After watching @ColinandSamir's video @IAmAndrewKirby had a bit of a revelation... “If I had to summarise YouTube success it would be: Make videos people want. Not many people want videos on fractional ownership... But lots of people want videos on MrBeast” I couldn’t agree more. If Colin and Samir posted a video titled... “Why Fractional Ownership is the Future” (with a thumbnail to match) It wouldn't have performed very well. Why is this? While fractional ownership is an interesting topic... On the surface, it’s not that appealing to creators. Why? It’s not that relevant to them. It doesn't benefit or interest them. Colin and Samir knew this. They had to make fractional ownership appealing. So, they shaped the idea around something their audience is interested in. MrBeast. Result: Fractional ownership = Appealing. What can this teach us? Make videos people actually want to watch AND thumbnails people actually want to click on. You might have an important video topic but are your viewers going to click and watch? If not, you need to shape it into something they will. How can we do that? Social hacking is often seen as a short-term tactic. Making content about a trend to ride the attention. But it can also be a great way to make ideas appealing to your audience... ‘Long term’ trends exist and they aren’t going anywhere. 🔲 Creators (e.g MrBeast) 🔲 Celebrities (e.g Elon Musk) 🔲 Companies/products (e.g Apple) 🔲 Society (e.g Crypto) Think about what your audience is interested in and how you can shape your idea around it. Great test = thumbnails If you can’t turn your idea into an interesting thumbnail It’s a 🚩 That’s one of the benefits of thinking about the thumbnail before you create the video. Can you package your idea in a visually compelling way? If not, how can you adjust it to do so? Social hacking = better thumbnails By shaping your idea around something appealing you can make it the focus of your thumbnail.

I just watched the new Colin and Samir video titled 'Why MrBeast should sell his channel' about Fractional Ownership. I can recommend the video for all creators interested in new and creative ways to monetise, and I can recommend their whole channel for when you're looking for a good mix of entertainment, but still on topic to the creator economy. I liked the video for two reasons. First, it got me thinking about ways we can all collaborate together on one project as a community. I'm still in the really early days with this thought, and I have no idea how it would pan out in reality, but I think something really fun and rewarding could happen with the most active members of this community. The newsletter is step 1 on this process. Second, it taught me a lesson about thumbnails and titles. If I had to summarise YouTube success in a few words it would be this: Make videos people want. In Colin and Samir's example, not many people think they want to watch videos about Fractional Ownership, but lots of people want to watch videos about MrBeast. I think I need to do a better job at tailoring my videos to be more aligned with what people want. I recently recorded a video about 'How To Be Consistent', but I think it would do even better if it was titled something like 'How Is Ali Abdaal / Graham Stephan So Consistent!?" Same contents, but framed in a way that people want. So a really important question for us all to ask is: what content to people want? Where is attention? I made a list: 1. Big YouTubers 2. Celebrities / Actors / Movies 3. Web 3 / Crypto 4. Politics 5. News I'm wondering what would happen if 95% of videos I made had a theme related to the above. Charisma on Command grew their channel using Celebrity clickbait, but I don't watch any movies/know about celebrities. Web3 could definitely fit into the occasional piece of my content. E.g. Web3 for content creators, or if I'm making a video about staying focused, I can use Web3 as an example of a distraction that eats attention.

Currently setting some goals for 2022. Has anyone got any high-quality resources they would recommend? Main resources used so far: Ali Abdaal: I WAS WRONG - How I Set Goals https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rkRC728rIU The Gap and The Gain by Dan Sullivan https://www.amazon.co.uk/Gap-Gain-Achievers-Happiness-Confidence-ebook/dp/B08TGTK2L2/ref=sr_1_1?crid=5VAOA1B33XYO&keywords=The+Gap+and+The+Gain&qid=1640791484&s=digital-text&sprefix=%2Cdigital-text%2C399&sr=1-1

Link: https://hypothes.is/ Hypothesis lets you highlight and annotate any page on the internet. It feels like it turns the internet into your personal scrapbook! Plus it has integrations with Readwise. Meaning you can export all highlights into a database like Notion. Cool stuff.