You Can't Afford to (not) Create Stuff

Your weekly YouTube education in five minutes

Author

Johnathon Eva
March 03, 2025

What to Watch:

give me 8 minutes and I’ll make your titles 81% better

Aprilynne strikes again.
Don’t miss out on this short, but powerful video that this YouTuber put out. I’ve seen clients time and again have HORRIBLE titles.
This is the fix you very well may NEED in order to get your YouTube channel off the ground and souring.
If you don’t have the time for 8 minutes of education, you probably don’t have the time for YouTube honestly…

Packaging Breakdown

Don’t Do this:

5.5k views is certainly not bad, but as you can see by the number outlier (thanks VidIQ), then you’ll see that it’s not an outlier.
The key problems of this thumbnail/title is that they don’t compliment each other. The car is out of commission, but there’s no broken car in the picture. The visuals are stunning, but there’s no immediate context for them.
You can have stunning photography, and if there isn’t a story to them, your video will still fail

Creator - Sydnie

Try THIS

Creator - Sydnie

Boom!! 59k views. But why?
First take a gander over to the title. Look at that hyperbole, look at that curiosity. Most Haunted Battlefields? Intrinsic interest. The background? Creepy looking, or haunted in nature. This means that there’s title and thumbnail complimenting. I don’t love the contrast of the white, but perhaps this adds to the ‘haunted/creepy’ feel rather than detracts.
It’s naturally more interesting than the former video and it started with the IDEA

If you have questions about the concepts above, just reply with em’ I’d love to connect!

Creator’s we love

Martin Huber Knives:
Sure, his YouTube channel is old, but he only started posting consistently about a year ago. Since then though Martin has figured out how to tell a story with his products, and how to engage an audience with every piece of his content. Let’s take a look:

Martin Huber Knives

132 Videos - 14k Subscribers - Started in August 2014 - consistent since Q1 2024

12k views - 7x outlier

23k views - 13x outlier

107k views - 59x outlier

Key Takeaways

Visual Storytelling - You don’t even need to watch the entire video to get what the video I about. This is the essence of visual storytelling that we see from these thumbnails. I have no clue what TWIST Damascus is, but by golly that orange twisted metal looks awesome.

Questioning me - Notice in that second one he asks if “you can Forge” Why does he do that instead of “Can I Forge?” The video surely won’t be about me, but psychologically I came more about me than I care about him. This is a great example of using tiny bits of smart (not clickbaity) titles to your advantage.

Riches in Niches - I want everyone to take a bold look at what he doesn’t do here, because it’s freakin’ important. I don’t know what a Zulu Spear is, I don’t know what Damascus is (I think it might be a type of metal, but I’m not gonna Google it) I don’t know what makes a metal stainless. Yet he uses these niche terms - won’t that impact the reach he can have? On the contrary - it will allow him to reach the people MOST interested in these videos, and ironically enough, because it’s something I don’t know about, I’m more willing to click as well.

Creator News

YouTube is THE MOST used social media platform in America. - A breakdown of some pew research centera data

Takeaways:
1.) More than Facebook. This new dataset is so relevant for anyone trying to grow a following or a business on the platform. It has THE most attention, so it’s the most valuable.

2.) It’s not too late - Sure, the best time to start YouTube was 10 years ago. The second best time is now. Get going

3.) Keep going - I don’t know if you see that trending bar, but it’s going up. That means that there is still more and more potential for growth. I’ve talked with way too many creators that say they can’t afford to really invest into YouTube. Listen to me when I tell you, you can’t afford not to.

Hey you! You made it to the bottom of this, so can I ask a favor? If you found any of the information relevant would you just go ahead and forward this email to someone you think will find it useful?

Thanks!