Success in YouTube

Table of Contents

Defining success in YouTube for yourself
Understanding the meta information behind creators
What you need to get started
Picking the content you'll produce
Case Study: SovietWomble

Success in YouTube

Everybody wants to be a YouTuber, but before you unveil your brand spanking new channel to the world, you need to understand what makes a channel successful. We can all agree that success is dependent on the person, but for the sake of argument, we'll classify success purely by quantitative numbers: a high subscriber count, tons of views per video, and hours upon hours of videos to binge watch. However, be warned, you can have a successful channel but of low effort and quality. Therefore, before embarking on your YouTube career, you need to ask yourself one question and be completely honest with yourself, "What do I want?"

This is a completely subjective question and everyone can have different responses and that's okay. Just know that your answer will dictate the outcome of your channel. It will determine your motivation, your inspiration, your intention, and your effort, and all of this will determine your success. Do you want fame and glory? Do you want your own community? Maybe you want to teach people a craft? Or spread your opinion through video essays. Are you okay with a low subscriber count? Are big numbers of high significance to you? Would you be satisfied with a project that isn't seen by millions? Some of these you may have strong opinions on now, but can change over time. It's important to prioritize and focus on what's important at the moment, but keeping in mind the overarching goal. Once you figure out the big picture, you can move forwards and actually make the damn thing.

Meta versus Authentic

​There are two essentially two schools of thought when it comes to what kind of channel you want to make: Meta and Authentic. Your Meta channels would be the people who trail blazed what it means to be successful and the format of the modern YouTube video. A few names that come to mind are PewDiePie, Casey Neistat, Dude Perfect, and Good Mythical Morning. The Authentic channels are much more sensitive because what does it mean to be authentic. Well, here we'll classify that as someone who makes consistent content regardless of the YouTube algorithm. Whether they actually conform to it privately, publicly they are the same as they've ever been. SovietWomble, Captain Disillusion, HowToBasic, and Primitive Technology are some of the big names in this category. If you know your YouTube history, you know that in this system therein lies some overlap. All of the Meta channels proposed were at one point in time Authentic channels. The difference is their content production, it went from being genuine to being a job, and it reflects in what they upload. Clickbait thumbnails, pandering, and the dreaded YouTube algorithm.

Don't take this criticism of what it means to be a popular channel nowadays as flak. These guys have put in the work and the time to earn their spot at the top of the food chain and their success is unparalleled and to be respected. It's incredibly difficult to maintain true to yourself in the face of popularity and striving to remain the best at what you do. It's why becoming a "sellout" is so looked down upon, the audience wants the producer to be the same, while the producer wants to adhere to the system for channel growth. While this is not always the case for every channel, this is the key decider in the difference between a Meta and an Authentic channel.

What you need to get started

While the mindset and the end result of these channels are different, you're going to need the same basic instruments as anyone else on YouTube:

• A camera of sorts
  ​You need to record some sort of content right? Whether this be OBS or a handheld camera, get something made to record other things.
  
• ​Microphone
  99% of channel have sound integrated one way or another. The few channels that don't tend to not do so hot. When was the last time you saw a channel with a 100,000 subscribers not use their own voice or their own sound effects?
  
• Video and Audio Related Software
  ​You now have video. You now have audio. Guess what? It's time to edit.
  
• (Optional) Webcam
  ​Not completely necessary like the other 3 components, but depending on what you're going for, this could be beneficial to you. You might be doing voice overs thus a webcam might not really be needed, but if it's more of a video essay or capturing reactions, webcams are perfect.
  
• (Optional) Capture Card
  ​Only necessary if you're recording content from a device that is not your PC or Mac, such as a console.
  

Regardless of your success and your aim for the channel, these things will be staple in your career as a YouTuber. Some other products might be handy for you like green/blue screens, mic stands, and fancy peripherals, but for the most part, these are all extras. Those above are your core, this is what enables you to make a video, without it, no content, and no content = no channel. Upgrade and add more components as you see fit.

What kind of channel are you?

You've probably already given it some thought, but now would be to time to decide just what kind of channel you're going to make. You can make any format for any genre among YouTube, but most of these genres have their own style unique to themselves. Fashionistas talk face to face with their camera, offering advice and showcasing makeup or clothing. Conspirators provide some sensory evidence in order to persuade you while talking through it and justifying their beliefs. Your run of the mill tutorial style videos regardless of the genre, be it a craft or cooking, all try to teach you a specific thing. Figure out which genre you want to be apart of and then maybe watch a few channels to see what the popular formats are. The format could be the overall feel of the video, the way the content is displayed, the order of operations, etc. Find what suits you best.

For demonstration purposes of how to proceed from here, we'll be taking a look at gaming channels, specifically an individual named SovietWomble. His videos definitely belong in the gaming category, however you can look at his channel in the same vein as an art channel. While his medium is playing games with his friends and recording the funny interactions between them, his art is the art of subtitles and timing.

Case Study: SovietWomble

His early videos before he even got 1000 views (which in today's standards is pretty insignificant, but for a starting YouTuber means everything) set the tone of how his channel was going to be. It was raw, poorly edited, and haphazardly put together pet projects that showed he was interested in three things: playing games, playing with his friends, and recording their funny moments together. These early videos were 30 second clips of them playing a video game and some funny event occurs to a member or someone had said something funny. The quality is poor, the game is old, the humor is childish, but it was the foundation of his channel.


This is SovietWomble's last video before becoming a YouTube sensation. His next video would realize the perfect formula (albeit unrefined at this point) that would allow him to produce Grade A videos as long as he put in the effort (which he always does).
Things to note:

• While I mentioned his art is of subtitles, there aren't any
  
• There is no context of this funny moment
  
• Title is bland, not clickbaity
  
• Categorized his video as news/politics
  
• Started publishing videos September of 2011, only a year after PewDiePie
  

To build further off of just sharing the banter between mates, he focused on the editing aspect. He didn't change his channel to a "Let's Play" series, or a "How To" series, he changed it into something his own. By understanding how one can use timing and subtitle manipulation to enhance a scene, SovietWomble can make almost anything that's funny, even funnier. His craft didn't come over night. The work that's needed to make his videos is incredible to comprehend. And it's clear that it didn't happen over night. The first few videos where he attempted his interpretation of subtitles, it wasn't visually there yet, but still funny and new. It helped to convey tone: if someone was angry, the text could be red, if certain dialogue was important in a conversation, everyone could be white, while the important one could be yellow, individuals receive their own unique color to distinguish themselves.


Here is the next upload. Extremely different than the dozens of clips uploaded prior. For one, it's an actual video with some length to it, and not just a 30 second highlight. SovietWomble began to understand how he could use the content he recorded and edit it in a way that could actually be successful and tell a story. Things to note:

• Subtitles make it's first appearance (very raw in its nature, but still effective)
  
• The video is a series of clips rather than one clip on its lonesome
  This allows SovietWomble to create a story arch. Jokes from an entire play session can be told and retold given the context. In most interactions with people, jokes aren't just one off lines that come and go, but are built upon previous interactions. This is exactly what SovietWomble needs to do in order to step his game up. Build off of previous jokes in the same video and keep the momentum going, with each video having it's own thesis and theme.
  
• Title is still episodic, but clearly unique
  
• From here on out, videos take months to produce
  This indicates the amount of time and effort it takes to make a video. Anyone can upload a raw 30 second video, maybe slap on some subtitles or a gif or a picture to make it more funny, but doing what SovietWomble will start to do is going to take effort.
  

It wasn't refined yet, and it wouldn't be for a few months, but the idea and the identity of the channel was taking hold. It was clear of the direction he was going towards and now he has the means of portraying it. It's all about cultivating his craft. Later on, he would focus on a certain font and style, the quality of the videos improved as he upgraded his recording and editing software, he branched into more games to play, his use of subtitles varied and became more advanced. All of this work clearly paid off as he now has 3.2 million of the most die hard fans I've ever seen and his videos. He averages 3.7 million views per video from 172 videos, and 25% of these videos don't even have 100,000 views (all from before he figured out what he was doing).


Here we have two examples. The former being SovietWomble's most successful video from his most popular series, and the latter what I think is SovietWomble's most ambitious endeavor that shows his creativity and exactly how much effort he puts into his videos. Keep in mind that SovietWomble is one person, and he intends to keep it that way. From the previous DayZ video we had watched earlier, production time and quality has clearly gone up.
Things to note:

• The biggest difference in subtitle usage is tracking
  This is what SovietWomble is known for. This is what makes every editor out there gawk at him. He's not just using a program to auto track his text for him. He manually tracks makes thousands of key frames to make the text silky smooth. When you watch his video in 60 FPS, that's him, sitting down and editing the movement of the text 60 times per second.
  
• There is a unified style of text
  Enabling him to reflect the mood and tone of the speaker. When we no longer need to worry about a trivial aspect, we can put all of our effort into making other things better. This allows us to manipulate the text to bend to our will, just as SovietWomble does.
  

The second video I showed you is a monster. It's 30 minutes long, three times as long as his average video of 10 minutes. Not only is it that he has more content to use because he played more games, he went out of his way to experiment with new things. We see satire of news broadcasts, an anthem sung beautifully for a revolution, and the evolution of an entire playthrough that took months in one sitting. SovietWomble is starting to branch out, and it's paying off. He's mastered his craft of subtitles and this allows him to find other ways of making his videos interesting and attractive.

I chose SovietWomble not only because of his clear progression of how he became a homegrown YouTube phenomenon, but because of his morals. SovietWomble is about as uncorruptable as you can get in the Internet age. While controversial as it most definitely hinders his growth and income, he stands by his content and lets it speak for itself without feeling the need to "sellout" to sponsors and advertisements. He refuses to play the YouTube game in a world of clickbait titles and thumbnails. His headlines are simple: Random CS:GO Bullshittery Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, ... and so on. That's not the title that you've seen get a million hits, that sounds like the kind of title a 12 year old playing a game would come up with. I already stated that SovietWomble is a one man army and that he intends to keep it that way, but I never said why. This is what makes SovietWomble a worthy icon to look up to. He understands his product and how it works and how the results of what would happen if he tampered with its assembly. Everything up until this point has been through the lens of one man. People always wonder why he doesn't hire an assistant or use algorithms and procedurally generated tools to aid him, but if he did that, the humor could vanish. No longer is his videos being put through one lens, but potentially other lenses of humor that may differ from the original work. The work that has made him this successful. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. By creating an identity that SovietWomble is proud of, by mastering his craft and becoming one of the most unique gaming channels out there, this enabled him to develop a dedicated fan base without the need to give in to the YouTube meta, even if that means sacrificing his numbers for his happiness.