This content analyzes common YouTube creator advice, categorizing it into a tier list from "F" (terrible) to "S" (excellent), to help creators focus on strategies that genuinely benefit their channels and avoid detrimental or time-wasting practices.
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I've been doing YouTube for nearly a
decade now, and over the course of my
career, I've heard all sorts of advice
tossed around. Some of this advice
dramatically reshaped the way I thought
about the YouTube algorithm. But some of
it, looking back, was just complete
nonsense. And what better way to
structure a video with a list of bad,
mid, and good things than a tier list.
Let's get into it.
We're going to start things off with F
tier. And this tier is for the truly
terrible advice. Advice so bad that
following it will hurt your channel. And
there's not going to be too many things
in this tier. Most advice is at least
applicable in some niche cases. Uh or at
least is at the very worst just a waste
of time. Uh but the stuff in this tier
is worse than that. It will mess with
your analytics. It will derank your
videos in the algorithm. Don't follow
the advice here. But to start us off, we
have you should delete bad, old, or
underperforming videos. So, this is
disastrously bad advice. But to fully
explain why, let me give you a quick
rundown on how the YouTube algorithm
works. This will, of course, be
massively simplified. But to be honest,
the core concept is really not all that
complicated. The YouTube algorithm works
by comparing viewers watch histories and
looking for patterns. So the most basic
pattern would be something like this.
Viewer one gets on YouTube and gets
shown a random selection of videos on
their homepage. They watch videos B, D,
and G. Viewer two gets on YouTube and
watches videos B, D, and G. Viewer three
gets on and watches videos B and D and
then logs off for the night. YouTube is
going to put video G onto viewer 3's
recommendations front and center. the
next time they log on because it noticed
the pattern that people who like videos
B and D also tend to like video G. There
are of course hundreds if not thousands
of additional variables, but all of
those additional complexities layer on
top of that core concept, patterns of
viewership. YouTube calls this co-watch
behavior, and it is the main driving
force behind the recommendation
algorithm. If you can understand that
concept, you can probably follow my
rationale for basically every tip in
this video. So, the reason that deleting
old videos is bad for growth is that it
also removes that data from your viewers
watch histories, which means there's
less of a pattern for YouTube's
algorithm to pick up on to use to push
your videos to new people. Now, of
course, there can be genuinely good
reasons for deleting an old video. if
you, I don't know, accidentally doxed
yourself and included some sensitive
information, yeah, probably don't just
leave that up for strangers to see for
your own safety. But in general, it's a
bad idea. And if you really just don't
like your old videos and want them gone
for reasons of taste, uh, that's okay,
too. I suppose you can also just unlist
them, which won't remove them from
people's watch histories, but that also
means that if they want to watch it,
they can just go back through their
watch history and find it. So, it's not
a good solution for really sensitive
information, but if you just don't want
it to show up on your channel, it does
work. I'm personally of the opinion that
it's a good thing to let audiences go
back and see how much you've grown as a
creator. But I understand that not
everyone can stomach the cringe of their
teenage self, but if you're just
deleting it because it didn't get the
view numbers you wanted, you're making
the problem worse, not better. I
actually know a few YouTubers who delete
low performing videos to make sponsors
think that they hit higher view counts
more consistently than they actually do
so they can use that data to negotiate a
higher rate. But this is playing with
fire in my opinion. And second in F
tier, we have the advice all engagement
is good engagement. I think everyone who
thinks about this for more than a second
knows it's not true. But still, every so
often I'll see a creator going back and
forth bickering with one of their fans,
and they'll invoke this as a sort of
attempt to reframe the whole interaction
as like a gotcha. Like the viewer will
be criticizing or insulting some aspect
of the creator's video, and the creator
will counter, "Aha, I got you. You see,
you thought you were damaging my
reputation by insulting me, but actually
you've just given me more engagement,
boosting my influence even further.
Haha, jokes on you. But this is usually,
frankly, a pathetic attempt to stop
people from criticizing them. But still,
there are some people who earnestly
believe this. I've even heard of a few
creators who will include one or two
spelling mistakes on purpose in order to
generate more engagement in the form of
comments that are correcting them
thinking that that is helping their
recommendations reach more people. It's
it's just not I don't know how else to
say it. Uh but the people who literally
design the YouTube algorithm have said
as much. It doesn't work. Don't do it.
Now, of course, if a creator posts
something that's so bad that the badness
of it becomes a spectacle in and of
itself, that can override the negative
effects of negative engagement. But even
in those cases, usually the big winners
in that scenario are going to be the
commentary channels that farm that
misfortune for views. That's honestly
the only advice I've heard which I do
think actively hurts your channel's
ability to rank highly in
recommendations. Let's move on to D
tier. This tier is for advice which I
don't think actively hurts your channel,
but can indirectly hurt it by nature of
just being a complete waste of time.
This is going to be a pretty packed tier
because honestly, most of the advice
that I hear as a creator falls into this
category. First in Dtier, we have you
should post at specific times or days of
the week. For like 99% of YouTubers,
this just doesn't matter at all. Now,
sure, if most of your audience is
American and you post at 3:00 a.m.
Eastern time or you post during the
Super Bowl or you post during Christmas
morning, yeah, the amount of people who
are immediately dropping everything to
go watch your video is going to be
lower. But if a viewer likes your
videos, they're going to see it the next
time they open YouTube. And in fact,
your video already being up and ready to
watch when they sit down at their desk
for the first time to start their day
might actually play in your favor. It
might not be good for their
productivity, but still. The point is,
in the long run, a video is going to get
about the same amount of views that it
would have no matter what time it was
uploaded. So, don't stress about it
unless you make time-sensitive videos.
If you're doing a news show or, god
forbid, YouTube drama videos, you do
have to keep your topics relevant to the
current news cycle. And if you make
videos about internet trends and fads or
new releases in gaming and film, you
don't want to miss the boat on those.
Although, even in those cases, a good
video can still work after the fact as a retrospective.
retrospective.
But yeah, for most creators, this just
isn't something you need to concern
yourself with. I used to upload all of
my videos at 10:00 a.m. on Saturday
morning because that's when I personally
would have been most likely to just be
chilling looking for something
interesting to click on. But eventually
I stopped caring about it and just
started uploading whenever a video was
ready and I didn't see any difference in
performance at all. Next in Dtier, the
algorithm will punish you for taking a
break. So in general, no. There's no
amount of time you can take off that
would trigger some sort of massive
downranking of your videos in
recommendations. If your audience really
likes your videos, they're going to keep
sharing them with their friends and
probably even go back and watch some old
ones. As an example, at the beginning of
the year 2020, I had about the same
amount of subscribers as my friend Sam
from the YouTube channel Sam Onella
Academy. Sam proceeded to take a nearly
three-year long break, all the while
massively diffing me on both subs and
views. And this isn't me saying there's
anything wrong with the algorithm or
anything like that. His audience just
really likes his videos and likes to go
back and rewatch them. And when he
finally did come back after those 3
years, all of his new videos did
basically just as well as you would have
expected had he never taken a break at
all. Bill Wartz made what I think could
be reasonably described as the greatest
educational YouTube video of all time.
And even though he hasn't posted in
years, his channel still pulls plenty of
views. If he ever posted another history
of blank, I think the internet would go
bananas. Now, these channels are of
course outliers. I don't think everyone
can expect that level of audience
loyalty. But what I'm getting at is that
the performance of good old videos is
not negatively impacted by the lack of
new videos. Even channels whose videos
are highly time-sensitive still take
breaks from time to time, and they still
have an audience when they come back.
Now, obviously, you don't want to be too
inactive. If you just up and ghost the
internet for years at a time, it's not
just your audience who's going to
notice. YouTube channels are businesses,
and like any business, you're going to
have competition. If you've left your
audience with nothing to watch for years
on end, I would expect your competitors
to notice and for them to try and
emulate your style in order to capture
some of your audience. So, take breaks
when you need to. Don't burn yourself
out, but never think that success is
guaranteed either. Next in Dtier, just
do this one weird trick. All right, I
don't want to stoke drama, so I'm not
going to name names, but I do have a
bone to pick with. Okay, I'm
re-recording this bit because after
watching it back, I think I started to
come off way too heated for no reason.
Basically, what I want to communicate is
that there's a lot of videos out there
that can really just get you barking up
the wrong tree if you're not careful by
convincing you that there's a lot of
subtle tweaking that you can do to your
video's metadata. you know, things like
the video tags and the file names and
like things you can do with the YouTube
Studio editor that would allegedly
massively boost your odds of going
viral. And I'm sorry, but I do think
that that's all just a complete waste of
time. I'm not saying that adds zero
value at all, but at the end of the day,
if your videos are bad, there's nothing
that you're going to be able to do like
metadata manipulation wise to get people
to like them. And if your videos are
excellent, frankly, it would be pretty
hard to screw it up. Like, it would be
legitimately difficult to get people to
stop sharing them. And if your videos
are mid, you're much better off spending
your time learning how to improve your
craft than you are learning all these
subtle metadata manipulation tricks. You
should always prioritize the things that
your audience can see, not what
YouTube's algorithm can see. Next in
Dtier, one bad upload can kill your
channel. Thankfully, probably not.
Again, flip it around. How many times
have you, as a viewer, completely
written off all of a creator's future
work based on one bad video? Probably
not too many times. Although, if you've
been around long enough, maybe you can
think of one or two. But no, what
actually kills channels is a string of
uninteresting videos that leads to their
audience just not being as excited about
their stuff anymore. But yeah, don't
stress about singular flops. It's way
too much pressure to put on yourself.
And literally every YouTuber uploads a
stinker every once in a while. And last
in Dtier, monetization will hurt your
YouTube channel. It's crazy. I know a
handful of creators who just agonized
over the decision to either monetize
their videos or do sponsors. They
thought their audience would crucify
them if they did it, but Patreon wasn't
quite making ends meet for them. And so
eventually they felt like they had no
other choice. And then when they flipped
the switch, they got literally zero
negative comments about it. And the same
is true for sponsors. In fact, oftent
times I see the exact opposite happen
where they'll suddenly get a lot of
comments along the lines of like, "Yo,
our boy finally made it. Hype." It's an
understood milestone in a creator's
career, and I think most audiences
understand that. I've even heard of
creators faking sponsorships because
they feel like it gives them more
legitimacy to have them than to not. I
wouldn't do that. Faking sponsors is
also Dtier advice, but so is completely
writing them off as selling out. That's
it for Dtier. All the rest of the stuff
on this list is at least somewhat
applicable and definitely won't hurt
your channel. In Ctier, we have advice
that is potentially useful, but isn't
universally applicable. And first in C
tier, this is going to be a
controversial one. Collabs are a good
way to grow your channel. This one's
interesting because YouTube Creator
Studio actually tells you that this is a
good idea. I did a ton of collabs in the
early years of my YouTube career, and to
be honest, I don't think a single one
moved the needle at all. Now, I'm not
saying they can't work. They can make
for fun and entertaining videos, but for
growing an audience, one, they're not
that great, and two, you want to build
your own audience, not leech from
someone else's. That second point isn't
some moral judgment or anything. I'm not
saying you're not going to have any
overlap with other channels audiences.
Of course, you will, but I've seen it
several times where a creator will do a
collaboration and it'll do well and
they'll get a ton of new subscribers and
views and they'll get all excited and
celebrate. But when they upload their
next video, it doesn't hit and they
might even lose subscribers. And the
reason is because those subs weren't
made in earnest. They were subbed as a
show of support for a different creator
and for you as their friend, but not
because they actually connected with
your content. And that can be really
demoralizing. You may have noticed that
collabs in general are just not all that
common these days on YouTube. And I
think this is the reason. they're just
not all that effective in the long run.
Now, there are other creators who I
think do it well, but I think the reason
they make it work is that they do cameos
or games where it makes sense to involve
other creators. My friend Magic the Noah
does this amazingly well with his game
shows, but even then, after being in
multiple videos, I don't think I've ever
noticed the spike in subscribers or
views. So, do the collabs that make
sense, but definitely don't force it.
And especially don't chase down other
YouTubers asking to collab because it's
not even worth it. Next, in C tier,
censor your speech using euphemistic
slang. Look, I'll be honest, I really
wanted to put this one in F tier. I find
it immensely disrespectful when people
use such corny language to discuss
serious topics, but I will admit that
this is a matter of personal opinion and
that at this point clearly that type of
thing has become pretty firmly ingrained
in the online vernacular. I watched a
pretty interesting series of videos by a
channel called Ethmology Nerd, who makes
a pretty good case that these words do
serve a social function beyond just
dodging a platform's sensor bots. I
don't know. I'm not an ethics
philosopher, so I will leave it up to
y'all to decide what is and is not
appropriate for serious online
discussions. But what I do know is that
these supposed sensor bots do not exist.
There are no guidelines saying that you
cannot use terms like kill, sex, and
yeah, even rape and pedophile in your
videos. Now, sure, if you're using those
words in a graphic context, that's one
thing. But if the context is there, if
your video is about those subjects,
removing the word doesn't suddenly make
your video familyfriendly. A true crime
podcast about vicious evil murderers is
still a true crime podcast about vicious
evil murderers, even if you say unal
alive instead of kill. So either talk
about it or don't. Next in C tier,
premieres help your channel grow.
Premieres are fine. They can be a cool
way to build hype and even result in a
bit of bonus revenue from super chats.
But do they help you grow? Probably not
in a significant way. In fact, some
people, myself included, find them to be
a bit obnoxious. It's a bit of a
buzzkill when you're bored and looking
for something to watch and you see a new
notification from your favorite creator
and it's for a premiere that's in 24 hours.
hours.
Cool. I'd rather you just have told me
tomorrow. And if you're late to a
premiere, you got to either wait for it
to end or awkwardly try to rewind it.
Uh, meanwhile, chat is talking about a
totally different part of the video and
spoiling stuff. And yeah, premieres are
fine. Messy, but fine. Next, in Ctier,
you should engage with your audience by
doing update videos, Q&A videos, and
milestone videos. So, on my main
channel, Tearsu, I decided very early on
that I was going to never do these. So,
when I was first starting out, I created
a list of rules for myself to keep me on
track for growth and keep me out of
trouble. And the number one rule on that
list was to only ever upload exactly the
sort of video that I thought my audience
had subscribed for. My channel was about
looking at the natural world through the
lens of gaming and nothing else. My
assumption was my audience did not care
who I am. And I do think this rule
served me well. I mean, not to toot my
own horn, but for a while I was the
fastest growing educational channel of
all time and reached a million
subscribers after only about 18 months.
But of course, I have no control data to
compare against, and I know plenty of
other channels that have done just fine
uploading that style of video alongside
their main content. I think it makes
more sense to flip it again to the
viewer perspective and ask if your
favorite channel or actually let's say
not your favorite channel. If a channel
that you like but perhaps isn't even in
your top five uploaded a Q&A video,
would you watch that? But I guess this
also goes back to one of the earlier
points on this list, which is that one
bad upload isn't going to sync your
channel either. The performance of my
first video on this channel certainly
proved to me that there can be a ton of
value in doing these more personal
videos as I've been able to sinceense
connect with more of my audience and
fellow creators than ever before.
There's clearly merit to both approaches
and I look forward to learning more
about how to best make this genre of
content. So subscribe if that's
something you're interested in. And last
in C tier, basically everything you've
ever heard about fair use. I wish I had
the time and the expertise to try and
properly debunk all the misinformation
about fair use, but for now I will just
say go watch the Tom Scott copyright
video. It's crazy though. In my
behind-the-scenes video, I got a lot of
comments saying, "Why on earth would you
pay for stock footage when fair use
exists?" Look, I do wish some of them
charged a bit less, but ultimately I do
want an incentive to exist for nature
videographers to go shoot interesting
videos for me to buy. If it were legal
that I could just rip their videos and
run it through a watermark remover, that
would be cool for a short time, but
eventually these nature videographers
would just find better uses for their
time and film experience. I want to have
a good relationship with nature
photographers. I want them to be excited
to show me the latest cool shots that
they got, not just to hide behind some
flimsy legal defense while I benefit
from their work for free. As with most
things, the answer to the question of
why does this cost so much is because
it's worth it. Maybe not to you, but to
someone. All right, first in B tier.
Now, interested is interesting. So, this
is a common adage I've heard tossed
around in YouTuber circles a lot, I
believe it was first popularized by
Casey Neistat, but I'm not 100% sure.
So, while it is true to an extent, uh, I
learned the hard way that if you make
things too niche, too high concept,
people will bounce off of it. Still,
passion is by far one of the most
important things to showcase in your
videos. YouTube is pretty great at
showing people videos relevant to their
interests. And if you among all the
YouTubers for a given topic seem like
the most passionate of the bunch, you'll
be in a pretty good position. And the
reverse is also true. If people can tell
that you're not all that excited about
the thing that you're talking about,
they're not going to be excited about it
either. Next in B tier, shorts will help
your channel grow. So strictly from the
perspective of increasing the number of
views and subscribers on your YouTube
channel. Yes, this absolutely will work.
In fact, the numbers can be truly
staggering. But what can also be
staggering is how difficult it can be to
convert those shorts viewers into long-
form viewers. This is my friend Juliet.
She runs a channel called Girl Who Eats
Art. It's a shortssonly channel about
showcasing edible mosaic artwork. Her
videos have a combined 1 and a half
billion views and her channel has 1 and
a half million subscribers. For
reference, that is over three times as
many views as I have across all of my
channels. And she's only been doing it
for a year and a half. Juliet just
uploaded her first long- form video. An
8-minute long video of her touring an
art museum and interviewing people.
Before I tell you, how many views would
you guess that video got? 10,000,
100,000, a million? 431?
less than a tenth of a percent of her
subscriber count. So, what's going on?
Why did her video get so few views?
Well, I actually think the answer is
pretty simple. While most long- form
viewers do watch a few shorts here and
there, most short form viewers never
even open the YouTube homepage where
long form videos are shown. I've seen
some viral posts going around saying
that YouTube Shorts should have just
been a separate app. And if you ask me,
it basically is. So if the last thing
you watched on the YouTube app was a
short, the next time you open YouTube on
your phone, it'll open directly to the
shorts feed, so you never have to see
anything else. Now, if you ask me, it is
a bit ridiculous that shorts are also
shown on the YouTube homepage,
especially with these tall thumbnails
that take up double the real estate and
crowd out long form stuff. But in
fairness on the Smart TV app, which is
frankly where long- form creators most
prefer their videos to be watched
anyway, shorts usually don't show up
there. Anyway, the point is you can pull
insane numbers on your shorts, hundreds
of millions of views, but still struggle
to pull even a tiny fraction of a
percent of those viewers over to your
long- form videos. You really do have to
treat them like a separate audience.
Still, if the content of your shorts
specifically references long- form
content that people watching that short
might also like, you can see excellent
growth across your entire channel via
shorts. This is something that I myself
am far from mastering, but my friends
over at Extra History have been crushing
it with this strategy. So, yeah, shorts
are powerful for growth, but they're
easy to overestimate and tough to
convert into the audience you actually
want. On a similar point, my next piece
of advice in Btier is to ask your
audience to subscribe during your
videos. So, there's really no reason not
to do this. I do it. All the best
creators do it. And we do it because it
works. It makes the number go up and we
really like it when the number goes up.
The reason I include it now here is
because I think it's time to drop the
biggest truth nuke of the video, which
is that subscribers don't matter very
much. I wish they did. A YouTuber's
subscriber count is often their biggest
point of pride, and it certainly is for
me. Hitting a million subscribers was
one of the biggest milestones of my
life. But if you're going to ask your
audience to do something, you know
what's better than asking them to click
the I'd like to see more of this in the
future button? getting them to watch
more of your videos right away. In the
same amount of time that it takes to ask
your audience to click the red button
and tap the bell, you could just suggest
another video to them that they might be
interested in. Spending more time on
your channel right away is a lot
stronger of a positive signal to the
algorithm than just tapping a button.
Subscribers are great, don't get me
wrong, but it's easy to over prioritize
growing that number rather than growing
your channel's actual reach. Next in B
tier, focus on making sure your
click-through rate is as high as
possible. This is another number that
creators often over prioritize, and it
can be even more misleading. I can't
tell you how many times I've seen a
fellow creator complaining on Twitter
that they must be shadowbanned because
with a CTR as high as theirs, surely
YouTube should be pushing their video to
the masses. The problem is, while yes,
CTR does scale directly with how
interesting a video's title and
thumbnail are, it scales inversely with
how many impressions a video is getting.
CTR is always going to start high and
decline as your video spreads. So, if
you're looking at your analytics and
thinking, "I don't get it. My CTR is
crazy high. YouTube says this one's
clearly a banger, so why is it not being
shown to the masses?" Unfortunately,
that's kind of similar to saying like,
"I've gone on so many first dates.
Clearly, I'm hot stuff." So, paying
attention to CTR used to be more
important for creators because you could
take a dead video and then change up the
thumbnail and then look at the real-time
CTR data that YouTube would give you and
you could look for a change. If the
change swung positive, that was a good
thing. That was a really good signal.
Now though, you can just use YouTube's
AB testing feature to do the same thing.
Um, so there's not really a ton of
reason to pay super close attention to
CTR. Now, looking at your real-time CTR
can be useful for title changes. Um, cuz
right now, most people can only do it
with their thumbnails, but there is a
title AB testing feature in beta, so
you'll get it eventually. Last in B
tier, you should get your audience to
sign up for a newsletter. This is a
strategy I hadn't even heard of until
recently, but apparently a lot of really
successful creators do it. So, the basic
idea is pretty simple. Kind of like what
I was saying before, subscribers don't
necessarily mean that much anymore. Just
because someone is subscribed doesn't
mean they're for sure going to get a
notification for your next video. So
instead of relying on YouTube to push
your video out, you could just ask your
most loyal fans to join a mailing list
so that you have total control over that
connection to your audience. And this
does work. Data shows that the industry
average for opening these emails is
about 20%. Which is like 10 times higher
than the average rate that YouTube
viewers click on push notifications. So
it is a pretty reliable way to reach
your audience. The really clever
YouTubers will send out not just their
own videos, but a whole curated list of
the best videos that they've seen over
the past few days or weeks. That way,
their video becomes part of a pretty
concrete pattern of co-atching. And
anyone who organically encounters one of
the other videos in their newsletter
will have a much higher chance of seeing
their video next. So, pretty clever
stuff. The only drawback is, believe it
or not, sending a bunch of emails can
get pretty expensive pretty quickly.
Like potentially several thousand dollar
a year. So definitely useful, but not
something to worry about unless you're
already an established creator. All
right, we're leaving the mid tier now.
So look, I'm not trying to be a YouTube
guru or anything like that. I'm not
going to promise that these tips are
like guaranteed to grow your channel and
propel your career to new heights and
make you rich and famous overnight. But
I do think everything from here on out
is genuinely great advice that I would
give to anyone in the industry, both new
and old creators alike. First in A tier,
you should use the AB thumbnail testing
feature. So, this just works pure and
simple. If you're not AB testing your
thumbnails, you're almost certainly
leaving views on the table. Now, it is a
lot of extra work to create three
thumbnails instead of just one, but I've
seen some truly explosive growth on old
videos after successfully finding a new
winning thumbnail. I'm talking like
doubling or tripling the amount of views
on the video. There's also a title AB
testing feature in beta right now, which
opens up even more possibilities. I
don't have a ton more to say about this
one. It just genuinely is a really
powerful tool. Next in a tier, you
should translate your videos into
multiple languages. So, pretty much
every creator that does this that I've
talked to has said that it basically
doubled their revenue for very little
extra effort. Translated subtitles are
good, but if possible, what you really
want to do is find someone who can
provide a translated audio track, too.
The multi- language audio track feature
is really powerful and auto plays the
appropriate language based on viewers
location if the translation exists. I
really wanted to make this work for Tzu,
but because my videos are so
jargonheavy, unless I find someone who
specifically knows like the ins and outs
of gamer culture in that language, the
translations just don't capture the same
gaming connotations that they do in
English. So, yeah, it's tough and
finding someone who can do that is
difficult. People like that are hard to
find and expensive, but if you'd like to
see tiers you brought to your local
language, u pledging to my Patreon would
help me get that off the ground. All
right, and finally, S tier advice. So,
for advice in the highest tier, I
decided to go with more nebulous
vibes-based sorts of things because at
the end of the day, I really do believe
that having the right mindset and having
the right creative ambition will really
always trump any sort of back-end
optimizations or analytics tricks. First
in S tier, we have the 80% rule. This is
advice that Hank Green posted to YouTube
around the time that I was just starting
my career here. And I never forgot it.
The idea is simple. 80%. Everything
creative I do, I do my best to get it
80% of the way to as good as I can make
it and go no further. I just don't try
to get it to 100%.
>> Now, of course, I've heard tons of
similar proverbs to this, you know, like
don't let perfect be the enemy of good,
done is better than perfect, that sort
of thing. But I don't know, something
about the way that Hank puts it, plus
his track record with starting and
finishing a huge variety of massively
successful projects, made this one stick
differently. I'm sure there's plenty of
fields that this sort of advice can
apply to, but I think us YouTubers
really need to hear it more than most
because we really like to stress a lot
about the finer details of things and
tend to have a pretty well- definfined
picture of what we want a video to end
up looking like. And I think for
YouTubers like myself who upload
somewhat infrequently and spend a lot of
time per video, the biggest risk is not
that we make a bad video. The biggest
risk is that we don't make a video at
all. We either spend way too long
polishing something that's already
perfectly fine or we get halfway through
a project and realize it's not quite
turning out the way we liked it and so
we just start over. It's tough because
one of the pieces of advice that I see
passed around a lot in creative circles
is just make it exist first. You can
make it good later. But on YouTube, once
you publish a video, it's out there. You
can't change it. You just have to let it
ride. Mistakes and all. And even with
that being said, the 80% rule is great
advice. And the last advice on this tier
list, the algorithm is the audience.
Basically, the idea that every time you
would normally use the word algorithm,
swap in audience. So instead of the
algorithm likes this thumbnail more than
that one, you think the audience likes
this thumbnail more than that one. And
instead of thinking the algorithm isn't
pushing this video, you think the
audience isn't pushing this video.
This is advice that Todd Dup prey, head
of search and discovery at YouTube, aka
the guy that leads the team that manages
and designs the YouTube algorithm, says
every chance that he gets. I've kind of
been trying to condition you guys to
think this way over the course of this
video by frequently asking you to
reexamine all the pieces of advice
through the lens of an audience member
rather than the perspective of a
creator. The things that matter to the
algorithm are the things that matter to
the audience. And if something doesn't
matter to the audience, it's probably
not worth fussing about for the
algorithm's sake either. Personally, the
things that determine whether or not I
want to click on a video are, does it
look interesting? Is it by a creator who
I really like? Does it look like it's
about something that I've already
watched another video about? Do I have
time to watch something that's that
length? If the thumbnail looks like a
still frame from a video, do I want to
see the rest of that video? And that
sort of thing. There have been a lot of
videos on YouTube lately from YouTubers
complaining about low views and
speculating about possible algorithm
changes that are affecting them. And in
fairness, the video that I posted um a
few weeks ago was also about challenges
that I was facing as a creator. But I
hope the takeaway from that video was
that I don't believe that there's any
nefarious YouTube suppression going on,
but that the audience is just changing.
And yes, I did hear also about the
potential ad block shenanigans. And
those sorts of things do happen from
time to time, but as a creator, the
advice that I would give is that you
still have to just prioritize focusing
on the things that you can control. What
viewers want is a moving target, and
sometimes strategies and formats that
used to crush it suddenly don't work as
well anymore. I apologize if the S tier
section came off as a bit disappointing.
Uh, I get that just make good videos
doesn't really feel actionable. Uh, and
again, I'm not trying to be a YouTube
guru or anything like that. I'm just
sharing my opinion as a creator. I hope
this video helps you avoid red herring
advice and helps you focus on what
really matters. And that's the tier
list. I'm really curious how this video
does because I have no idea if people
actually want to just hear me ramble
about things or if the success of the
first video was an anomaly. I know I
kind of baited people into thinking I
was maybe about to retire with a title
and thumbnail like that. And I know
that's not a move I can pull twice, so
I'd be surprised if a video like this
does anywhere near as well. I promise
the next video on this channel will not
be about the YouTube meta. Let me know
in the comments what you think. And if
you'd like to help me fund an indie
gamedev studio, consider pledging to my
Patreon cuz we've got some cool things cooking.
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