From 300 to 19k Subs in 3 Weeks using 100% AI video

I got 19,000 new subs, 11.1M views, and 60.4k watch hours in the past 17 days on a previously dead youtube channel and every single video was 100% AI generated (screenshot proof is attached to this post).

And I’m going to walk you through step by step how I did it. No gatekeeping lol.

Background: This is a client I'm working with who's in the franchise space. He had basically nothing on socials - 300 subs on YouTube with a couple random videos that had a few hundred views. Here's exactly what I did.

Step 1: Content Research

First thing I did was figure out what's already working super well in his niche.

I went and searched terms like "franchise," "top franchises," "how to open a franchise," "franchise mistakes," "best franchises" on Instagram and TikTok.

I went through and saved the top ~50 videos I saw with the most likes and views that were talking about franchise related topics.

Step 2: Find the Patterns

After I had those ~50 videos, I re-watched each one and wrote down the common patterns I saw.

I figured out they fell into 4 main types of content that work really well in the franchise space:

Comparing franchises to other franchises (McDonald’s vs Burger King etc)
Case studies on a specific franchise (how much money a Popeyes makes)
listicles (top 3 franchises, worst 3 franchises etc)
Comparing franchises vs other opportunities (franchises vs real estate, etc)

Each of these types of content also had 1-3 video formats that were popular. Talking directly to the camera, talking back and forth with a clone of yourself, etc

Step 3: Plan the Content

I took each of those 4 buckets and planned out 16 videos total - 4 per week.

I paid really close attention to the specific elements of the videos from my research that did super well.

I saw multiple videos pop off talking about "how much it costs to open a Chick-fil-A franchise."

Then another one went viral about "how much it costs to open a Wingstop and how much it makes.”

So I took the viral pieces from each video, and used those as my guide for coming up with the ideas.

Step 4: Scripts

I used AI to write the scripts. I have a very specific prompting setup I used that was able to create a great first draft, and I did about 10 minutes of edits for each script afterwards.

Editing was super simple - just basic captions, text hooks, and background music, all done in capcut.

Step 5: Video Generation / Editing

I turned all the scripts into AI videos. There are different softwares you can use to do this, but I found none were really that realistic so I used one I built myself.

The editing process after the videos were generated super simple, just basic captions, text hooks, and background music in Capcut.

Step 6: Start Posting (First Videos Flopped)

Started posting.

First few videos didn’t do well. There were getting a few thousand views each.

Nothing was really clicking. We got a few dozen subscribers here and there.

Then we had our first video start gaining traction - a Chick-fil-A vs Wingstop video. It climbed to about 16,000 views in the first three days, which was our best by far.

Step 7: How We Went Viral

I went and looked at the retention graph on that video. There was a really steep drop because we had a CTA at the end that was 5 seconds long. Retention looked really good up to that point, then sharp drop-off.

On YouTube, you can actually trim videos after they've been posted.

So I trimmed off the last 5 seconds (the CTA).

Within a day, that video went from 16,000 to 200,000 views.

Within two days, it hit 800,000 views.

Over the next two weeks, it hit 5 million views. We got 8,000 subscribers from that one video alone.

Step 8: Apply It to Everything

For all the scripts we hadn't posted yet, we modified them to either have much quicker CTAs or drop CTAs altogether.

Then we had a string of videos pop: