The YouTube Formula
Everything on YouTube will come down to this little formula: CTR + Watch Time.
It's simple, but not easy.
First, you need to earn the click. CTR (click-through rate) is the function of your topic selection, title, and thumbnail.
If you select a boring topic, people won't click.
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But even if the video topic is cool, you need to pitch it well, so that people click on it versus the other videos. Think in terms of CURIOSITY triggers here.
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A good CTR is 5%+.
The second part is WATCH TIME.
You can kinda hack the packaging and make people click your video, but you can't fake engagement.
The intro is where 2/3 of people usually bounce. Let me repeat, the intro is where most videos die! The best creators spend 50-80% of their effort on the first 30-60 seconds.
The HOOK is what makes a great intro.
There are a few options here.
1️⃣ Johny Harris will throw you right into the story promised in the packaging:
"If you don't believe that humans ever landed on the moon, you'd probably think that on July 16th, 1969, a select group of government officials..."
2️⃣ Alex Hormozi does the BENS method masterfully:
"I'm about to teach you a rarely used method that I use to grow my audience by 5 million people in under 24 months and the crazy thing is 24 months ago I had less than 10 000 followers and I knew nothing about YouTube..."
Big Promise: 5 mil in 25 months.
Easy: started at 10k and knew nothing about YT.
New: rarely used method.
Safe: he actually did it.
Once you get the intro down, you should follow the "peeling the onion" technique in the rest of your video. This is where the first problem naturally creates the next one and so on.
"Was mood landing a hoax? → What are the best theories? → The evidence is shaky... "
Hook them again in the section transitions to maximize the watch time.
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The formula "CTR + Watch Time" is easy to grasp, but is extremely hard to execute. The best part though is that you can FIX your dead videos that you've already recorded with this simple editing hack and the packaging technique that got me x7 more views on the same video. Click here to watch it.
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Just kidding. I don't actually have that video. But you got the point ;)
