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I Asked MKBHD and Mrwhosetheboss How to Grow on YouTube

2023-07-01 · Compilation of other people's clips · Ali, Marques Brownlee, Arun Maini · recording, 25:48 · watch on YouTube

Topic: YouTube, writing online and creators · mode: Conversation and interview · tags: His own numbers, His own products discussed, Sponsor segment present

Ali sets clips from his interviews with Marques Brownlee (MKBHD) and Arun Maini (Mrwhosetheboss) beside his own advice on growing a YouTube channel: make what interests you, set goals within your control, keep it fun, improve each video a little, speak to one target viewer, treat analytics as bumpers rather than the ball, and outsource what you are not good at.

What is said

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

00:00:00 — What should I make videos about?

  • ★ Ali says Marques Brownlee and Arun Maini (Mrwhosetheboss), two of the biggest YouTubers in the world, have a combined total of over 30 million subscribers. — 00:00:00 · Marques Brownlee
  • ★★ Marques Brownlee says he is lucky that the videos he knows will do well, such as the hottest gadgets and collaborations with interesting people, are also the ones most interesting to him. — 00:00:23 · Marques Brownlee
  • ★★★ Among the students of his Part-Time YouTuber Academy, Ali says, those who succeed on YouTube are usually the ones making content they are genuinely interested in. — 00:00:48 · Part-Time YouTuber Academy
  • ★★ Ali has taught over 3,000 students in his course, the Part-Time YouTuber Academy. — 00:00:48 · Part-Time YouTuber Academy
  • ★★★ Ali says that if you keep trying to appease the audience and chase the numbers, forcing yourself to make videos you do not enjoy for the algorithm or subscribers, YouTube becomes a second job and is not a sustainable way to grow a channel. — 00:01:17

00:02:03 — What goals should I have? Numbers and the infinite game

  • ★★ Arun Maini says he has always been numbers-driven, with sheets on his wall of the subscriber counts he wanted to hit, but as his channel has grown he has tried to detach himself from those numbers, because on YouTube you cannot win. — 00:02:03
  • ★★ Ali explains finite games as played to win, like hitting a million or a hundred thousand subscribers, and infinite games as played to keep playing, like spending time with your friends. — 00:02:33
  • ★★★ Ali thinks of YouTube as an infinite game: not chasing a subscriber or revenue number, but creating a life where he makes content he is passionate about, shares it with his audience, keeps doing it and builds a business that makes it sustainable. — 00:03:17
  • ★★★ In six years of YouTube, Ali has never set a subscriber or revenue goal for his channel; his only goal has been to make one or two videos a week that will hopefully help at least one person. — 00:03:47
  • ★★ Because he would keep making YouTube videos even if he won the lottery, Ali says he is playing his infinite game and should not stress about the numbers or set goals outside his control. — 00:03:47

00:04:26 — Sponsor read for Epidemic Sound

00:06:23 — Goals within your control; make what we'd want to watch

  • ★★★ Marques Brownlee: Asked how he would guarantee a goal such as 20 million subscribers by the end of 2024, Marques Brownlee says he does not know, but doing more and better would get his channel closer, and that is all he can control. — 00:06:49 · Marques Brownlee

  • ★★★ Marques Brownlee's overarching goal for his channel and business is to make what his team would want to watch and subscribe to. — 00:06:49 · Marques Brownlee

    “we want to make what we'd want to watch”

  • ★★★ Marques Brownlee says the number one reason he stays consistent is that it is fun: his team are tech and video nerds, and trying a new piece of tech every day is the dream. — 00:07:26 · Marques Brownlee

00:07:33 — How to stay consistent?

  • ★★ Marques Brownlee says a creator's career is typically relatively short, but as a tech creator the pressure to keep things interesting falls on the tech companies, not on him. — 00:08:19 · Marques Brownlee
  • ★★★ Ali's first method for staying consistent on YouTube is to find a way to make it fun and make it feel good. — 00:08:19
  • ★★★ Arun Maini says you have to really love what you do: he already had the tech in his house and was so passionate about it that making videos was fun. — 00:09:12
  • ★★ Arun Maini: When he started, Arun Maini says, he filmed things he already had and was not thinking about watch time, retention or consumer insights: it was just fun. — 00:09:31
  • ★★ Ali says the video that went viral and made Arun Maini's channel take off was about his 301st, Ali's own was his 91st and Marques Brownlee's was his hundred-and-something. (hedged) — 00:09:31 · Marques Brownlee
  • ★★★ Ali says most big YouTubers spent ages making crappy videos to learn the craft, yet many beginners expect their first video to take off, which it will not. — 00:10:00
  • ★★★ Viewers pay for YouTube videos with their time, everyone's most valuable non-renewable resource, Ali says, so a video that is not very good cannot expect anyone's time and attention. — 00:10:00
  • ★★ It took Ali 52 videos to get about 800 subscribers, so he tells a student who reached 800 subscribers with four videos that this is really good. — 00:10:43
  • ★★★ Ali advises focusing on what is within your control, making a video every week and trying to improve it a little each time, as a far easier recipe for consistency on YouTube than targeting view counts. — 00:10:43

00:11:08 — How can I make my videos better? Micro refinements, reinvesting money and building a team

  • ★★★ Arun Maini describes the polish of his videos as an aggregation of micro refinements built up over years, such as deciding to use music to create moods or to put his face in a circle so he is always visible. — 00:11:12

    “the way I describe it is an aggregation of micro refinements”

  • ★★ Arun Maini tries a change to his videos on a gut feeling, looks at the graphs to see whether it works, and keeps what works as a mainstay. — 00:11:41

  • ★★ Ali calls an aggregation of micro refinements a fancy nerd way of saying: make your videos a little better each time. — 00:11:41
  • ★★ Marques Brownlee's team has spent half a million dollars on a robotic camera for the shots in their introductions, though he started as a kid in his bedroom reviewing laptops, Ali says. — 00:12:10 · Marques Brownlee
  • ★★ Marques Brownlee says his team turns the money it makes into making better videos. — 00:12:10 · Marques Brownlee
  • ★★ Casey Neistat (quoted): Casey Neistat says he makes money so that he can make videos, whereas a lot of people make videos so that they can make money. — 00:12:39
  • ★★★ To make your videos better, Ali suggests investing the money coming in back into your YouTube channel: production value, writing, thumbnails, or even hiring a team. — 00:12:39
  • ★★ Ali says all the big YouTubers now have their own teams: almost no one is a one-man operation any more, and those who are are completely burnt out. — 00:12:39
  • ★★ Ali's team is 14 people besides himself, working around the YouTube channel, social media and the business. — 00:12:39
  • ★★ For the first two years of his six years on YouTube Ali worked alone, then hired slowly, then very quickly, then slowly again, building the team he has now. — 00:13:09
  • ★ Very big YouTubers call Ali for advice on growing their teams when they realise they are burnt out. — 00:13:09
  • ★★★ Ali would really consider hiring a team once your YouTube channel or the business around it makes a couple of thousand a month, or even earlier if your time is worth more than the hours spent editing videos. — 00:13:38

00:13:57 — Scripting for three people or for one target avatar

  • ★★ Arun Maini: When scripting, Arun Maini thinks of three people he knows with different levels of tech enthusiasm and checks every line for whether each of them would watch, understand and enjoy it. — 00:14:00
  • ★★★ For most beginners Ali finds three viewer avatars overkill; he recommends speaking as if to a single person, the prime target viewer for your channel. — 00:14:21
  • ★★ Ali advises picturing the target viewer demographically (age, gender, home, education) and psychographically (likes, dislikes, hopes and ambitions): the clearer the image, the more targeted the message. — 00:14:50
  • ★★ Ali says a message targeted at one avatar makes far more people than that avatar likely to connect with it, and for an educational YouTuber a single niche demographic is far easier than trying to appeal to everyone. — 00:15:20
  • ★ Ali says Arun Maini's channel has about 15 million subscribers. — 00:15:20

00:16:04 — How Marques Brownlee's team plans, scripts, shoots and edits a video

  • ★★ Marques Brownlee: In Marques Brownlee's process for a tech video, he takes notes while using the device, brain-dumping into one document with his writer-researcher, then turns it into a script and story. — 00:16:04 · Marques Brownlee
  • ★★ Marques Brownlee's team shoots the A-roll, his talking to camera, first, so they know what he has said, and then shoots the B-roll to cover the whole script. — 00:16:48 · Marques Brownlee
  • ★ Marques Brownlee: At the end of making a video, Marques Brownlee's team walks through the whole timeline and watches the video together before exporting and publishing. — 00:17:48 · Marques Brownlee

00:18:18 — Are data and analytics important?

  • ★★★ Marques Brownlee pays attention to the numbers as a guiding force but does not live by them, since maximising retention as his only focus could lose what makes a good video: they are the bumpers on the bowling lane, not the ball. — 00:18:45 · Marques Brownlee

    “They're the bumpers on the bowling lane more than they are the bowling ball itself.”

  • ★★ Arun Maini found that asking people to subscribe very early in a video was harmful: up to about 20% of viewers could drop off, irritated rather than subscribing. (hedged) — 00:19:14

  • ★★★ Ali advises most YouTube beginners not to look at their analytics, which will tell them the wrong things with numbers that are not statistically significant. — 00:19:14
  • ★★ Once each video gets a few hundred to a few thousand views, Ali says, it makes sense to use analytics loosely as a guiding force to spot broad patterns. — 00:19:56
  • ★★ Ali says it is easy to over-index on micro refinements in analytics and lose the heart of why you make videos; he almost never looks at his own retention curves, which someone on his team watches. — 00:19:56
  • ★ Ali says this video is long and not optimised for retention, which is fine because its point is to help the viewers who care about the topic. — 00:20:55
  • ★★ Ali's mental model for analytics is that it is easy to think only about the numbers and forget that they are real people. — 00:21:24

00:21:59 — When should you start outsourcing? The octopus analogy

  • ★★★ Marques Brownlee: In Marques Brownlee's octopus analogy, a solo creator has eight arms doing everything from filming and editing to inbox, accounts and taxes; his team is all the arms he has cut off, each much better than him at the job. — 00:22:33 · Marques Brownlee
  • ★★★ Ali says he should only do what he fundamentally wants to do and is good at, and outsource everything else, preferably to someone who enjoys it and does it better, such as his general manager Angus, who loves spreadsheets and accounts. — 00:23:02 · Angus
  • ★★★ When building a team, Ali suggests asking what you would have a clone of yourself do instead of you, which often gets people past the worry that it will be hard to find and train someone. — 00:23:31
  • ★★ Students of Ali's Part-Time YouTuber Academy are always resistant to outsourcing their editing, he says, but those who do say it has completely changed their lives. — 00:23:31 · Part-Time YouTuber Academy

00:24:02 — Gaining confidence through YouTube

  • ★★ Arun Maini says he was quite embarrassed about YouTube in his first years and told no one, and that YouTube was a vehicle towards confidence for him. — 00:24:07
  • ★ Ali says Arun Maini started out making videos without showing his face, out of insecurity and worry that people at school would make fun of him. — 00:24:37
  • ★★★ Ali says that for most YouTubers, who start out as somewhat misfits, becoming a YouTuber and growing the channel and business helps them grow in confidence, build skills and make friends. — 00:25:02
  • ★★ To YouTubers at any stage, Ali says keep going and keep up the motivation and consistency: past the discomfort lies the chance of the best job in the world. — 00:25:02

In the description and comments

  • ★★ Ali Abdaal (channel): Asked when to start outsourcing a channel's editing, the channel answers: whenever you value your time more than the money. — creator comment
  • ★ Ali Abdaal (channel): Asked for an ultimate study guide video, the channel says it is working on it. — creator comment

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Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

Central: aggregation of micro refinements · Arun Maini · infinite game · Marques Brownlee

Also: Angus · audience retention · Casey Neistat · octopus analogy · Part-Time YouTuber Academy · target avatar · watch time

Only in the description or credits: Deep Dive

Also centred on Arun Maini: I Asked 5 Millionaires for Their Best Financial Advice

Also centred on infinite game: How I Gained 1 MILLION Subscribers · Everything's Changing - Life Update · 8 Steps That Got Me Millions of Subscribers on YouTube

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