The YouTube Formula: How Anyone Can Unlock the Algorithm to Drive Views

Book Preface

Everyone should have a YouTube channel. Literally everyone, but  especially brands. When I see brands that don’t have a presence on YouTube, I think they’re insane. It’s unfathomable that anyone  isn’t capitalizing on the opportunity there. It’s the most coveted job in  America, and with good reason. It is quite literally a gold mine.

When I was a kid, I watched YouTube all the time. It was always  my dream job. I didn’t want to be an astronaut or a doctor—I  couldn’t envision a world where I wasn’t a YouTuber. I started my  channel in 2012 and only got 40 subscribers my first year. Now I  have one of the fastest growing channels in the world. I gained more  than 15 million subscribers in 2019 alone with just over 4 billion  video views. And it’s still growing every day.

If you are just getting started on YouTube, do not expect to pull  any type of viewership in your first year. If this isn’t something you  can accept, don’t start. But if you can, then you need to do this: make  100 videos. It doesn’t matter what they are because they will be terrible, but do something you like doing.

Your first 10 videos will be  garbage. Then make 10 more. These will also be garbage, and so will  the next 10. But eventually, things will start to improve. You’ll get  better little by little. The best way to improve your content is to make  content and see what people like. Then you’ll notice something with your 101st video. It will be in  a whole different league from your first video. You will still be a long  way from good content, but it will be better than your first video was.

It took me hundreds of videos over several years before I got good at  it. I had been making YouTube videos for two years and still didn’t  make good quality videos, even though I thought they were good at  the time. I was like so many creators: I thought the algorithm hated  me because I wasn’t getting subscribers and views. But in reality, my  content wasn’t good enough. In fact, my videos were horrible, like  most YouTube videos are. Most YouTubers have their priorities backward. They spend all their time thinking about the algorithm in their  first hundred videos when they should really be thinking about how  to make better content geared toward the viewer.

Unless you’re the rare YouTuber who has created content professionally, you’re probably average (at best) at making content. You  don’t go from entertaining nobody to entertaining millions in a  day. It’s hard work and a slow progressive workup, and it should be.  Because if you got millions of viewers overnight, you wouldn’t know how to handle them.

Every video is your competitor, so you have to keep putting  in the effort to keep your content relevant and competitive. Viewers have to pick between videos every time they go to YouTube, and  they’ll choose the better video without a second thought. Make your video the better video.

If a video from your channel from six months ago doesn’t make  you want to barf because of how much better you are at making  content now, you’re doing it wrong. I can’t even stand watching my  videos from six months ago because I am so much better at making  content now. I can see how bad my old videos are. They could have  been so much better! I’m depressed even thinking about those videos.

There is a huge opportunity on YouTube for brands. If every  brand knew what I know, they could get a hundred times the viewership they get on television for the same cost. They should be giving  creators like me their advertising budget to make YouTube videos  around their brand. I’ll give you an example. If I was Coca-Cola, I could build a pyramid of a million Coca-Cola cans. Or I could make  a video called, “I Filled My Friend’s House with a Million Cans of  Coca-Cola.” These are both banger ideas that would get a ton of  views if done right. (This was free, Coca-Cola; next time you can pay  me, lol.) Videos like these could lead to millions upon millions more  return than TV-spends, and it’s exponentially cheaper. And seriously,  who really watches TV commercials anyway. Everyone picks up their  phones during commercials.

If brands want to get real visibility, they have to get off of TV.  What do you think people do—especially anyone under the age of  30—when the ads start rolling on TV? They pull out their phones  and quit paying attention! They’re not watching your commercial!

Their attention has been moved to Twitter. SnapChat. YouTube. TikTok. Tweets spike during TV commercials. And people don’t put their  phones down until the commercials are over and their show or sporting event comes back on. Three times fewer people skip a brand deal  on YouTube than they do on TV, because people are usually watching  from their phones. They don’t have a second phone to grab when they  come across an ad or brand deal on YouTube, so they watch it. And  they’re watching a YouTuber they watch all the time, so they are also  less likely to skip because they trust these YouTubers. I have more eyeballs on my content every week than the Super  Bowl. And I have a personal connection with my viewers who have  built trust in me. This audience trust value is worth so much more  than an impersonal celebrity or athlete appearance in a TV commercial. Brands shell out more than $5 million for 30 seconds crammed  in with a bunch of other ads during the Super Bowl. With YouTubers  like me, you could get 10 to 15 minutes of undivided attention centered on your brand for way cheaper.

Then you can get the viewers  to go watch more videos and interact with your brand in other ways  if you’re really smart about it. It’s a no-brainer. You’re quite literally  insane if you’re not capitalizing on the opportunity here Business execs think they know more than the YouTuber, especially if the YouTuber is very young. They want to control their  integration, giving YouTubers a list of talking points to read verbatim  with a call to action at the end. While this works to an extent, brands  would convert exponentially more and see greater brand awareness  and exposure if they let the YouTubers be themselves. A brand should say, “Here’s a bunch of money, do what you do to connect with your  viewers . . . as you’ve done on literally hundreds of videos with hundreds of millions of views. Do what you think would work best to get  our brand talked about or our product sold. We trust you.”

Brands who give the creative license to YouTubers and let them  talk naturally like they normally would with their audience are getting more brand exposure and ROI than they could in any other way,  guaranteed. And they should quit focusing on views but on what  kind of impression they left. Will they remember you? Or will they  hear another sleazy sales pitch?

Let me give you an example of the power of a YouTuber. I created an app called Finger On the App. I announced on my Instagram,  Twitter, and SnapChat that everyone who downloaded and put their  “finger on the app” at a certain time would have the chance to win  $25,000. All you had to do was be the last person with your finger  still on the app. The app was only available on iPhones and only in  America. Even with these limitations, and without even trying, I had  1.5 million people install the app. I hadn’t even promoted it on my  YouTube channel, which at the time had more than 37 million subscribers. In contrast, a newcomer to the mobile video world, Quibi,  launched around the same time as my app, but they had a $1.7 billion budget. Guess how many installs they got? Only 300,000 on the  first day.

Finger On the App was inherently cool, so people talked about  it. It naturally went viral. This is how businesses should pitch  things. Change your mentality from wanting to get the most views to wanting to be the most talked about. My app was trending everywhere. I created a social footprint. And it all happened because I  owned the app myself and had the control to spread the message my  way. Brands come along and think they know better, but they would  be so much more successful if they let YouTubers do what they do  best. We know how to go viral. We know this digital world inherently because it’s what we’ve lived and breathed our whole lives. We  know how to get your brand talked about naturally. This is way more powerful than a pointless view.

YouTube isn’t going anywhere. Google’s parent company Alphabet and Google’s Android operating system funnel so much crazy  traffic to Google-owned YouTube. These companies have so much  power and an unfathomable amount of cash that YouTube can’t be a  fad because of this. It’s worth putting effort into something with such  secure staying power. A lot of YouTube content is subpar now, but  people will start to figure it out and it will be more competitive and  expensive as time goes on. Figure it out now.

If you picked up this book, it’s because you’re already on YouTube  or you are thinking about being on YouTube. Hopefully I’ve helped  you understand that you absolutely should be on YouTube. You’d be  nuts not to be. The opportunity to make money, grow a business, and  spread a message is so huge, whether you’re a regular person like me  or a big brand. And this book has every element you’ll need to do just that.

I first met Derral Eves in Dallas, Texas, for the sole purpose of  talking about YouTube. I was working hard to achieve my dream of  becoming the world’s biggest YouTuber when I came across Derral’s  YouTube channel. I knew I had to meet him because he knew stuff I  needed to know. So I messaged him, and I jumped on a plane. We’ve  been YouTube data best buds together ever since.

Derral has pulled tens of billions of views on YouTube and even  on other platforms because of his deep understanding of algorithms and the viewer. He owns VidSummit, the #1 YouTube data conference in the world. Only one or two other people in the entire world  understand YouTube on the level that Derral does. I have one of the  top three most-watched channels on YouTube, and I still talk about  YouTube data and strategy with Derral because nobody is on the  same wavelength as he is. Whether you’re a creator or a brand, you  can learn how to be successful on YouTube by reading Derral’s book.  Be open to what he can teach you, whether you have five subscribers  or five million. Because remember, you should be improving at every  level, always making better content. The YouTube Formula will help you do that.

MrBeast