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How I Gained 1 MILLION Subscribers

2020-11-15 · Long video (solo, talking head or whiteboard) · Ali · recording, 27:48 · watch on YouTube

Topic: YouTube, writing online and creators (also: Mindset, motivation and happiness, Goals, purpose and life design) · mode: Reflection and life update · tags: His own numbers, His own products discussed, His medical past, Family

On receiving YouTube's gold creator award for a million subscribers, Ali reflects on the journey: slow early growth sustained by a process goal of one to three videos a week, hedonic adaptation to views and money, the hate comments that do and do not hurt, why he feels no pride (his success is luck), being recognised, his coffee meetups, sponsorship money and YouTube as an infinite game.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — The million-subscriber award arrives; what the video will cover

00:01:04 — From 47 subscribers in 2017: 52 videos to the first thousand, the compounding graph and the forgetting curve

  • ★★ Ali started YouTube in the summer of 2017 with about 47 subscribers, and reaching a large subscriber count was not even on the cards for him. — 00:01:04 · YouTube
  • ★★ Making two videos a week, it took Ali 52 videos and six months to reach his first 1,000 subscribers. — 00:01:34
  • ★★ Ali says channel subscribers, views and revenue grow like compounding gains: very slow at the start, then accelerating as the flywheel keeps turning. — 00:02:03
  • ★★ Laying the forgetting curve over the growth graph, Ali says that about 302 videos in he has forgotten how much effort the early work took; two or three videos a week now feels normal. (hedged) — 00:02:27 · forgetting curve
  • ★★ Early on, Ali thought 4,000 subscribers reachable only with very hard work, and that there was no way he would ever reach the 50,000 of his friend Ibz Mo. — 00:02:27
  • ★★ Ali's channel reached 5,000 subscribers in March 2018, with 78 videos published. — 00:03:08
  • ★★ Even at 20,000 subscribers, Ali thought 50,000 to 60,000 a goal for two years later and 100,000 impossible, though friends said his accelerating growth would get him there. — 00:03:08
  • ★★★ Ali says he has never really cared about subscriber count and always knew fixating on it was pointless; since 5,000 subscribers the number has stopped meaning anything, though he checks growth every day. — 00:03:52

00:04:25 — The motivation to keep going: a process goal, not a numerical goal

  • ★★★ What kept Ali going through slow early growth was a process goal of making one to three videos a week, entirely within his control, rather than a goal for subscribers or revenue, which are outside it. — 00:04:25
  • ★★★ Ali advises new creators not to fixate on the numbers: after ten unwatched videos you will ask what the point is, but the numbers come as a side effect over time. — 00:05:20

00:05:35 — Hedonic adaptation: money, views, subscribers and the YouTube Studio app

  • ★★ Ali disagrees with the line in YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki's award letter that little can match the satisfaction of one's voice reaching a million people, because of hedonic adaptation. — 00:05:49 · YouTube
  • ★★ Ali explains hedonic adaptation: the more of something you have, the more you get used to it, and your goalposts shift completely. — 00:05:49
  • ★★ At 13, earning six pounds an hour and about 24 pounds a week in a part-time job, Ali felt that 20 pounds was the best thing in the world. — 00:06:18
  • ★★ Spending a few thousand pounds on the new Apple M1 MacBook Air and MacBook Pros felt like a bargain to Ali, who once thought a thousand-pound MacBook very expensive. — 00:06:40 · MacBook
  • ★★ Hedonic adaptation applies to Ali's YouTube numbers too: once one new subscriber delighted him; now a day with 1,000 extra subscribers instead of 2,000 feels terrible. — 00:07:39 · YouTube
  • ★★★ Against hedonic adaptation, Ali says a challenge for everyone becoming more successful is to remember what it felt like at the lower level, such as the joy of earning 20 pounds or gaining two subscribers. — 00:07:39
  • ★★ Ali hates the YouTube Studio app because the first thing it shows is how the latest video ranks against the previous ten, and a low rank sends him into a spiral. — 00:08:21 · YouTube
  • ★★ When a video underperforms, Ali has to talk himself round with the Stoics and people like Gary Vaynerchuk in his head saying it is not about the numbers but about having fun and providing value. — 00:08:50 · Gary Vaynerchuk
  • ★★ To get over an underperforming video, Ali reminds himself that 50,000 views is still a lot of people; three years before, such a video would have been viral for him. — 00:09:19

00:09:35 — Haters: the comments that do not touch him, "you only care about money", and scammer comments on his course

  • ★★ Ali calls it a misconception that there are loads of haters online: almost all of his comments are nice and supportive. (overstated) — 00:09:49
  • ★★ It took about a year of making videos before Ali got any hate comments at all. — 00:10:26
  • ★★★ The fear of hate comments keeps people from putting themselves out online, but Ali says that at the start nobody is watching and those who are love you, so there is no need to worry about hate comments. — 00:10:55
  • ★★ Hate comments come later, Ali says, as numbers swell and videos go viral and reach people outside your subscribers. — 00:10:55
  • ★★ Hate comments about Ali's looks, his speaking speed or calling him a virgin nerd do not affect him at all. — 00:10:55
  • ★★★ The hate comments that get to Ali say his videos used to be good and altruistic but now he only cares about money and fame, because there is a shred of truth in them: his psychology around the channel has changed. — 00:11:39
  • ★★ Until 10,000 or 20,000 subscribers Ali replied to every Instagram message; now he gets 50 to 100 DMs a day and does not even see 99% of them. — 00:12:08 · Instagram
  • ★★ Ali gets 200 emails a day, and replying to all of them would be a full-time job. — 00:12:08
  • ★★★ Ali says that even at the start his reason for making videos was not altruistic. — 00:12:42
  • ★★★ In the parasocial relationship between creators and audiences, Ali says, it pays creators to give the impression that making content online is purely altruistic. — 00:13:11
  • ★★ Underneath the altruistic image, Ali says, every creator also makes content for money, attention, an audience and fame. (overstated) — 00:13:11
  • ★★ Ali now has 1.2 million subscribers and is open about how much money he makes. — 00:13:40
  • ★★★ Ali says he has always cared about money, always treated YouTube as a business and always been interested in teaching; he sees his videos as teaching people at scale. — 00:13:40 · YouTube
  • ★★ Part of Ali wonders whether such a commenter has a point and he has become arrogant and narcissistic, expecting views and followers because he is famous. (hedged) — 00:14:09
  • ★★ Ali has been very scared of selling things, knowing some of his audience will call him a scammer for charging money. — 00:14:39
  • ★★★ The first cohort of Ali's Part-Time YouTuber Academy, a four-week live, intensive, interactive course released a few weeks earlier, starts on 16 November 2020. — 00:15:08
  • ★★ Enrolment for the first Part-Time YouTuber Academy cohort is closed; the next cohort will be in February 2021. — 00:15:08
  • ★★ Though Ali promoted the Part-Time YouTuber Academy only on Twitter, Instagram and his newsletter, a commenter on a YouTube video called him a scammer for releasing a $2,000 course on doing well on YouTube. — 00:15:08 · YouTube
  • ★★ Ali answers that nobody is forced to buy the Part-Time YouTuber Academy and that he is not selling a result but 24 hours of live teaching on Zoom, with homework, guest workshops and a full-time team. — 00:15:37 · Zoom
  • ★★ The first Part-Time YouTuber Academy cohort has 400 paying students, and many scholarships were given to people who cannot afford it. — 00:15:37
  • ★★ After three and a half years of free content, and Skillshare classes that are effectively free, Ali can see why charging money can look to some like taking advantage of his audience. — 00:16:25
  • ★★ Ali's friend Matt D'Avella recently released his own course and also talked about how many people complain that it costs money. — 00:16:25 · Matt D'Avella
  • ★★★ Ali says making videos is a job and a business that has to pay the bills, and the parasocial belief that creators must be purely altruistic makes any hint of a business enough to call someone a scammer. — 00:16:54

00:17:13 — Why he does not feel proud: circumstances, luck and unfair advantages

  • ★★★ Asked how proud he feels to have hit a million subscribers, Ali says he never feels proud of himself and thinks feeling proud of yourself is pointless. — 00:17:23
  • ★★ For Ali, being proud of someone needs a personal connection: he would not be proud of Ed Sheeran for a number one, but would be proud if his brother's startup did well. — 00:17:23 · Taimur Abdaal
  • ★★★ Ali says who he is results from circumstances and luck: he was lucky to have a few unfair advantages that he stacked up to build his YouTube channel. — 00:18:12 · YouTube
  • ★★ Among his lucky breaks, Ali names reading Austin Kleon's Show Your Work in 2016, which encouraged him to start his blog. — 00:18:12 · aliabdaal.com
  • ★★ Ali was lucky that in 2012, when he started medical school, it was easy to set up a business helping people get into medical school; the money let him afford decent camera gear from the start. — 00:18:41 · 6med
  • ★★ Ali was lucky to get into Cambridge University, a big-name university whose brand value his channel traded on. — 00:18:41 · University of Cambridge, Cambridge
  • ★★ Ali was lucky to have chosen medicine, since his channel traded on the brand value of being a doctor. — 00:18:41
  • ★★ Ali was lucky that his mother moved the family to the UK when he and his brother were very young, to prioritise their education; without that none of this would have happened. — 00:18:41 · Ali Abdaal's mother, Taimur Abdaal
  • ★★ Ali says he was dealt a very good hand and did not squander it, playing his cards reasonably well, but that is nothing to feel proud of. — 00:19:02

00:19:35 — The experience of fame: first recognised, being recognised now, the coffee meetups

  • ★★ Ali was first recognised around November 2017, four months into YouTube: at a restaurant in Cambridge, which he thinks was Italian, as Katherine told him off for neglecting her for his videos, a girl with her Cambridge medicine interview the next day thanked them for their interview advice. — 00:20:01 · Katherine, Cambridge, YouTube
  • ★★ Ali now gets recognised a few times in the street when he goes out outside lockdown; he likes it but finds it awkward, not knowing where to take the conversation. — 00:20:30
  • ★★ For about three years Ali has had a standing offer on his website: anyone who comes to or passes through Cambridge can have a coffee with him, which he buys, no questions asked. — 00:21:02 · Cambridge, aliabdaal.com
  • ★★ For the first two years of his coffee offer Ali met people after work in his hospital canteen; recently, outside lockdown, Tuesday afternoons became his meetup day in a Cambridge town-centre coffee shop. — 00:21:32 · Cambridge
  • ★★ Through his coffee meetups Ali has made friends and found a singing teacher and a guitar teacher, and Joe, whom he met at one, is now on his team helping with the content. — 00:21:32
  • ★★ Meeting viewers makes the numbers feel real to Ali, and he wants to do more in-person meetups, which he calls a really nice part of fame. — 00:22:01

00:22:22 — What each level of growth feels like; Ryan Holiday's "it feels like nothing"; the infinite game

  • ★★ Ali calls 5,000 subscribers the peak of the experience: from then on he could ask viewers for video ideas and be sure of questions for a Q&A. — 00:22:30
  • ★★ Every later milestone, 100,000, 200,000, 500,000 and a million subscribers, has felt no different to Ali from 5,000. — 00:23:00
  • ★ Ali recently talked to the author Ryan Holiday on one of his Deep Dives. — 00:23:00 · Deep Dive
  • ★★ Ryan Holiday (quoted): In a blog post, Ryan Holiday writes that when told he had hit number one on the bestseller list while mowing his lawn, he put his phone away, kept mowing and said it feels like nothing. — 00:23:29
  • ★★★ Hitting a million or a hundred thousand subscribers feels like nothing to Ali, because the number is not what matters: the work is. — 00:23:29
  • ★★ The gold creator award for a million subscribers, with a letter from YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki, arrived in the mail a month or two before the video; Ali says it does not feel like anything. — 00:23:59 · YouTube

  • ★★★ Ali has recently taken up the philosophy of doing the work so you can keep doing it: YouTube is an infinite game with no end goal, and he wants to keep playing because it is fun, profitable and helps people. — 00:24:26 · YouTube

    “This YouTube thing is an infinite game.”

00:24:48 — The money side: the first sponsorship deal and how sponsors feel now

  • ★★ Ali got his first sponsorship deal in the summer of 2018, at 52,000 subscribers and 120 videos. — 00:24:55
  • ★★ Ali's first sponsorship deal was for about a thousand pounds, which felt to him like free money for a two-minute mention. (hedged) — 00:24:55
  • ★★ Negotiating sponsorships himself through middleman agencies, Ali did not know what to charge for a 60-second integration and plucked a number out of thin air; sponsor rates were a black box. — 00:25:25 · Squarespace
  • ★★ At the start Ali made about 500 to 1,000 pounds per sponsored video, and now makes a lot more, though his sponsorship agreements bar him from saying how much. — 00:25:54
  • ★★ Ali finds it odd that nobody would blink at Coca-Cola spending 200,000 on a TV commercial, yet paying a creator 200,000 to plug its product feels different, though the result is the same. — 00:26:21
  • ★★★ Ali used to think of sponsorship money as free money; now it is just another line of revenue in the business, and with his agency there is a sponsor almost every week, so he can focus on the content. — 00:26:21

00:26:52 — Thanks to viewers, a promised follow-up video and sign-off

  • ★★ Ali says he will make another video on 15 lessons he has learned on the way to a million subscribers. — 00:26:58

Threads in this video

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

Central: hedonic adaptation · infinite game · Part-Time YouTuber Academy · process goals · YouTube

Also: People: Ali Abdaal's mother · Austin Kleon · Ed Sheeran · Gary Vaynerchuk · Ibz Mo · Joe · Katherine · Matt D'Avella · Ryan Holiday · Susan Wojcicki · Taimur Abdaal · Thomas Frank

Projects: aliabdaal.com · Deep Dive

Works: Show Your Work!

Organizations: 6med · Coca-Cola · Instagram · University of Cambridge

Concepts: flywheel · forgetting curve · parasocial relationship · unfair advantage

Places: Cambridge

Products: MacBook · Squarespace · YouTube Studio · Zoom

Also centred on hedonic adaptation: Motivation, Stress & Time Management - Exam Revision Q&A with Cambridge students

Also centred on Part-Time YouTuber Academy: A Productive Day on Vacation in the Canary Islands · A "Productive" Day in my Life (Lockdown) · PRODUCTIVE Day in the Life of an Aspiring Gymshark Athlete · How Much Money I Earn as a Doctor + YouTuber · A Beginner's Guide to Making Money with Online Courses

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