I'm taking a course on how to build and grow a YouTube channel. The main advice they give is "just commit to making a video once a week, every week, for 2 years, and you're life will change." It's a tautology, no guarantees on how well your channel will do, but it's such a simple idea, and nice motivator to build momentum and keep going.
Tom Scott's 3-part series (on YouTube) a few years back on "How to be popular on the Internet"[0] has similar advice. There are higher-cost and lower-cost ideas, but given the amount of randomness inherent to getting popular, quantity tends to be the more important factor. He of course says it much better than I can.
It can also be really hard to judge quality (or at least popularity) a priori. I write for various publications that track traffic. Invariably I'll have posts I think are unique and interesting, which I really like. And they get middling views.
So it often makes sense to not tilt too far into finely-crafting a low volume of work.
Then I'll slap something together a "5 things people get wrong when doing $X." It's not bad but it's pretty cookie cutter. And it will blow up.
Agreed. It's incredibly difficult to know what the audience wants, at least until you have a loyal community following (fans). Even then it's not perfect.
> "just commit to making a video once a week, every week, for 2 years, and you're life will change."
That's probably the best advice. These courses can't do anything about Youtube's algorithm changes, which is ultimately what will determine virality.
If your channel is not about toys, makeup tutorials or culture war commentary, it's unlikely your content will ever break through. So you might as well just go for a "good enough" video instead of a perfectly manicured one, because the algorithm doesn't seem to care either way.
