Escaping YouTube Jail: Tips and Tricks You Need to Know | Ep. 2602

All 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 this date's recording. And he would record all these YouTube Shorts that were super high quality. He'd be telling the story, it'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, 100 views or whatever. And, but he's spending like probably like we're talking 5 figures a month or so 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 to script it out as well. And so, maybe for the first 5, 6 months, 7 months or so, guy's getting nothing, right? 200 views, 175 views. I'm looking at it, I'm like, man, YouTube must really hate him or something. So, I talked to him about it. 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 has 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 1,000 or so. Now he's up to like 54,000, which is great. And the channel has 19 million views. They're all in Shorts, which is like, that's 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 outta 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 2 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 the other— when I had a conversation on Monday, this is a really good analogy. So I talked to another YouTuber, George Gammon. I don't know if you're— when you were at my event, he was the first speaker. He talked about macro, like gold.

Yeah.

He talked about where the economy's going. So he's like, look, 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 bring consistent ad revenue? I 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, their 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 E-A-T, 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 E-A-T. And once you have it, you, or their version of it, you start doing better. And 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 20,000, 30,000, 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? Or 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, we take some of these episodes here, right? And the longer ones do way better 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 4, 5, 6 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 with any social network out there. That's really how they do well. Now you could say, oh, but look at MrBeast. Well, MrBeast 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 that. You know how long it took him to get to 10,000 subscribers?

A few years?

7 years.

Yeah, I believe that.

Very long time. So look, 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 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 when I was talking with George on Monday and also the guy that works with him, Josh, Josh was like, your YouTube channel is shit. He's like, the thing is both of them are like, dude, there's so much potential because your content's so much better. It's just because I've gone back to long-form podcasting now, it's going to take some time for it to be recognized again. But it's like, that's all it is. And what George showed me, this is where I was going with this, but He showed me his YouTube graph and he was publishing these whiteboard videos. They would take 8 hours to prepare. And these are 30-minute videos. He's teaching about macro and all that. And he published 3 per day. So, he's working 80 hours a week publishing these YouTube videos. And really, it took him 3 to 4 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 2, 3 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.

Yeah.

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 3 to 4 months but 80-hour work weeks. Or if you look at Patrick, he spread it out over a year or so and that's how it worked. Anything else, Neil?

Nope.

All right. That is it for today. Please don't forget to rate, review, subscribe, and we will see you tomorrow.