It Wasn't the Content

In 2024, I started a YouTube channel about watches.

It was maybe the seventh or eighth YouTube channel I had ever started. I had a lot of YouTube channels that didn’t grow very much. I’d make tons of videos and nothing would happen. I’d get really disappointed about it.

But in 2024, I made this channel. The first video I made, talking about a watch that I had just bought, randomly, out of nowhere it felt like, got 10,000 views. Which is something I had never experienced before.

I continued to make videos on it, and by the 10th or 11th video it had gotten 1,000 subscribers, had been monetized, and started bringing in about $100 a month in AdSense.

Which blew my mind. I had never had a channel be monetized. Never gotten to this point. And I tried a lot.

So I kind of analyzed why it was that this happened, and over time I think I understood some of why.

There’s something I don’t see people talking about very much when they talk about YouTube strategy. I think it’s really important, but it’s very obvious. Everybody seems to do it, but I don’t see people talking about it.

It’s that you talk about stuff that has shopping intent, searchability, and a passionate community.

Shopping intent

The reason my channel blew up, and it seemed obvious to me later, was that watches were something that people were buying.

I know from my own history that when I was buying a watch, or researching a watch to buy, I’d watch a hundred videos just to see what it looked like. It didn’t matter the size of the creator, because I just wanted to see it. And everyone had different footage.

Shopping intent is really important because there will always be people shopping for the thing, even months or years later. So you have natural views coming in from the fact that people are shopping.

And by the way, it wasn’t just one video. I have a video now that’s at 80,000 views. Almost every video I have is above 10,000. Some are at 30, 40. And I only have 1,800 subscribers, and I’ve only created, in total, I think 16 videos or something like that. I’m planning to put more energy into it now.

Searchability

The second thing ties hand-in-hand with the shopping: searchability.

Watches are something that people look up. Now, it doesn’t have to be watches. It could be iPhones, which is why there are so many big tech reviewers. It could be running shoes. It could be anything. But the more searchability the topic has, the more volume it has, the more views your channel or video could potentially get.

A passionate community

The last thing is a passionate community.

Watches are something that people love to talk about and research and argue about. There’s taste involved. Different people like different things.

And that type of community, which honestly you can gauge by something like Reddit and how much people are talking about the thing, is something you can tap into. As long as you’re passionate about it as well, because it’ll come out. I guess it’s not required, but ideally you like the thing, because you have to talk about it. And that passion means you don’t want to stop.

Besides tapping into it, a passionate community just means people are going to be looking stuff up. They’re going to be commenting. They’re going to like your video. And they’ll subscribe.

Whatever form this fits for you

Whatever thing you’re passionate about, see if there’s something you could talk about within that community.

Because either you’re going to talk about something that people are already searching for, or you’re going to teach something that people want to know in that niche. You can go either way with it.

But the thing with a product and shopping intent is that it’s kind of an easier sell. People understand why they want to watch the video. Teaching someone how to do something, they have to be ready to learn. And it’s a great thing. I love teaching. I kind of want to be a professor one day, honestly. But it’s a different thing.

You can combine both and make both kinds of videos. But just for the growth, you might want to think about the product stuff.

Hope this helps.

If you want to see the channel I’m talking about, it’s here.