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5 Things I Wish I'd Done Sooner On YouTube

2024-10-29 · Long video (solo, talking head or whiteboard) · Ali · recording, 31:30 · watch on YouTube

Topic: YouTube, writing online and creators · mode: List of tips or lessons · tags: His own products discussed, His own numbers, Family, His medical past

In a Creator Club video, Ali lists five signs of potential he sees in smaller YouTube channels: professional packaging, effort on the first 30 seconds, a clear value proposition, unfair advantages, and consistency through enjoying the process, warning overthinkers not to let any of it stop them publishing.

What is said

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

00:00:00 — Why some channels succeed: five signs of potential, from Part-Time YouTuber Academy students

  • ★★ Since 2020 Ali has run the Part-Time YouTuber Academy, an online community where over 20,000 students have taken his courses on starting, growing and monetising YouTube channels. — 00:00:29 · Part-Time YouTuber Academy, YouTube
  • ★★ Success on YouTube is probabilistic with no guarantees, Ali says: each sign of potential helps, and stacking several of them stacks the deck in your favour. — 00:01:27 · YouTube

00:01:44 — Sign one: great packaging, thumbnails and channel banner, without overthinking

  • ★ Chris Williamson is an alumnus of the Part-Time YouTuber Academy. — 00:02:06 · Part-Time YouTuber Academy
  • ★★★ The first sign of potential in a small YouTube channel, Ali says, is how good its packaging looks: first impressions count, and people tell at a glance whether a channel looks amateur or professional. — 00:02:35 · YouTube
  • ★★ Unlike in 2010, when any video could get views, Ali says YouTube is becoming more like Netflix and viewers increasingly expect high quality. — 00:03:01 · Netflix, YouTube
  • ★★ Once you have made at least your first seven or so videos, Ali recommends spending a little time designing a cohesive look for your channel. — 00:03:30
  • ★★ Ali recommends a channel mood board, such as a Pinterest board or a Notion gallery, saving any channel banner or thumbnail that catches your eye; he keeps a Pinterest board of thumbnail styles. — 00:03:30 · Notion
  • ★★ For a cohesive channel look, Ali says you can also download free thumbnail design templates from Canva. — 00:04:00
  • ★★★ Ali warns overthinkers not to let overthinking thumbnails and channel banners stop them making content: consistency, an upload schedule such as once a week, is the foundation everything else stands on. — 00:04:29
  • ★★ Ali's early thumbnails were for music videos, travel vlogs and an app project that flopped, and only over a period of years did he land on a thumbnail style; his team still experiments and A/B tests thumbnails. — 00:05:19
  • ★★★ The second sign of potential, Ali says, is how much effort goes into a video's first 30 seconds, often called the hook, which he prefers to think of as the promise. — 00:06:58

00:07:00 — Sign two: great hooks, the effort in the first 30 seconds, filmed last and thought of as a promise

  • ★★ Elizabeth Filips, a friend, former team member and Part-Time YouTuber Academy alumna, was Ali's part-time personal assistant helping run the academy's first cohort in late 2020, before she had a channel. — 00:07:30 · Part-Time YouTuber Academy
  • ★★ Inspired by the academy's students, Elizabeth Filips started her own YouTube channel, which blew up; she later left Ali's team to continue medicine and her channel. — 00:07:59 · YouTube
  • ★★ On a typical retention curve, Ali says, 30 to 40% of viewers click off right away because they realise the video is not for them. — 00:07:59
  • ★★ Of a 20-minute video, Ali guesses only about 15 to 20% of viewers watch to the end, so effort on the second half is less leveraged than effort on the first 30 seconds. (hedged) — 00:08:38
  • ★★ Ali says viewers pay for free YouTube videos with something arguably more valuable than money, their time and attention, so in the first 30 seconds they want to know whether the video is worth it. — 00:09:07 · YouTube
  • ★ A video by Han, a student in Ali's Accelerator program, with a carefully made opening, had 1.4 million views when Ali recorded this. — 00:10:01
  • ★★★ If editing a video takes four hours, Ali says about two should go on the first minute and one on the first 30 seconds, because more people see the opening than the second half. — 00:10:01
  • ★★ Ali overthinks his openings: for this video it took him about 10 minutes to record the first 30 seconds. (hedged) — 00:11:00
  • ★★ Ali says he still suffers from analysis paralysis even after seven years of making YouTube videos and over a thousand videos. — 00:11:29 · YouTube
  • ★★★ For about a year Ali has filmed the first 30 seconds at the start without overthinking and redone them at the end of the session, sometimes launching straight into point one; he suggests filming the hook last if you overthink hooks. — 00:11:58
  • ★★ Since "hook" sounds aggressive, like a fisherman hooking a fish, Ali thinks of a video's opening as a promise to the audience and suggests creators try that word instead. — 00:12:27

00:12:49 — Sign three: a clear value proposition, the grunt test, and land and expand

  • ★★★ The third sign of potential is a clear value proposition: most channels that succeed make it obvious who they are for and why to watch, and a small channel trying to be everything to everyone rarely grows. — 00:13:47
  • ★★ Ali says that if you started a YouTube channel today with the variety of content he makes, it probably would not work without a lot of luck and other unfair advantages. (hedged) — 00:13:47 · YouTube, unfair advantage
  • ★★ The YouTube algorithm picks up signals from viewers, Ali says: if a kind of viewer watches a channel through, it promotes the channel to similar people. — 00:14:45 · YouTube
  • ★★ Extending a viewer's watch session is a very good signal for the YouTube algorithm, Ali says, because YouTube can serve more ads the longer people stay. — 00:15:15 · YouTube
  • ★★ Ali applies the marketing grunt test to YouTube channels: a caveman looking at your channel should be able to grunt what it is about. — 00:15:44 · YouTube
  • ★★ In a live Accelerator Q&A, Ali found a student's channel had a strong unstated value proposition: helping business owners grow their businesses by streamlining processes and operations. — 00:16:48
  • ★★★ Ali encourages creators to state their value proposition out loud: say who the channel is for and what it does. — 00:17:47
  • ★ Ali says most people who watch this far into his YouTube videos seem to be nine-to-five corporate employees with a tendency to overthink. — 00:18:13 · YouTube
  • ★★★ Starting off by just making the videos matters most, Ali says: your channel's niche can emerge over time and need not be nailed from day one. — 00:18:42
  • ★★★ Ali's channel had no value proposition at first: music videos without him on camera, a cover of Ed Sheeran's Thinking Out Loud, travel vlogs from his elective in Cambodia and Vietnam, and a series on designing an app with a friend, which flopped. — 00:19:37
  • ★★ Amazon did not start as the everything store, Ali says: it began by selling books and then expanded into book-adjacent goods such as CDs and DVDs, a land-and-expand strategy. — 00:20:03 · Amazon
  • ★★★ A YouTube channel should land and expand like a business, Ali says: start in one niche and widen it over time, since it is really hard to succeed as a nicheless channel. — 00:20:32 · YouTube
  • ★★ Ali knows he could grow his channel more by making only videos about growing on YouTube or about finance, but chooses not to because he likes being a variety YouTuber. — 00:21:01 · YouTube
  • ★★ After the early experiments Ali found he was good at helping people get into medical school and made a hundred videos on it, then hundreds on doing better at exams, then hundreds more on general productivity. — 00:21:29
  • ★★ Izzy, a former student of the Part-Time YouTuber Academy, is now Ali's wife; he says they got together only after she finished his YouTube course. — 00:22:00 · Part-Time YouTuber Academy, YouTube
  • ★★ Izzy's channel took off with a video on how she learned Mandarin Chinese in six months, an unfair advantage; after that her general productivity videos started to work too. — 00:22:00 · unfair advantage

00:22:01 — Sign four: unfair advantages, from Izzy's Mandarin to Ali's Cambridge medicine

  • ★★★ The fourth sign of potential is an unfair advantage: something very hard for someone else to copy or replicate, which works like a competitive moat around a channel. — 00:22:30 · unfair advantage
  • ★★ Early in his YouTube journey, Ali's unfair advantage was being a medical student at Cambridge University, which matched teaching people how to become one. — 00:22:59 · University of Cambridge, unfair advantage, YouTube
  • ★★★ Ali says a channel works when its unfair advantage matches its value proposition: a Cambridge medical student who sucks at music should not make guitar videos. — 00:23:26 · unfair advantage
  • ★★ You do not need unfair advantages to succeed on YouTube, Ali says; they only make success more likely, and you probably have some in your own experiences. — 00:23:26 · unfair advantage, YouTube
  • ★★ To find your unfair advantages, Ali suggests asking what you have invested hours and hours of your life into that other people might not have. — 00:24:33 · unfair advantage
  • ★ Ellie Jean, a former student of Ali's and a fashion expert with thousands of hours in women's fashion, leans into that advantage with a channel breaking down women's fashion. — 00:24:33
  • ★★ Having spent 184 days of play time, about 200 days of his life, on World of Warcraft, Ali says he would be better at making a World of Warcraft channel than a Minecraft channel, which he has never played. — 00:25:02 · World of Warcraft
  • ★★ Ali has spent hundreds of hours designing websites from the age of 13 to 30, so a web-design channel would also make sense for him. — 00:25:02
  • ★★★ To find your strengths and unfair advantage, Ali suggests asking what you are surprised that other people find hard. — 00:26:01 · unfair advantage
  • ★★ Ali says he is weirdly good at what others he knows struggle with: making online courses, breaking a concept into a five-step framework and giving a talk on stage without any prep. — 00:26:30

00:26:51 — Sign five: consistency and enjoyment, last man standing

  • ★★ Azul, a student in Ali's Accelerator program in his 60s, makes near-daily, low-lift financial advice videos for people over 50, walking in a park, in a niche that is not saturated. (hedged) — 00:27:02
  • ★★★ The fifth sign of potential is consistency and enjoyment: last man standing is a viable strategy, and every successful YouTuber has been consistent in some way. — 00:27:31 · YouTube
  • ★★★ Ali says the single biggest risk to your YouTube channel is quitting, so finding a way to enjoy the process makes you far more likely to stick it out long enough to see growth. — 00:27:31 · YouTube
  • ★★ Ali likens each video to planting a seed: some grow slowly or not at all, but some may become big trees, so the more you plant, the better your chances. — 00:28:00
  • ★★★ Ali has never met a YouTuber who succeeded through discipline: every one he knows who stayed consistent long enough found a way to enjoy the process, the topic and the team. — 00:28:30 · YouTube
  • ★★ Ali started YouTube not intending to quit his job; three years later he quit because he was making over a million a year from his channel. — 00:29:09 · YouTube
  • ★★★ Ali says you do not want your YouTube channel or creative business to become another prison like a nine-to-five you dread: it should be fun, or there is no point. — 00:29:09 · YouTube
  • ★★ With anything he struggles with in his channel, business or team, Ali asks two questions: what would this look like if it were easy, and what would this look like if it were fun. — 00:29:38

00:30:18 — Plug for the YouTuber Academy and Accelerator, pointer to an earlier video

In the description and comments

  • ★★ Over seven years on YouTube, Ali says, he has gained almost 6 million subscribers. — video description · YouTube

Threads in this video

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

Central: hook · Part-Time YouTuber Academy · unfair advantage · value proposition

Also: People: Aman · Azul (youtuber, mentioned from 2024) · Chris Williamson · Ed Sheeran · Elizabeth Filips · Ellie Jean · Han · Izzy Sealey · Matt D'Avella

Projects: Creator Club · Part-Time YouTuber Accelerator

Works: Thinking Out Loud

Organizations: Amazon · Netflix · Pinterest · University of Cambridge · YouTube

Concepts: analysis paralysis · audience retention · freedom profile · grunt test · land and expand · last man standing · stacking the deck

Places: Cambodia · Vietnam

Products: Canva · Microsoft PowerPoint · Minecraft · Notion · World of Warcraft

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