You wouldn't expect it, but Linus Sebastian somehow got almost 14 million YouTube subscribers with a pair of sandals and a quirky sense of humor!
Linus is running a fully-fledged business operation with an entire workforce behind his YouTube channel. This YouTube operation is hosted in a massive office with various workstations, sets, and studios optimized to create content.
Linus' channel has managed to scale to the size of a YouTube empire. There haven't been many like him who've built such a diverse team with a range of skill sets.
Many video editing techniques are employed seamlessly on the Linus Tech Tips channel, along with shameless segways to plug his Linus Tech Tips store.
From content managers to writers and even fashion designers, Linus's media team has everything you can imagine to support his brand and YouTube channel.
Much of Linus’s success comes from providing value from day 1. He has gone to every effort to provide immense levels of value in each video to discuss technical information on computer building and understanding technology.
Linus and his team of content creators keep a very light-hearted and educational approach on YouTube. They have a range of tools for maximizing watch time and engagement on their channel. Humor, information, and seamless editing have taken them a long way.
Linus Glues Your Eyes To The Screen
Linus utilizes all kinds of angles and jump cuts, and videography styles to keep your eyes glued to the screen.
Having jump cuts that zoom right in and then right out again is a fantastic way of re-engaging your attention. But, unfortunately, as the years pass by, our attention span as society continues to decrease, or instead, we simply get bored quickly as we are spoiled with exciting content all the time.
The J-cut is also used in a lot of Linus’s content, and this is where the audio of the next cut starts playing as the previous clip finishes. This creates a smoother transition between 2 clips, usually about half a second difference or less. The idea behind it is to introduce the audio first and then the visual afterward, so it is easier to watch and takes away the roughness from a regular jump cut.
When it comes to B-roll, Linus has the advantage of using very flashy commercials of products that he is discussing in his content. It’s usually the case that new computers, computer parts, and other gadgets have a ‘high tech’ look.
This is perfect for Linus because all he would need to do is take parts of these advertisements and use them as B-roll. Then, pairing them with his in-house B-roll footage of the same product creates a formula for highly engaging content from a visual perspective.
The editing staff uses a lot of text on the screen for the audience to keep up with the parts and specs listed on computers. This is a valuable strategy if you’re creating content where you constantly list off many things at once or have specific details about events such as dates, times, and other titles.
His primary target audience is young male gamers, who find interest in his content through a seamless flow of clean and vibrant graphics. Understanding your target audience is critical for how you present your content and how you handle it afterward in post-processing.
Linus constantly switches between shots of him talking to the camera and closeups of computer parts he specifically refers to. Again, this ties into understanding target audiences. His audiences are men, and men are primarily interested in things.
So, for example, young men who are technically inclined are engaged when studying technology specifications, building computers/gadgets, and troubleshooting technical problems.
Linus Creates Thumbnails That Hook Your Eye
Linus Tech Tips thumbnails and titles are one of the main reasons why each video on the channel gets a million views. With over 4.92 billion total views on the channel, it's clear that Linus's team is doing something right to get viewers to click on their videos.
If you look at the channel, you will notice one essential aspect to the channel's thumbnail designs. Linus's face!
No… Linus is not a narcissist looking for attention; instead, his face is used for branding. Linus is a well-known YouTuber within the tech review space. So if you saw a Linus Tech Tips thumbnail show up on your feed, most of you would know who the nerdy-looking man in the thumbnail is.
However, if you took his face off the graphic and just put it in a laptop with the same color background, the video might still get hundreds of thousands of views, but nowhere near the typical 1 million view mark!
When you create consistency with your channel, viewers begin to recognize your videos with a quick glance.
Finding the right thumbnail design for your channel will take time. When we work with clients, we will typically go through dozens of different thumbnail designs before sticking to one. Thumbnails are critical to your channel's growth. If your thumbnails aren't easily getting recognized and clicked on by your audience, chances are your designs need work.
How do you find the right thumbnail design? First, you need to constantly experiment with recommended software like Photoshop or Canva and tinker with the colors, images, faces, emotions, and text.
Click on the button below to receive the full tutorial of how we designed this thumbnail, you'll even get a FREE photoshop file already set up, in the YouTube video description!
You can track your thumbnails analytics through YouTube Studio's analytics feature. Once you click on the analytics, click on reach. From here, you can see the total impressions, click-through rate, traffic source types, where your traffic is coming from, and see the videos YouTube is suggesting to your audience.
The critical analytics you need to focus on are the impressions and click-through rates. Within a couple of hours, you can accurately gauge whether or not your thumbnail performed well with two numbers.
An impression is the number of times your video is displayed to the viewer. The click-through rate is the total percentage of viewers clicking on the video after YouTube showed your video (impression.)
Try to aim for a 10% click-through rate for your thumbnails. 6% is a reasonable click-through rate, but anything at or above 10% is excellent. If the thumbnails you create are constantly getting 10%, chances are you're doing something right with the thumbnail design and the title below the thumbnail.
Your ability to see if your impressions are performing well will depend on the older videos you released. For example, if your newest video got 100,000 impressions while your previous video got 50,000, the latest video performed better because a high number of viewers clicked on the video and watched a high percentage of the video.
Let's move back to Linus's channel...
The other key characteristics you will see in his thumbnails are flashy gamer-like rainbow colors with excessive emotion. In addition, the thumbnails create a sort of comedic element to the channel's branding.
Figure out what kind of emotion you want to display to your viewers. Are your thumbnails going to be serious, funny, crazy, or neutral? Your face is not required to be on the thumbnail, but make sure the images, colors, and text (text is unnecessary for some thumbnails) create some emotion.
Linus, for example, displays a fun, comedic, and energizing style because the channel represents Linus's day-to-day personality. You need to figure out your true personality and attach it to the video's thumbnail and title. If you genuinely think you're a serious and professional guy, that is what your thumbnails should display!
Create thumbnails that show the real you and avoid branding yourself as a personality that you are not. The viewers will catch on to your fake personality and trust you less. Don't let that happen!
If we look at Linus's thumbnails, you will notice the same fun, comedic, and energizing style. Linus likes to add titles that create a question for the viewer after hooking the viewer's eyes with the thumbnail.
Linus never reveals what the video is about. Instead, he will often make a crazy statement that doesn't tell much and tempts the viewers into clicking the video after seeing the thumbnail and title that makes you curious.
Make sure to keep your titles short and straight to the point, like Linus's videos. The best way to see if your title is too long is by using the tool "thumbsup.tv". Try to create thumbnails that can fit within a user's phone and desktop screens. If the thumbnail gets cut off, the title is too long!
Linus Is A Master At Making Shameless Plugs Fun
Linus is a king at showing no shame when it comes to plugging his sponsors and his Linus Tech Tips Store throughout his videos. On top of that, he is excellent at just dropping it on you suddenly, even if he was just in the middle of an essential point in the video.
And that's the point, catching you when you're engaged in his content and then quickly letting you know about the special offer he has for you before diving back into the content.
It's a tricky balance when it comes to bringing sponsors into the video. If you drag it on for too long and spend an entire minute of the video on your advertisement, you're most likely going to piss off your audience.
The key is to ensure that you're getting the core message out about the product or service you're advertising for and then getting back into your standard program afterward.
Of course, you need to appease your sponsor so coming up with creative ideas like Linus to place products in your content is crucial to success with balancing advertisement in your content.
Linus makes sure to keep it short and sweet; having advertisements that are only seconds long keeps his viewer retention high and time spent rambling on about sponsors low.
The craziest fact is that most viewers love the plugs because they are so ridiculous, making it fun for viewers to watch. You will see viewers in the comments responding to how Linus plugged his Linus Tech Tips Store.
Linus Is An Undercover Sandal Wearing Business Alpha
If you watch Linus’s videos, you will notice the sheer amount of videos the channel releases.
With 8 total channels and 17 videos per week, Linus needs a staff of hard workers to manage the day-to-day operation. Fortunately for Linus Media Group, the group consists of 43 team members!
Don’t let Linus’s boyish look and disgusting sandals fool you! Linus is a business alpha who knows the ins and outs of running a full-scale business.
Some of you might think that YouTube is a side hustle that requires minimal effort...
YOU’RE WRONG!
YouTube can turn into a full-time business that can require you to work more or less than your regular 9 to 5 job (depending on how you systemize the channel) and generate millions of dollars at the same time!
Why the hell does Linus need so many people to run a YouTube channel?
You need to understand that building a channel that generates millions of dollars requires a lot of effort. So as Linus’s channel grows, his responsibilities grow with it.
Once you reach a point where you’re making enough money to support yourself through YouTube, it’s wise to give away responsibilities to other people to focus on tasks that do not require you to perform time-consuming yet straightforward activities.
When you start your channel, you will initially be editing videos, creating thumbnails, doing market research, and writing scripts all by yourself.
Over time, you begin to get bogged down in tasks that might have seemed easy at first but become more challenging mentally the more you do it.
It wouldn’t make sense for Linus to research 17 topics, write 17 scripts, film 17 videos, edit 17 videos, and create 17 thumbnails. That would be a headache! But, at the same time, Linus would need to figure out new ways to continue innovating the channel and look for new business sponsorships.
Too much work on YouTube leads to burnout!
Burnout can eventually lead the business to plateau or, even worse, decline! Getting overworked within the YouTube space is very common. It even happened to Linus 1 year ago when he told his community that he had thought about retiring.
To scale on YouTube, you need to figure out how to hire specialists who know how to make creative content and generate new ideas.
That is why Linus continues to hire new people. First, however, he needs to find ways to get his staff to do tasks that take up too much of his energy and time, even if it involves hiring a manager that does a simple job like telling someone to build a water-cooled pc.
Once he replaces a task that took too much of his energy, he can focus on spending more time doing what he loves outside of the business and coming up with new ways to scale.
Scaling is critical, especially when Linus needs to support his family, pay his staffs’ salaries, purchase the necessary equipment to maintain the large creator warehouse, and pay taxes to the Canadian government.
Linus Media Group has 43 employees specializing in different areas, including content creation, management, and business analysis. These areas include:
- 1 CFO
- 1 COO
- 5 Managers
- 3 Cinematographers
- 7 Editors
- 1 Accountant
- 1 Bookkeeper
- 9 Writers
- 1 Product Designer
- 1 Graphic Designer
- 2 Logistics
- 2 Account Lead
- 1 Engineer
- 1 Event Coordinator
- 2 Customer Service
- 2 Fashion Designers
- 1 Social Media Coordinator
Once you factor in Linus’s 43 employees, 11 sponsors, 8 channels, projects, merchandise, collaborations, the Linus tech tips forum, and client work, you begin to realize that Linus Tech Tips is not just a YouTube channel; it’s a full-blown agency!
Linus’s “How does Linus make money?” video explained where most of Linus's 2020 income came from.
He stated that the total revenue they received in 2020 was from merchandise (15%), Floatplane (6%), Amazon Associates (9%), other affiliates (2%), YouTube AdSense (26%), in-video sponsor spots (27%), sponsored projects (14%), and other revenue (1%).
We don’t know how much money Linus Media Group makes. Many articles on the internet attempt to predict Linus Tech Tips' net worth, and it would be inaccurate for us to tell you the exact amount, especially after Linus told his fans that almost every article on the internet is an incorrect one.
However, the data Linus gave his audience provides a wealth of information that most big YouTubers are not willing to share. It allows us to see how much money a YouTube business can bring and identify where the money is coming from.
Linus Media Group is diversified to where the company doesn’t need to worry about just receiving YouTube AdSense revenue. If YouTube decided to demonetize Linus Tech Tips or raise taxes, the channel would still be making money from the other 74% of income coming in.
If you want to become a full-time YouTuber, you must treat the platform as a business. When you don’t treat it like a business and grow to a point where you’re overworking yourself, you will struggle to scale.
Your struggle to scale could be caused by your refusal to hire, avoid researching your competitors and topics, forget to find new income streams, rely on YouTube’s AdSense program, and hope that YouTube doesn’t introduce an update that could slow down growth or take away your money.
Don’t be ignorant and make YouTube your prison. YouTube has endless opportunities if you treat it like a businessman.
Conclusion
Linus and his media team never fail to give high-quality value and entertainment in each piece of content put out on YouTube. His marketing ability on YouTube has come leaps and bounds over the years.
With a fun and informative approach, Linus excels in the tech reviewing industry on YouTube, and he is unique in the space, especially when you consider that he runs an entire workforce to support his channel and brand.
Linus Sebastian has become a true business alpha on YouTube, providing his audience with incredible levels of value while keeping it entirely digestible through seamless editing and adding humor throughout his content.
Running a successful YouTube channel like Linus Tech Tips requires more effort than you think it does. Scaling up can be a complex process for any business, but learning from Linus and his media company can show us what it takes to get to the top and then hold that position.
If you had your chance to run a media empire on YouTube, where would you start, and how would you scale over time?
These are questions to consider as you either start your own YouTube journey or consume content and wonder how different people attained success on YouTube.
