I hear it all the time from people. “I’m passionate about it.” “I’m not going to quit, It’s my passion”. Or I hear it as advice to students and others “Follow your passion”.
What a bunch of BS. “Follow Your Passion” is easily the worst advice you could ever give or get.
Why ? Because everyone is passionate about something. Usually more than 1 thing. We are born with it. There are always going to be things we love to do. That we dream about doing. That we really really want to do with our lives. Those passions aren’t worth a nickel.
Think about all the things you have been passionate about in your life. Think about all those passions that you considered making a career out of or building a company around. How many were/are there ? Why did you bounce from one to another ? Why were you not able to make a career or business out of any of those passions ? Or if you have been able to have some success, what was the key to the success.? Was it the passion or the effort you put in to your job or company ?
If you really want to know where you destiny lies, look at where you apply your time.
Time is the most valuable asset you don’t own. You may or may not realize it yet, but how you use or don’t use your time is going to be the best indication of where your future is going to take you .
Let me make this as clear as possible
When you work hard at something you become good at it.
When you become good at doing something, you will enjoy it more.
When you enjoy doing something, there is a very good chance you will become passionate or more passionate about it
When you are good at something, passionate and work even harder to excel and be the best at it, good things happen.
Don’t follow your passions, follow your effort. It will lead you to your passions and to success, however you define it
SOURCE:u/tlo_oly This is a case study documenting the progress and what I did to grow a channel from 0 subscribers to over 90,000 subscribers in 3 months. Below are a series of articles and notes I put together to document my thoughts, process, and strategy on how to accomplish this. YouTube is the second most trafficked website on the planet, next to Google, and there is massive opportunity waiting for those that can crack the system of ranking into the algorithm and create content that a massive amount of people want to consume. I wish you all the best and hope this adds value to you and your journey.
Grow Your YouTube Channel From Zero With The Right Strategy And Not Just “GETTING LUCKY”
Aside from luck, I think there needs to be strategy as well. YouTube won’t help you grow at all from my experience until you prove your audience and trust as a channel. YouTube has to know it wants to promote your content as a suggested video to an audience it can find key interests in.
I tried to figure out the best way to show YouTube what audience WANTS to see my content. So, quality counts there. You need to make content people actually want to see. The key metrics in that measurement is: 1. Click Through Rate and 2. Audience Retention (Watch Time). If you have a decent CTR which I believe is above 8% and a watch time of 5:00+ minutes per video, you are good from my communication with other larger channels.
Ok, so YouTube now knows you have good content that people want to see. Now they need to know you are a channel that it trusts with content. This just takes time and consistency. I recommend daily uploads, bi weekly uploads, weekly uploads, monthly uploads. This depends on the type of audience you have. Example, most gaming channels need to pop out daily videos to be competitive in the market with an audience that demands daily binge worthy content. A review channel or a channel that does comedy sketches that takes time to make, may be a bit more forgiving and come flood your video with views when it releases every month or two. So, that quantity and consistency really relies on what other popular channels are doing and what the audience expects for your type of content.
So, now you have a consistent upload schedule that YouTube can trust, you have a high audience retention rate showing YouTube you have binge worthy content that people want to see, now who is your audience YouTube needs to suggest your videos to?
You have to actively work to promote your content off of YouTube alongside utilizing YouTube’s features for your video to help target an audience naturally.
There are three ways I have come to find that work so far:
Social Media
YouTube Ads (Video Promotion Option)
Keywords in: Description, Thumbnail title, Video title, Tags, About section
When it comes to Social Media:
Facebook
I have come to learn that Facebook is completely dead unless you have a group. But a Facebook page is useless these days unless you pay for it and with paid sources there are much better places to put your money.
Instagram
Instagram is dying as well, but not as bad as Facebook pages. Facebook has literally made decisions to stunt organic growth as a means to boost the need for you to spend money on ads to grow your presence online with their platforms. There are some strategies to grow on Instagram without spending money, but they have proven to not be as effective as other sources.
Instagram also goes out of its way to ban you for trying to build your profile too fast with follows, likes, comments, essentially anything the platform was originally intended for. Too many Bots and third party software took advantage of growth strategies and automated it to a point where Instagram got fed up with the spam and pretty bans you as a human for producing bot like results with Shadow Bans, cool down periods of Action Blocks, and flat out account Bans.
So, if you are willing to put up with it, try going on Instagram and find relevant account profiles to what kind of content you make, or go to popular YouTube creators Instagram profiles that fall in your category for content and do the following:
Look through their posts and start looking for a post that has less than average likes. This shows that the users the liked the content are really active and engaged in the content. Then go follow those accounts. This is done in hopes they will see your follow or follow request and either follow back or go look at your profile at least and then decide they may be a fan in the future of your content.
Make sure to go and like posts of the accounts that follow you back and take some time every now and then to go on your explorer page and like posts from people you follow. This shows people that you are real and not some spam account that just followed them to unfollow them later. You’d be amazed at how happy people get when they follow you and you go and like their posts. They usually return the favor and this looks good for your account and you can build some loyal fans that way.
Watch the stories of the people you follow. A lot of people go into their stories and see who watched their story posts and get excited when they see you watched theirs all the way through.
Do a search for hashtags or searches for keywords that are relevant to your type of content or audience and then go on a liking spree. Go like posts. This will give your account a possibility of being discovered by other people that look at who liked the post. It will also show smaller profiles that you liked their stuff and they may go check out your profile and follow you.
Don’t expect hashtags to do much. Instagram literally only shows about 30% of all content to people that follow you. In other words, even if people follow you, there is a good chance they won’t even see your posts because Instagram doesn’t push it into the explorer feed.
Eventually after your account ages well, and you start to get engagement on posts and people start following you, Instagram will trust your account more and then you will slowly start getting the original perks of being able to get discovered through hashtags and posts. Just don’t expect a lot of organic growth. Those days are over, it’s pay to play now.
As you can see, Instagram takes a lot of work, but if you are serious about it, put in the time and you will see returns on your effort. Of course you need to post to your account as well. Make posts about thanking them for follower goals, post clips of your videos, make announcements of your newly released videos. Your entire goal should be to push traffic to your YouTube channel in hopes of gaining new Subscribers and getting dedicated fans to view your content with high retention. Let the ego go of not trying to interact with people because you are a “big YouTuber to be”. Stay humble and interact with people and talk with them to build a bond with your fans. It goes a long way. You should always interact with your fans by responding to comments on posts and videos for as long as you can until your channel is so big that you physically can’t anymore. So, until that day comes, put in the effort to respond and thank people for everything.
Twitter
Twitter has proven to be pretty useless as well. Twitter is good for announcements and communicating quick thoughts to your audience. Just don’t expect to grow a Twitter account without having people actively searching to follow you. Hashtags just don’t work like they used to and you won’t build a large Twitter following more than likely posting away with hashtags or not.
Twitter is great for networking as the engagement on the platform is so terribly low that you can be seen by users that are otherwise usually hard to get ahold of. Ever seen an account with tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, or even millions of followers that literally gets like 5-100 likes per tweet? Yeah, all the time. Don’t expect twitter to get much out of posting. It’s good to have so people can go follow you there and interact with you. But overall, it’s a lot better for networking and connecting with other users.
P.S. Yes I know that there are examples of accounts that get excellent engagement on their posts, but this is rarely the case.
TikTok
TikTok is fresh and hasn’t stunted organic growth opportunities yet. Of course it still requires you to post content people want to see and engage in, but you CAN actually grow on the platform. My anecdotal example would be: I posted three days ago clips of my YouTube videos and I have gained over 4,000 followers and 72,000 profile likes on all the videos combined. I have also grown my YouTube channel by over 700 new Subscribers and 23,000 minutes of watch time. All within a 72hr period.
My strategy that I believe you should implement is to take your best clips out of your YouTube video and make it into a TikTok upload (I do this by exporting the clips to my Desktop > Upload to Google Drive > Download from Google Drive onto my Phone > Upload from my Phone to TikTok). And try to upload as much as possible. Utilize hashtags, and relevant keywords in your post, and ALWAYS put a call to action with “Full Video on YouTube Link in Bio” or something along those lines telling them where to go to find more if they like what they are seeing. Keep clips between 7-17 seconds ideally and leave them with a coherent point from the video that will make them want to check your profile and maybe go Sub to your YouTube channel.
Relevant factors I have noticed with TikTok to get views:
Likes – you want to try and maintain a good view to like ratio. I have noticed 10% is decent enough to have the video keep getting pushed into impressions.
Follows – if your video starts getting a lot of follows as a result, expect your video to go viral or semi viral. This is probably the most important factor I have noticed as a metric for virality: get follows from the video.
Profile Visits – people go check your profile. TikTok knows they found the right audience when people want to go see what else you have to offer.
Shares/Duets – when people share your content or duet it, it also shows TikTok that your video is socially worthy of this audience and trusts that the law of averages will play out and you will get impressions as a result.
Comments – comments show interest, but ultimately you want people to comment @ their friends. This garnishes more views and social proof of worthy content. It’s like a share within another form of engagement (comment).
YouTube Ads
If you have trouble figuring out what is trending or how to take advantage of new search traffic that enters the platform, then I recommend the YouTube Thumbnail Ad video promotion strategy. You can target anything on YouTube to have your ad as an impression on: Channels, Specific Videos, Audience Demographics from: Age, Location, Language, Household Income, etc.. If you hone in and target your audience well then you should have no problem getting views down to $0.01-$0.02 per view and you’ll be able to get a lot of views and engagement fairly quickly.
Just remember, with the YouTube thumbnail ads, you will usually get a lot of dislikes just because there is a social stigma around using “ads” to garnish views and grow your channel. But there’s nothing wrong with an ad, you are simply paying to get your content shown to people that otherwise would not know you exist as people are either not searching for your keywords or YouTube just simply doesn’t promote your channel or video beyond a few impressions. It’s a known fact that the top 3% of channels get 90% all of the views and less than 1% of videos get over 1 million views. So, to compete and grow an audience, YouTube ad promotions really work in my experience. You just have to target the right audience.
Though the dislikes may suck, the subs you get and positive engagement in the comments will help grow your channel and let YouTube know what kinds of people enjoy watching your content and it will eventually get recommended to the right people. YouTube’s algorithm needs to know who to show your content to and that the platform can trust your channel to put out good content that people want to watch. This is why CTR and Audience Retention is incredibly important. Boost CTR with good thumbnails and titles, boost viewer retention with great content that hooks for first 1 minute and then retains minutes 1-5 are critical.
Keywords
The first minute is the most important and the minutes from 1-5 are crucial to have the most captivating content in order to get the highest retention possible.
Create content around what keywords are being searched for. If you spend a lot of time making a great video, you want to get it seen. The best way to do that is to post content that people will search for.
Really use your description as an opportunity to get your keywords in your upload. Keywords are key to ranking and you can get all your relevant searching keywords and long tail searches in the description. This will help YouTube rank your video as people click on it, stay and watch, and interact with your content.
Thumbnail and Title:
YouTube wants a good CTR (Click Through Rate)
You get this by having a captivating thumbnail that makes people want to click when there is an impression. Avoid small text and a lot of complexities going on. Make it simple, easy to read text, and not have a lot going on. Also, make sure to leave the viewer wanting more. Don’t answer what happens in the video in the thumbnail, build suspense and desire with the thumbnail.
Make sure the title is captivating as well and generates interest. It needs to be relevant to the video and style of content your viewer base is looking for. Also use the Title as a way to capitalize on major keywords for search results most relevant to your content and the audience you are targeting.
Make sure to title your thumbnails and video with relevant keywords within and also add tags (meta data) within the image and video file.
Links in Description: If you want to guide people off your YouTube page and follow you on other social media, make the links clickable. They should be able to just click the link and go straight to your profile. People will rarely see your username and actively go search for you.
End Cards: make sure you have end cards at the ends of your videos (this one did – so that’s good). This allows viewers to continue to binge your content and get to know you better as a creator and want to keep coming back for more.
This is my two cents on the subject. Hope it helps. This is all my opinion and is subject to be completely wrong. I just simply believe these to be the reasons for my stunted growth or growth in general.
How To Get Monetized On YouTube In 33 Days [A Case Study]
The main things I learned:
High CTR (Click Through Rate)
High Audience Retention
You need to focus on making sure a relevant audience is targeted by YouTube for your channel overall. Once YouTube sees a high CTR and high audience retention, it starts to look for an audience. Once it figures out what kind of audience watches your content, it pushes your vids like crazy and the channel sees real growth.
I would say high CTR is over 10% and videos 10-15 minutes get over 5 min watch time averages for high audience retention.
Search results don’t seem to matter as much as they would seem. With traditional SEO for things like blogs and branded sites, it matters so much and I recommend tools like SEMrush to help with research. But for YouTube, videos seem to be hardly found through search when comparing the results of successful videos to the impressions YouTube just hands out to your video if the algorithm likes you content. And YouTube likes your content when you can keep people on their platform and engaged in their brand. This is done by getting people to see the impression of the Thumbnail and Title, clicking on it, and then staying for a long time and engaging with the content through liking, commenting, subscribing, clicking an end card, watching another video of yours or watching another recommended video (therefore not leaving the website). This keeps YouTube a dominate website and makes their bounce rate stats insane compared to other websites on the internet. This generates trust from companies to know they can feel comfortable dedicating massive amounts of money from marketing budgets towards this arm of their strategy. Therefore, the channel wins, YouTube wins, and advertisers win.
Results (Proof of Concept)
When I originally posted this Post I was at:
731/1000 Subscribers and 476/4000 hrs watch time (Requirements for Monetization)
Currently the channel is at 53,000 Subscribers and 479,000 hrs of watch time
I was able to post my first video on October 24, 2019 and got the official “Congratulations” email from YouTube on November 25, 2019 to be approved for the YouTube Partner Program.
Summary
Ideally you want your CTR to be as high as possible when the video first comes out (24-48hrs) this is critical as the higher the CTR and the higher the AR (audience retention) the more impressions you’ll get. If you get a 15-20% CTR that’s amazing, which is why I recommend trying to get over 15%. The more YouTube pushes the video with impressions, it’s natural for the CTR to drop. YouTube wants to push good videos as long as it can until the CTR gets burned down to low conversions. This is why videos get pushed for many months and sometimes even years.
The key is to make a Thumbnail that captivates the viewer and use a title that compliments the thumbnail, but try not to reuse text in the thumbnail in the description. Also, make sure you focus on keeping your audience retention as high as possible. I try to aim for 10+ minute videos and anything under 5 minutes for me is not good retention. My videos average around 6:30-7:30 minutes retention.
The key to high retention is making sure people click and don’t leave within 10 seconds because they see the video is really off from their expectation or there is not captivating reason to stay. Next, focus on first 69 seconds of the video. Your best stuff should be packed into the first minute of the video. If you have a decent intro that is good energy and captivating, you can use the rest of the first minute to put in the best content available for the video. Don’t be afraid to mix the video up, even out of original recorded order, to fit in the best stuff. Next, focus on keeping people from minute 1 through minute 5. Do this with keeping up with you audience expectations for your niche. What is it that other massively successful channels are doing? Take notes and study their content. Understand what they are doing and implement similar strategies and styles to make sure you are aligning with what has already been proven in the market to succeed for that targeted audience.
From there is just a game of uploading consistently and waiting on YouTube to kick in it’s magic and boost your channel. There’s 4 phases to YouTube’s algorithm:
Identify channel uploads (consistency) and CTR/AR (Click Through Rate/ Audience Retention)
Video Suggestions
Audience Identifying
Channel Growth
YouTube sees your uploads are consistent and that the CTR and AR is high. Once this occurs, you will start to see YouTube views coming from Suggested. Once suggested happens, YouTube then sees if it can identify an audience that shares similar interests and if those suggested views garner the same CTR and AR. If the CTR and AR are good on the suggested views, YouTube then takes the audience it has identified to want to consume your content and the channel takes off pretty fast because you will start getting a ton of Browse Feature views. Once you get the Browse Feature views going, you are locked into the algorithm.
And from there is just posting consistently and keeping your CTR and AR high. The main thing I learned as well is that because YouTube needs to identify an audience, it’s important to make sure the content or niche you are targeting with your content stays very very similar in each video. Don’t get too much variety for the channel. Keep the theme and subject matter consistent. The moment you want to veer off into another area of interest or focus, it’s better to start another channel just for that.
Side Notes
I.
I believe it takes about 30-90 days to get a channel from zero to favored in the algorithm.
Basically the name of the game is:
Pick a niche and stick to it without changing up. This allows YouTube the opportunity to discover your best audience. You won’t get recommended (impressions) if YouTube isn’t confident it knows your audience. YouTube loses as a platform if it recommends the wrong content to the wrong people and the UX side of the equation is hurt. So audience identification is a major factor.
YouTube won’t look for an audience if your content isn’t something that people want. How do you prove this? CTR AVD and total watch time. YouTube sees a high CTR 10%+ ideally (Click Through Rate) and High Average View Duration (aim for 50%+) and minutes watched. A 10 minute video with 30% AVD (3:00 minutes) is better than a 2 minute video with 80% AVD (1:36 minutes).
YouTube sees you have good CTR and AVD, you’ll start to see suggested views as the source. Once this occurs, you’re looking good. Now it’s just about consistently uploading and keeping your KPIs high (Key Performance Indicators).
Once YouTube identifies your audience with suggested views and the algorithm likes your channel and is confident you put out stuff people care about and want to watch, you will get Browse Feature views. That’s the big wave you ride and comes the “YouTube Success” people seek. Basically this is where YouTube builds your channel for you as long as you keep putting out good content that’s relevant to your audience.
The name of the game is to help YouTube make as much money as possible. This is done by keeping people on the platform for as long as possible to expose them to more opportunities to see ads. You do this and YouTube will reward you with tons of traffic and impressions.
II.
This is all you need to worry about:
CTR
AVD
Total Watch Time Accumulated
YouTube targets the right audience
Consistent Uploads
CTR – Relevant content your viewers want to watch with a Thumbnail that is captivating and evokes an emotional response and a NEED to click.
AVD – Content that is entertaining for the targeted audience. Does your audience like High Energy? Calm Energy? Detailed Descriptions and lots of Talking? Raging at the Game? Long Drawn Out Intros? To The Point Videos? etc.
How much watch time does your AVD add up to? Are you gaining a ton of watch time for the videos and channel overall? YouTube needs people to stay on the platform for as long as possible, the more you are able to keep people on the platform, the happier YouTube is.
Is YouTube targeting the right audience? Look at your Suggested View Sources. Are these videos relevant to your content? What are the CTRs and AVDs of the videos being suggested? Did you do anything to potential make YouTube identify the wrong audience? Sub4Sub? Post on Reddit or Facebook Groups? etc. If YouTube suggests your videos to 100 people across 100 different videos and out of that you get a few to click and Watch a lot of the video, YouTube will know there is an audience out there and that IT was at fault and your content doesn’t suck. If you get suggested and no one is clicking or watching a lot of the video at all, YouTube will think your content sucks and move on.
Are you uploading consistently? How often are other channels in your niche uploading? 2xs a day? 1x a day? 2xs a week? 1x a week? You should be pumping out content at the same rate as the other big channels in your niche.
III.
You want to help YouTube identify your audience, so here are some tricks:
In your description:
Put – “Inspired by [channel names of VERY VERY similar channels]”
Also add something like:
Check Out More Videos or More Awesome Videos
[Channel Name| Video Title | {Video Link} ]
[Channel Name| Video Title | {Video Link} ]
[Channel Name| Video Title | {Video Link} ]
This will let YouTube know who your audience is related to, and if people click on these links it will show a common interest from the viewers and associate your content with these other videos and channels
Next, make a playlist:
Hot COD Vids [Or whatever you like lol]
Add Your Videos and Other Videos from channels you are trying to gain an audience from or have an audience identified from for your channel.
Put this playlist as an End Card in all your videos. People that click on these will see your video, another channel video, your video, another channel video (mix it up). And this will also tell YouTube that these viewers that watch your content want to see more of your content AND like other channels like yours. Over time YouTube will recognize this and start suggesting your videos to the right audience (the channels you are associating with).
Once you do this, if your content is good with high CTR and high AVD, YouTube will now know your audience (because you helped it figure it out) and you are in business.
IV.
You can grow with only YouTube. There is no need to post videos anywhere else. However, I have noticed that TikTok does not stunt organic reach like other platforms like Facebook and Instagram. So, the best thing that I’ve found is to grow organically on YouTube by understanding how the platform works and if you want, you can post clips on TikTok and get a lot of traffic and potentially subscribers.
However, YouTube is very particular about identifying audiences. So, if you are posting videos online and it’s driving traffic to your videos but the audiences are not right for the content and/or people are leaving very quick and the watch time is low, it will affect your channel overall and you will see slower growth and potentially even hurt the channel from growing at all.
Basically, ideally you want your CTR to be as high as possible when the video first comes out (24-48hrs) this is critical as the higher the CTR and the higher the AR (audience retention) the more impressions you’ll get. If you get a 15-20% CTR that’s amazing, which is why I recommend trying to get over 15%. The more YouTube pushes the video with impressions, it’s natural for the CTR to drop. YouTube wants to push good videos as long as it can until the CTR gets burned down to low conversions. This is why videos get pushed for many months and sometimes even years.
The key is to make a Thumbnail that captivates the viewer and use a title that compliments the thumbnail, but try not to reuse text in the thumbnail in the description. Also, make sure you focus on keeping your audience retention as high as possible. I try to aim for 10+ minute videos and anything under 5 minutes for me is not good retention. My videos average around 6:30-7:30 minutes retention.
The key to high retention is making sure people click and don’t leave within 10 seconds because they see the video is really off from their expectations or there is not captivating reason to stay. Next, focus on the first 60 seconds of the video. Your best stuff should be packed into the first minute of the video. If you have a decent intro that is good energy and captivating, you can use the rest of the first minute to put in the best content available for the video. Don’t be afraid to mix the video up, even out of original recorded order, to fit in the best stuff. Next, focus on keeping people from minute 1 through minute 5. Do this with keeping up with you audience expectations for your niche. What is it that other massively successful channels are doing? Take notes and study their content. Understand what they are doing and implement similar strategies and styles to make sure you are aligning with what has already been proven in the market to succeed for that targeted audience.
From there is just a game of uploading consistently and waiting on YouTube to kick in it’s magic and boost your channel. There’s 4 phases to YouTubes algorithm:
Identify channel uploads (consistency) and CTR/AR (Click Through Rate/ Audience Retention)
Video Suggestions
Audience Identifying
Channel Growth
YouTube sees your uploads are consistent and that the CTR and AR is high. Once this occurs, you will start to see YouTube views coming from Suggested. Once suggested happens, YouTube then sees if it can identify an audience that shares similar interests and if those suggested views garner the same CTR and AR. If the CTR and AR are good on the suggested views, YouTube then takes the audience it has identified to want to consume your content and the channel takes off pretty fast because you will start getting a ton of Browse Feature views. Once you get the Browse Feature views going, you are locked into the algorithm.
And from there is just posting consistently and keeping your CTR and AR high. The main thing I learned as well is that because YouTube needs to identify an audience, it’s important to make sure the content or niche you are targeting with your content stays very very similar in each video. Don’t get too much variety for the channel. Keep the theme and subject matter consistent. The moment you want to veer off into another area of interest or focus, it’s better to start another channel just for that.
V.
Watch hours usually happen very quickly once things pick up. If you have a 5+ min AVD on a video and it gets thrown into the algorithm you need about 48,000 views. This can be accomplished with one video alone in a day or across a few decent videos that take in 10,000-20,000 views.
Focus on getting CTR and AVD as high as possible and keep an eye on if YouTube is trying to find you an audience. YouTube is looking for your audience with Suggested Views. The more content you give it, the more it will test audience groups. This is why uploading content a lot is good for growing quickly. You give YouTube more opportunities to search for your audience. This is also why you should stick with your niche and don’t switch up your content . You want YouTube to identify your audience and consistently get it right.
Create content for niches that get tons of traffic and that people want to consume. Get your CTR and AVD high. Pump out content as much as you can. Become a content creating machine. Watch your KPIs and see where you can improve. Watch for YouTube suggesting your content and where they are suggesting and what the results are. Then be patient and upload consistently if everything is looking good.
If your CTR and AVD are not good, youtube won’t even try to find you an audience because it has no incentive to. YouTube makes money when people stay on the website for as long as possible. If your content can’t keep people on the platform, youtube has no interest in helping your channel grow.
If you can keep people on the platform with great content, youtube has a massive incentive to find your content a home with the proper audience and it will continually reward you as long as you feed the system what it needs to make its platform the best experience as possible for its user base and make the platform a ton of money by keeping people on the website.
VI.
You do not need to post anywhere else to grow on YouTube. YouTube has an algorithm that works and if you hit your KPIs, the system will reward you. YouTube is designed to take underrated content and blow it up, along with promoting already proven content.
In fact, promoting on other platforms may or may not hurt your growth. YouTube builds a profile to figure out your audience. If you promote on say a Reddit forum and people go watch it, YouTube will build a profile around those viewers and try to recommend your content to what THOSE viewers are interested in. If they are irrelevant to your niche, YouTube will then have the wrong data to work with because you fed the algorithm bad information by bringing in irrelevant traffic to your channel/videos.
It feels like there’s a huge surge of PL games – what gives? Not enough counters? PL feels to me like a hero you 100% lose to late game if you don’t have the right draft. Everyone says that the draft doesn’t matter at all here so how do you deal with him without using earth shaker or timber…
How come he is so popular? Was there a nerf or buff that made him really good all of a sudden?
How do you beat him without the hard counter heroes? Strategy/Items?
What other heroes besides the two mentioned are good at beating him? I know legion commander is decent and maybe ember spirit?
Is he balanced/where he should be in comparison the other heroes?
When he hits level 6 should I just abandon lane as an offlaner or is there any point in staying?
PL Artwork
It’s actually not that hard to deal with a PL.
In general, illusion heroes like PL and Naga have become decent picks this patch. In the PL games I’ve seen, people counter PL with an ultra fast draft. The point is to choke the enemy out of their jungle and into high ground by minute 20-25
He has the highest base damage in level 1 in the agility section, making him have a good lane because he can last hit easier, with quelling blade, its almost assured that u can last hit every creep,
Id say the best counter to PL is Axe, Lion, Ember, Puck, Magnus and many more, I wouldnt say ES because in late game, if PL has heart ES wouldn’t do anything even with his ult to PL because of his high hp.
Yeah Legion can counter PL in the early game because of her aggressiveness and her 1st skill.
I’d say he is one of the best carries this meta.
If you are an offlaner, you shouldn’t let the enemy carry farm freely. ask help from your fellow supports or your midlaner. and if you are still in the draft selection of heroes, NEVER LET THE ENEMY TEAM LAST PICK PL.
About his level 6, if you as offlaner along with your 4 can dumpster their lane before the PL hits 4-5, then you should aggressively take their safelane tower. Try cutting the creepwave while chipping away at their tower. Then ward their jungle areas. Absolutely no breathing space should be given. PL is actually weak even with lev6, and is pretty easily killable until he gets a Diffusal + Manta up. PL loves farming jungle, so you have to choke him out. Mid plus 1 or 2 supports can easily kill PL in the mid game, if you have some sort of wave clear.
IIRC, in the minors game of Nigma vs RNG, Nigma picked PL, while RNG picked Lifestealer and Underlord. The game was pretty matched even at 70+ minutes. Underlord’s atrophy meant PL can’t deal any damage at all, and Lifestealer had built Mjollnir for the illusions. Miracle, being the madlad that he is, ultimately bought a divine rapier for his damage issues.
Here’s an example, you pick mid and lose your lane but wait, you get a lucky team fight 15 mins and you’re back in the game. The enemy tilts and you proceed to win. Don’t pat yourself on the back here, acknowledge your mistakes and lack of skill. Be real, you got lucky. Stop thinking shit like, “look, I picked mid and carried!”.
I always see this happening. People writing off their mistakes as not that bad and then praising everything they did as perfectly played. Let’s be honest, ya? Most of us have clocked thousands of hours into this game. You can tell for sure how well you’re doing to an accurate degree if you wanted to.
Watch your own replays and pretend that you’re a 3rd party. It’s very straightforward to tell if you played amazing, decent, average or shit. If you went 10-0-10, ask yourself honestly, did you really play amazing? Or was it that your enemies were bad? Or you got lucky? Or your team played really well?
I’m not saying to always assume you’re a shit player that gets lucky if he wins. I’m saying that in order to improve as a player, it takes an objective view. If you keep deluding yourself into thinking that it wasn’t your fault you lost or that every win was because of you, then you’re just going to stay in whatever shit MMR bracket you’re in forever.
The title is the first thing users see when they find your content. And if it isn’t punchy, it might be the last. Here are some basic tips for writing strong YouTube titles: Keep it short and sweet. The most popular YouTube videos tend to have the shortest titles. Stick to 60 characters or less or some of your title may get cut off when displayed. Include your keyword(s) in the first half of the title to avoid losing valuable information. Most online readers focus on the beginning of the sentence and skip the rest. Engaging doesn’t mean clickbait. The best headlines offer an obvious benefit or create an emotional reaction. Clickbait is tempting, but can damage your channel’s reputation in the long term. Still can’t come up with a title? YouTube’s autocomplete feature is a great way to find popular keywords. Start by searching for a particular theme or topic, and see what title YouTube suggests.
TIK TOK IS GREAT FOR PROMOTING!!!
I see a lot of people on here asking where to promote their videos. There’s truly only one answer. Tik Tok. I know what most of you are thinking. Isn’t Tik Tok that cringey dancing app? NO! Believe me I didn’t like the idea of Tik Tok until I got into it for promoting my YouTube channel. I LITERALLY AMASSED OVER 1700 FOLLOWERS IN 2 DAYS!!! The algorithm is ridiculously good. Just put good effort into your tik toks. The community is great. And to make matters better… YOU CAN LINK YOUR YOUTUBE CHANNEL RIGHT ON YOUR PROFILE! I can’t express enough how much this app has surprised me. Give it a try! Its 100% worth it!
I was thinking about my journey as a web novel author and how it shares a lot of similarities with my YouTube journey.
I’ve been writing years and slowly writing/uploading new chapters for people to read. It started with me having a horrendously depressing day and needing an outlet for all the dark negative thoughts going through my head. I decided to take what was inside of my body and pour it into my computer. My first chapter was over 8,000 words but by the end of it, I felt immensely better about myself. Then I just kept writing new chapters.
It was a nice feeling seeing people read my work and comment below the chapter. After several chapters, I got my first review which was great. As I continued to write, I began getting a varying degree of comments/reviews/DMs from people who either hated or loved my work. I kept writing new chapters. I got reviews saying how my work was like an adolescent’s wet dream or some other negative thought, but I kept writing new chapters. Sometimes, I’d crawl into bed because of the comments and reviews but it wouldn’t be long before I would continue writing new chapters.
Years passed by and I found out I’d written over 500,000 words (a combination of writing the chapter and editing them). In my analytics for the site, I’d had over 1,000,000 accumulated views and reached the top 10 for active series on the site (I dropped down to #~3,000. T^T). But I kept typing new chapters. I’ve had people comment about their surprise to see I’m still writing my web novel series.
Then in 2018, I came up with the idea of narrating my story and uploading the chapters onto YouTube. Just like with writing out my chapters, I had people tell me that I had no business on YouTube. I was told my accent is too strong or I suck at narrating my work, but I keep uploading new chapters. I’ve also received DMs from people who told me they were die-hard fans of my videos and love the story.
Just like with writing, though I don’t have an impressive number of views, subs, or watch-time, I know that it’s just about uploading new videos. The same as when I realized I had written ~500,000 words, I know I’ll get to 1,000 videos (maybe even 10,000) and I’ll just continue uploading new videos.
Crossing a mountain is intimidating, but if you remove a grain of dirt and keep going you’ll eventually remove your obstacle and reach your goal. There may be various strategies shared on YouTube, related to SEO, thumbnails, titles, and etc, but everything boils down to keep making videos and having the intent to improve your skills with each one. It may take 1,000, 10,000, or even 100,000 videos, but if you keep at it then you’ll reach your goal.
As someone who plays alot of Bristleback, Viper is the most painful to play against. Getting stunned into his w just kills you if you’re not snowballing. Silver edge carriers are effective but if you outlast the purge – it’s not hard to deal with. Viper’s W plus a stun or hold absolutely shreds you. Viper + Shaman combo is deadly against Bristles.
Core silencer is probably the second hardest for me to deal with, the pure damage and the inability to cast spells without refreshing curse is really difficult to play against.
As a Bristle against a Silencer it’s advisable to get a lotus orb – to dispel.
Besides for the two heroes, spirit vessel is good, long disables (shadow shaman) As well as people who force you to face them (legion, axe)
Also fighting against any six slotted hc seems impossible, a six slotted bristle gets melted by a six slotted am or void or drow.
Slark is another hard counter – but you need to snowball pretty quickly and survive the laning phase to be effective. I’d recommend playing a few games as bristle and see how the enemy team deals with you, then do so yourself next time you face him. I know for me Riki seemed unbeatable until I played as him and got sentried and dusted into oblivion, doesn’t scare me at all anymore.
Buy a fast wand and prepare salves. When BB spams quill spray, he is either a) over-extending just to refresh the debuff b) Low on mana. If he doesn’t kill you when he starts spamming quill, he will lose out because you will have a 20 charge wand and full health( from salves). Once you have full hp, go and trade with him to force him to spend gold on regen. Item progression on BB is quite important as his mid-game is quite weak if he doesn’t have the tank items. He also can’t spam quill to farm waves because of mana issues so his farming isn’t great and he has pretty bad stat growth for a strength hero.
In team fights, your team shouldn’t be committing spells/ over-committing to kill him unless he over-extends by a lot. Quill takes quite a few casts for it to start to hurt so you should just go completely ignore him go for his team. He is a tanky af hero but he can’t 1v5. The best thing to do is ignore him. Bristleback wants to be hit and if you hit him even if he dies he still does his job. You waste your time not killing his supports or his carry and you’re getting quilled the whole time. Just ignore him and focus the rest of his team. When his team dies 5v1 him and kill him last.
Heroes that are good against him would be:
Lion( Mana drain, Stuns for repositioning),
Nyx (Mana burn, Stuns for repositioning),
Axe( Call, spin),
Viper (Magic resist shred + Break),
Legion Commander( PTA purge, duel),
Lifestealer,
Ursa,
Ancient Apparition (ulti)
If you follow any of the above tips – Bristleback will be the least of your worries.
Hi everyone, I’ve learned a lot from this subreddit, so I wanted to give back and share a few things that have helped my channel.
My watch time and views on youtube have been improving so much in the past few months and it’s all because of three things: SEO, better thumbnails, and better titles. For me improving on these three elements is key for consistent growth month over month. I’d love to get lucky and get massively recommended by the algorithm, but so far it hasn’t happened.
For thumbnails what works on my channel is big, and I mean, BIG titles. Taking up half of the screen or more and words that will spark curiosity. Make sure your thumbnails are readable and eye-catching in the smallest size possible (I couldn’t find the exact measurement, but it is the size of the suggested videos thumbnails when you’re watching in the YT app). I also try to use aesthetically pleasing photos, enhanced bright colors in the photo (I started editing my thumbnail photos with lightroom, too and use presets that enhance the colors – you can find free or cheap presets online and the lightroom app is free) Using close ups of my face if possible or prominently showing the product if a product review has led to higher CTR. Also, using consistent fonts – I only use 3 fonts on my channel in different combinations.
For titles: half of my title is SEO friendly – I run it through TubeBudy (free version) to see if it is searched enough and what the competition is (aka my chance to rank); the second part of the title is a bit more directed to making viewers interested, I try to make it a little more sensational.
I also make my video descriptions super SEO friendly – I find all the tags that are searched enough and that I can potentially rank for and write a copy that naturally uses as many of them as possible.
By no means am I saying that I’ve cracked the code to youtube success and perfected these techniques, but doing these things has definitely made a difference in my channel. Hope it’s helpful to someone.
I understand that my channel might be an exception vs. a rule so take my lessons learned with a grain of salt. In fact, take any advice you ever receive with a grain of salt and weigh it against your own knowledge, and the knowledge of others.
1- QUALITY OVER QUANTITY.
I find personally that if I put more effort into a video, EVENTUALLY it will be rewarded with higher views and more engagement. The lazier it is, the worse. Don’t put out content just for the sake of putting out content. It needs to have a punch. Medicore won’t do, you have to stand out in some way. Cut aggressively. Put out only your best. I’m personally sitting on about 10 videos/songs/ideas that just aren’t quite there yet.
2- ENGAGE VIEWERS.
Talk to them. Like/heart their comments. treat them the way you wish your favorite Youtuber would treat you. Build that audience. Let them know they’re valued. Not by spamming “THANKS SO MUCH” in your video, but by taking the time to actually communicate. They want to talk to you, so talk back.
3- CURATE COMMENTS.
YouTube comments section can be straight up cancerous. It sucks to get some scathing criticism or get trolled. As you grow, it’ll happen more and more. First- Unless you’re Onison, or publishing controversial viewpoints, know that it probably isn’t you. The internet is full of trolls. Thing is, this is YOUR comment section. Trolls can troll where the fuck ever, but your comment section is yours. If there’s a post in there that’s obviously inflammatory, hurtful, or downright shitty, delete that ish. Constructive criticism? Fine. Asshattery? Nope.
4- LET YOUR SUBSCRIBERS/FANS HELP.
They subscribed. They like you. Encourage them to share your work with their friends. They likely run in a social circle that likes the same things they like. So encourage them to pass it on. Sharing is caring. Whether that be on Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, or (shudder) 9gag.
5- DON’T GIVE UP.
Push yourself out of your comfort zone. Do new things that are related to your niche. Try new things. Combine your niche with something new or interesting. Mash stuff together. Mix it up, baby, you’ve got a stew going. Make it funny, fresh, new, interesting. Keep creating.
6- LUCK
Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. Just like any other aspect of show business, luck plays a very large part.
Most importantly- if you do manage to somehow capture lightning in a bottle? Don’t hold yourself to that. Don’t compare every video against the one. Let them stand on their own. You can compare what works and what doesn’t, but don’t go “HOW COME MY OTHER VIDEOS DON’T HAVE AS MANY VIEWS AS THIS ONE?” Let that go. It’s the nature of the beast.
I guess I’ve done pretty well for myself over the last 15 years, and one thing that stands out to me more than anything in the divide between those of us that build successful businesses, employ people to help us scale, etc and those that always spin their wheels is this absolutely bullshit idea that reading is the key to wealth.
Everything you could ever need to know about business, wealth, life, love etc is probably in a total of 20 books, and if we just focus on business and wealth creation, let’s call it 10 and that’s being generous.
What 10? that’s up to you really since most books that are decent say the exact same fucking thing in a different way or with different characters.
What billionaires read, or how they start their morning has absolutely NOTHING to do with you. NOTHING.
Do you know why?
Because their ability to read a book a day, meditate twice, do yoga, write in their vision journal, ALL THAT BULLSHIT came AFTER they were wealthy.
While they built their companies, they worked 7 days a week 18+ hours a day, eating shitty fast food or whatever was available, barely showering let alone meditating for two hours.
I succeeded the same way everyone else did, working like an insane person towards my goals each day. Testing, failing, learning, testing.
Sure, read Think and grow rich, read how to win friends and influence people, read the millionaire next door, read the bible or any other religious text with most of life’s lessons told as stories, even read the secret if you want some metaphysical bullshit, because whether it’s real or placebo, if you believe it, it’s real.
But then, GET. TO. FUCKING. WORK.
Stop watching bullshit artist Gary V, or Warren Buffet Talks, or running to Amazon to buy Bill Gates top 10 touching books of the year.
Bill Gates was a fucking savage for decades. There was no Gates reading list 30 years ago, I doubt he read anything that wasn’t market reports.
After 15 years I thankfully have some breathing room to read some books, post bullshit on reddit, laugh hysterically at a Gary V videos and even consider stuff like hot yoga and flotation tanks and what super-food smoothie might make my dick 10% harder and perhaps give me back a few years that I burnt off of my life building a 20 person company.
Early on I got my hands on some Jim Rohn videos at the library, your best year ever seminar or something, probably on youtube now. It was like 5 hours and it was enough to change my life. It all just made perfect sense to me.
If you can read something like think and grow rich and feel the need to consume 500 other books on the subject, you probably won’t be getting anywhere in this lifetime.
STOP READING SHIT. STOP WATCHING SHIT. Downtime is for rich people.
I get that you think a 4 hour Joe Rogan podcast talking about sending your blood and spit and shit to 50 different labs to get a full breakdown of your perfect diet, vitamin and mineral supplementation and optimal workouts and sleep time is what’s going to make you a millionaire, but I assure you it won’t.
It will just make you a really healthy person with insurmountable credit card debt.
Stem cell injections won’t make you Joe Rogan and reading Bill Gates book list won’t make you a billionaire.
Self education is mostly used as an excuse for procrastination. Don’t fall into the trap of thinking you are getting better by constantly trying to absorb information, not to mention the completely conflicting points of view you encounter when you choose to absorb content from an endless amount of sources.
If you want to learn sales, sell something. Reading 30 books on selling is going to give you 30 conflicting points of view, mostly by people that failed as salesman so they wrote a book talking about all the shit they never did that probably should work if someone actually had the discipline that they don’t.
….but at least they wrote a book which is worth something to them, what’s it worth to you besides a dozen hours you could have been building your business?
F(AWXM) 