How to Blow Up Your YouTube Channel in the Next 90 Days
A YouTube strategist walks through her thumbnail workflow, the upload experiment that found her format, and the dubbing move that 5x'd her engaged views.
Posted
1 weeks ago
Duration
Format
Interview
educational
Views
15.9K
313 likes
57 · 43
Big Idea
The argument in one line.
Channels grow when every thumbnail opens a question or an emotion, the audience stays unified around one viewer and one kind of value, and the creator deliberately changes the recipe until a format clicks.
Who This Is For
Read if. Skip if.
READ IF YOU ARE…
A YouTuber whose thumbnails accurately show what the video is about but still get low click-through.
A creator a few months into a new channel who uploads every week and isn't sure what their repeatable format is yet.
Someone posting across several unrelated topics who suspects their audience is split between different videos.
A mid-sized creator with older videos still pulling 150+ engaged views a day who is weighing whether to dub their back catalog.
A solo creator who keeps buying new systems and calendars but still can't post consistently.
SKIP IF…
You want a step-by-step guide to a thumbnail design tool. The tool demo segments here are sponsor-adjacent and light on technique.
You're brand new with videos under a few dozen views a day. The dubbing advice explicitly isn't for you yet.
TL;DR
The full version, fast.
A thumbnail has to evoke an emotion, a question, or both, because thumbnails now take up more screen than titles and viewers often never read the title. The guest's team finds thumbnails in three steps: collect inspiration by format rather than topic, connect the favorites by naming exactly why each one works, then mock up three directions. She found her own format by doubling her uploads to two a week and editing herself, which forced faster reps until clip-driven research breakdowns emerged. Beginners fail in two opposite ways: spreading across audiences, or repeating a failing video forever. Dubbing her back catalog into 60 languages 5x'd engaged views and doubled AdSense.
Free for members
Chat with this breakdown — free.
Sign in and you get 23 free chat messages on us — ask for the hook, quote a framework, find the exact transcript moment, generate a markdown action plan. Bring your own key when you want unlimited.
A thumbnail must evoke an emotion, a question, or both. Thumbnails are growing on every YouTube surface while titles shrink, so a burger photo that only shows the topic isn't enough. A five-minute angle, three easy steps, or a famous chef mid-bite each add the missing pull.
04:48 – 06:53
02 · The thumbnail workflow, step one: inspiration collection
Packaging starts with titles, which are basically the idea. The producer then gathers thumbnails relevant by format and emotion rather than topic, plus her own past outliers and off-platform visuals like a TV intro frame.
06:53 – 08:26
03 · Step two and three: inspiration connection and three mockups
The team names why each favorite works. For her thumbnails video, the hook was tension between flat 2D UI and 3D shadows. They pick three directions and iterate mockups with feedback.
08:26 – 12:26
04 · Repackaging an underperforming video
A tool demo generates alternate packaging for her habits video. She reacts live: 'silent habits' and a notebook composition interest her, rainbow sticky notes match her brand, and she dislikes the word 'boring' and wants to test 'routines' versus 'habits'.
12:26 – 14:07
05 · Back-catalog thumbnail swaps
The host shows creators who changed old thumbnails and saw views per hour jump 3x to 20x. A clearer curiosity gap, like 'signal on Mars', took one video from 200 to a 3,800 views-per-hour peak.
14:07 – 16:42
06 · Starting over and launching with four videos
Her current channel is her second. Despite experience, starting from zero in the YouTube niche was hard. She launched with four videos at once to create a bingeable loop, and those four still outperform her next ten to fifteen uploads.
16:42 – 19:58
07 · Doubling uploads to find a format
Weekly uploads grew too slowly, so she went to two a week and took editing back. The compressed timeline forced her to distill what mattered and surfaced her format: clips of well-known YouTubers woven into her own research. Once quality maxed out at that pace, she dropped back to weekly with far better videos and got her breakout, a video on YouTube intros, about five months after launch.
19:58 – 23:43
08 · The two opposite beginner mistakes
Mistake one is splitting the audience across unrelated content; she uses an 80% rule where most viewers of one video should want every other. Niche means audience plus value, not subject. Mistake two is repeating the same failing video forever without changing anything.
23:43 – 25:04
09 · The 90-day program structure
Her accelerator mirrors her own path: build foundations, upload weekly, then spend three full weeks on one standout video. The surprise for her was how hungry creators are for community.
25:04 – 26:52
10 · Math problems versus drama problems
Every problem is either a math problem with a logical fix or a drama problem rooted in emotion. Most creators treat perfectionism like a scheduling problem and buy new systems that can't fix it.
26:52 – 29:54
11 · Why every creator needs a mastermind
She has met with two other creators for two hours every Wednesday for four years. The easiest place to find mastermind partners is a creator community anchored around shared values.
29:54 – 33:34
12 · Dubbing the back catalog
She dubbed her whole back catalog into 60 languages using a service that clones her own voice and localizes thumbnail text, titles, descriptions and subtitles. Engaged views went 5x, AdSense more than doubled, and subscriber growth 10x'd, led by Japan, South Korea and Brazil. YouTube's free auto-dub never moved the needle. It only pays off on videos already getting 150 to 200 engaged views a day.
33:34 – 36:21
13 · Where YouTube is heading with AI
She is pro-AI but skeptical until she has tested a tool deeply. The features she likes most give creators more control, like A/B testing video cuts and intros with full retention graphs instead of just a winner.
36:21 – 39:40
14 · What's next: offer stack, shorts, new formats
She plans to bring in experts to fix her offer stack, fund a producer-led shorts experiment, and test easier formats like redesigning viewer-submitted thumbnails, because month-long research videos aren't sustainable as her only differentiator.
39:40 – 41:42
15 · The fantasy novelist dream
Her longest-running passion is creative writing. She wrote a 310-page fantasy novel in school and wants to rewrite the series someday. She also paints and makes all her own thumbnails.
41:42 – 44:35
16 · Put yourself where luck can find you
Most of her biggest opportunities came from being active on Twitter and showing up to in-person events. One creator meetup led to a YouTube program invite, and now possibly running her own program inside YouTube.
Atomic Insights
Lines worth screenshotting.
A thumbnail that only shows what the video is about evokes no emotion and no question, so it rarely earns the click.
Thumbnails are getting physically larger on every YouTube surface while titles shrink, so many viewers decide before they read the title.
A curiosity gap doesn't require curiosity itself; any strong emotion, including familiarity, can open it.
Gather thumbnail inspiration by format and emotion, not by topic, and include your own past outliers.
Naming exactly why an inspiration thumbnail works, like tension between 2D and 3D, is what turns a reference into a concept.
Launching a new channel with four videos at once builds a bingeable loop and makes the first subscribe easier.
Doubling upload frequency for a few weeks forces faster reps and can reveal your format faster than polishing one video a week.
Once you've maxed out quality at a high pace, dropping back to weekly gives you dramatically better videos.
Use the 80% rule: most people who watch one of your videos should want to watch every other one.
A niche is an audience plus a kind of value, not a single subject; cars and dressing well can share one channel.
Repeating the same underperforming video forever is just as fatal as spreading across unrelated topics.
Perfectionism is a drama problem, and no new calendar or system will fix it.
Dubbing a back catalog into dozens of languages multiplied one channel's engaged views 5x and its subscriber growth 10x.
Voice-cloned dubbing with localized thumbnail text outperformed YouTube's free auto-dub, which produced no boost at all.
Dubbing only pays for itself on videos already getting roughly 150 to 200 engaged views per day.
Swapping an old thumbnail for one with a clearer curiosity gap can lift views per hour by 10x or more.
A weekly two-hour mastermind with two peers, held for four years, was one of the biggest drivers of early growth.
Showing up at in-person creator events produces opportunities that consistent uploading alone never will.
Takeaway
Open a question, unify the audience, change the recipe.
WHAT TO LEARN
Growth comes from thumbnails that pull an emotion or a question, a channel that serves one viewer one kind of value, and deliberate experiments when the same video keeps failing.
01Thumbnails as curiosity gaps
If a thumbnail only shows the topic, add an angle like a surprising time, a number of steps, or a recognizable reaction that makes viewers need the answer.
Design for the thumbnail first, because titles are shrinking on every surface and many viewers never read them before deciding.
Collect references by format and emotion across niches and off-platform, not just other videos on your exact topic.
03Step two and three: inspiration connection and three mockups
For each favorite reference, write down the specific tension or emotion it uses, then turn the best three into separate mockup directions.
04Repackaging an underperforming video
Retest single words in packaging, such as routines versus habits, because one word can change who clicks.
05Back-catalog thumbnail swaps
Old videos with weak packaging are free upside; a clearer curiosity gap on a new thumbnail can lift views per hour many times over.
06Starting over and launching with four videos
Launch a new channel with several videos at once so the first visitor has something to binge and a reason to subscribe.
07Doubling uploads to find a format
When weekly uploads stall, double your pace for a few weeks to force reps and discover what your format actually is.
After you max out quality at the faster pace, drop back down and spend the reclaimed time making each video much better.
08The two opposite beginner mistakes
Check your channel against an 80% rule: most viewers of any one video should want to watch every other video.
Define your niche as a specific audience plus the value they get, which lets you cover different subjects without splitting viewers.
If the same kind of video keeps failing, change one variable on purpose instead of hoping the next identical upload performs.
10Math problems versus drama problems
Decide whether a problem is logistical or emotional before trying to fix it with a new system.
Treat perfectionism as an emotional hurdle to work through, since better calendars and tools will not make you post more often.
11Why every creator needs a mastermind
Find a few peers at your stage and meet on a fixed weekly schedule; creator communities built on shared values make this easier.
12Dubbing the back catalog
Consider dubbing your back catalog only once individual videos pull roughly 150 to 200 engaged views a day.
Localize more than audio: translated thumbnail text, titles, descriptions and subtitles help dubbed videos reach new regions.
Use your own voice in dubbed tracks where possible; generic auto-dubs produced no measurable lift in this case.
13Where YouTube is heading with AI
Stay skeptical of AI tools until you've tested them deeply, and keep final judgment on what works for your channel.
Favor platform features that show you full data, such as retention graphs per variant, over ones that only declare a winner.
14What's next: offer stack, shorts, new formats
When your signature format is too slow to make often, test faster formats that keep the same audience and value.
Hand experiments outside your strength, like shorts or sales funnels, to a producer or expert with a defined budget.
16Put yourself where luck can find you
Show up where opportunities happen, both active on social platforms and in person at creator events.
Treat a single meetup or conversation as a long bet; connections often pay off a year or more later.
Glossary
Terms worth knowing.
Curiosity gap
The gap between what a viewer currently knows and what they want to know. A thumbnail or title opens it so the only way to close it is to click.
Packaging
The title and thumbnail of a YouTube video considered together, as the thing a viewer judges before deciding whether to watch.
Outlier
A video that performs far above a channel's usual view count. Creators study their own and others' outliers to find repeatable ideas.
Engaged views
A YouTube Studio metric that counts views where the viewer actually watched past the opening seconds, filtering out quick bounces.
Views per hour
How many views a video gains in an hour, used to measure momentum and spot when a thumbnail change takes effect.
Dubbing
Replacing a video's original audio with a translated audio track in another language while keeping the same visuals.
Back catalog
All of a channel's previously published videos, as opposed to new uploads.
A/B test
Showing different versions of a thumbnail, title or video cut to different viewers and comparing which performs better.
Mastermind
A small group of peers who meet on a fixed schedule to share progress, problems and feedback on their work.
Offer stack
The full set of paid products a creator sells and how they connect, including calls to action and funnels between them.
Quotables
Lines you could clip.
00:50
“In your thumbnails, you have to either be evoking an emotion, evoking a question, or doing both. And if you're not doing that in your thumbnail, it's not going to be very clickable.”
One-line rule anyone can apply to their next thumbnail.→ Before/after thumbnail teardown↗ Tweet quote
01:51
“The thumbnails are taking up physically more and more space on your screen. And the titles are taking up physically less and less and less space.”
Concrete observation that reframes where effort should go.→ Screen-recorded proof on the suggested panel↗ Tweet quote
20:55
“80% of the audience of one video should be interested in another video on your channel, even every other video on your channel.”
A memorable, testable niche rule.→ Channel audit checklist↗ Tweet quote
25:14
“All problems are either math problems or drama problems.”
Short, quotable framework with a twist on productivity advice.→ Talking-head explainer on perfectionism↗ Tweet quote
26:57
“It's impossible to solve drama problems with math solutions.”
Punchy closer for the framework.→ Text-on-screen hook↗ Tweet quote
30:30
“My views have five X, my engaged views have five X. My AdSense has more than doubled.”
Hard numbers on a single tactic.→ Case-study reel on dubbing↗ Tweet quote
41:54
“The biggest opportunities that came to me in my YouTube journey are things that happened serendipitously because I put myself in positions for those things to happen.”
Universal advice with a specific story behind it.→ Closing motivational clip↗ Tweet quote
The Script
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.
17px
Today is a special day. We've got the best YouTube strategist on the planet right now on one of 10 podcasts, April Lin. That is way too kind.
Hello, hello. I'm honored to be here. This is awesome.
Well, your last upload was around thumbnails and it's your most viewed video in the past year, which is already crushing. And that's just, yeah, four weeks old. So I'm curious for those watching, what would be your top advice if one's thinking about thumbnails?
Okay, let's... Start broad and then get more specific. Broadly, I think the biggest thing that people have to think about with thumbnails is, and it's a little bit of a buzzword, but I'll explain.
What is the curiosity gap opened by a thumbnail? What's the curiosity gap? I like to define it as the gap between what we currently know and what we want to know.
In a thumbnail, you should be opening some sort of curiosity gap. The curiosity gap ironically does not have to be the emotion of just pure curiosity. Any sort of emotion can be powerful in a thumbnail in order to get people to click.
But the way that I describe it is that in your thumbnails, you have to either be evoking an emotion, evoking a question. or doing both. And if you're not doing that in your thumbnail, it's not going to be very clickable.
So in an example, for instance, let's say I'm making a video about like how to cook a burger, you know, it'd be like, okay, how, how to cook the perfect burger. I could just like show myself holding a burger and be like, Right.
And that in that case, I'm showing what the thumbnail, what the video is about. I'm showing myself and I'm showing a burger. But what emotion is evoked?
Like. There's not, or like what questions are evoked? The only questions are coming from the title itself.
And if really interestingly, if you look across all the different surfaces of YouTube right now, across every single surface, the thumbnails are taking up physically more and more space on your screen. And the titles are taking up physically less and less and less space. This is especially prominent if you're looking at the suggested panel, like how ginormous the thumbnails are and how tiny the titles are.
So. What that means is that if you rely on your title alone to evoke those questions or those emotions, people are always going to look at your thumbnail first and they might even like not get to scanning your title and not even get that. So how can we add some like emotion or question to like the burger example?
Richard, any thoughts? How do we bring more emotions to the burger? Emotions or questions to evoke in this thumbnail of how to cook a burger.
or the perfect burger. Either make the burger incredible or depends on the niche, if it's entertainment or more educational. What would increase the intrigue curiosity gap here would be, I mean, yeah, if there's a special way to do it or maybe a time sensitive way, like you can do it in.
five minutes when people think it's 20 minutes. So we're talking about like adding some sort of like angles here. So for instance, it could be like how to cook the perfect burger, seeing that that burger is like, you know, just five minutes or something.
Oh, that's really interesting. How can we get this like great result in only five minutes? There's a curiosity that the curiosity gap is.
How can you do that in just five minutes? We could add something like three easy steps or something. Okay, what are the three easy steps?
I'm thinking about making a burger. I'm like, do I know these three steps? I want to know these three steps.
Let's do that. Going towards the emotion side, if we lean into some sort of... familiarity um and potentially even like you know this is kind of like pie in the sky but if you can offer this to gourd ramsay and have like a picture of him like mid -bite and some text around like like like like shockingly good or something else that like he he would say as he's taking this bite in this moment that creates this curiosity and this emotion of familiarity like oh like i i want to know why this burger is so good that even gourd ramsay says that this is a great burger So these are all different examples of how you can go beyond just showing what the video is about and either evoking a question or evoking emotion.
Just a quick mention. We recently released the best thumbnail generator in the world. It can create 12 realistic thumbnails in under 60 seconds using your channel's visual style and your actual face.
And the best part is it does not look like AI. So for a limited time only, you can try it for just $1 for the first month in the link below. Amazing.
And what's your thumbnail workflow to create those thumbnails? Yeah, so my workflow is... Pretty down to a science.
I would say at this point, whenever I'm working on a new thumbnail, I guess a new video, we always start with packaging. I'll usually have a couple of title ideas in mind. To me, titles are pretty aligned with ideas when I'm coming up with the idea for the video in the first place.
And then it's like, okay, we have, we have a title or in general idea for this, for this video, let's go into thumbnails at that point. it passes over to my producer he takes pretty much i would say most if not all of the thumbnail work where he starts with the research phase and this is when i will contribute as well if i have like seen different types of visuals that I think could be interesting or different comps that I think that could be interesting.
I would funnel that towards him, but then he'll go through his own research process as well. And it always starts with, I call this inspiration collection of, Hey, how can we collect all of these different thumbnails that could be relevant to the video that we're making? And it does not have to be relevant by topic.
It's more relevant by format. Um, or it could just be, this is a really interesting emotion that someone evoked, or this is a really interesting question that someone evoked. Let's add this to our inspiration.
So for instance, recently, and this is very, um, very meta, but I made a video about thumbnails. So I was like, okay, how can we come up with, with, with, with a thumbnail for this video about thumbnails? We could look at a bunch of other videos people made around thumbnails and we do, but most of our inspiration is actually focused on other people talking about different things in a similar format and seeing if we can bring those in.
Also my own past outliers or bring those in. And we look at off platform inspiration as well for this particular one. I remember I saw a specific like.
frame of an intro of a TV show that I've been watching. And I thought that looked very, very cool because there, and there's that next question, which is what makes this cool? So we have inspiration collection.
We are bringing in lots of different thumbnails that we've seen recently that we think could apply that are evoking emotions that we think we might want to evoke and opening questions in an interesting way. That's step one. Step two is the inspiration.
connection so we take kind of our favorites from that and then we really identify why did we pull this thumbnail in what way is it evoking questions in what way is it evoking emotions and this particular one there was this contrast there between a things that were typically two -dimensional like in this case it was like a digital ui of design elements and like a cursor and dragging something, but there were shadows underneath and it was made to be 3D.
And so that tension between the 2D and the 3D, that was novel. And that was how it was creating this interest. So I'm like, oh, that's cool.
And how is everything else doing that? Do we see any? any similarities between our inspo of how they are evoking questions or emotions.
And then from there, we typically pick three different directions that we want to start making mock -ups in. So in this case, it's like, oh, we like this tension between 2D and 3D. Thumbnails are typically something that is 2D on a screen.
How can we make that look 3D and create that contrast there? So that would be one direction of a mockup. We choose two other versions of mockups to go into.
And then that's like the back and forth of Joel coming up with a mockup, giving those to me, me giving him feedback and going back and forth until we come up with something that we like. Maybe I can show you a new version of creating different thumbnails. So we just launched on 1 of 10.
It's called Optimize. We make it easy because once you've uploaded and now it's crushing, so you're leaving it. But when it's flat, you might want to try to change your thumbnails, right?
Do you A -B test often? Your back catalog? I usually A -B test at launch, but I rarely A -B test my back catalog just because I'm so busy.
Yeah, true. Perfect. Using one of 10 will make it so much easier.
Basically, for example, like this video, you might see different types of variation of a composition or different elements and might give you new ideas to... that will come up with for your next video. Like here, the thumbnail one, maybe there's one new one that you're like, oh, this is not bad.
Maybe this is a new version to try it out if it flattens out. And so it makes it super easy and super fast. Can you show me the ones for the habits one?
The one in the bottom left. This one? Yeah.
This is one that I would say... Despite our process, we don't always come up with banger thumbnails. This is one that is massively underperformed for us.
I'll say a big part of it is probably just the idea itself. I don't think it's as strong, but I also don't think the thumbnail is nearly as strong as it could be. Because it reads through the scripts and even watches it.
And so understand what's going on in it. And we'll use parts of it that... it makes sense to be in the packaging.
Does it automatically upload it to YouTube and start an A -B test? Not yet, but soon, yes. So we'll make it super easy for everyone.
See if it brings ideas or composition ideas. And basically it also changed the tiles and thumbnails. Does any stand out that you think could make sense with what's been talked about?
Silent habits, small YouTubers never see. I don't really love small YouTubers never see, but the word silent habits, I think is interesting. I think like potentially like that can be a source of inspiration from it.
That on the left where it says like unlimited ideas. I like this. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
That caught my eye. Yeah, I do tend to have like the rainbow effect on most of my thumbnails. That's something that I think the current version of the thumbnail doesn't have.
It's just all like yellow. And I'm like, oh. We could probably do a different version where we'd be like, I'm centered or at least like a different colors of sticky notes.
I think that catches my eye a lot more. So I like, I like that. Yeah, I love this one.
This one's sick. Okay, nice. Continue.
Let's see. Let's see real fast if there's any you like. I like kind of the stuff that's in that notebook for the one that says the idea habit.
I don't love the idea habit, but that composition, I've seen a lot of that do really well right now, especially as we're moving towards a more analog friendly world and what a lot of people are reaching for. So I've seen that composition and I think that could be something to... True.
And it makes sense with habits as well. True, true, true. Okay, it's going with the hidden.
Interesting. I do think that like hidden routines is interesting. The concept of routines versus habits is something that maybe I could like test.
Are people more into the word routines or habits? True. The boring habits that make YouTubers blow up.
Yeah. Hot take. I don't like the word boring in like anything.
That's that's I mean, I've seen it work, but yeah, it's tough. It's worked here and there, but depends on the audience for sure. Do these seven things daily and YouTube will reward you?
I think that's an interesting title. I think that's an interesting title. Yeah, for sure.
I'm surprised you are not changing your back catalog too much because it is super useful. Like I keep seeing it so much these days. All of this is using one of 10 thumbnail generator, but you can see like his views, like 3x the views per hour, 4x, 4x, 4x.
to like 14 ,000 views per hour. And it's adding to him like millions of views basically just by changing the back catalog. Like hang time also keeps changing.
It's like 2x, 3x. So it's like all compounding thousands and thousands of views because it's attracting a new audience or maybe it's more intriguing or so on. So this is the feature on 1 of 10 where you can just see like who changed their thumbnails that have led to more views.
And you sometimes see like here, this one is at 35 views per hour, which is quite low. And it grew to 800 views per hour just by changing this thumbnail. So that's like a 20x.
But the views, as you can see, was really low. So impressions can be extremely low, basically. And like less than 100 or less than 50 even, it seems.
And like here, for example, I find it super cool. From unexpected signal to signal on Mars, you clearly see that it's much more intriguing, like the curiosity gap, basically. You're like, it went from something you don't really understand as a thumbnail to signal on Mars.
What? Is there actually a signal on Mars? And you go, you see the views, yeah, 200 per hour to now 3 ,800 at a peak, which is crazy.
That's wild. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I recommend you to change your thumbnails.
Want to know more about your growth on YouTube? Well, so I've seen you like from literally zero subscribers. So it's been really cool to see you crush.
What's your journey? For those of you who don't know, this is not my first YouTube channel. This is my second YouTube channel.
So I had, I would say, a practice run before this where I would say that's where I learned a lot of the basics. A lot of the fundamentals of just like, oh. How do I edit?
How do I like physically film a YouTube video and like upload that and make a thumbnail? All those things where I'd say happen on my practice run in my old channel. When it comes to this channel, I definitely came in with a lot of hubris of, yeah, I've done this before.
I should be able to get monetized again. And holy cow, it was, it was so hard. It was so hard to start with your brand new channel on something.
like in this niche, something that I felt like, why would anyone listen to me? I don't really have that proof here because it's a brand new channel yet. I'm talking about YouTube.
Like why, why would anybody care? And the phases that I would say was phase one was when I first started the channel was the upload consistently phase. That was like the classic make one video a week sort of phase in my channel.
I launched my channel with four videos to give the viewers a sense of like what my video, what my channel is going to be about in general, which I would definitely recommend anyone starting a brand new channel from scratch. I would say upload with four videos versus just uploading with one. It creates an opportunity for a much more bingeable loop and kind of the world building.
And it makes the subscribe a lot easier versus if there's just one. Yeah, that's the MatPat way, I think. I don't know if you saw that.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, so it actually worked for you. So you uploaded four at a time and did you immediately get views?
Like what happened? Yeah, I uploaded four videos. I would say I did have a previous channel.
And at that point, I did also have a... somewhat active twitter following way back in the day so i was able to tell people oh i have i have a new channel this is the new channel and so i was able to get people to watch but even my first like 10 to 15 videos that i uploaded on that channel the first four are definitely still the ones that got the most views because they were all uploaded all at once all together which was really interesting so did that at launch then uploaded weekly for a while and I was growing, but it definitely wasn't growing as fast as I wanted to.
And I'm like, dang, I really want to get my channel monetized. I would like start getting some momentum. I want to start seeing some results.
So I flip -flopped into a quantity arc. I went to two uploads per week, which for me, I essentially, I doubled my pace, my quantity for. a few weeks.
I was experimenting with what that would look like. And really the main question was like, can I get more content out? And really mostly, can I figure out what I want my format to be?
Because I think we think a lot about like, Oh, like what types of videos can you be making? And there are so many types of videos that you could be making, even within talking head educational content. Is it just you?
Are you pulling in clips? Are you also reacting? Are you also adding B -roll?
What is your video recipe? And I didn't know mine. If I just kept doing the same thing over and over again, I'm not really getting closer.
So I decided to do an experiment where I doubled my uploads. At that point, I took my editing back to myself. Previously, I was outsourcing my editing.
I took it back to myself so I could move faster.
I uploaded twice a week for some time. And during that time I was really forced to compress my entire upload. everything, the entire upload process into a fraction of the time, which really forced me to distill everything into what was most important.
And I started to improve because the reps kept increasing and I was doing it all myself. I'm like, how can I make this better? How can I make this better?
Even though I only have a few days to do this and it was not sustainable for me, but that push was how I was able to identify a format that was, that worked really well for me, which was Let me include clips of these like well -known popular YouTubers in my video as I break down the research that I did connecting these clips and interpreting them and what they actually meant.
And people loved that. So after I did that. At a certain point, I felt like I have maxed out the amount of quality that I can deliver at this quantity.
I don't think I can possibly make better videos right now with the amount of time that I have. I have reached my max. That's when I could finally slow down again and go back to one video a week.
But now I felt like, holy cow, I have so much time. And I was able to do a much higher quality video in that one week than I did before that quantity boost in the first place. And through that process is when I got my breakout video, which was my video about how to make a killer YouTube intro.
And that kind of started the, I guess, the next chapter of this channel. Beautiful. How long was it before that breakout video you were on the channel?
The channel itself, I launched on April 14th, 2023. Started the increasing my quantity about three months from then. So April, May, June.
So in July, I think it was September. It was right before VidSummit when I got that breakout video. So over the years, you've seen all kinds of YouTubers.
I'm curious, especially for beginners, what do you see as the common mistake? Two main mistakes I see, which is funny because they're kind of the inverses of each other, but I will explain. One is not sticking down with your subject area or the types of videos that you're making.
You could call it your niche. Not sticking in one niche.
I've seen a lot of people where, especially beginners, they're making like this type of content and this type of content and this type of content and this type of content. And it's totally okay to do that, to learn what sort of content you want to be making. But at a certain point, you've got to make a decision.
And one big mistake I see is that they never make that. decision and that's okay if you want to treat youtube like play or like a hobby but if there's any sort of momentum that you want to grow on your channel your channel has to follow what i call the 80 rule which is that 80 of the audience of one video should be interested in another video on your channel, even every other video on your channel.
And if that is not true, then your audience is too segmented. And it's gonna be very difficult to build up the momentum in order to keep growing because if someone subscribes and the next. video that they see from you as something completely different from the reason that they subscribed, they're not going to watch.
And then you have some people who's only watching some videos and other people who are only watching other videos and your audience is segmented. So that's, I would say mistake number one is segmenting their audience and not being as niche enough in the niche that they should be making, which I know is really annoying advice to hear.
Cause like, no, nobody wants to stick into a niche, but yeah. And I would also just define when I say niche, what I really mean is two things, which is audience and value.
Who are you making videos for? And what are they getting out of your videos? Your exact videos themselves.
It doesn't even have to be the same subject area. Like I'll take a men's culture creator speed. For instance, they have some videos about cars and they have some, some, some videos about dressing better.
You'd be like, What the heck? Those are completely separate subject areas, but the audience and value are pretty similar in their, in their videos and the way in which they do it.
Because essentially it focuses almost like a men's culture magazine. And so the reason why the people keep coming to their channel, the audience is the same and the value of that sense of belonging and also improving themselves as a man is pretty similar across all of. the videos and then the playfulness that's there as well.
So that's, I would say mistake one. Mistake two is the exact opposite of that, which is doing the exact same thing over and over and over and over again. And it's not working and never changing.
That is the second most common mistake that, that I see, which is, and that's kind of what I was doing when I first started my channel, which is why I had to like kick it into a new gear of something has to change. Let me increase the quantity. Let me try different videos.
Trying different combinations of audience and value is okay. As long as you're doing it intentionally. with the purpose of finding the thing and then doubling down on that thing.
But you can't expect anything to change if you do the exact same thing over and over again and never change. And I guess the game is basically finding the right balance between mistake one and two. Yeah.
On the opposite side of things, what have you seen work for your community, your students inside? 90 days breakthrough which you can talk about yeah absolutely so 90 day breakthrough if you if you don't know that's my youtube accelerator program it is a 90 days a 12 week long program pretty beefy it's essentially like a college quarter course and what i really love about 90 day breakthrough is that it like there's this very strict curriculum that they bring everyone through so that that process that i told you about about uploading at a certain cadence and then doubling your upload cadence and then slowing down again.
That's something that we actually follow with a 90 day breakthrough of different phases. So phase one is building up their foundations. Phase two is like uploading every single week.
And then phase three is spending three entire weeks on just one banger video. But one of the coolest things that I see with a 90 day breakthrough, I would say like apart from all the technical stuff with the curriculum is the sense of community. It is wild to me how close creators can get and it really validates to me at least how starved they are of community and kinsmanship when it comes to the whole creation process there are so many people who feel so alone and by just even taking something with a bunch of other people they find their people they feel much less alone and there's there's this concept that i really love when it comes to youtube problems which is Is it a math problem or is it a drama problem?
All problems are either math problems or drama problems. What does that mean? A math problem is a logistics problem.
There is something that you need to solve for. You need to make your process better. You need to learn something more.
Like there is a knowledge gap. There is some sort of specific logical thing that is holding you back. Drama problems are things that do not have a logical solution.
These are more emotional hurdles that you have to get through. And the problem is that most people view their drama problems like math problems. They think, gosh, I'm just not uploading nearly enough as I need to be doing right now.
I need to come up with a better process for uploading to be more efficient. This is a math problem when reality is. Is it actually that you need a better system or is it that there's something that's holding you back from making this content because it's your perfectionism and there's a drama problem that you have to work through because this perfectionism is holding you back.
And no matter what new system or calendar trick you learn is not going to solve that perfectionism as that is at the base of not uploading nearly enough. Perfectionism, I see it too much, too much. It's insane.
Instead of someone posting every week, they end up posting every three weeks, then every two months, and then they just, they wonder why they don't grow. So stop being perfect. Stop being perfect.
But the main problem is that they view it as, I need a better system. When in reality, it's like, no, you have to get through that perfectionism. So it's impossible to solve.
drama problems with math solutions. And one of the biggest things that I did for my own YouTube growth when I was starting out was, and everyone talks about it, but it's so hard to do. I formed a mastermind with other creators in my journey.
I had two of them and we met the three of us, but we met for two hours every single Wednesday. And now we are four years from that. And one of them, Left YouTube.
So we brought another one in and we still meet now. Now we meet every, every other Wednesday for two, for two hours because we've gotten so busy. We still do that to this day.
And a lot of people ask me like, Oh, like how, how do you find these people? And for me, one of the best ways to find people like this is joining another YouTube community. So kind of bringing that back to 90 Day Breakthrough.
It's so cool. I think in week one, our UK students organized like a UK meetup that they just did in person, which is just like, what the heck? That's so cool.
And a lot of people that they meet in a community like this, they share. especially if like the program itself is anchored around a creator that you share values with. I think that's a cool thing about 90 Day Breakthrough is everyone's a viewer of my content and my content tends to view YouTube in a specific balanced way.
So everyone who's taking this has those same shared values. So the odds of them meeting someone that they can then go and mastermind with later are super high. And a lot of the students in our past cohorts like still have their own mastermind groups that they made from friends that they made during the cohort.
Yeah, that's so cool. Wow, that's fun. It's like all organized without you not even taking an initiative.
It's them that took the initiative to all be together, which is awesome, which I see too much as well that it's missing that. I met you through the Creator Now world, which was meeting other people and we saw a lot of people grow from it. Because a lot of people helped each other and got that community.
So now you got 90 days breakthrough that you can join and meet other like -minded people and grow together. Nice. Before getting into that, let me tell you about how the 1 of 10 strategy team can help you grow your channel much faster and make more money.
Our team has directly worked with over 100 YouTubers to grow their channels by optimizing their content, focusing on the right strategies. So for example, here's a video idea title and thumbnail that we crafted for Mike Shake that ended up getting 22 million views and being his most popular video of all time. Another example is the content strategy we built for Callaway, helping him go from zero to 70 ,000 subscribers and grow a six figure business on top of that.
And those are only just two of many creators the team has worked with in the past six years. So if you're ready to take your channel to the next level in the next 90 days with daily support, video reviews, winning ideas, Is there something you did recently that worked out for you in terms of growth in views, growth, anything on YouTube?
Yeah. Okay. So there's something that I did recently that has completely blown up my channel.
And every time I look at YouTube Studio, I'm like, what? This is my channel? This is crazy.
And that is I dubbed. all of my back catalog of videos and we'll be dubbing future videos in a bunch of different languages. I did like 60 languages.
Yeah. Definitely don't have to do that many, but my views have five X, my engaged views, engaged views have five X. No way.
Yeah. So the public views have like 10x. It's crazy.
But the engaged views have 5x. My AdSense has more than doubled. And yeah, my videos are blowing up right now in specifically Japan, South Korea, and Brazil, which is very, very cool to see.
And I think my monthly subscriber count growth has also 10x. It's just, it's wild. It is truly insane.
Okay, that's crazy. And can you tell more? Like what did you do exactly?
How long it takes? How much it costs? For anyone who's not familiar with what dubbing is, dubbing is essentially when you...
a different audio track in a different language over the visuals of your existing video so someone in Brazil for instance can come and watch my video and the visuals are all the same but they're hearing it in Brazilian Portuguese now YouTube has had auto dubbing on on YouTube for free for I want to say like a year or so now and I've had that enabled the whole time but I never experienced any sort of boost at all until i started dubbing with this company called ditto dub not sponsored but uh their their their ceo reached out to me actually and offered to dub my back catalog for free and i was like yes okay sure nice and did that and what's really interesting about ditto dub and the difference between that versus youtube's auto dubbing is that ditto dub does it in your own voice.
So I, I personally am not bilingual. I'm not that cool. I don't speak any other languages, but other people who do have told me that, you know, the, the Japanese dubbing in my voice sounds so much better than the YouTube one.
Ditto dub also localizes the thumbnail text, which is super cool. So my like thumbnails will come up, but the thumbnail text that people are seeing in different regions is in that language. And also stuff like the title localization.
the description localization and the subtitle localization. So yeah, did that. The overall process is it took some time just because I mean, I have a lot of videos to go through.
They have like a Chrome extension that will do it for you. Cost wise. I think it's, it is, it's definitely pricey.
I was talking about some strategies of like using this best and who was for it, who it's not for. I would say you definitely need to have some view velocity on videos in order for it to be useful. I do have a few older videos that absolutely took off from dubbing, but they were getting at least 150 to 200 engaged views per day.
So if you're like a smaller creator who doesn't have that many engaged views per day on any of your individual videos. it's probably too expensive to be worth it. But if you're a larger creator, I think dubbing in at least like four languages would probably have a big impact.
What do you think of YouTube? So we're actually talking right now, right after MadeOn, which with a lot of features and new updates from YouTube. I'm curious, where do you think YouTube is going in the next year with all AI and everything?
When it comes to anything... AI generated or AI powered, I do think that there has to be some sort of healthy skepticism on the side of the user to not just blindly trust, but to like check and have their own taste and be like, okay, this is what I'm seeing. Is this like, do I feel like this is true or do I feel like this is false?
Or are there parts of this that I think is true and parts of this that I think is false? I'm definitely pro AI. And I am also, I would say, pretty skeptical of all AI unless I have dug very, very deeply into it and have built up that trust.
I think that's something that I like a lot with 1 of 10, for instance, is that you guys do what you do in a level that's higher than anything that I have seen before. And also, there's... Like it's everything still falls ultimately to the discernment of the user to understand, to say, I like this or I don't like this, or I want to take parts of this.
I want to change everything else. And the power is still there with YouTube and where it's going. I think the, the parts that I'm most excited about are the parts that give creators more control over like more, more insight.
And control over what's working and what's not. Like, let's say, for instance, the video A -B testing. I think it's so cool that we're going to be able to A -B test video cuts and intros and see the retention graphs on each.
YouTube will give us the watch time share winner, but they're also going to give us the retention graphs of each of those. And it's ultimately up to you to look at those retention graphs and say, okay, this is the one that I like better. Or this is the one that I like better.
that I like worse. And I think that as YouTube continues to give more control back to the creators, I think only good things will come from it. Yeah, no, I believe so too.
Like all of this in the end, it's to lower the barrier of entry to create content. And the creator can then just really focus on what matters, which is creating high quality content, do the research and make the... Best video ever.
Like that's why we built the one of 10 auto cut. Like we tried to remove anything that's annoying to do as a creator. And I don't think anyone loves to go through the cuts and remove silences and repetitions.
So that's why we're like, let's remove that and make choosing the cut as easy as possible. What's next for you? What is next for me?
I think my big thing going into the next. This chapter is twofold. One is I want to figure out exactly what I want my offer stack to be.
I think if you ever have like your own products, there's a question of like, okay, like what's, what are the right calls to action? What are the right funnels? Well, what is the right way that all of your offers work together to be more synergistic with each other?
I didn't get into YouTube because I enjoy sales and marketing. I think I'm actually quite bad at the sales and marketing side. So I think a big next chapter for me is probably looking to some like experts, consultants and bringing them in to look at my entire offer stack and just make it better.
So that's like a big priority for me. And number two, I want to start making some short form content. Gasp.
I make exclusively long form content, but I think that there's a lot of power in shorts. I just have to unlock it. I just got to crack it.
My issue is that I really love long form content. So I really don't want to spend too much time on shorts. But I have an idea for like a budget for like an experimental project that I want to give to my producer and have him like helm what the different options we could do for short form content.
So those are the two big projects that I have in mind right now. How long it takes you to do the research for each video? Because now you're posting once a month.
How long it takes? It takes a while. It really depends on the video.
I would say my own standards for my huge breakdowns have risen so much that I have put a temporary hold on some of my killer video series videos because I'm like, it'll take me a full month just to research. And I don't have time for that. So another thing that I'm actually trying right now is experimenting with different formats of content.
Uh, ones where like, for instance, I have a video coming out, redesigning viewer submitted thumbnails. And that's, that's a format that I haven't done in like a long form video before, but I've seen it work in some other niches and I'm really interested to see if it can work with us. And so we have all that filmed and we're just getting it ready, but the video feels similar in some ways and also feels different in some ways.
And I definitely want to experiment more with what does it look like to upload different formats of content, especially because I don't know, I'm all for innovation in content. And yes, I know that my deep level of research tends to be one of the differentiators that I have. And also, I don't think it's the most sustainable differentiator that I can continue for the longest time because it always it requires me requires me to like look in and research and.
I think every once in a while I can make one of those videos, but I want to be able to supplement things that I can show up to more frequently, especially as my time continues to get sucked away into like 90 day breakthrough and maybe a short form content and the newsletter and everything else that I have going on and travel.
I don't know why like tis the season where everybody's getting married at all times. And just like the number of weddings to go to is just insane. Yeah, I've been through that phase.
It's actually a lot of work. Actually talking about repackaging thumbnails. Let's see what the Optimize came out for you.
Curious, last two questions. One is, what's your dream? My dream.
This is gonna be so funny. The one passion in my life that has been consistent for as long. as I can remember, is creative writing.
And my dream since I was little was to become a published fantasy novelist. So that is like my my like full dream. And I do think that one day, one day, there's probably going to be some sort of books.
Nice. That's sick. Oh, wow.
I didn't know. I never heard of that from you. No.
Wow. That's super interesting. Okay.
Do you write on the side? Do you have ideas for a book? I don't write now.
Unfortunately, I've been reading a lot now. All of my writing I did when I was younger, but I wrote like a 310 page long fantasy novel when I was younger in school. And then half of a second, it was meant to be a quartet.
So it is my dream to like one day go back and revisit it all and rewrite it knowing what I know now. Yeah. Oh, wow.
That's really cool. I mean, yeah, I see that in a lot of people in the space with that creative mind. Like I want to do like Hollywood level movies at some point.
I think it would be sick. I don't know if you know Jake Bryant. He's in the whole Hollywood movie world as well.
So a lot of strategists have that in mind. But a fantasy book, that would be really cool to read one day. So do it.
Thank you. Yeah. I've, I've, I've always been a better writer than I am filmmaker.
And I feel like for me, YouTube, I enjoy visual art. Like I enjoy, like I'm, I'm a painter. And so some of that comes into.
youtube and when it comes to like making my visuals i make all of my visuals myself and just like the composition and colors of everything but yeah at its core is always the writing you're a painter as well damn we're learning so much learning so much absolutely and uh what's one last piece of advice you we haven't talked about that you think could really help someone watching right now until the end of this pod biggest opportunities that came to me in my YouTube journey and continue to come to me in my YouTube journey are things that happened serendipitously because I put myself in positions for those things to happen.
What do I mean by that? Well, if you're just making YouTube videos and you're talking to nobody else, but you're just making your videos and putting those videos online, Even just by that, there are going to be a lot of people who discover you and can reach out to you.
But specifically when I was having my come up, being active on Twitter and going to in -person events and conferences, a huge majority of the opportunities and connections that have came into my life since starting YouTube can be traced back to. Being on Twitter and putting myself out there there and going to in -person events and meeting people from there.
Like a specific example, I was living in San Francisco and I went to a YouTube creator collective event. And in that event, I met somebody who a year later was running this program within YouTube who thought of me to bring into the program, which I did. And I went through that.
And now I am considering like. running my own program within YouTube next year for something similar. So all of this just came from at its core, me deciding to show up to an in -person event.
And that would not have happened if not for that. And that is just one example of many, many, many that have come from just putting myself out there in a position where things can happen serendipitously. No, yeah, for sure.
I mean. We met and we ended up being your first sponsor ever, which was a really cool moment. I can give another example of showing up out there.
I started YouTube talking about Mr. Beast and had 100 views and then ended up getting a job with him. And Twitter.
I told myself I'm going to post every day for 30 days. If not, I'll give $100 to this Discord server I was in. And doing that led to showing what I was working on with other creators then led to what 1of10 is today.
So little things like that adds up to everything. That's amazing advice. That's awesome.
Well, that's a great ending. If you guys want... Direct help from April Lynn.
90 Days Breakthrough and check her channel. Thank you so much. Thanks for having me on.
The Hook
The bait, then the rug-pull.
The title promises a 90-day blowup. What the conversation actually delivers is quieter and more useful: a working definition of a clickable thumbnail, a format-finding experiment anyone can run, and one back-catalog move that multiplied a channel's views without making a single new video.
Add Modern Creator as a preferred source and Google shows you more of our breakdowns in Search, Top Stories, and AI Overviews. It only changes what you see, and you can undo it in your Google settings anytime.
Add to Preferred SourcesOpens your Google source preferences with us pre-loaded. Tick the box and you're done.
A four-phase thumbnail system from a team that packages videos for 100+ YouTubers: find outlier inspiration, figure out why it worked, remix it for your niche, then keep testing.
A YouTube coach rebuilds three real, subscriber-submitted thumbnails live, and every fix comes down to naming the right main character before touching a single color.
00:50
01:23
01:57
02:39
02:48
03:37
04:10
05:17
05:51
06:24
07:31
08:04
09:11
09:28
10:02
11:06
11:25
11:45
13:05
13:39
14:45
15:19
15:45
16:59
17:33
18:06
18:40
19:13
19:31
20:53
21:27
22:00
22:34
23:07
24:14
25:21
25:54
26:29
27:35
28:08
28:33
29:04
29:36
31:02
31:29
32:02
32:36
33:09
34:16
34:49
35:23
35:43
37:03
37:36
38:10
38:43
39:30
40:13
40:45
41:17
42:37
43:11
43:40
44:32
45:31
46:44
13:02
14:43
10:30
18:31