, I did promise you all a story
and well, literally it is a YouTube story.
We all know by now that YouTube shorts
has its own shelf in the mobile app, right?
But you know what else has its own shelf?
YouTube stories.
Every single user can see and watch YouTube stories,
but not every single creator can make one.
And what else happens when you watch YouTube stories?
It shows all of your stories in sequence
before moving to the next channel.
Stories last for seven days
and they are limited to 15 seconds in length,
which means that if they hook you in as a viewer,
you can watch loads of YouTube stories
from one creator in matter of minutes.
And this is what Jake Fellman has been up to,
reposting his old YouTube shorts as YouTube stories.
But wait right there, I hear you cry.
Isn't this a flagrant abuse of YouTube's policies?
Isn't this all reused content?
Well, usually I would agree with you,
but YouTube told Jake to do this.
You see, YouTube has this thing called Partner Managers
that are often assigned to larger creators.
And being the high role that Jake is these days,
he got his very own YouTube Partner Manager
who suggested the idea of repurposing his shorts
into YouTube stories.
And here's the really curious thing about YouTube stories,
viewers know virtually nothing about them
from a data perspective.
You don't know how many views, likes, or comments they have,
but if you're not subscribed,
there is that bright and beautiful red button
for you to press.
And guess what? That's exactly what
viewers of Jake Fellman's stories have started doing.
From zero subscribers as a traffic source
at the start of October,
Jake Fellman stories,
that he has already posted on his channel
six months ago as shorts,
have brought in an incredible 300,000 subscribers.
That's over 50% of his total subscribers
for that time period.
That is bonkers.
And it's only the half of it.
Over the last two weeks,
Jake Fellman's YouTube stories
have helped sustain subscriber growth on the channel,
but they haven't done anything for views.
Or have they?
If you post YouTube stories,
you can get some very simple metrics
from the analytics page in the YouTube studio.
Obviously, subscribers gained from stories
do count towards your channel, but views don't.
And so when we look at Jake Fellman's stories analytics,
not only is he getting plenty of subscribers,
but he's getting plenty of views as well,
over 50 million in the last seven days
or over 225 million
since he started posting YouTube stories
a little over two weeks ago.
So in reality, this isn't a channel struggling for views,
this is a channel that has discovered quite possibly
the most powerful and underutilized tool there is.
However, and unfortunately,
not many creators can take advantage of this hack.
But if you do have 10,000 subscribers
and you do have access to YouTube stories
and you have posted successful YouTube shorts in the past
that are 15 seconds or less,
you've got nothing to lose, have you?
I know it's going to apply
to about three people watching this video right now.
But here's something to be hopeful about.
YouTube often lowers the requirements of its features.
For example, very recently
it's lowered the requirements for both the community tab
and mentions from 1000 subscribers to 500 subscribers.
I'm not making any promises,
but maybe in the future,
you will need less than 10,000 subscribers
to start using YouTube stories.
- In case you didn't know,
stories are a mobile-only tool
accessed from the create button in the YouTube mobile app.
They are very, very similar to shorts
in how you record a video
or upload one from your phone's gallery,
just like Jake Fellman is doing.
You don't create a thumbnail, or a title, or a description.
You simply film and post.
As briefly mentioned earlier,
none of the views, likes, or comments
count towards your channel, only subscribers.
And there is no monetization angle here, either.
No ad revenue and no shorts bonus payments to be had.
Put simply, YouTube stories, just like regular videos,
just like live streams,
just like YouTube shorts,
just like the community tab,
is another way to distribute your content
to the mammoth YouTube audience.
Now, let's get back to this diamond play button.
Currently, Jake Fellman is 2 million subscribers short.
But given the success he's recently had
with YouTube stories, theoretically
he doesn't have to post another YouTube video.
He could just repost all of those shorts as stories
over the next three to four months
and he would hit 10 million subscribers.
Zero views, 2 million subscribers,
you try and figure that one out.
In the meantime,
if you do want to learn more
about reaching more of your audience
through tools that might be available to you
such as the community tab
which now only requires 500 subscribers,
then check out the video over here.