How I got half a million views on one YouTube video!

Every now and then I take a look through my previous YouTube videos on my main channel to see how they’re doing in terms of views. The road to “getting famous” has certainly been a rocky one, but very interesting all the same and a lot of fun. It’s also been great for me to be able to share with you what I’m learning as I go, here on this blog – it helps me to put it all into my own words, think about different ways to interpret the info/data, and reflect on what’s happening.

When I last took a look at my YouTube videos, I found that I had finally hit a new milestone -  over 500,000 views on one video, my David after the Dentist spoof.  It’s been reported that less than 1% of all videos on YouTube ever pass that mark, so that’s a pretty big deal.

I also noticed that I now have 6 videos in the three figure count range.  That’s pretty cool too.  It can be so difficult to get even a thousand views on your videos on a site that now has 35 hours worth of video added to it every minute, so I’m pretty proud of the numbers I’m getting.  It shows that maybe I do actually know what I’m talking about and that my hard work is paying off. lol

My video Only Gay seems to be on a similar path to my David after the Dentist spoof because it got over 100k views in its first month on YouTube, and now is nearing 250k after its second month. Only Gay is also a spoof, this time of Rihanna’s song Only Girl (in the world), which at that time, didn’t even have its own music video yet. I “pushed the line” a bit with that one because the content included almost every  gay stereotype I could think of, but it obviously worked with all the views and comments it’s been getting.

Of course, there are a number of factors at play when looking at the success of these videos:

• Timing was of course essential because I did both videos right away after I discovered the originals (the day after I saw the David after Dentist video and a few days after I first heard Rihanna’s song)
• These videos wouldn’t have gone very far without them actually being clever ideas.  There are no shortage of spoofs on YouTube, but they’re often not done very well or without much thought.
• Optimizing the metadata (titles, descriptions, and tags) made a big difference in ensuring they’d be found when people were searching for the originals or similar types of videos.
• Sharing them online through other Social Media like Facebook and Twitter, as well as on my Blog ensured that people who are interested in my videos knew to check them out and gave them an easy way to share them with their friends as well.
• And of course luck - because if the originals hadn’t gone viral themselves, mine wouldn’t have been able to ride on their coat tales as well.

So just remember that although there are some factors out of your control, there’s also a lot of strategy you can use to help ensure your videos get found and get the view count up.  If you’re someone like me who’s trying to make it big online, then make sure to dedicate an ample amount of time in creating your videos and use the tools at your disposal to get them seen.  It takes a lot of work and a ton of time, but in the end it’s worth it… or so I’ve been told.

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YouTube Comments of the Day – Scalpel Free Vasectomy:

TeegsProject365 has made a comment:
hahahahahahaha This is OUTREGOUS! how do you come up with stuff? lol AMAZING!

louiswolfe has made a comment:
Nut shots, milkshakes and hamburgers all in one convenient location – ain’t Canada something really special!

JanKarlsbjerg has made a comment:
“The snip” is something men have done so their partners don’t have to do “the pop”