A meeting with MrBeast's content strategist: some takeaways | #44

markets, packaging, content, oh my!

Here's what I've been up to the past week since I published my Plan for 2024, my first weekly update, and my 2nd weekly update.

On and off, I've talked about becoming a YouTuber.

A few months ago, I saw this tweet advertising software for identifying trends on YouTube.

Included with the sale of the software was a 1 hour strategy call with one of the founders. His name is Richard.

I looked up who he was, and it turns out: he was a content strategist for MrBeast.

The software at the time was $200/year, so I figured that alone was worth the 1 hour call. I bought it.

On Tuesday a few days ago, I ended up having that call. I want to share some of what he told me and what I plan to do with his advice. In this newsletter:

• My market is (too?) small

• There are so many possibilities with packaging (title, thumbnail, etc) and it matters A LOT

  • Do I want to be more entertaining than educational?

  • Do I push away the audience I actually want?

  • Is there a middle ground?

  • Am I just being a baby about this?

• What makes a video editor valuable?

• And how much do video editors get paid?

• How does being a YouTube strategist work? What do they actually do?

• So, what now?

My market is (too?) small

I love learning things and then explaining them to others. That's the appeal of being a YouTuber for me. Being able to learn something, tell everyone about it, and get paid for it.

It helps to have a niche. I haven't isolated mine yet, but the keywords are storytelling, art, video, and investing. For the sake of the call, I said I wanted to make After Effects tutorials.

He immediately told me that was a pretty small market. I calculated it and he's right, but I'm okay with that.

My goal is: can I love what I do most of the time and be somewhat well off? I don't aspire to be at MrBeast's level.

If you're interested in the details of my calculations, they're at the bottom.

There are so many possibilities with packaging (title, thumbnail, etc) and it matters A LOT

I started off by showing them a video of a text animation tutorial I made. I made it because it was complicated to learn, and now that it made sense to me, I wanted to make it easier for others to learn.

But, I had no idea how to package it. What should the title be? The thumbnail? Who exactly is watching this? Is there more than one type of audience? How do I appeal to everyone? Should I try to?

He explained to me that there are, roughly, two approaches: search and browse.

I can appeal to people using the search engine. Use keywords, show them I know what they're searching for and that I have the solution.

Or, I can appeal to people who were browsing their homepage or recommended videos. These are people more interested in entertainment.

If I want to appeal to them, I should package it as entertainment and then teach them whatever it is. For example, my title could be something like,

"I watched a bunch of videos with a billion views. Here are 10 techniques they all used to get popular."

And then I could mention my text animation as one of the techniques.

I have several thoughts about this.

1) Do I want to be more entertaining than educational?

At the end of the day, the packaging is a promise about what the viewer is going to get by clicking.

If my title is "how to make this text animation" then my packaging isn't compelling to a lot of people. But, it keeps its promise.

If my title is "10 animation techniques popular videos use", then it's more clickable. But, it's a different promise.

The viewers of that video aren't trying to learn how to make the animation. They probably don't care about the technical details. Which is what I'd want to talk about, primarily.

2) Do I push away the audience I actually want?

What about someone searching for my text animation tutorial specifically? If I title my video ""10 animation techniques popular videos use" then it's unlikely to show up in their results, no?

Am I okay with that?

3) Is there a middle ground?

I hesitate to adopt a pure entertainment style of packaging. But I also want my videos to get views. I wonder what a happy medium looks like.

Packaging is a fascinating subject. I have a lot of friends with great content but get little attention. The possibility of a lot more attention with slight tweaks is intriguing.

Even my own content, like this blog you're reading. It's main purpose is to be a medium for me to think out loud and a journal I can look back on. So, I'm not aiming to grow it.

But, I'd be lying if I told you I wasn't interested in it getting more attention. A title that gets me a 10% higher open rate but doesn't promise anything I'd have to write extra for? Sign me up!

4) Am I just being a baby about this?

At the end of the day, it's a business. People are offering their attention for something in return.

If I am given a way to get more views (package my content as entertainment, tweak it a bit), shouldn't I at least consider it?

The dream is to make content I want to make and everyone happens to love it. But obviously if it were that easy, everyone would do it.

I should expect to have to fight for attention to some degree. My video competes with others, so I should expect to have to sell it.

If a big audience wants to watch certain things, I should expect that, to some degree, that's what I should make, right?

Maybe I resist because of fear of the unknown. It's not part of my identity to be an entertainer. Past a few examples of the packaging, I don't know what the audience wants.

Maybe if I knew, in high resolution, what they wanted and how to give it to them, I wouldn't hesitate.

What makes a video editor valuable?

I asked him what kind of video editors he looks for - if there are any desirable qualities they tend to lack.

He said that most editors choose good edits, good brolls, good music, etc, but that’s it.

It's more rare (and valuable) to find an editor that can use After Effects, craft an intriguing story, and can familiarize themselves with the creator's work.

And how much do video editors get paid?

Market rate is about $75-80 per minute of published video. A common pay structure is a flat rate plus a bonus.

For example, if you agree to make a 10 minute video for 80 dollars a minute, that's 800 dollars.

You could also say something like, if that video hits 1,000,000 views within 3 months, I get a 50% bonus.

If you're a good enough editor, you can strategically take a deal with a lower base but a higher bonus.

A common target for bonus views is 1.5-2.5 times the 30 or 90 day average number of views.

How does being a YouTube strategist work? What do they actually do?

First I asked what the common problems were that YouTubers hired him for.

His answer: they all have a million things to do, and they all want more views. So he helps with anything pre-production. Mostly researching ideas and packaging.

90% of the time this means

• looking at what other channels in the client's space have done that worked that the client has not done

• looking at what channels in adjacent markets have done that worked that the client has not done

For example, if I run an After Effects channel, it might mean checking out Photoshop channels for ideas.

It's rare that video ideas are "Eureka moments" that come out of nowhere. Most of the time it's data and evidence backed.

So, what now?

I've come to a few conclusions

• Ben Marriott and Sonduckfilms both took more than a decade to get where they are. I should expect to work on something other than YouTube before I get there, if I decide I want to get there.

• I should be doing A LOT of studying of packaging, retention, and content strategies. If I understand better how to make a great video, I can promise more interesting things to my viewers. Plus, I'll be more valuable to clients.

• I should still make YouTube videos, but it should be more of a portfolio than a channel. Later it can evolve into a channel, but for now I should work on my client pipeline.

• I should also focus on writing a little more. There is content that needs to be a video natively, like an After Effects tutorial. Which is fine. But writing takes a lot less time than making a video. So it's probably better to write it first and then make it into a video if it gets popular.

So, in some form, I'll be analyzing existing YouTube videos and continuing to teach myself After Effects. In the latter case, I'll resume the horse animation tutorial.

See y'all next week!

PS: Market size calculations:

After the the call, I did some quick math to calculate the TAM (total addressable market).

Adobe has 33 million creative cloud subscribers. Let's say 5 million of them use After Effects (AE).

How many of them would watch tutorials on YouTube?

The AE subreddit has 255k subscribers. The AE Tutorials subreddit has 13.4k. Let's say 10% of AE users are watching AE tutorials on YouTube.

So, 10% of 5 million is 500k.

Who are the biggest (by subscriber count) YouTubers who primarily make AE tutorials?

It looks like

• SonduckFilm (875k subs, joined May 2011) and

• Ben Marriott (761k subs, joined Nov 2013).

To get past 1 million it looks like you have to expand to editing, storytelling, etc. For example, Cinecom.net (2.67 million subs).

So yeah, if my estimate is 500,000 AE tutorial watchers, that's not too far off. Maybe I'm too conservative and it's more like a million.

Let's say I joined them and cranked out videos for 10 years. What could I expect to make as an AE tutorials YouTuber?

I estimate I could comfortably crank out a video every two weeks.

Let's estimate a $10 CPM (how much I get paid from ads per 1,000 views). And say that I, like Ben, get an average of 140k views per video.

That's (10/1000) * 140k * 26 (a video every 2 weeks) = $36,400 a year.

I imagine with sponsorships I could make that crack 6 figures. If I sold a course like Ben does, probably low to mid 6 figures.