The argument in one line.
The YouTube algorithm no longer prioritizes your subscribers — it routes strangers with one specific problem to whoever is most reliably associated with solving it, so committing to the same problem category (with a freshly updated take each time) is both the growth strategy and the only moat.
Read if. Skip if.
READ IF YOU ARE…
- You have posted 10–50 YouTube videos and stalled below 1,000 subscribers despite consistent effort.
- You keep changing topics or niches because you assume your existing audience must be bored of your current angle.
- You have real expertise in one domain but feel trapped by it — like making the same video over and over is beneath you.
- You run a service business or coaching practice and want YouTube to send pre-qualified clients rather than a random audience.
SKIP IF…
- You are a pure entertainment or vlog creator whose appeal is personality-first, not problem-solving.
- You are already monetized and publishing consistently with a clearly defined problem category — you already do this.
The full version, fast.
YouTube no longer shows subscribers your videos by default — it matches strangers who have one specific problem to the creator most associated with solving it. That means every new viewer is a first-timer who has never heard your take before, which makes repetition a feature, not a flaw. The boring strategy is simply owning one problem category and refreshing your angle as the world around that problem changes. Long-term, that repetition builds the pattern recognition that turns into named frameworks — the one asset competitors cannot copy. The three forces that prevent creators from sustaining this are pride (it feels like settling), fear (wrongly assuming your audience tires of your story), and the curse of knowledge (forgetting how fresh your expertise still sounds to newcomers).
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Create a free account →Where the time goes.
00:00 – 00:38
01 · Hook — the 5% problem
Stat-driven cold open: 69M creators, <5% ever monetized. Credibility claim: this strategy earned a quarter million in a few months.
00:38 – 02:24
02 · Old algorithm vs. new algorithm
Circle model (subscriber-first) vs. funnel model (stranger-first). Illustrated with physical emoji tokens on a chalk-diagram desk. The algorithm no longer reliably shows your content to your own subscribers.
02:24 – 04:47
03 · The boring strategy defined
Same problem, different video. Every new viewer is a first-timer. The algorithm categorizes you by topic consistency. Creator examples: Graham Stephan (finance) and Justin Sung (learning).
04:47 – 08:47
04 · Sponsor — 1of10 competitor research tool
Demo of the 1of10 tracker (follow competitor channels, see what topics are outperforming), title generator, and AI thumbnail generator. $1 for 30-day trial.
08:47 – 10:35
05 · Long-term payoff — patterns become frameworks
Repetition surfaces patterns. Patterns become named frameworks. Frameworks are content IP that cannot be copied. Switching topics kills the compounding.
10:35 – 13:54
06 · Three obstacles — pride, fear, curse of knowledge
Pride makes repetition feel like settling. Fear of boring your audience is a projection — audiences are mostly first-timers. Curse of knowledge makes you underestimate how valuable your basics still are.
13:54 – 15:06
07 · Zen proverb close
"Before enlightenment: chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment: chop wood, carry water." The work does not change — your relationship to the work changes. CTA to next video on finding your lane without picking a niche.
Lines worth screenshotting.
- YouTube no longer prioritizes your videos to your own subscribers — the algorithm now routes strangers by topic, not loyalty.
- Every viewer entering your funnel today is hearing your take for the first time, which makes repetition feel fresh to them even when it feels stale to you.
- Being boring on YouTube means owning the same problem category — it does not mean making the same video; the world around the problem keeps changing and demands a fresh angle.
- The algorithm can only send you the right people consistently if it can reliably categorize you — consistent topic focus is the signal it needs.
- Repetition builds pattern recognition that becomes proprietary frameworks — the one form of content IP that competitors cannot reverse-engineer or copy.
- Less than 5% of YouTube channels ever get monetized, mirroring how less than 2% of people who know the fitness basics actually follow through — the knowledge gap is not the bottleneck.
- Pride is the first enemy of consistency: ambitious people mistake repeating themselves for settling, when it is actually the compounding play.
- Fear of boring your audience is largely a projection — your audience is not tracking your evolution the way you are; they are mostly first-timers.
- The curse of knowledge makes experts underestimate how valuable their 'obvious' content is to beginners who have never heard it.
- A creator's origin story should be told a thousand times — it is not for the superfan who has seen everything; it is for today's new entrants to the funnel.
The algorithm rewards topic consistency, not subscriber loyalty.
WHAT TO LEARN
YouTube now routes strangers to creators by problem category, which means every viewer is a first-timer — and repeating yourself is not a liability but the entire strategy.
- YouTube no longer reliably shows your new uploads to your own subscribers — the algorithm matches strangers to creators by topic, so your subscriber count is a lagging indicator, not a growth driver.
- Every viewer entering your funnel today has almost certainly never seen your previous work, which means content you consider repetitive is genuinely new information to most of your audience.
- Committing to one problem category does not mean making identical videos — the world around any problem keeps changing, and your job is to report back on what is currently true inside that problem space.
- Repeating yourself long enough to recognize patterns is not stagnation — those patterns become named frameworks, and named frameworks are the one form of expertise that competitors cannot replicate by watching your videos.
- The fear that your audience will get bored of your origin story or core thesis is almost always a projection; data consistently shows that new entrants hear it as fresh, and longtime followers find it grounding rather than tedious.
- The curse of knowledge is the hidden tax on expertise: the more fluent you become in a subject, the harder it is to remember how it felt to know nothing about it, which makes you systematically underestimate the value of your foundational content to beginners.
- Pride — the sense that repeating yourself is beneath an ambitious person — is the most common reason capable creators abandon consistent strategies before they compound into recognizable authority.
Terms worth knowing.
- Boring strategy
- Publishing videos that address the same core problem category repeatedly, while updating the specific angle to reflect current events, tools, or trends in that space. The problem stays constant; the treatment evolves.
- Funnel model (new algorithm)
- The current YouTube distribution model, where strangers with a specific problem enter the top of a creator's funnel, may watch one or two videos, and often exit without subscribing — meaning every viewer cohort is largely made up of first-timers.
- Circle model (old algorithm)
- The previous YouTube distribution model, where subscribers formed a stable inner circle and the algorithm prioritized showing them the creator's new uploads. This model no longer reliably holds.
- Content IP
- Proprietary frameworks, named models, or original methodologies that emerge from solving the same category of problem repeatedly — assets that are publicly visible but functionally inimitable because they encode the creator's accumulated pattern recognition.
- Curse of knowledge
- A cognitive bias described in the book Made to Stick (Heath & Heath) where someone who has mastered a subject can no longer accurately recall what it felt like to be ignorant of it, causing them to misjudge how basic or obvious their content appears to newcomers.
- Outlier (YouTube context)
- A video that significantly over-performs relative to a channel's baseline — used by research tools like 1of10 to identify which topics and formats are generating outsized results for competitor channels.
Things they pointed at.
04:48channelGraham Stephan
05:45channelJustin Sung
12:55bookMade to Stick
Lines you could clip.
02:48
“Every day, a new wave of first timers are showing up in your funnel.”
03:23
“How do I be unmistakably the same thing every single time so that the funnel sends me the right people every time.”
09:24
“Your frameworks become your content IP. That's one of the few things that people cannot copy from you.”
14:03
“Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water.”
Word for word.
Read-along
Don't just watch it. Burn it in.
See every word as it's spoken — crank it to 2× and still catch all of it. The same dual-channel trick behind Amazon's Kindle + Audible.
metaphoranalogystory
69,000,000 people are making YouTube videos right now. But less than 5% of channels will ever get monetized, and I want you to be one of them.
The YouTube algorithm has changed. What used to work even a year ago is no longer working. And I know because I work with tons of channels on a daily basis.
And what I found is that you don't need to chase trends, you don't need retention hacks, what you need is a boring strategy. This is the strategy that we're running on all our clients and even on our own channels. It's made us a quarter million dollars in the past few months.
And so in this video, I wanna break down exactly what this boring strategy is, and why people are using it incorrectly. So to understand this, let's look at how the YouTube algorithm currently works.
So on the left side here, this is what the algorithm used to be like. Let's say this is you, you're the creator, and you are in the center of this circle.
And so as you're making videos, people are gonna come into your circle and check them out, and some people are going to stay. So these are your subscribers. They are staying within your inner circle.
So when they subscribe to you, the algorithm will show them your videos. Right? They get priority.
So for example, looking at my feed, I'm subscribed to Ali Abdaal, Justin Sung, and Peter McKinnon. Now I've been subscribed to them for a while, but I haven't seen a single one of their videos in my feed for months. So what this means is that the algorithm no longer prioritizes showing videos to your subscribers.
So this circle model is no longer the case. So the new algorithm looks more like this. And if this is you as the creator, then you would be here.
So what does this mean? Let me give you an example. Right now, at the time of this recording, the new Diablo four expansion just dropped, like on PS five, on PC, whatever.
And being a huge Diablo fan myself, I got curious. So I looked it up, watched one video, and all of a sudden Diablo four reviews were just popping up all over my feed, and I'm not even subscribed to any of these channels.
Now you might be seeing a lot of new viewers coming into the top of your funnel all the time, but things are moving through fast. Right?
So they could be here today and gone tomorrow. Right? These people here are leaving out the other side of the funnel.
That's the new algorithm. So why does this difference matter and why does it pay to be boring YouTube?
So being boring on YouTube means that you're making the same video, solving the same problem for the same person over and over again.
So look, in this circle model, if you keep making the same video over and over, your subscribers might actually get bored because some of them have seen most of your videos. But that's not necessarily the case in this new algorithm. Right?
Because people pouring into your funnel today have probably never seen you before. They didn't catch your last video.
So they don't know your evolution over time either. They came in today because they have one specific problem and YouTube guessed that you might have the answer to it. So to them, your boring repeated message is the first time that they're hearing it.
And every day, a new wave of first timers are showing up in your funnel. So your job on YouTube has changed a bit. Right?
It's no longer how do I keep these people entertained? It's now become how do I be unmistakably the same thing every single time so that the funnel sends me the right people every time.
So by being boring, the algorithm will know how to categorize your videos and send them to the right people every time. Now, let me be very clear about something. Being boring does not mean that you're trying to make videos to put people to sleep.
Right? You still want people to engage. But more importantly, being boring does not mean that you're making the exact same video over and over again either.
What it actually means is that you're talking about the same problem over and over again. And if you look closely, when you're talking about the same problem over and over again, you actually have to make a slightly different video every single time.
I can't tell you how many times I've made the same video talking about how to grow on YouTube or how to make money on YouTube. It's the same problems every time. But since the algorithm keeps changing, the meta keeps changing, the creator economy keeps changing, the problem stays the same, but the world around the problem is always changing.
So it's actually my responsibility to keep up with the changes and report back to you what is currently working in the meta. I'm still talking about the same problems, but now I have to step up as a leader in this industry because I have to keep you all up to date on what's working.
So let's look at some examples of channels who are doing this very well. So this is Graham Stephan. He's been making YouTube videos for a very long time now.
He's made millions of dollars on YouTube. And if you look at his channel, especially recently, you can see that he's using the boring strategy.
He keeps talking about the housing market crashes and what to do. He keeps talking about how the government is impacting the stock market. I mean, scroll back and you'll see that he repeats the same problems every month, every quarter.
I mean, you can even see he's using the same exact thumbnails, like just minor tweaks in the title, minor tweaks in the thumbnails. But overall, he's just hammering in the same problems over and over.
That's the boring strategy. And he's become known for this, and people start to, you know, associate him with this because he's so consistent. I mean, it's boring, but it works.
Next, let's look at our friend Justin Sung. He has talked about the same problems over and over again. How to learn faster, how to remember everything you learned, how to set goals.
I mean, we used to be in the same niche as Justin before we pivoted to YouTube, and I remember seeing him make the same reverse goal setting videos he's been doing for years. But guess what? It's the same problem, but different video.
Right? What happened recently that changed the way that we learn? AI came into the picture.
Right? Learning and studying this year is completely different because of AI. And so Justin's responsibility as a creator is to keep teaching the same problem, but make sure that it's updated to the times.
Right? To ensure that it's actually relevant and useful for people today. That's the boring strategy.
Now, some of you might be thinking, what if I don't know what problem to talk about over and over again? Right? Some of you have a lot of knowledge and a lot of experience from your career and you need help kinda identifying what are the few problems that you can totally own on your channel.
Well, that's where the sponsor of today's video comes in, one of 10. Now we're fortunate to be connected directly to the team at one of 10. They're amazing dudes and they understand YouTube.
We've been running one of 10 on this channel and all of our clients channels for the past few years, and they've been extremely helpful for coming up with good ideas. Because when you choose your niche, the next question becomes, what topics or ideas are actually working in this niche right now?
Before one of 10, what we used to do is just spend hours doing manual competitor research and market analysis, scrolling through YouTube trying to figure that out, but now we just let one of 10 do it for us. So one of my favorite features is the tracker, where you can basically track what videos are doing well for your competitors.
So you can make a folder and just add the top competitor channels that you want to track or you can just let one of 10 make the recommendations for you, and they'll show you what's working right now. I mean, you can see everything. Right?
Titles, thumbnails, views multiplier, and you can set filters for everything too.
So in this case, we saw people using Claude in every industry. Right? From building businesses to video editing to graphic design.
We even saw people using Claude for vending machines and growing tomatoes. So that tells me that Claude is a hot topic right now. But not only that.
Right? Here's a pro tip. If you do a bit more investigating, you can see what are the boring problems that all these channels are using Claude to help them solve.
That's how you can start finding your lane. I know I'm just talking about one feature here, but one of ten has been rolling out a lot of new stuff recently, like their title generators, their thumbnail generator, which has been really popular because people can sketch out what you'd want your thumbnail to look like, and you can even reference the biggest channels in your space for inspiration and such.
So for example, if I wanted an Alex Hormozi style thumbnail, that's me right there filling in for Hormozi. Arms are looking pretty big.
And you can even see the winners of AB test on other people's channels so that you can learn from their data. So if you wanna sign up to one of 10, you can use our special link in the description below. You can get a thirty day trial for just $1 and I know you'll be able to find at least one good video idea in that time frame.
Alright. So next, wanna talk about what happens long term when you adopt the boring strategy. Not only does it grow your channel, but it also does something amazing for your business.
And so for me, just being a practitioner of YouTube strategy every day for years, we started to see patterns. Patterns and where people get stuck, patterns and why their first video goes viral, patterns on what actually grows their channel.
Patterns, they turn into something incredibly valuable for you and your business. They turn into frameworks.
, right, your intellectual property. That's one of the few things that people cannot copy from you. Your frameworks become the byproduct of doing the same work long enough that you start to see things that nobody else can see.
Like, you might have picked up some of the frameworks that keep resurfacing on our channel. I mean, we draw them out all the time. Right?
We have frameworks on picking a niche, finding the right video ideas, scripting, editing, thumbnails, everything. By the way, if you want all of our frameworks, you can just grab it for free in the description below.
But these frameworks are the results of working with clients and solving the same problems over and over again. So if you keep switching topics on your channel because you're getting bored of talking about the same thing, then you're not gonna get enough reps in any one problem to actually recognize these patterns.
And let me be clear, it's not just frameworks because pattern recognition turns into many useful things for your business. If you want to publish research, if you want to become an industry leader, all of it stems from repeating a boring strategy and recognizing patterns.
So you can probably see by now that the boring strategy is not complicated. So why then don't more people actually do it? Well, unfortunately, the most fundamental things are not always the easiest to do because it just works against our human nature.
I mean, look at the the fitness industry. Right? Everyone knows what it takes to get jacked and to get six pack abs.
You eat less bad food, you exercise more, and you do it consistently. It's a boring strategy, but we know it works because we have endless research showing that it works, and yet only about two percent of the population ever lose enough fat to get to the point where they have six pack.
And it's the same with YouTube. Right? There are millions of channels out there, but only about 5% ever get monetized.
But the boring strategy is there, but your human nature is somehow going to, you know, sabotage you or get in your way. So what is this and how do we address it? Right?
So first, there is pride. When you settle for just doing the same thing over and over again, it kinda feels like you're settling. Right?
It doesn't feel ambitious. It's just you settling for the same thing. For ambitious people, that might even feel like you're giving up.
Now the second thing is fear, And in particular, it's the fear that people will get bored of hearing your story. I mean, I definitely felt this one.
I've told my story about how I used to be a doctor, but then I quit medicine to become a YouTuber. I mean, I must have told that story a thousand times. I'll be honest, I got sick of telling that story a while ago.
But what's happening is my audience isn't getting tired of me telling that story. Well, not that I know of anyway. I mean, if you're sick of me telling that story, then please leave a comment below letting me know so that you can reignite my feelings of shame and guilt.
But really, I've told that story so many times and I've never seen anyone commenting or telling me that they're bored of hearing my story. In fact, there have been plenty of people who told me that it's always been a good reminder when they hear that story again. And it, you know, inspires them to get back on track.
And I can vouch for my other fellow creators. Right? Like I will never get tired of Alex Ramosy talking about gym launch or Colin and Samir talking about lacrosse.
Right? It's just who they are. Now, the third thing holding us back is what's called the curse of knowledge.
This is something I first learned about in the book made to stick by Chip and Danny. Once you've understood something so deeply, it's almost impossible to remember what it was like to not know it.
Like for me, when I learned about YouTube strategy, it became second nature to me and I sometimes forget that I still need to keep it very simple for the people just getting started. So the other day, I was having a conversation about, uh, YouTube outliers and by the end, my friend asked me, what's an outlier?
And I was like, why didn't you tell me that you didn't know what an outlier was before I spent fifteen minutes talking about it? And by the way, if you don't know what an outlier is, then please go sign up for one of 10, link in description, it's for your own good.
But for me, I've been living, sleeping, breathing YouTube for years. So sometimes I forget that something so boring to me can still be new and you know, magical to someone else. So by now, you know what the boring YouTube strategy is and you know what's probably stopping you from taking action.
So let me give you this Zen proverb that I've been thinking about a lot. Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water.
After enlightenment, what it means is that the work doesn't change, it's your relationship with the work that changes. Before I figured out the strategy, being boring on YouTube felt like a prison.
It felt like I wasn't allowed to be creative. But after I figured it out, right, I got enlightened. Boring is the thing that now I'm trying to protect.
I am now always on the hunt for different ways to solve the same problem. Like, what are the new tools? What's the new research?
What can I learn and report back to you about YouTube? It's given me a purpose and to feel like I'm evolving in my craft, and that's what I want for YouTube.
Now, of course, actually choosing your problems and finding your lane, that's a whole other discussion. Most people will hear everything I just said now, and they'll immediately just default to picking a niche. If I were starting a channel from zero today, I wouldn't think about picking a niche.
I do something completely different, and I made a whole video on exactly that.
The Hook
The bait, then the rug-pull.
Sixty-nine million channels competing for the same algorithm, and 95% of them will never see a monetization check. The host opens with that number not to discourage but to frame a counterintuitive argument: the path to the 5% is not better retention hooks or trend-chasing — it is a deliberate, almost stubborn commitment to the least glamorous possible strategy.
Named ideas worth stealing.
02:24concept
The Boring Strategy
Same problem category every video; update the angle as the world around the problem evolves. The algorithm can only route you correctly if you're unmistakably associated with one problem.
Steal forChannel positioning, content calendar planning, pitch for recurring series
00:38model
Circle Model vs. Funnel Model
- Circle (old): subscribers in a loyalty ring, algorithm surfaces your content to them
- Funnel (new): strangers enter at the top with one problem, many exit without subscribing
Visual framework for understanding why subscriber count is now a vanity metric and topic association is the real moat.
Steal forExplaining to a client why 'growing subscribers' is the wrong goal
08:47model
Repetition → Patterns → Frameworks → Content IP
The business case for boring: doing the same work long enough generates pattern recognition that turns into named frameworks, which are the only content asset competitors cannot replicate.
Steal forJustifying a long-term single-niche content strategy to a restless client or team
10:35list
Three Obstacles to Consistency
- Pride — repetition feels like settling
- Fear — wrongly assuming your audience tires of your story
- Curse of Knowledge — forgetting how fresh your expertise sounds to newcomers
Psychological audit for why creators abandon boring strategies before they compound.
Steal forCreator coaching session, onboarding call, mindset section of a YouTube course
How they asked for the click.
VERBAL ASK
14:40next-video
“If I were starting a channel from zero today, I wouldn't think about picking a niche. I do something completely different, and I made a whole video on exactly that.”
Soft verbal hand-off to a linked video — no hard ask, no subscribe pitch in the close. The main monetized CTA was the sponsor mid-roll.
MENTIONED ON CAMERA
FROM THE DESCRIPTION
PRIMARY CTAWhere the creator wants you to go next.
AFFILIATECommission earned if you click.
OTHER LINKSAlso linked in the description.
Visual structure at a glance.
