if you knew what I knew you could get 10 million subscribers within six months your first video is not going to give you subscribers don't matter views don't matter I mean they do so stop sitting there and thinking for months and months on end and just get to work and start uploading everything you want as a Creator comes from making the best videos possible and thumbnails Mr B shares his best YouTube advice all the way from title and thumbnail secrets to growing a channel on YouTube it's much easier use on one video than 50 000 views on 100 videos he also reveals how he's able to hook in viewers in his videos and what he would do if he started over from scratch what advice would you give yourself when you were starting out your videos suck you think your videos are good but they suck you know they just do um and the sooner you learn how to make good great videos that people actually want to watch the studio you'll get views um I think it's the biggest takeaway because like when I was 14 I thought my videos were the best in the world they weren't they're terrible many people are making way better videos than me but I didn't think that and I think you know to be successful you kind of have to have a little bit of that ego where you're like you know my content's great you got to believe in it but also like if you have sub a thousand subscribers like there's a good probability your videos just suck they just do and you need to make hundreds of videos or 100 videos I don't know it depends on difficult to your videos improve something every time and just like get to the point where they don't when you make good content you'll blow up it's not the algorithm it's not anything it's just like most me and most people who are in my position you just make terrible videos and that's that's okay because you've got to make a bunch of videos and improve over time to be great like you don't just pick up a baseball and become an MLB level uh athlete within a year you know it takes many many years and YouTube's kind of the same way a lot of people get analysis paralysis and they'll just sit there and they'll plan their first video for three months and yeah any of you listening if if you especially if you have zero videos on your channel your first video is not going to give views period it's not your first 10 are not gonna give views I can very confidently say that so stop sitting there and thinking for months and months on end and just get to work and start uploading like all you need to do this this applies to people who have not uploaded videos but have dreams of being a YouTuber is make 100 videos and improve something every time do that and then on your 100 first video we'll start talking like maybe you can get some views but you know your first hundred are gonna there are very free cases like Liza koshy or Emma Chamberlain who have really good personalities and it doesn't take them so as many videos and it's just like people who are seven foot five and making the NBA like yes there are free cases you can find but for the average person like us you know who don't have these exceptional personalities and you know backgrounds in filmmaking just make 100 videos improve something each time and then talk to me on your 101st video how do you improve something each time the second one just I don't know put more effort into the script the third one try to learn a new editing trick the fourth one try to figure out a way that you can have better inflections in your voice the fifth one try to you know study a new thumbnail tip and implement it the sixth one try to figure out a new title there's infinite ways that's the beauty of content creation online there's literally infinite ways from the coloring to the frame rate to the editing to the filming to the production to the jokes to the pacing to every little thing can be improved and they can never not be improved there's no there's literally no such thing as a perfect video what YouTube wants is they want people to click on a video and they want to watch it like at its core that's what it is now you can like draw little lines and go as deep as you want and to how to get people to click and how to get people to watch I mean essentially by studying the algorithm you'll learn that you're more studying human psychology right what do humans want to watch anytime you say the word algorithm just replace it with audience and it works perfectly like the algorithm didn't like that video no the audience didn't like that video literally that's it if people are clicking and watching then it gets promoted more and that's literally all the algorithm does is reflect what the people want 280 and If you deny that you just make terrible videos and are trying to find a scapegoat what makes for a good title short not just short it's also if someone reads it are they like do they have to watch it is it just so intrinsically interesting that it's just gonna quit them if they don't click on it you know what I mean ideally it's a title also that you know because the titles don't live in a vacuum right so it has to lead into the content so ideally the title represents content that you would want to watch for 20 minutes so if it's a 20 minute video and the title is I stepped on a bug the click-through rate is going to be much lower and then it feels like a five second video like even nuances of the length of the video based against the title will affect whether people want to click it because sometimes they just all add up I mean it's that yes ideally you want to below 50 characters because above 50 characters on certain devices you run the chance of it going dot dot dot so like I took a light pole and I saw how many dollar bills I could stack on top and they would just go dot dot dot because it's too long and it can't finish it and that's the worst thing because then people don't even know what they're clicking on and so it's gonna do even worse short simple ideally and just so freaking interesting they have to click and it is a good segue into the content and it represents the length of the content the more extreme the opinion typically the higher the click-through rate if you can like pay it off in the content then it just super charges it so like oh so you have a kind of estimate of the experience this water right if you're like Fiji Water sucks yeah that would do fine but if you said Fiji Water is the worst water I've ever Drank In My Life yeah way more extreme opinion would do way better but you have to deliver yeah but then you have to deliver because the more extreme you are the more extreme you have to be in the video I heard you guys talking about um autoplay on YouTube and I've never considered it I've always thought about the thumbnail but now on YouTube videos automatically play of course so before you do you film a video what is the thumbnail what is the video and what's the first five seconds and then what's the first 30 seconds you know by the first five seconds it's like goes with the thumbnail because it's possible that people Open YouTube and they don't see it especially for us because like for so many people I've watched hundreds of our videos when I upload I am first on your homepage so like you you just literally don't even see the thumbnail because it auto plays so quickly so like the thumbnail is irrelevant I have to like visually convince you to click on the video wow that's so interesting yeah that's why we go so hardcore dude that's so crazy so do you consider also captions in those first five seconds because of course everything yeah yes 100 wow so those first five seconds that hook is now even more important than it ever used to be oh of 100 yeah before it was important because you had to convince people to watch yeah now you have to convince people to click and watch at the same time whoa with the first five seconds that's driving CTR now too yeah interesting 100 I bro I roast that a lot of people who like have boring first five seconds it's brutal your title and thumbnails set expectations and at the very beginning of the video to minimize drop off you want to assure them that those expectations are being met if you click on a video where you know uh of his where it's like tether is a scam and then at the very beginning he starts talking about literally anything else then you are like oh this is bullet this is what I clicked on but if at the very start of the video you go tether is a scam and I'm gonna teach you why then it's like okay you match the expectation so at the very beginning match the expectations and then you want to exceed them so you want to assure people that what they clicked on is what they're getting and then blow their mind and be like but you're also getting even more that's how you you lower drop off which I a lot of people sometimes it takes like 20 seconds to really meet the expectations and so you lose like that's where you're going to lose everyone everyone's videos start like this and then it levels off so you want to reduce the amount of people that click off on the audience for Teacher graph I hope you're popping up graphs while I'm saying this so so it's easier for people to visualize we really should drill this home because like the number one thing is like retaining as many people as possible at the start as I Envision a chart where you lose 35 percent of your viewers in the first 30 seconds and then a vision one where you only lose 20 that's 15 more people that are watching you know throughout the video than not and it's not like you made the whole video like uh a bunch better you just had a more strategic intro that hooked them I'm showing to put this into words and like to really impose how important that is but like that 15 difference in viewership really does make the difference between hypothetically like two million views on a video and like 10 in my head the thing people undervalue the most is literally the first 10 seconds of the video like yeah I can almost I think I can quote it uh I tied up an FBI agent I have a hundred thousand dollars in this bag here's a knife good luck and I just run away like it gives you everything you need yeah no wasted words short concise and then tension you will basically want to remove every dull moment you probably want to find the 10 most critical people you know make them watch the video and just roast it you know certain things like if I just talk to a camera for 10 seconds without a cut like a lot of people will just like get bored or they'll lose interest so like having a b Cam and a c Cam and just you can just talk for 10 seconds but three seconds in cutting to a b Cam and then a c cam like now it's more interesting even though it's essentially the same thing and not that crazy but you want to have good pacing typically having a payoff at the end keeps some right last sleep Circle wins 10 grand if there is a low moment halfway through you're gonna watch the end because you want to see who wins the 10 grand um so having a good payoff at the end how do you keep viewers watching and you know happy with the video I would say just give them why they clicked tell them I just watch and then just stick on topic like that right there isn't even super complex but I would already put you in the upper echelon and you too okay uh it's it's hard for a lot of people people for whatever reason like to just drag it out a lot of Vlog channels do it it's like eating 100 ice cream and they'll be like I'm gonna eat a hundred dollar ice cream but first and it's like earlier in the day and it's just stuff that has nothing to do with what you clicked on it's like them birthday shopping for their mom and it's like that's that's not why I came here if you're looking to grow your YouTube channel I gotta tell you about this before we get into the rest of Mr Beast genius advice and that is that we I think media are doing a free YouTube challenge to help you grow your first 1000 subscribers on YouTube or make your first one thousand dollars on YouTube to sign up for free all you have to do is go to tube1kchallenge.com or check out the link down in our description during this free challenge Sean Cannell the founder of think media is going to be showing you guys how to grow your YouTube channels and make money online with YouTube so click on the link to sign up today or to check out when our next challenge is gonna be okay let's get back into the video what's interesting is the longer people watch something the more likely they are to keep watching so you don't have to try as hard in the hypothetically back half of a video as you do in the front like even right now we're so deep into this where a lot of people listening are probably just going to keep listening relatively close to the endless we just have a really boring part of this conversation because they're just they're just in it they're they're immersed um and so a big like to really boil it down to a simple level you just want to get people where they're immersed in the content and then just kind of hold them there the thing is it's all knowledge it really is and like every time I say this people debate it to the end of time on Twitter but I don't care like I could start a new channel tomorrow with not using my face or my voice like without ever promoting it and in six months I have 20 million subscribers I just could it's purely knowledge like if you knew what I knew you could get 10 million views of video and you could get 10 million subscribers no matter where you are right now within six months it really is just knowledge and yeah I I can already tell you 90 of people watching they don't agree with that they don't and everyone has excuses and they're always like nah YouTube just doesn't work like that Jimmy you don't understand but I I Mentor a lot of people I see it even to this day I still see it all the time uh it is possible it is simply knowledge and the second you accept that it is knowledge and you start your for me 10 000 day journey of learning for you whatever it is if you want to be less hardcore but and like actually figuring out you know what makes a good video what does my audience want how can I Elevate and then you take that knowledge and you just you just assume that I will never understand what the perfect video is and every single day I just need to be devoted to learning as much as possible and improving as much as possible and I gotta prove every video as much as I can then there you go there are tons of viral ideas that people can do that don't require money it does not require money to go viral like at one point one of my most few videos was like spending um 24 hours in a desert we just grabbed a tent some stuff and we went to the desert and it got like 60 70 million views I have so many videos where we've spent hardly any money like the uh no food one or I'd have to pull up the channel and go through it that have gotten tens of millions of views and they would have gotten 10 plus million views even on a small channel so people who say oh well I could be Mr Beast if I had money well hey I didn't start off with money I was poor I had no money and it took me like seven years just to buy a camera saving up from YouTube and B some of our most reviews literally like anyone could do the best way to get views in my opinion I think it's better to really really focus on quality if you're a very small YouTuber and you can upload a video a day and like all the videos be average and like none of those videos will really stand out none of it's like epic enough where like the algorithm's gonna go oh this video like this video is good like we need to spread it I feel like a lot of small YouTubers they just post like videos that aren't bad but they're not great and they just do that and none of them ever pop off so they never get an audience where it might be better to like you know upload half or a third or even like a fifth of the videos but make the videos you upload so freaking good that like the algorithm has to promote it and that you know it has to find audiences for it because it's such an interesting and good video when you like set a consistent schedule and you're constantly having to upload videos that aren't as good as you'd like because you got to hit oh this Monday I said I'd upload every Monday you know like that's a dangerous trap because then you know the viewers notice that the quality isn't as good and it makes them less likely to watch and I think it hurts your longevity a lot of times people oh boy it's like they think their videos are better than they are honestly and they tell them Jimmy I mean they do and and you have to like you have to that and they have horrible friend groups because you really are like the type of YouTubers you hang around and so like a lot of times I'm just like what you're saying is wrong who told you this they're like oh this guy this guy and it's like well they're wrong it's not true you there's no such thing as a perfect video like someone should always call you and on your video because it could be better like that's because imagine if someone does it every video and you upload hundreds if not a thousand videos over the next 10 years and every single time someone's critiquing you and you're applying what they're critiquing like Imagine The Compound Effect over that time span it's it's invaluable people think it's like oh well um it's all like CTR and stuff like that but a big thing that everyone underestimates is it's what what was your experience with your last video If people loved your the last video of yours that they've watched they're more likely to watch your next one but the YouTubers watch this when people watch your video they go okay that was good but like that's enough of of you for the day like it was it was all right right whereas what you want is them to go holy crap that was crazy oh my God what's that holy crap that was crazy oh my God and they just and they watched 10 videos that's what you're going for that data can't describe and like I don't I've never heard anyone talk about that but that that is it that's how you get these High View counts because people watch 10 videos not one you know it's okay to draw inspiration for me but just don't do what I do to a tea it's not like yeah one dollar versus blank I'm the first person to do it but I just you know saw that format and I was just like how can I do that 100 times better right how can I put 100 times more creativity into it how can I a level up the editing by 100 times how can I spend on blah blah and that's always my mindset how can I like if I get inspired by something how can I do that but a hundred times better and make it my own whereas a lot of people are just like Oh Mr Beast did that I'm just gonna do it yeah how do I make a good thumbnail how do I get people to click my video you want it to be simple you want them to be able to like when they're scrolling through their suggested or homepage or whatever touch point you want them to instantly be able to understand what you're conveying and and you want them to feel some type of emotion you know what I mean the way I like the phrase it is you want to make it so interesting or or Spike their curiosity or whatever emotion so much that like if they don't click it though wonder you know when they're before they go to bed like what happened you know what I mean like like an example would be like if you uploaded a video I wrote a skateboard with 1 000 other people on it and like people were falling off the side or whatever I'm envisioning like a giant skateboard people like hanging on the side of it um maybe it's like about to go off a big ramp if you don't click that you're gonna like be so curious it's gonna be on your mind you know later in the day when you're daydreaming you're gonna think like huh what happened what happened to those thousand people on that skateboard that's kind of the mindset I think you should have when making thumbnails how often do you change a thumbnail on a on a video is that something do you just stick with one or you try well so well I think we get better at making thumbnails every year so it's more when I upload a thumbnail I usually think it's good and I don't change it most of the time but what happens is like three years later I look back and I'm like oh that's a horrible thumbnail and so it's usually like every two years we just go back and update a lot of our older thumbnails just because they're terrible um it's just with like the new knowledge we have and what we've learned and funny enough that actually usually does help quite a bit when we update the thumbnails on old videos that they usually do see a little bit of an uptick because they're just you know if we take an old thumbnail where it's like uh seeing if whatever like uh the thousand 100 000 magnets can stop a car and it just looks terrible and then with the new stuff I know we zoom in a little bit so it's a little more visible and make things look better then magically it starts doing a little bit better because now people actually understand what it is because I'm not as much of an idiot anymore in 10 years YouTube's going to be bigger than television ever was for culture in America at least in my opinion and so I think a lot of people underestimate that and people I don't think people really understand just how like to be a one of the top creators on the biggest social media platform and that and that will also be the biggest in 10 years during that whole time like the amount of value and how crazy that is like you don't need a network you don't need um you know to go through people you just are you can and you can do whatever you want and you can influence people how you want it's just wild it's mind-blowing and you can leverage that to build businesses or you know like do things like peace philanthropy or whatever I think like people don't realize just how much influence the top YouTube channels have no one's ever gonna do what I do better than me like it's just not it's not even humanly possible like I reinvest every penny I make yeah I work every hour I'm awake I devote every atom in my brain to solving this I hire the best people on the planet I've been doing this for 14 years and I think in decades not years so I'm going to be doing this for another 20 30 years not two or three so no the next me isn't going to be me because no one's gonna do what I do better than me it's not possible if I thought someone was doing better than me I just started sleeping less so I could work even more like I'd figure it out the barrier to entry to BU is extremely high yeah right especially where you're it's just because I'm all in I'm crazy like people shouldn't be me I don't I don't have a life I don't have work-life balance I my personality my soul my being is making the best videos possible entertaining my fans as best as I can like that is what exists on this planet and I don't recommend it like you should have work-life balance you should not devote your entire life to this one one thing like go have fun like you know I'm miserable a lot of times I I have a mental breakdown every other week because I push myself so hard like I don't recommend it you know what do you think gets us to a million subscribers well subscribers is an arbitrary okay so millions and million views no you should ask me what helps us make the best views possible that's the only question you should ask me subscribers don't matter views don't matter I mean they do yeah but all that comes everything you want as a Creator comes from making the best videos possible and thumbnails but it's easier to you know make thumbnails the video Parts the hard part and that's the thing that you're known for ask how can I make my videos better do that every single day for years and then you'll probably get views