How to Get Out of YouTube Jail (is there one?)

0:00All right. So we're going to talk about how you can get out of YouTube jail and if there actually is one. So let me share a story here, Neil. I was at a dinner a few weeks ago, a CEO dinner in Puerto Rico with a few mutual friends that you know as well. And one of our friends, Patrick Campbell, he did really well, sold a company called ProfitWell, made lots of bucks. And it was interesting because we were talking about YouTube and he started publishing maybe about a year ago from the States recording. And he would record all these YouTube shorts that were super high quality. He'd be telling the story.

0:34It's animated. He'd do like a whiteboard thing where like, if you're watching the video right now, he'd be like this, right. And like a whiteboard would pop up. Right. And then he'd be like instructing. And I was like, man, this is super high quality, but I kept watching the videos. I'm like, man, he's really not getting any play. It's like 75 views, a hundred views or whatever. And, but he's spending like, probably like, we're talking five figures a month or so, um, on this. Right. And like, it takes a lot of time to do the recuts, the reshoots and all that to tell these good stories. And it's a scripted out as well.

1:01and so maybe for the first five six months seven months or so guys getting nothing right 200 views 175 views i'm like looking at i'm like man i'm like youtube must really hate him or something so i talked to him about i was like so what's the deal with that and he's like well i just broke out of youtube jail i was like wait what and so i looked at his youtube and now he has a video he's a short there that has 11 million views another one has 2 million views another one has 1.1 million views. And he's gone from like, he had like no subscribers, like maybe like a thousand or so. Now he's up to like 54 ,000, which is great.

1:34And the channel has 19 million views. They're all in shorts, which is like, we'll save that for another day. So I've never heard of YouTube jail, by the way. How did he claim that he got out of YouTube jail? So his theory, and here's where we'll go, we'll debate on whether there is one or not. Cause I talked to another YouTuber like two days ago. His theory is that YouTube wants to see what you're all about. And then sometimes the algorithm takes a while to understand what it is that you're trying to do. Right. And also here's, here's the other, when I had a conversation on Monday, this is a really good analogy.

2:06So I talked to another YouTuber, George Gammon. He, I don't know if you're, when you're at my event, he was the first speaker. He talked about macro, like gold. He talked about where the economy is going. So he's like, look, you know, at the end of the day, YouTube, if you're a YouTuber, you're an employee of YouTube. It's like, they want to see if you're going to stick around for a while. They want to see if you're going to be consistent and they want to see that you're going to be consistent about what you're going to talk about? Because ultimately they care about one, their ad revenue. And two, are you going to be consistent ad revenue?

2:31I was like, oh, that makes a lot of sense. And so that is the whole theory around YouTube jail. Did I answer your question? Yes. And I don't think there's necessarily a jail per se. I think what happens is if you create a lot of good videos over time, the algorithm just gives you more love. I don't really look at it as like a jail. I look at it as more so you're building up your reputation, your authority, right? Google calls it eat expertise, authority, trust. I know YouTube has a different algorithm, but I bet you, it just takes a little bit of time for you to show them that you have eat. And once you have it, you or their version of it, you start doing better.

3:11And of course they want to see good engagement metrics as well. And not people not putting out crap content. I just like the whole analogy around like, if you're a YouTuber, you are an employee of theirs, right? Because if you think back in the day, like when I used to post, I'd be getting like 20, 30, 50 ,000 views per video in the marketing niche, right? Which is pretty good. It's the moment that I started being inconsistent and started talking about other things that it's like, oh, like think about it. If you hire someone and they start doing other things after a period of time, when you need them to do one thing, you're probably going to fire them, right?

3:40Or at least if they're going to do the new thing, you're going to take some time to see if they're actually good at the new thing, right? You know what's interesting too, Neil? Like when you post your channel right now i'm observing it's we take some of these episodes here right and the longer ones do way better um from from what i've seen so going back to the engagement metrics the average view duration all that type of stuff it matters and also one thing to keep in mind with youtube it was much easier to do well four or five six years ago just like most social platforms once they get a lot of people a lot of competition they become more picky and then they start cramping down on reach it also helps them generate more ad revenue it's the same way any social network out there that's really how they do well now you could say oh but look at mr beast well mr beast is creating mainstream content that appeals to pretty much everyone and that kind of stuff does really well it's much harder to monetize though and people forget you know how long it took him to get to 10 ,000 subscribers?

4:40A few years. Seven years. Yeah. I believe a long time. So look, it's, um, it's not as you can call it YouTube jail if you want. It just depends on how you look at it. Right. Like if you want to phrase it like that, you can, at the end of the day, it's just, are you consistent? Are you providing value? And is your video providing value? Like, is it, is it up to par with the other videos that you're competing with? That's what it is at the end of the day. Right. And then ultimately you'll get rewarded because I, when I was talking with George on, on Monday and also, um, the guy that works with him, Josh, um, they, Josh was like your YouTube channel is shit.

5:16He's like, and the thing is like, both of them are like, dude, there's so much potential. Cause your, your content is so much better. It's just like, because I've gone back to long form podcasting now, it's like, it's going to take some time for it to be recognized again. But you know, it's like, that's, that's all it is. And what George showed me, this is where I was going with this, but, um, he showed me his YouTube graph and he was publishing these whiteboard videos. They would take eight hours to prepare and these are 30 minute videos. He's teaching about macro and all that. And he published three per day.

5:42So he's working 80 hours a week publishing these YouTube videos. And really it took him three to four months or so to get the play. All of a sudden he went from like 200 views a day to like 70 ,000 views a day, just in a span of like two, three days, right? But it's because all of a sudden YouTube started to recognize it. And he thought first there's a bunch of bots coming to his YouTube page. But at the end of the day, he increased, he got out of jail faster if you want to look at that because he put an insane amount of hours and he published a ton right so that's how you might look at it like it took him three to four months but 80 hour work weeks or if you look at patrick he spread it out over a year or so and that's that's how it worked anything else neil nope all right that is it for today please don't forget to rate view subscribe and we will see you tomorrow