YouTube can be overwhelming as you're starting.
When a million "YouTube Experts" are screaming in your ear about different YouTube strategies, you can get lost in the BS.
Here's the truth that most of these "experts" don't know…
YouTube is a STUPID EASY platform to understand. However, everyone LOVES to overcomplicate it.
Forget what all of these bastards are saying and listen up here because we will be break down the 5 MYTHS about YouTube most of you might be believing.
Myth #1: "The Number Of YouTube Subscribers You Have Determines How Successful You Are!"
Don't listen to this crap!
YouTube Subscribers is a vanity metric that says nothing about how much value you provide.
Achieving the 1,000,000 subscriber threshold is 100% possible to attain… But do you need it?
You don't, and here is why…
Let's compare two YouTubers. Let's say Creator A has 20,000 subscribers and Creator B has 1,000,000 subscribers. Most of you would probably say that Creator B successfully has over a million subs, and Creators A is slacking off.
However, when you take a deeper look at both channels, you will begin to realize that Creator A is the one who's killing it.
Creator A:
- Interacts with thousands of his fans that respect him
- Gets his viewers to participate in challenges that he puts out
- He tries to figure out ways to get his community more engaged.
- His fans comment on all his videos.
- He gets his fans to subscribe to his email list
- His viewers purchase his products and then continue purchasing more of them.
Let's compare Creator B with his 1,000,000 subscribers…
Creator B:
- His fans know and like his channel, but they only watch it for entertainment or educational purposes.
- His fans know who he is, but they couldn't care less about his story.
- His goal is to get the maximum amount of likes, views, and subscribers, instead of building a community.
- Creator B does not have an email list set up and doesn't sell any products.
- He relies on YouTube Adsense to make his money and worries that he'll start losing it.
- He worries about plateauing and losing his subscribers.
Which of these two creators do you think is more satisfied with their channel?
Duh... Channel A!
For all we know, Creator A might be a multi-millionaire marketing genius while Creator B is struggling to pay his rent!
Don't make the mistake of judging a channel by its subscriber count, especially if you're looking for collaborations. You might be thinking, "Hey, this channel looks cool! Let's work with him and try to grab his fanbase, which has millions of people!"
Even worse, you decide to pay this guy thousands of dollars for a collab, and after you finish the collaboration, you gain maybe 50 new subscribers.
That would suck!
However, we're not going to sit here and say that having a million subscribers and attracting diehard fans isn't possible. Of course, it is, but these YouTubers are challenging to find.
You need to be looking for the right fans that want to binge on your content and invest in you; otherwise, you'll be enslaving yourself to the YouTube platform.
Myth #2: "Make your thumbnails clickbait if you want to get views!"
The part where content creators get wrong is trying to make their thumbnails as clickbait as possible without providing content that the audience deems valuable.
There are three core parts to the game of YouTube…
- Session Watch Time
Your videos will not perform well if you're doing great at one of these areas but suck at the others.
Keep making those clickbait thumbnails; we wholeheartedly endorse it. However, you need to back it up with solid content.
Imagine being a viewer, clicking on a video that you thought looked like it was worth your time, only to find out that it was garbage, and you clicked off straight away.
That is what happens from a viewer's perspective when your videos have brilliant thumbnails, but the content is terrible.
The way you should be seeing YouTube is through the lens of sharing a message that is presented in a complete package that people want to watch.
What's the point if your thumbnails bring people in, but the content makes everyone want to click off?
So put in the effort, invest in the time to put together a video that the whole world wants to watch, why not aim for millions of views?
The YouTube algorithm will stop your video dead in its tracks if your viewers aren't sticking around to watch your videos.
In the long term, your videos will continue to perform worse as YouTube recommends your content less.
Think of it as a negative compound effect. First, your viewers click off your video far too early. Then, YouTube recommends your videos less on the home page, and then your "incredible" clickbait thumbnails are now rendered useless…
It sucks a lot in the end, so start focusing on providing that complete package for your content. You'll go a lot further and have far more reach as YouTube attempts to provide you with more impressions due to higher watch time, session watch time, and audience retention levels.
Myth #3: "View Count Matters!"
Views are probably one of the most exciting things you can get on YouTube. It's fun to watch one of your videos get thousands of views, and sometimes millions!
However, most of you don't realize that the views you are getting are the result of YouTube's two most unrecognized stats…
Watch time and session watch time.
Why does no one mention these stats? Because they are boring to say and reveal YouTube's secret system to keep you on the platform!
First, let's quickly break down what watch time is.
Watch time is the length of time viewers watch your video. You can track this stat simply by going into YouTube Studio, hovering over a video, then clicking on "analytics."
The more watch time you get, the likelier your video will keep viewers on the platform. And that is why Session Watch Time is also critical to the growth of your channel...
One of the signals YouTube looks for is how much time people spend watching a video and how the video contributes to the overall viewing session.
This is called Session Watch Time.
Let's say YouTube surfaces two videos, Video A and Video B.
When we surface video A, most of the viewers stay on YouTube for two minutes. Video B's viewers, on the other hand, remain on YouTube for another 30 minutes.
Video B is going to win because YouTube favors videos that keep viewers on the platform longer.
YouTube will also reward you for getting your viewers to continue watching other videos THAT ARE NOT from your channel.
Your competitors are helping you grow your channel! How funny is that?
YouTube wants users to stay on the platform as long as possible, watch as many videos as possible, subscribe to as many channels as possible, and see as many ads as possible!
If you help YouTube increase viewer's session time on the platform, they will thank you for it!
Just think about it for a second… YouTube is a business that is trying to extract as much money as possible from its viewers.
Yes, it sounds dark, but it isn't, especially if you're a content creator trying to make money off the platform.
We'll paint the picture so you can understand what we're saying here…
1. You, the content creator, post a video.
2. A viewer watches the video you posted.
3. As he watches the video, pre-roll, mid-roll, and post-roll ads display.
4. The advertiser makes money from the ads you watched.
5. The advertisers make money.
6. YouTube gets a cut of the capital.
The money YouTube made gets reinvested into the platform (and other purposes outside of YouTube…), which helps it develop the platform further and, most importantly, pay its creators.
Most creators and casual users will never think of the process YouTube's algorithm goes through to keep people using YouTube.
Most of us will think, "oh! YouTube is a business that is trying to make money off of views and subscribers!"
Although we do think YouTube's algorithm is pretty clear cut, it's not as simple as thinking that vanity metrics like views and subscribers contribute to everything towards a creator's growth.
So, the next time you're creating a video, you should be thinking, "I need to boost my watch time and session watch time!"
Then you will be on your way to 100k subscribers and beyond!
Myth #4: "SEO tags and keywords are vital to growing your YouTube channel!"
We're shaking our heads right now…
Let us say this bluntly, so you remember this forever…
SEO tags and keywords are probably the most useless features on YouTube!
You're not going to grow your fanbase just by adding a couple of "high-ranking keywords."
You know what will certainly grow your content… The right strategies and amazing content!
We see MANY people going on and off about SEO tags in forums, YouTube videos, and sometimes even our clients slip up and say it! You need to erase SEO and keywords from your YouTube dictionary!
YouTube itself has already confirmed that the SEO section is mainly used for misspellings. So are you going to really spend hours researching the best keywords that are spelled correctly?
Stop wasting your time and start figuring out ways to provide shit tons of value to your viewers. Your viewers and the YouTube algorithm with reward you if you do it...
Myth #5: "Shorts are the newest and best way to grow your channel!"
Again, false. It's not a matter of what style of content you choose. Instead, it is how good your content is in that particular style.
Suppose you're used to creating scripted content videos and decide to go into live streaming, and you're completely unprepared. In that case, you will fail miserably, of course.
Ensuring you have a high level of competency regarding the content style you're working with is the golden key to success.
So, in the case of this myth, shorts will build your brand as much as longer-form content will, but only if you focus and put out content that the people want to watch.
The advantage of YouTube shorts is that people are far more likely to watch any particular short in front of them. Still, the number of impressions that you'll receive is far less.
This is due to viewers only being able to view one YouTube short at a time, compared to every other style of content viewed on the YouTube homepage.
So make it count. If you're creating YouTube shorts, you need to condense your message into 60 seconds or less. On top of that, we'd even argue that you should aim for the lowest duration possible for a YouTube short.
This is because viewers scrolling through shorts are looking to consume the most value and/or entertainment in the lowest amount of time possible.
It is possible to run a YouTube channel that is primarily filled with YouTube short videos and succeed. For reference, take a look at the YouTube channel: Girls With Guns
They have over 1.2 million subscribers with over 400 videos. With a quick scroll through the channel, you can easily see the content is geared towards YouTube shorts and other short-form content.
You've likely seen them when you've scrolled through a few shorts, kind of hard to ignore attractive women shooting guns with high recoil…
In essence, choosing one style of content creation over the other isn't what dictates whether you succeed or not. Rather, it is how you handle your channel and the videos you put out for your fans.
Are your viewers coming back for more?
Are your analytics showing that they are engaging with your content and watching for long periods of time?
What about the comments? Are people explicitly mentioning they are enjoying your content?
These are the sort of questions you should be asking instead of whether or not one style of content is better than the other.
Conclusion
Don't make things harder for yourself than they have to be.
Pick a path, get started, and if you've already made some progress reassess your knowledge on what is needed to create a successful channel.
You should be planning out your content in a way that will bring your audience back for more, no matter what style of content you choose.
Here are the core things to remember from these myths we've dispelled today:
Subscribers don't matter nearly as much as you think. They may have some effect regarding networking and social proof. Still, it is by far not the highest metric judged by the YouTube Algorithm.
Just because you have incredible clickbait thumbnails that viewers are clicking on all the time does not mean they are sticking around to watch the video. Put yourself in the viewer's shoes, imagine clicking on a video that had an exciting thumbnail (that in our minds indicate the video should be good), then suddenly, you're watching some boring video with a maximum quality of 360p which drags on for 15 minutes…
Yeah, I'm sure you can see the problem.
This takes us into the next myth. View counts don't matter. As mentioned, clickbait thumbnails can increase your views, but everyone clicks off in the first 30 seconds.
YouTube is also not judging the performance of your channel through your view counts, so focusing entirely on views isn't going to get you anywhere fast.
Speaking of useless metrics, SEO tags are at the top. YouTube has even stated that the tags account for less than 10% of your search result performance. Getting super creative with your tags isn't seen in a positive light by the Holy YouTube Algorithm.
Lastly, arguing that one style of content is better than another is a severe waste of time. Stop with the stereotypes and start putting out interesting content, and you'll have a lot fewer problems with your growth.
The bottom line is, stay focused, do what you do best, and ensure you're providing as much value as possible for your fans.
If you want to stay focused on the best YouTube strategies, click that red button below.
We will hold your hand throughout the ENTIRE process and guide you to reach most YouTubers' desired milestone…
The ultimate 100k subscriber plaque!
