Stop Struggling to Get More Views on YouTube in 2025
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Hello Creators, What if I told you that views are not driven by how good the actual content is? Today we are going to explore EXACTLY what is holding great content back from the views it deserves and how you can finally fix that! We will also be addressing an elephant in the room called "Creator Education" and how you can tell who is legitimate and what advice to follow. โ If you're wondering if it's too late for you to grow a successful YouTube channel, you need to watch my recent video on this. โ My BEST FREE WORKSHOPS on Becoming a Full-time Creator
Views Are Driven By Value NOT QualityThe most important factor in succeeding on YouTube is not authenticity, it's not quality content and its not SEO or beating the algorithm with clever hacks. The most important thing comes down to the ability to attract an audience. And attracting an audience comes down to your ability to demonstrate value to the viewer at a glance. Value for the Viewer is the single most important deciding factor in how well your videos do, aside from the total addressable market for the video idea. Many of you conflate value and quality, but value is judged at a glance, and quality is an experience you have, once you click on a video and give it a chance. You can't know a video was high quality or low quality until you spend time watching it. But you have to make an educated guess and click on it in the first place right? You can't click on a video unless the creator was able to attract your attention and gain your interest. And they can only do that via the Title and Thumbnail. Part of your filter is whether that Title and Thumbnail convey a Topic your are about RIGHT NOW, more than you care about other options in your feed. That is where the importance I constantly put on Topic, Title, Thumbnail and Timing comes from. As much as you may be tired of hearing it, this decides how many views you get. When I was a Small YouTuber I took advantage of this idea when I was making videos around freelancing and tutorials. I mostly made videos knowing there was a large market of users for the software or product I was going to be covering, or that it was a problem that a lot of people had or were trying to solve. I also tried to be early to products or topics I felt would have a lot of traction or that I knew the brands behind topics were spending a lot of money to drive attention around. By doing this I didn't have to worry about whether enough people cared about the Topic, I had a guaranteed way to know it could do reasonably well. This approach still works today and is why my 90 second tutorial for Green Screen in Adobe Premiere Pro has over 200,000 views despite only getting 1300 views the first day I uploaded it 2 years ago, and still gets roughly 400-600 new views per day even now. This isn't limited to education and tutorial content, and works in niches like commentary and other entertainment based niches as well, which is why reaction channels do extraordinarily well on YouTube, especially if they cover social commentary on broader issues instead of just breaking news (which is why the genre changed). If you want to get more views are your videos you need to prioritize both ideation around topics and timeliness, and evergreen content that can keep getting views, even if they don't get views up front, can be incredibly powerful. You also should put more effort into your thumbnails and titles. Attractive thumbnails and figuring out the standard of that for your niche is not very hard to understand but may be challenging to execute, and often it's just better to hire a thumbnail expert or use a template bundle if you know you don't have the skills. But titles are a bit more challenging for most creators which is why they might try to lean on SEO. I would advice against trying to specifically make SEO driven titles, because most people don't know how to do it properly but also most traffic comes from the YouTube homepage and recommendation system. It's better to focus on titles that have emotional triggers for a specific audience avatar. For more help with this, I recommend this video if you're struggling to write better titles: โHow to Make Better YouTube Titles Using ChatGPTโ
How to Use Creator Advice and When to Ignore It...Many creators looking for helpful information find themselves frustrated trying to figure out who is giving legitimate advice and is genuinely looking to help them grow and succeed. It can feel like this is impossible to figure out and confusing with there being dozens of channels and creators all putting out their tips and advice with some of it contradicting each other. And the advice that doesn't contradict each other starts to feel generic or repetitive even if its the correct advice. Or if a Creator gives unique and specific advice, it can be dismissed if it is too narrow or doesn't apply to every niche. I'm going to reveal the ultimate secret of how to best understand whose advice is legitimate and whose is not, but you should probably read the rest of this article anyway... "IS THIS INFORMATION GENERALLY TRUE, OR FACTUAL OR LOGICAL.... EVEN IF IT DOESN'T APPLY TO ME OR HELP ME GET WHAT I WANT?" This is what it really comes down to for most people. Just because something does or doesn't work for you or apply to you, is not the ultimate deciding factor of it being useful (in general) or to someone else. Your real frustration and problem is finding what will EXCLUSIVELY or specifically benefit you. And when your own filter for what is legitimate, is down to what is getting viewed by the most people, you're actually working against that goal. The more specific the advice is, the less view potential it has. So if you're exclusively watching the advice that has the highest views because it helps you believe that the advice is more legitimate, instead of focusing on advice that applies to EXACTLY the specific challenge you're dealing with, that could be you following the NOISE instead of the SIGNAL. General advice can help with general issues, but if you're clever enough you can often have figure out quite a bit of that on your own, which is where a lot of the detractors of content advice are really coming from, they were able to figure it out on their own, and they assume everyone else can as well. In reality, not everyone is on the same level and not everyone has the same issues, and there aren't enough people teaching on specific things or exclusive niches, and that is what is creating so much confusion in the market. Oddly enough the biggest problem in Creator Education isn't too many channels or educators giving advice. It's the opposite, there is not enough variety among creators who give advice to allow creators of different niches to have a mentor that specializes in exactly what they want to accomplish and can relate to their unique challenges. And it can be frustrating for those trying to learn to get specific information since usually that would entail 1-on-1 coaching they can't afford, or they don't have the confidence that they will get results even if they paid for that kind of access and mentorship. The best FREE opportunity to get advice specific to you from someone who has been a successful educator in the creator world, is to participate in live streams where creators take questions or Q&A sessions, this can be on X Spaces or during live streams. I try to stream weekly on my channel (aside from travel and holidays) to give creators as many opportunities as possible to ask specific questions that can help them, and I also answer as many questions as I can publicly on X thought they day, and I am trying to spend more time on Threads (from META) so that those who don't want to use X can have an opportunity to publicly ask me any question they want that is specific to them. The benefit of public spaces around creator education, is that as specific as a problem might be, if one creator has this issue, 1000 creators typically have it, but are afraid to speak up. As much as their is a signal to noise issue when it comes to creator education, you can't just look to superficial things to figure out how is legitimate or not. You can't rely on whether they sell a course or not, because that's just immature thinking, and you can't rely on the idea that they wouldn't teach if they were successful because that's not true in every other profession, and not even true for most hobbies. I've tried to put together a list of practical ways of vetting creator educators, and I've also put together examples of ones I personally feel can said to be legitimate. This is just a resource, you will have to use your own best judgement and account for both your own biases as well as my own. How To Find A Legitimate Creator Educator (they don't have to check all these boxes but should be able to check a few)
โ In my own creator journey I made HUNDREDS of videos that had nothing to do with YouTube Growth before I ever started to focus on helping other Creators. In fact, it didn't become a primary content pillar for me until I already was over 75,000 subscribers and months away from my silver play button. The majority of any YouTube advice I offered up until I had 100,000 subscribers was just what camera equipment you could buy on a budget and some very basic information about how to use the platform and how monetization worked at the time. The majority of my content in my early creator journey focused on freelancers and revolved around tutorials and software and hardware reviews, such as my Photoshop Tutorials, Camera Reviews and Drone Reviews. This year I plan to actually create more beginner tutorial content for new video editors and content creators because the tutorial space has felt a bit thin lately, and most people are trying to do cinematic tutorials with storytelling. My goal is to either make a tutorial in under 3 minutes with exactly what you need, or a 20 minute tutorial that takes you through every step so that you are sure you can execute it perfectly. What made it easy to pivot was these topics overlapped with my own creator journey and experience since I love tech so much and had a professional background working as a creative in corporate before going independent. It's also why much of my focus in my messaging has revolved around Creators who work a 9 to 5 job and especially those who want to translate the experiences of their corporate career to education content that can let them take ownership of their work, and profit from their years of knowledge and experience. But as a long-time OG YouTuber I've had my fun and played with entertainment content too in the past, when variety was more acceptable on YouTube and I've coached HUNDREDS to entertainment channels, and in my work with AMG and Supercell I've specifically have coached almost 100 gaming channels in just the last 2 years including JuicyJ CR, Mautic and Power Couple Gaming. What you should look for (in my opinion) is a variety of Creator Educators that play different roles in your Creator Journey, and may specialize in different things. Look to collect essentially a "board of advisors" that you can learn from and that have different insights and points of view, and then consider what resonates with you and also whether it applies to your specific goals and agenda right now. In some cases, it will be information that might need to be referenced later instead of applied right now. The most important traits I feel are necessary are whether the Creator Educator is teaching in a way you understand, and if you can see a clear logical reason for what they are saying. Even when a Creator Educator is giving accurate and actionable advice, it still could be the wrong fit for you specifically, or could be advice doesn't apply to your current stage in the Creator Journey. There is a significant difference between "is this true in general" and "does this apply to me specifically"? And it's up to each Creator to understand where that line exist. It's not something that can be made clear for you in a video that is intended to reach 10,000 to 100,000 different people with different situations. โ The more cynical types, would say that makes all YouTube advice on content creation meaningless and worthless, but your own experience probably contradicts that. It would be like saying public school has no value whatsoever, even though it doesn't produce a good outcome for everyone. While there is a limit to how far some people can go with general advice, and it is absolute true that people with talent and resources (just like in school), tend to benefit more than anyone else, its good that everyone can access free information and have relatively the same foundation and information to start with. one of the BIGGEST problems however, is that not everyone knows how to ask the right questions or how to put information in the right order. To help with that my team and I have made a FREE Creator Foundations Course with over 4 Hours of Material and a 90 Minute Monetization Masterclass that I gave at a paid private event. This course is a Free (Pay What You Can even $0) Course that you can take at anytime and will also be updated with my 10 Pillars of YouTube Lecture Series. We are giving this course away even though it should be at least a $199 Course for a few reasons, but one of them is to challenge that idea that "Creator Education Courses Have No Value or are a Scam" by giving you a low risk experience and exposure to structured content, that is meant to help a student, instead of feed an algorithm. โEnroll in The Creator Foundations Course. โ
Why You NEED To Be a Destination Channel to Succeed in 2025YouTube is not saturated with anything, except for mediocre content and inconsistent creators. Now, I know that may seem incredibly harsh, but you should actually see this as a good thing, and an opportunity for your own content to stand One of the problems with the idea of "YouTube EASY MODE" is that if it actually works out, someone can just copy everything you're doing, and then put more resources and effort behind it and make you irrelevant. As much as we would all like to believe that authenticity and personality matter more than anything, if that were true you'd have gone viral already instead of reading this post. The harsh reality is that you need to be able to attract an audience at a glance and a lazy thumbnail isn't going to cut it, that is usually the exception rather than the rule. You're not Penguiz0 who built a channel and established himself over a decade ago and can throw up the laziest thumbnail known to man at get 1 Million views. If you're a Small YouTuber or New YouTuber, you can still standout without having to put 40 hours a week of effort in to barely get any views. But you will have to put aside some of your preconceived notions and put value for the viewer first and foremost in your mind, and that may be a compromise you are unwilling to make if you don't get to fully express yourself. In 2025 and beyond, people will be looking for what I call a DESTINATION CHANNEL. Think of this like your favorite show, you know the one, that show that even after its been off the air for years you will binge watch an entire season of on the weekend. You want to create a channel with that type of experience, where a viewer can start watching in the morning and the entire day could go by without them. wanting to leave your channel. Here are the Characteristics of a Destination Channel on YouTube with different examples:
Becoming a Destination Channel is becoming a channel that can cut through the noise and build an OBSESSION among its true fans that keeps them coming back no matter what, because there is nowhere for them to feel what that channel makes them feel. The ultimate answer to growth on YouTube is building a community of SUPER FANS, and attracting your tribe. There is no gimmick, trend or algorithm hack more valuable than becoming a destination channel that can't be easily duplicated. If you're not ready to join the Awesome Creator Academy Pro Group or even an Academy Basic Membership, consider taking our FREE Creator Foundations Course so you can understand the principles of attracting your tribe and not just building an audience, and how to put value for the viewer first. This course is a "pay what you can" course, which means you can pay $0 and get it completely free, but any contribution that supports the work of myself and my team is fully appreciated. |