In this instructional video, the creator explains why many small YouTube channels fail to grow—primarily because they misunderstand the YouTube algorithm, which is actually a reflection of real viewers' watch histories. The core growth strategy presented is the "searching and surging" technique, which splits a channel’s content plan into two halves: one focused on low‑competition, high‑search‑volume keywords to capture search traffic, and the other on modeling already‑popular videos to siphon suggested‑feed views. The video walks through practical steps: using vidIQ to find and score keywords, optimizing metadata (titles, descriptions, tags, spoken keywords) and selecting underserved niches; installing the vidIQ Chrome extension to identify evergreen, high‑views‑per‑hour videos from competitors, then recreating them with added value. A detailed "valuable content formula" is provided, involving watching top videos, extracting their best points, mining top comments for audience questions or jokes, supplementing with external research, and scripting in one’s own voice. The creator also shares thumbnail design best practices (limited elements, large text, minimal whitespace) and recommends tools like Paint.net, Canva, or Snappa. Throughout, the presenter emphasizes that consistent application of these tactics—keyword research, dual‑track content creation, high‑value scripting, and optimized thumbnails—will push videos into both search results and the suggested feed, leading to rapid channel growth and monetization opportunities.
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Small YouTube channels make this mistake all the time, which prevents their channels from growing, and that mistake is not understanding the YouTube algorithm. See, most creators think that the YouTube algorithm is this seemingly random AI system that just randomly gives some creators views while not giving others views. Now that's actually the wrong way of looking at it, and that's because the YouTube algorithm doesn't just randomly give people views. The YouTube algorithm is simply a reflection of real viewers who watch YouTube. And one of the biggest keys for growing a small YouTube channel into a big one is something called watch history. Every time that somebody watches a video on YouTube, that action is stored in a place called their watch history. This in turn makes it more likely for that given viewer to see that channel more often appearing in their suggested video tab and on their YouTube homepage and other browse features once a channel gets into their watch history. And you might be asking, how can I get into someone's watch history from scratch? And that's a great question and one that I'm gonna be answering in secret number 1 in this video, which is the searching and surging technique. Now this is a secret that I've used on numerous of my YouTube channels to grow them from absolutely nothing to getting millions of views and subscribers. And one thing to remember is that every big YouTube channel that you see out there starts as a small channel. And when we're starting out as a small channel, it can be hard to get our content to show up in places like the suggested video feed, which I oftentimes refer to as the holy grail of YouTube views. And that's because if you can successfully get into the suggested video feed of other popular videos, if you can just siphon off a tiny amount of their views from a bunch of different viral videos, your video can in turn go viral. But like I said, as a small channel, it can be really hard to get into that suggested video feed when we're just starting out. So our content strategy is not gonna be doing the same thing that everybody else does on YouTube trying to get into that suggested video feed. Instead, we're gonna take a seemingly counterintuitive approach that actually makes sense if you think about it, and it works amazingly. And the way that we're gonna do this is by diversifying our content strategy. We're gonna compile a list of 30 to 60 different video ideas, half of them going after trying to get search traffic because as a small channel that's typically easier to get, and then the remaining half will be modeling already popular videos so we can hopefully siphon some views from them. Now you might be asking, why are we trying to get into search results specifically when just starting out? And the reason for this is because because when we're just starting out on YouTube, YouTube has no idea what our channel is about. And so if we think about this logically, how in the world is YouTube going to know who to promote our videos to and who's gonna get the most amount of value from our content if they don't even know what it's about? The answer is they don't, but here's the good news. We can tell YouTube who to promote our videos to. And the way that we do this is by producing videos on keywords with a low amount of competition meaning there's not many videos on that particular subject, and a high amount of search volume, meaning there's a lot of people searching for that subject. That way you don't have to produce as good of content to still do really great on YouTube. I do still recommend producing great content, and we're gonna talk about what that means in just a second and some easy ways to ensure that you're doing that. But at this point you're probably asking, how can I find those great keywords with low competition and a high amount of search volume? And the way that I personally do this is by using a tool called vidIQ. You can get the full features of this tool for a month by using the code MAPPAR at checkout if you're interested in it. And I use the keyword tool within vidIQ to search for queries related to the type of content that I want to generate videos on. Then what I do is I sort this content by the highest overall score. Now the overall score within vidIQ is simply the competition weighed against the search volume automagically for you. And I recommend making sure the volume is at least over 10,000 searches per month if I'm creating a channel that the main monetization source is going to be just ad revenue. But if I'm creating a channel where we're gonna sell courses or sell an affiliate product, then it's totally okay to use keywords with even a lower search volume. So now that we have these keywords, what do we actually do with them? Well, first of all, I recommend trying to say some of these keywords directly within your video by actually speaking them. The YouTube algorithm actually indexes everything you say in your videos in the form of transcripts that then get indexed within the algorithm. Also make sure to put these keywords if you can in the title, in the description written in a natural way into natural sentences, and directly within your tag section as long as they relate to the video and what's in it. And also another tip is to choose a niche that isn't already being served by a million other creators and that has the potential for good monetization. Now I made a video talking about what are in my opinion the absolute best 24 niches on YouTube. You can check that out later, it's on my YouTube channel. So at this point, we're gonna start uploading some of this content that we're optimizing for search traffic, at least half of it. And in doing this, we're telling YouTube what our content is about so YouTube doesn't just have to guess and promote it to random people. Because here's the thing, YouTube will test your content, but might as well just tell YouTube what our content is about so that they can test it to the right people. And as long as our content is good, it'll get pushed out to an even wider audience. And once we have the search side of the equation down, it's time to focus on our other 50% of content, which is to tap into what I referred to earlier as the holy grail of YouTube views, which is suggested views. And that brings us to secret number 2, the surging side of the searching and surging equation. So what about that other 50% of our content that's going to be devoted to modeling already popular videos? How do we actually find the best videos to model? Well, we can use that same exact vidIQ tool that I talked about earlier, but this time we're going to install something called the vidIQ Chrome extension that installs directly within your browser. And then when you go on any channel on YouTube, you're going to see this extra tab on their channel called the trending tab. Essentially what this does is it allows you to see the videos on their channel that are getting the most amount of views per hour right now. So it doesn't matter when the videos were uploaded, shows you the ones getting the highest views per hour right now, which means there's people interested in this content right now and the YouTube algorithm is pushing this type of content right now. So here's how to get your other 50% of content modeling already popular videos. What you do is you go to YouTube and you put in search terms related to your niche. You open up a list of 10 different YouTube channels that upload content similar to what you want to upload. Then you go to their trending tabs that will now appear because you installed the vidIQ extension, and all you do is you write down the titles of the top view per hour videos on each of those channels. But here's the stipulation: it has to be uploaded more than a week ago. Now, why am I saying this? That's due to the fact that sometimes you'll see a really high view per hour video, but it's only that way because it was uploaded literally 3 hours ago or 2 days ago and it's fresh on the channel. And if it's on a big channel already, it could just be getting those views based on the fact that it's on a big channel rather than on the video's own merit. So to bypass this, we only look at videos that were uploaded more than a week ago. This also shows us that the videos are evergreen, and it's even more ideal if they're uploaded a month ago, two months ago, and they're still getting a high amount of views per hour. Now, what's a good views per hour? Typically, anything over 20 views per hour is really good. Then what we do is we remake these videos in our own way, making them more valuable, and I'll show you how to do that in just a second, which brings me into secret number 3. Which is the valuable content formula and how to use it to get tons of views and subscribers fast and grow your channel. So YouTube loves when your content brings value to the end viewer that it's intended to bring value for. And the reason that is, is because like I said earlier, the YouTube algorithm is simply a reflection of what brings value to people and what people are actually interested in. Now there's two types of value on YouTube. There's educational value and there's entertainment value. Both can be incredibly good and there's pros and cons to each. Now here's my simple formula for making sure that all of your content is super valuable. So at this point you should have your list of 30 to 60 video ideas. Half are gonna be devoted to trying to go after search results and the other half are gonna be devoted to trying to get in the suggested tabs of already popular videos. And what we're gonna do is go one by one through these video ideas and we're gonna copy the title of that video idea or of that keyword paste it into YouTube, and open up the top 3 videos that come up. Then what we're gonna do is watch through each of these videos. Sometimes it helps me to go through them at like 2x speed, and then open up a Google Doc in a separate tab and write down all of the best points, the most valuable points from these videos. Remember, value can be either entertainment or educational value, and make sure to write it in this document in your own words. Then what you do is you go to the comments section of all of these videos and you see what the top comments are, and usually there'll be corrections that people are giving about the video. Or there'll be questions, or it might just be a funny joke that a ton of people resonated with and upvoted. And what you wanna do is note these down and then put these into your script because if all of these people found value in that comment, or if it's a correction about what some video should include within their video, a lot of people resonated with this and you're likely to get a higher audience retention if you can somehow incorporate this into your script. So I recommend writing down some of the top comments for ideas from each of those 3 videos onto your video. And you can feel free to give credit as well. If it's a joke, you can simply say, I saw this in the comments section of another video, thought it was really funny, I just wanted to share it with you. And if it's specific questions, then make sure to answer those questions within your video. Also feel free to do a little bit of additional research on places like Google, see the top articles that come up, and then try to incorporate the best parts of these articles also into your script. Then simply go through your script again, make sure you write everything within your own words. Also adding any of your own wisdom or any kind of value that you can possibly think of adding into the script as well. And feel free to include your personality or any jokes you have. And then finally put it chronological order if you're teaching something. If you're just doing like a general top 10 video, this doesn't really matter as much. But if you're teaching something, make sure to put it in a chronological order where it would make sense for someone to do this step, then this step, then this step. And it can be helpful to think in like a step-by-step manner, and it's exactly how I'm organizing this video right now. Now think about what we just did here. We literally took the most valuable parts of each of these 3 videos that we found and plus we did additional research and added even more value into these videos to literally produce the most valuable video on YouTube on that particular subject. Now it'd be fair to say that it would be strange for your video not to get views at this point. As long as we make sure to optimize your videos with the right thumbnail, the right title, the right description and tags, and do all of the optimization right, your video is going to get traction and you will grow your channel. And for thumbnails, you can use software like Paint.net, Canva, or Snappa. And I recommend following this checklist for thumbnails thumbnails. Number 1, keep the primary elements to 3 or less. This can be humans or animals or whatever the main subject is within your thumbnail. Keep that to 3 or less. Make sure to make everything big and taking up as much of the thumbnail as possible with as little white space or blank space as possible. Also make sure if you have text within your thumbnail, keep it to a minimum but make it as big as possible so it's easy to read. And feel free to get inspiration from other thumbnails and model them in your own way. Don't just rip it off, but take inspiration from a bunch of the best thumbnails so you can create your own best thumbnail. Now check out this video to discover what are, in my opinion, 24 of the absolute best niches on YouTube. These niches right here in this video next to me are great because there's a ton of demand for these niches. There's a lot of potential for great video ideas, plus the monetization potential is much higher than other niches on YouTube. And I explain what the niches are in this video right here, so click it and I'll see you there.
