How my YouTube video got over one million views
Dumb luck. That’s the simplest way to explain it. I didn’t set out to get over 1 million views on YouTube nor was it even the most clever video I think I’ve done (that would be the ultra-violent puppet movie I made: Sunnyland Vice). It pretty much happened by accident when a confluence of events took place and gave it momentum.
It started with the iPhone. Right around the time the original iPhone was announced I bought a few different iPhone domain names including iPhoneTrick.com. I wanted to do something magic related with the iPhone but since this was before the App store the only option was web apps. I sat on the idea for a while and then one day thought up the idea behind iPhoneTrick.com; what if you used it as a way to play tricks on someone else’s iPhone?
I created the entire iPhoneTrick site in less than 24 hours. I shared the site with some friends and people on my email list and that was about it. During that time its traffic was about a few dozen people a day. Not a lot, but it was a cool gag for me and my friends and was even used on David Copperfield.
Months later on April 1st I decided to put up a YouTube video that showed people how to use the site to pull pranks. I showed all the features, gave out the url, uploaded the video and forgot about. Literally. I never bothered to check the numbers. Then one day probably six months later I was looking for an embed link and discovered it had 500,000 views. I was very, very surprised. The views kept growing at about 2,000 a day.
So what made this video go ballistic?
- I was one of the first people out of the gate with tricks for the iPhone.
- My video showed people something cool they could do.
- The key words for the video were simple; magic, iPhone, trick.
- My early starter advantage gave me better search ranking.
- My video pops up a lot in related videos.
- Other sites linked to it and embedded it.
What can you do to get your videos more views?Since I haven’t broken 100,000 views with any other individual video I’m not the best expert on this, but I do have videos that routinely get views above 10,000. I have *some* insight.
2. Your video should either make people laugh or teach them something cool.
3. Use smart keywords.
4. Be different enough that you won’t be buried in search rankings.
5. Describe your video well enough that you’ll get listed in related videos.
6. Encourage embedding and submit it to web sites that might be interested.
7. Dumb luck.
In my own experience, the more closely I follow these guidelines, the higher the view count my other videos get.
The best single piece of advice I can give is the same thing I tell people about getting web traffic: Find new places to talk about what you have. Don’t keep pushing it to the same people.
Have a question or suggestion? Email me at andrew@andrewmayne.com
