YouTube's BIG Update Just Changed Everything for Small Channels — Transcript

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1. 0:00YouTube just changed their algorithm and
2. 0:01small channels that learn how to use it
3. 0:03are going to blow up fast. Just like
4. 0:05this channel that we took from zero to
5. 0:06over 100,000 subscribers in under 10
6. 0:09months. You see the old YouTube
7. 0:10algorithm used to look at your videos
8. 0:12first. They looked at your click-through
9. 0:13rate, how long viewers watch your
10. 0:14videos, but now all they look at is the
11. 0:16viewers themselves. If you talk to
12. 0:18YouTube's AI, they legitimately tell you
13. 0:20that YouTube is a mirror to your
14. 0:21audience's interest. [music] And on the
15. 0:23first channel that I ever started, I
16. 0:24made content about meat, like this video
17. 0:26right here. I got this idea from a
18. 0:27popular creator at the time and I
19. 0:29thought, well, if it worked for him, why
20. 0:31won't it work for me? Well, the reason
21. 0:33why it worked for him was because of his
22. 0:34audience interests. He already had
23. 0:37millions of people who subscribed to him
24. 0:39and wanted a more intimate look on his
25. 0:40finances, but I had 100 subscribers and
26. 0:42none of them really cared what stocks I
27. 0:44was buying. So, it makes sense that even
28. 0:46though I copied a proven idea in my
29. 0:48niche, the video still flopped while his
30. 0:50stood out. But, after I chatted with
31. 0:51YouTube a bit more, they told me
32. 0:53something that I've come to find is make
33. 0:54or break for the over 200-plus channels
34. 0:56that we help run, and it's really what
35. 0:58separates the channels that blow up
36. 1:00first few videos to the ones that stay
37. 1:01stuck under 1,000 subscribers for
38. 1:03months. But, once you understand it,
39. 1:05YouTube will allow your channel to start
40. 1:06getting the reach that it really
41. 1:07deserves, which leads to you growing,
42. 1:09getting monetized, and making money. And
43. 1:11that is simply that you have to
44. 1:12understand your viewers when and where.
45. 1:14You see, the YouTube algorithm is
46. 1:15smarter than you might think. In fact,
47. 1:17it knows almost everything about you. It
48. 1:19knows when you're on your phone versus
49. 1:20when you're on your TV, and it knows
50. 1:22that you like to watch certain content
51. 1:23in the mornings and at night. It knows
52. 1:25that on every Sunday after 8:00 p.m.,
53. 1:27you go on a 3-hour conspiracy theory
54. 1:29binge that you'll regret the morning
55. 1:30after. Not speaking from experience or
56. 1:32anything. And it is your job as a
57. 1:33creator to understand your audience on
58. 1:36the level of their 2:00 a.m. thoughts as
59. 1:37well. And there's a specific way to do
60. 1:39this with AI that actually allows you to
61. 1:40use Google's data for your audience to
62. 1:43learn exactly how they can suit. So,
63. 1:44that that way you can make content that
64. 1:46YouTube serves them on a silver platter.
65. 1:48Now, you've probably heard of ChatGPT,
66. 1:50Claude, and probably even Google's
67. 1:51Gemini. But, I'll take a bet that unless
68. 1:53you're really deep into AI, you you
69. 1:55heard of Gemini's deep research feature.
70. 1:57Deep research is a tool that scholars,
71. 1:58advertisers, and large companies use to
72. 2:00scrape the millions of websites on
73. 2:02Google to learn a lot more about topics
74. 2:04or people. And what this allows you to
75. 2:06do is see exactly what your audience
76. 2:07currently cares about. [music] It will
77. 2:09run through tens of thousands of YouTube
78. 2:11comments, Reddit threads, and websites
79. 2:13that your viewers are actively
80. 2:14participating [music]
81. 2:14in. So, I'm going to send this to Ad
82. 2:15Home Linden and let's run through it
83. 2:17together. So, first things first, you
84. 2:18want to open up Gemini and then now once
85. 2:20you're in Gemini, what you want to do is
86. 2:22you want to click the plus icon and then
87. 2:24go down to more tools and then click
88. 2:26deep research. And then what you want to
89. 2:28do is you want to ask it to find the
90. 2:30desires and pain points of your target
91. 2:33audience. So, I could say, "Give me the
92. 2:35desires and pain points of my audience.
93. 2:39They are small YouTubers that are trying
94. 2:43to reach their first 1,000 subscribers."
95. 2:46And now we will go ahead and click
96. 2:48enter. So, from here it generates a plan
97. 2:50and then all you have to do is go ahead
98. 2:52and click start research. Now, this does
99. 2:53take a while, so I'm going to go ahead
100. 2:55and come back in a second and see what
101. 2:56it comes up with. All right, so it is
102. 2:58finished the research. So, now it
103. 2:59essentially has identified all of the
104. 3:01primary desires and the pain points for
105. 3:04our audience. So, the motivational
106. 3:05architecture of emerging content
107. 3:06creators is around monetization,
108. 3:09algorithmic proof of concept, and
109. 3:10professional legitimacy. Makes sense.
110. 3:12So, from here escaping the algorithm
111. 3:14cold start, identity transition, and
112. 3:16professional legitimacy. So, trying to
113. 3:18basically become a professional content
114. 3:20creator. Then we have all the different
115. 3:22pain points here. Click through rate is
116. 3:24a huge pain point that people go after
117. 3:26AVD. Right now a lot of them are relying
118. 3:28on generic visuals, low contrast text,
119. 3:30or misplaced timestamp overlays, or
120. 3:32obscuring key title elements. They have
121. 3:34extended intros, delayed payoffs, filler
122. 3:35commentary, and lack of visual hooks,
123. 3:37and over-relying on high competition
124. 3:39broad search keywords, or creating
125. 3:41unindexed general [music] commentary,
126. 3:42which makes sense. That's typically what
127. 3:44I recommend against. So, then it gives
128. 3:45us the strategy around that. Production
129. 3:47bottlenecks, it talks about that. Shorts
130. 3:49to long-form watch time disconnect, so
131. 3:52yeah, basically looking at that. Then
132. 3:54isolation, social friction, and delayed
133. 3:56view processing. So, being lonely on the
134. 3:59journey, being embarrassed to show
135. 4:01people their YouTube channel cuz they're
136. 4:02afraid they're going to get they're
137. 4:03going to look like, "Oh, I'm trying so
138. 4:05hard and I'm not doing well." You know,
139. 4:07like that's a classic thing that
140. 4:08everyone struggles with. Then you have
141. 4:09content output metrics and realities.
142. 4:11Then you have the destructive dynamic of
143. 4:12reciprocal subscription and artificial
144. 4:14growth. Yeah, a lot of people tried to
145. 4:16go sub for sub, which doesn't work, or
146. 4:18they try to buy subs. Then they have,
147. 4:20yeah, the audience misalignment.
148. 4:22Basically, it just breaks down super
149. 4:24in-depth everything that they do wrong.
150. 4:27So, same thing here, low-cost baseline,
151. 4:30and then it shows all of the sources in
152. 4:32case you want to go and you want to dig
153. 4:33and do your own research as well. So,
154. 4:35now I have a very clear idea of where
155. 4:38exactly my audience is at. And so, you
156. 4:40can really use this as the foundational
157. 4:42thing behind your videos, where in your
158. 4:43scripts, you can even export this and
159. 4:45then feed it into Claude or another
160. 4:47scripting software that you're using.
161. 4:49And with this, you can really talk to
162. 4:52your audience at a much deeper level,
163. 4:54which is what creates insane retention
164. 4:56on YouTube. So, this is an extremely
165. 4:57powerful tool that not many people know
166. 4:58about, and I use this literally every
167. 5:00time I'm writing a very important
168. 5:01script, especially if I'm going after
169. 5:03kind of like a new audience or talking
170. 5:04about a new topic. And it's not sexy,
171. 5:06but it's what gets results. Now, you
172. 5:08want to take this information, start
173. 5:09tying it into your scripts, your
174. 5:10thumbnails, your titles, and also change
175. 5:12your video lengths to fit your
176. 5:14audience's preferred device type. If you
177. 5:15find the majority of your audience
178. 5:16watches on their mobile phone, you want
179. 5:18to make your video shorter. And if you
180. 5:19find that they like to watch on their
181. 5:20TV, make them longer. Now, this isn't
182. 5:22the sexy new YouTube cheat code that you
183. 5:24were probably looking for, but this is
184. 5:26the boring stuff that actually is going
185. 5:28to get you results. But there's actually
186. 5:29one more change that YouTube recently
187. 5:31made, and it's changed the way that
188. 5:32successful YouTube creators create
189. 5:34content. You see, if we time travel back
190. 5:35to 2 years ago, the YouTube homepage
191. 5:37looked like this. But if we go on
192. 5:39YouTube right now and we look on the
193. 5:40homepage, it looks like this. Now,
194. 5:42instead of all long-form videos,
195. 5:44majority of the real estate on the
196. 5:45homepage is now taken up by shorts. Same
197. 5:47for YouTube search. Now, whenever you
198. 5:49search something, even on my computer,
199. 5:50you're still going to get bombarded by
200. 5:52shorts. And looking at the data, we can
201. 5:53see that shorts views have absolutely
202. 5:55skyrocketed over the last few years. I
203. 5:57mean, look, in 2021, YouTube shorts had
204. 5:5930 billion daily views. And if we look
205. 6:01just last year in 2025, it has done over
206. 6:03200 billion views, which is a huge, huge
207. 6:07increase. And we're not seeing that slow
208. 6:08down anytime soon. Because right now,
209. 6:10the platform has over 2 billion monthly
210. 6:12active users, and approximately 175
211. 6:15million of those are in the United
212. 6:17States. And creators can earn anywhere
213. 6:18from 1 cent to 6 cents for 1,000 views
214. 6:21on a YouTube short. Which, if you're
215. 6:22taking advantage of the growing 200
216. 6:24billion plus views every single day,
217. 6:26that can add up to a significant [music]
218. 6:28amount of revenue. This means that we
219. 6:29need to adapt as creators, or else we're
220. 6:31going to get left behind. I mean,
221. 6:32YouTube shorts is literally the fastest
222. 6:34way to grow a long-form channel. But,
223. 6:35you don't just want to spam shorts and
224. 6:37expect your channel to blow up. YouTube
225. 6:38actually looks for equal distribution of
226. 6:40shorts, longs, and lives. So, for every
227. 6:43long-form video, you want to post two
228. 6:44shorts. Because this keeps your ratio of
229. 6:46short-form content [music] to longs
230. 6:47balanced. And in every single short-form
231. 6:49video that you produce, you want to link
232. 6:51back to your long-form videos using the
233. 6:53related video setting during uploading.
234. 6:55Now, YouTube has said multiple times
235. 6:57that channels who post both types of
236. 6:58content are getting pushed more by the
237. 7:00algorithm. But, what actually makes a
238. 7:01good YouTube short? Well, I want you to
239. 7:03meet George. And George has been trying
240. 7:04to grow on YouTube, but he just can't
241. 7:06break past that 1,000 subscriber mark.
242. 7:08He feels like he's doing literally
243. 7:09everything right. He's looking for
244. 7:10outlier videos that have high views and
245. 7:12low subscribers, and then he remakes
246. 7:14them for himself. He then follows the
247. 7:15advice of all the other YouTube gurus,
248. 7:17but then whenever he clicks upload, the
249. 7:18video flops. Now, Jimmy, on the other
250. 7:20hand, is in the same exact spot. Brand
251. 7:23new channel, and wants to get monetized
252. 7:24fast. But, he does things a little bit
253. 7:26differently. He picks a niche where he's
254. 7:28an expert in vegetarian cooking. He has
255. 7:30a ton of experience there. Then, he uses
256. 7:31AI to essentially figure out what the
257. 7:33biggest pain points are for his
258. 7:34audience. They don't understand how to
259. 7:36get enough protein while sticking to a
260. 7:37vegetarian diet. Plus, they struggle to
261. 7:39make consistent meals that actually
262. 7:41taste good. He also looks and realizes
263. 7:43that majority of his audience are
264. 7:44watching cooking videos on their TV and
265. 7:47mostly in the afternoons after they get
266. 7:48off work because they want to put
267. 7:49something together for dinner. Then he
268. 7:51does the exact same thing as George. He
269. 7:52goes and finds outlier videos around his
270. 7:54pain point of high protein food and then
271. 7:56takes these ideas and makes them
272. 7:57vegetarian. But he makes them even
273. 7:59longer, around 20 to 30 minutes per
274. 8:01video because he knows that longer
275. 8:02videos tend to get pushed more to TV
276. 8:04viewers. Then he also records two
277. 8:06short-form versions of his long-form
278. 8:07videos showing how to make the recipes
279. 8:10in under a minute and then links it back
280. 8:11to the full video for people to see a
281. 8:13much more in-depth explanation of the
282. 8:15recipe. And boom, Jimmy's first video
283. 8:17gets 100,000 views and his short gets
284. 8:19300,000. This is exactly what we did on
285. 8:21Heather's channel getting her over
286. 8:22300,000 views on her first video posted
287. 8:25where she had zero subscribers
288. 8:27beforehand. You see, YouTube isn't as
289. 8:29hard as you think and if you approach it
290. 8:30the right way from the start and
291. 8:32understand that the algorithm isn't a
292. 8:33black box. It's simply just a person.
293. 8:35And if you can understand that person,
294. 8:37then you're going to grow fast. And
295. 8:38there's actually a strategy that I've
296. 8:39started doing recently that's allowed me
297. 8:41to understand my viewers at a deeper
298. 8:42level and write for them in a way that
299. 8:44keeps them engaged until the end of the
300. 8:45video. So go ahead and check out this
301. 8:47video next where I talk about the
302. 8:48Hemingway theory and teach you how to
303. 8:50keep viewers glued until the end.