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Honest YouTube Advice for 45 Minutes Straight (2026)

2025-03-28 · Q&A video · Ali · recording, 44:41 · watch on YouTube

Topic: YouTube, writing online and creators · mode: Answering questions · tags: His own numbers, His medical past, Sponsor segment present, Family, His own products discussed

Sharing a talk he gave over Zoom to small YouTubers, Ali answers their questions on growing a channel: packaging (concept, title, thumbnail, hook) drives about 80% of a video's success, a niche is a target audience plus a value proposition, creative blocks yield to talking with your audience or being interviewed, and brand deals, trends and goals should serve a sustainable, enjoyable career rather than views or fame.

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 talk to small YouTubers, shared as a Creator Club episode

  • ★★ Ali recently gave a talk to a few hundred YouTubers with between a few hundred and a few thousand subscribers, and shares its advice in this Creator Club episode. — 00:00:00
  • ★★ Ali had wanted to be a YouTuber since about 2008, when he discovered music YouTubers such as Kurt Hugo Schneider, Sam Tsui, Tyler Ward and Alex G. — 00:00:29 · YouTube

00:00:48 — How his journey on YouTube started: seven years of procrastination, then YouTube as marketing for his business

  • ★★★ From 2010 to 2017 Ali told himself every year that this was the year he would make a YouTube video, and for seven years procrastinated, thinking he lacked the right gear and the know-how. — 00:01:17 · YouTube
  • ★★ When Ali finally made a few music videos, they got about two views and three dislikes, and he concluded he would not make it as a music YouTuber. — 00:01:47 · YouTube
  • ★★★ Ali's medical-school business of classroom courses for medical school applicants made about £150,000 a year in revenue and about £40,000 a year in profit, a UK doctor's salary, until its growth plateaued after three or four years. — 00:01:47 · 6med
  • ★★★ Ali started his YouTube channel by teaching what he knew about getting into medical school, hoping viewers would buy his course; he now knows this is called organic content marketing. — 00:02:19 · 6med, YouTube
  • ★★ The one video Ali would keep is his first vlog from June 2017, filmed on his iPhone, in which he said his first 50 videos would be bad but he would make them anyway. — 00:02:49 · iPhone

00:02:57 — The one video he would keep: his first vlog, and acting on inspiration

  • ★★★ Ali says the creative act comes down to taking advantage of inspiration when it strikes: the longer between having an idea and acting on it, the more it decays, so he films there and then. — 00:03:56
  • ★★ Ali balances acting on inspiration with building an idea generation system over time, using AI and Spotter Studio to generate title and thumbnail ideas. — 00:03:56

00:04:28 — His process of video creation: concept, title, thumbnail, hook

  • ★★★ After the concept, Ali thinks of a video as TTH, title, thumbnail, hook; for his channel the title matters most, since they can always put his face and some text on the thumbnail. — 00:04:58

    “I actually think of it as TTH, which is title, thumbnail, hook.”

  • ★★ Ali says the hook connects a video's title to its concept. — 00:04:58

  • ★★ Ali's team has a video coming out on Luke Burgis's book Wanting; after research with Spotter Studio, other AI tools and a whiteboard, they titled it along the lines of "Watch this if you feel behind in life". — 00:05:58
  • ★★ A somewhat unrelated title can work, Ali says: he could title the Wanting video "How to be productive" and use the hook to flip it to the book. — 00:06:57
  • ★★ Ali and his team have realised they can make almost any concept work: they just need a title that is clickable enough and reasonably delivers on the concept. — 00:07:26

  • ★★★ Ali thinks a video's packaging, the concept, title, thumbnail and hook, makes up about 80% of its success on YouTube. — 00:07:26 · YouTube

    “That packaging of the video makes up 80% of the value.”

00:07:53 — Spotter Studio sponsors the video

  • ★★ Ali reckons outlining, filming and editing a video account for only about 20% of the variation in its view count; most of it comes from the packaging. — 00:07:53

00:09:50 — How long he spends on title ideas; How to Get Rich as an inspired video

  • ★★ Ali's team usually spends about an hour going back and forth on a video's title, and the title stays provisional while he writes the video. — 00:09:50
  • ★★ Ali's team picks two slightly different titles to A/B test and keeps them under 55 characters, which he says is how many show on mobile before a title is cut off. — 00:09:50
  • ★★ Ali got the idea for a video after watching a video titled How to Get Rich on the channel Gary's Economics, which he calls very good. — 00:10:32
  • ★★ The one point Ali wants to make in his own video How to Get Rich is that the way to get rich is to be unhealthily obsessed with that goal. — 00:11:02
  • ★★ Ali made How to Get Rich on inspiration alone, with no Spotter Studio, A/B testing or AI tools, speaking from the heart, and calls it his favourite video filmed this year (2025). — 00:11:02 · ChatGPT
  • ★★ Ali says his video How to Get Rich is coming out the following week. (hedged) — 00:11:02
  • ★★★ Ali finds that many of his videos spoken from the heart without much preparation have done better than the ones his team meticulously prepared. — 00:11:42
  • ★★ Ali thinks of making content that excites you and performs well as a Venn diagram of what he wants to make and what the audience wants to see. — 00:11:42
  • ★★ Ali says the YouTube algorithm is the audience, as YouTube's algorithm team keep saying in their talks. — 00:11:42 · YouTube

00:12:00 — How to make content that excites you and performs well

  • ★★ A video does well, Ali says, if it intrigues enough of your audience to click on it and is good enough that they actually watch it. — 00:12:27
  • ★★ Ali's channel has about 6.25 million subscribers, many of whom he thinks no longer watch it. — 00:12:27
  • ★★ Most YouTubers lack full overlap between what they want to make and what the audience wants to see; the more overlap, Ali says, the happier you are. — 00:12:56
  • ★★ For Ali, only about 20% of what he wants to make is what he thinks the audience wants to see, which is where the challenge comes in. (hedged) — 00:12:56
  • ★ Ali says a video titled How Students Can Make Passive Income in 2025 is guaranteed a million views, though the title makes him groan. (overstated) — 00:13:38 · passive income
  • ★★★ To get excited about a video he does not want to make, Ali imagines being forced to give it as a university lecture in a series called How to Build a Life You Love, and asks how to make it interesting and valuable. — 00:14:00 · passive income
  • ★★ Ali asks what the point of a creator career is if it is not fun: he could be working in medicine or a corporate job, but chooses this, so he tries to enjoy the process. — 00:14:57

00:15:28 — How to find your niche: target audience and value proposition

  • ★★★ Ali says a niche combines a target audience and a value proposition: early on his channel's target audience was UK students trying to get into medical school, and its value proposition was helping them get in. — 00:15:34
  • ★★★ To find a target audience, Ali asks his YouTuber Academy students whom they would choose for a room of a hundred people they could help with an unprepared talk. — 00:16:04 · Part-Time YouTuber Academy, YouTube
  • ★★ Another way to find a target audience, Ali says, is to ask whether you would be excited to give advice to yourself five or ten years ago. — 00:16:04

  • ★★★ Most people Ali knows define their target audience as someone who is basically themselves but a little bit younger. — 00:16:48

    “someone who's basically me, but a little bit younger.”

  • ★★ Ali says "me but younger" works for about 80% of people; when a business is attached, such as a 25-year-old personal trainer selling to 45-year-old overweight women in the US, the target audience is defined differently. — 00:17:20

00:17:47 — How to overcome creative block

  • ★★★ One way Ali overcomes creative block is to talk to someone in his target audience, such as a younger team member, and ask about their problems, which gives him video ideas. — 00:17:47
  • ★★ Ali says he got over his fear of rejection long ago: at 15 he read books on it, and at university he wrote letters asking out girls he liked, who said no. — 00:18:25
  • ★★ Ali finds that being interviewed on a podcast feels far more comfortable than making a video, an experience he says nearly every creator shares. — 00:19:25
  • ★★ Anyone can talk on a Zoom call, Ali says, but facing a camera brings worries about the algorithm, the audience, retention curves and hooks that get in the way. — 00:20:02 · Zoom
  • ★★★ When creatively blocked, Ali asks a team member or his wife to get on a Zoom call, or sit behind the camera, and ask him questions. — 00:20:31 · Izzy Sealey, Zoom
  • ★★ When creatively blocked, Ali records himself in his app VoicePal speaking what he wants the video to say; the app asks follow-up questions, and he exports the script into Notion as the basis of the video. — 00:21:30 · VoicePal, Notion
  • ★★ For a channel with an established format, such as Colin and Samir's interview show with the guest's photo, a yellow background and black text, Ali says the thumbnail matters less, though its text still matters. — 00:21:55

00:21:56 — What is more important, title or thumbnail

  • ★★★ For a brand-new channel with no format and no established relationship with viewers, Ali says the thumbnail is really important, even for educational content. — 00:22:32
  • ★★ Five years ago, Ali says, business and money content on YouTube was in high demand and low supply, so the title was the most important thing. — 00:22:58 · YouTube
  • ★★ When everyone in a field uses the same title, Ali says, the only way to stand out is a really good thumbnail. — 00:23:27
  • ★★ The more of a format a channel has, the less the thumbnail matters, Ali says, but a video meant to break out beyond its audience needs a strong thumbnail again. — 00:23:27
  • ★ Ali jokes that his face is not that attractive, while his wife's thumbnails with her face get more clicks because she is really attractive. (playful) — 00:23:27 · Izzy Sealey
  • ★★★ A YouTuber can never rest on their laurels, Ali says: as "the productivity guy" in 2019 he could put "productivity" in a title and it did well, but the word draws much less interest now. — 00:24:13 · YouTube
  • ★★ James Clear's Atomic Habits really took off during the pandemic, Ali says, because everyone wanted to build better habits; habit videos have less virality now than in 2021. — 00:24:13 · Atomic Habits, James Clear, COVID-19

00:24:31 — Should you follow trends for video ideas

  • ★★ To spot what is doing well, Ali suggests typing the start of a search such as "how to be more…" into YouTube and seeing which suggestions come up. — 00:25:00 · YouTube
  • ★★ In personal development this year (2025), Ali's team has seen videos on emotional topics such as feeling lost, stuck or behind and overthinking do really well, overtaking videos about productivity apps. — 00:25:29
  • ★★ Viral replication, copying the title of a video that got views and changing something about it, was revolutionary when Ali's YouTube course taught it about five years ago; now everyone does it. — 00:25:58 · Part-Time YouTuber Academy, YouTube
  • ★★ Dan Go's video titled "I'm 42, watch this if you're in your 20s" got 3 million views, Ali says, and everyone in personal development then copied the title. — 00:25:58
  • ★★ The first creator to use a title gets the first-mover advantage, Ali says, and every later copycat of the format gets fewer and fewer views. — 00:26:33
  • ★★★ For new creators, Ali thinks chasing trends is a bit of a waste of time, because a trend is usually something broad. — 00:27:01
  • ★ Timing matters too, Ali says: videos on making next year (2026) the best of your life always do well at the end of the year, while midway through the year no one cares. — 00:27:01
  • ★★★ Instead of trends, Ali would have a new creator focus on the target audience and value proposition and on making the most valuable videos for that audience. — 00:27:35

  • ★★★ Ali judges a video on two axes, how good he feels about it and how many views it got; views measure the breadth of its impact and comments its depth. — 00:27:59

    “views is a measure of breadth of impact. Comments is a measure of depth of impact.”

  • ★★ Rather than chasing a trend that might triple his views, Ali would have a new creator think about the one person in the target audience who watched today: whether they got value, and enough of it to send the link on WhatsApp to friends also in the target audience. — 00:27:59 · WhatsApp

00:28:14 — How he defines a good video versus a bad video

  • ★★ A video of advice for YouTubers may get fewer views yet drive lots of sales to his YouTuber course, which Ali counts as a commercial win. — 00:28:43 · Part-Time YouTuber Academy, YouTube
  • ★★★ Making every video better than the last is impossible beyond about video 20, Ali says, and expecting it is a recipe for burnout; he just shows up, does his best and hopes it provides value. — 00:29:12
  • ★★ Ali has been making YouTube videos for eight years, and his team has made over a thousand videos. — 00:29:12 · YouTube
  • ★★★ Ali used to obsess over rating each video; now he keeps showing up with valuable content, speaks from the heart and looks at the analytics maybe once a month to see whether to tweak anything. — 00:29:51

  • ★★★ YouTube is his dream career and he wants to do it forever, so Ali optimises for sustainability and enjoyment over views, even if the channel grows more slowly. — 00:30:12 · YouTube

    “optimizing for sustainability and enjoyment to me is more important than optimizing for views.”

  • ★★ As a medical student and doctor, Ali made himself film four videos on his one day off in two weeks, after night shifts, to keep the channel consistent. — 00:30:12

00:30:28 — Productivity advice he stopped following

  • ★★ Now that he is rich and does not need the money, Ali makes videos when he feels inspired, sometimes one a week, sometimes none, even asking Spotter Studio to move a sponsored video from March to April. — 00:30:57
  • ★★★ Ali used to preach consistency and discipline, doing it even when you don't feel like it; now he is more fluid and makes a video when he feels inspired. — 00:31:26
  • ★★ Ali's first brand deal paid $500 for two minutes on Rosetta Stone, about what he earned in a week as a doctor, so he felt he had better do a good job. — 00:31:26

00:31:53 — Work-life balance now versus the early days

  • ★★★ The successful people Ali interviews talk about work-life balance only once successful; none had it while grinding, and building a channel or business alongside a full-time job, family, health and sleep leaves too few hours, so something has to give. — 00:31:53
  • ★★ Ali calls it strategic sacrifice and recalls a blog post, he thinks by Paul Graham, saying people's ambition goes down when they have kids because they have something better to do; Ali says that is totally okay. (hedged) — 00:32:22
  • ★★ Ali thinks a million subscribers on YouTube is a terrible goal because it is out of your control. — 00:32:50 · YouTube
  • ★★★ When there is a gap between your goal, such as a million subscribers, and what you actually do, Ali says either raise your effort, to something like 20 hours a week on YouTube, or lower the goal. — 00:33:23 · YouTube
  • ★★ Ali asks why a channel needs a million subscribers or to make money, and suggests making videos when you feel like it and treating YouTube more as a hobby. — 00:33:23 · YouTube
  • ★★ Most people are not making money from YouTube, Ali says, and making a lot of money from it takes so much work that it is hard with other things going on. — 00:33:23 · YouTube

00:33:56 — Formula for crafting a hook, worked on "Why your boss hates you"

  • ★★★ Once he has a title, Ali asks a question he got from his wife, also a YouTuber: what is the heart of this video, the thing he wants people to take away? — 00:33:56 · Izzy Sealey, YouTube
  • ★★ For the audience's example "Why your boss hates you", Ali makes the heart of the video that people need to add more value at work to get ahead, weaving in Jenny Wood's book Wild Courage. — 00:34:46
  • ★★ Ali took a hook formula from MrBeast, who said in a Colin and Samir interview about five years ago that his team basically repeat the title of the video in the opening. — 00:34:46
  • ★★ Ali sometimes opens a hook with "if you clicked on this video…", as in his recent video on never having enough time. — 00:35:12
  • ★★ In their hooks, Ali's team reaffirm the title and then agitate the viewer's problem, which he calls trying to have empathy for the audience. — 00:36:16
  • ★★ Ali cites a copywriting idea: if you can articulate the prospect's pain better than they can, they will immediately trust your solution. — 00:36:45
  • ★★ When Ali worked full-time as a doctor, a senior who did not like him at all made him dread work on her days, and he tried to take annual leave when she was on call. — 00:37:18
  • ★★★ Ali's hook formula, used in almost all his videos: repeat the title, agitate the problem, show empathy, show he knows what he is talking about, and signpost what is coming up. — 00:37:47

00:38:08 — Rules for creating thumbnails

  • ★★★ Ali's thumbnails usually have no more than one face, two at most for a podcast-style video, after a vidIQ presentation showed that more faces in a thumbnail perform worse. — 00:38:08
  • ★★★ After vidIQ showed that thumbnails with more than about four or five words perform worse, Ali's team limits thumbnail text to about three to five words. — 00:38:34
  • ★★★ For brand deals Ali recommends Justin Moore's new book Sponsor Magnet; Moore has been his team's go-to brand-deal consultant for years. — 00:38:34 · Amazon
  • ★★ Ali does little on his own brand deals: Angus and his team work out the brand-deal strategy with Justin Moore. — 00:38:34 · Angus (general manager)
  • ★★★ Ali's hot take: creators should not reach out to brands, which start reaching out once a channel reaches a certain size, unless they really need the money and want to do the B2B sales work. — 00:38:34

00:38:50 — Brand deals and sponsorships

  • ★★ Ali started getting approaches from brands at 20,000 subscribers, and knows creators with about 10,000 subscribers who get them. — 00:39:20
  • ★★★ Ali's number for brand deals is about $15 CPM, $15 per thousand views on average with a big spread: about $150 for 10,000 views and about $1,500 for 100,000. — 00:39:49
  • ★★ Ali knows no creator who likes brand deals, but they do them because they pay the bills fairly easily, depending on the brand; some big companies working through agencies are a nightmare. — 00:40:11
  • ★★ Brand-deal deadlines used to motivate Ali to film when he did not feel like it; now that he cares more about work-life balance and has the money, he would rather not work to someone else's deadline. — 00:41:02
  • ★★★ Every niche has a ceiling, its total addressable market, Ali says; the question is what your goals are and whether the niche can fulfil them. — 00:41:39

00:41:40 — What if my niche is too small; closing

  • ★★★ For most people the goal on YouTube should not be fame, Ali says: if fame is your goal you will have a terrible time, and he sees it as a recipe for burnout and dissatisfaction. — 00:42:13 · YouTube
  • ★★★ In almost every niche you could make at least $100,000 a year, Ali says, and in most at least a million dollars a year if done well; entertainment and news are the exceptions. — 00:42:51
  • ★★ Ali's wife has a course on how to learn Mandarin that is doing reasonably well. — 00:42:51 · Izzy Sealey
  • ★★ Ali's business does about a million a year in brand deals, which he says is hard unless a channel is really big. — 00:43:24

Threads in this video

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

Central: hook · value proposition

Also: People: Andrew Huberman · Angus (general manager) · Dan Go · Izzy Sealey · James Clear · Jenny Wood · Justin Moore · Kurt Schneider · Luke Burgis · MrBeast · Paul Graham · René Girard

Projects: Creator Club · Part-Time YouTuber Academy

Works: Atomic Habits · Colin and Samir · Gary's Economics · Sponsor Magnet · The Diary of a CEO · Wanting · Wild Courage

Organizations: 6med · Amazon · vidIQ · Y Combinator · YouTube

Concepts: content marketing · copywriting · COVID-19 · CPM · mimetic desire · passive income · viral replication

Places: Hong Kong

Products: ChatGPT · Claude · iPhone · Notion · Rosetta Stone · Spotter Studio · VoicePal · WhatsApp · Zoom

Also centred on hook: 5 Things I Wish I'd Done Sooner On YouTube

Also centred on value proposition: 5 Things I Wish I'd Done Sooner On YouTube · How to Start and Grow a YouTube Channel in 2026

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