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The Key to Success on YouTube

2021-06-02 · Long video (solo, talking head or whiteboard) · Ali · recording, 11:43 · watch on YouTube

Topic: YouTube, writing online and creators (also: Mindset, motivation and happiness, Learning and studying, Productivity and time) · mode: List of tips or lessons · tags: His own numbers, His medical past, Lesson from a book, Feel-Good Productivity thesis, Sponsor segment present

After four years and over 350 videos, Ali shares nine life lessons from YouTube that he applies to life generally: haters are rare, no one actually cares, give value for free, what is obvious to you can be amazing to others, everything is figureoutable, you don't need to be an expert, the start is painful, ask others for help, and enjoy the journey.

What is said

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

00:00:00 — Four years on YouTube, over 350 videos, and nine life lessons

  • ★★ Ali says that in about four years on YouTube he has made over 350 videos, spent thousands of hours filming and editing, and received 118 marriage proposals by email. — 00:00:00 · YouTube
  • ★★ Ali shares nine life lessons from four years as a YouTuber, which he calls general life advice rather than lessons only for would-be YouTubers, though he thinks you should become one. — 00:00:29 · YouTube

00:00:42 — Haters are surprisingly uncommon

  • ★★ Ali's first lesson: haters are surprisingly uncommon; people thinking of starting a YouTube channel fear hate comments, but there are very few, and most people are nice and well-intentioned. — 00:00:53 · YouTube
  • ★★ Ali applies the rarity of hate comments to life: instead of meeting people with suspicion, do not let the bad things that happen stop you trusting people and being open and vulnerable. — 00:01:22
  • ★★ Had he not made a YouTube channel for fear of hate comments, Ali says his life would look very different; every YouTuber friend of his worried about hate comments at first and found them no huge deal. — 00:01:22 · YouTube

00:01:46 — Nobody actually cares

  • ★★ Before starting YouTube Ali worried what friends and family would think, but none of the people he expected to criticise him for putting himself out there in public cared. — 00:01:52 · YouTube
  • ★★★ Ali's second lesson, for life generally: we often stop ourselves doing things for fear of what people will think, but if we just did them we would see that for the most part no one actually cares. — 00:02:21

00:02:40 — Give people value for free

  • ★★ Ali says that to start earning on YouTube a channel now has to reach 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 hours of watch time, which he calls quite hard. — 00:02:50 · YouTube
  • ★★ It took Ali six months and 52 videos to reach 1,000 subscribers; until then everything he made was value given away for free on the internet. — 00:02:50
  • ★★★ Ali's third lesson: when you give people value for free, really good things happen; that is the whole model of YouTube, Twitter and Instagram, and monetisation can come afterwards. — 00:03:19 · YouTube, Twitter, Instagram
  • ★ Ali suggests that people desperate to be paid for the value they provide are probably the same people who would never pay for an iPhone app. (hedged) — 00:03:19 · iPhone

00:03:46 — What's obvious to you can be amazing to others

  • ★★ Ali puts his feeling that what he talks about is really obvious down to the curse of knowledge, a term he attributes to C. S. Lewis: we don't realise others don't know what we take for granted. — 00:03:48
  • ★★★ Ali's fourth lesson, first learned from his now friend Derek Sivers, author of Hell Yeah or No: what is obvious to you can be amazing to others, because most people don't know what you know. — 00:04:18 · Derek Sivers

00:04:41 — Everything is figureoutable

  • ★★ When Ali started on YouTube he knew nothing about cameras, shutter speed, ISO, aperture, editing or sound, and learned it all from free YouTube tutorials, Google, other YouTubers and Skillshare classes. — 00:04:47 · Google, YouTube
  • ★★★ Ali's fifth lesson: everything is figureoutable; since you can learn anything on the internet, think "I don't know how to do this yet, I will figure it out" rather than giving up. — 00:05:16 · cracking open the black box

00:05:44 — You don't need to be an expert

  • ★★★ Ali's sixth lesson: you don't need to be an expert; from YouTube and from teaching medical students he has learned that the best teachers are often those just one step ahead of us. — 00:05:45 · YouTube
  • ★★ In a medical tutorial Ali learns much better from someone just one year ahead of him. — 00:05:45
  • ★★ Whatever you are trying to do, Ali says, don't feel you need a qualification first, except in life-and-death work such as brain surgery. — 00:06:15
  • ★★ Ali plays an excerpt of his first vlog, from 2017, in which he says that, as they say, your first 50 YouTube videos are going to be terrible, and hopes to make his 50 before junior-doctor life began on 1 August 2018. — 00:06:44 · YouTube

00:06:46 — The start is painful: his first vlog and his first artwork

  • ★★★ Ali's seventh lesson: almost everything we do starts with a painful stretch on the steep end of the learning curve, when what we make is not very good. — 00:07:13
  • ★★ Ali recently started learning art to become a concept artist; he calls his artwork absolutely terrible, but knows producing his first 50 to 1,000 pieces will make him improve and lead to quality. — 00:07:13
  • ★★ Ali has a team of eight people who help run his YouTube business, the channel and the courses. — 00:07:42 · YouTube

00:07:47 — Bring others with you and ask for help

  • ★★ For his early videos Ali asked friends at university to film him and to suggest content, titles and thumbnails, and they were very happy to get involved. — 00:08:04
  • ★★★ Ali's eighth lesson: long before you can hire anyone, ask the people around you for help; they are often very happy to oblige, and we need not do everything ourselves. — 00:08:33
  • ★★★ Ali's ninth lesson: remember to have fun and enjoy the journey; productivity and success are not about doing more things but about doing more of what matters and learning to have fun along the way. — 00:08:33

00:08:43 — Enjoy the journey

  • ★★ Ali says Brandon Sanderson's "journey before destination" embodies everything he has learned from four years of YouTube. — 00:09:00 · Brandon Sanderson, journey before destination, YouTube
  • ★★★ Ali says that if you fixate on the destination you are unlikely to get there, since progress happens on the journey; without enjoying it you either won't do it or will reach a destination that was not what you sought. — 00:09:00
  • ★ Ali cut this video from 14 life lessons to nine because it was getting too long for the YouTube algorithm; the other five are in an extended version on Nebula. — 00:09:30 · Nebula, YouTube

00:09:40 — The other five lessons on Nebula, the CuriosityStream sponsor read and sign-off

Threads in this video

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

Central: cracking open the black box · guide, not guru · journey before destination · obvious to you, amazing to others · YouTube

Also: People: Brandon Sanderson · C. S. Lewis · Derek Sivers · Miley Cyrus

Works: Hell Yeah or No: What's Worth Doing · The Climb

Organizations: CuriosityStream · Google · Instagram · Nebula · Twitter

Concepts: watch time

Products: iPhone

Also centred on guide, not guru: How To Beat Imposter Syndrome · Reflecting On My Fears - Day in the Life

Also centred on obvious to you, amazing to others: 15 Lessons that Improved My Life · 5 Lessons I've Learned about Racism · How To Beat Imposter Syndrome

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