The simple way – although not very simple in practice – to increase your views and subscribers (for free) is to post consistently without getting distracted. The YouTube algorithm will eventually pick up one of your videos and some point and after that, you will experience very fast growth in views and subscribers. The complex phrase for this process is the Utility of Loss Theory.
How do I know that? Well, read on.
I started a YouTube channel a few months ago and I was frustrated by slow growth.
Key Takeaways
- Think of YouTube growth like playing a casino game – you take risks
- Imagine each video as a risk that you take and the channel’s growth as the reward you want
- Each video has the potential to spread out to a wide audience
- Posting videos consistently increases the chance of YouTube’s algorithm picking up one of them
- Once the algorithm spreads one of your videos to a big audience, your subscribers and views will grow very fast from there onwards.
I began researching on how to grow my audience and increase the views and I was almost giving up before I found the story of Mr Beast. He has 214,000,000 subscribers.
What you might not know is that his success took lots of time and was not random. It all comes down to a statistical theory called the Utility of Loss.
If you don’t know him, Mr Beast (real name Jamie Donaldson) is one of the most popular YouTubers of our time. He grew from a barely noticeable YouTube channel in 2012 to one with an audience of over 214 million subscribers in 2023.
He is definitely one of the most remarkable content creators globally and most people seem to marvel at his seemingly “overnight” success.
How YouTube Growth Can Happen
Let’s look at how Mr Beast grew his channel in the first years. You will understand how the process works.
Mr Beast posted his first video on 1st February 2012 at just 14 years old and armed with a dream of becoming a professional YouTuber. Just like me and any other YouTube channel out there, he struggled to grow an audience.
His first 59 videos were of him playing computer games.
In his 61st video, he crossed the 50,000 views mark (views not subscribers).
So, it took him 567 days (one and half years) to get those views which means around 88 views each day and less than 1,000 views per video.
By 31st March 2014, Mr Beast had uploaded over 300 videos and had been a YouTuber for 2 years with almost 1,000 subscribers. He wanted to quit at this point. Sounds familiar?
This is obviously a relatable story because it is what most YouTubers in Kenya and beyond go through although some quit way before their 100th video.
It is easy to wonder why Mr Beast, who was 16 years at the time, would keep making videos while he clearly was not growing fast enough for a professional YouTuber.
Well, it’s all about the statistics.
YouTube Audience Growth – Asymmetrical Outcomes Through Rare Events
Dr Nassim Taleb in his book Fooled by Randomness talks about the concept of Asymmetrical Outcomes Through Rare Events.
The idea of asymmetrical outcome is to ensure that you stand to gain more from an outcome than what you lose.
An important part of this theory is surviving the losses in that you need to keep taking a chance at an event without it crippling you in whatever you are doing.
To put it in perspective, an asymmetrical outcome is like gambling at a casino where you have a 10% chance of being right and a 90% chance of being wrong.
If you are right, the casino gives you Kshs. 1,000,000 and if you are wrong, you give them Kshs. 100. You stand to gain more than you may lose eventually.
The goal for you would be to have enough hundred–shilling notes to keep playing against the casino.
Nassim says, “The frequency or probability of the loss, in and by itself, is totally irrelevant: it needs to be judged in connection with the magnitude of the outcome.”
Which means losing those Kshs. 100s could be well justified since the outcome is significantly higher.
Think of it this way, for every 100 times you play against the casino, there is a chance you will be right 10 times. So, your loss would be Kshs. 100 * 90 = Kshs. 9,000. The other 10 times you would win Kshs. 1,000,000 * 10 = Kshs. 10,000,000.
Consistency is Key to Growing YouTube Channel
Mr Beast, after 2 years of nothing on YouTube had almost quit.
He says that reading comments on his previous videos re-ignited his passion and he kept going at it. And this time he decided to be more passionate and post a video each day.
Arguably, with fewer videos, Mr Beast had a lower chance of getting picked up by the YouTube algorithm.
This is why some channels stay buried forever because they upload less often. However, with each new video, he increased the odds of getting it right by YouTube and by his target audience.
It is like playing roulette only that the swings are the videos that he kept making. This story is not uniquely tied to him but rather applies to most areas in life on how consistency eventually breeds success.
The chance of a rare event – with significantly higher benefits – occurring increases with an increase in the number of swings taken.
YouTube’s Algorithm Will Eventually Pick Up One of Your Videos
Using the theory, this is the point where the rare event happens and the success comes
On 16th January 2016, Mr Beast released a video of him counting from 1 to 10,000 in one sitting and it got picked up by the YouTube algorithms eventually ending up with 11 million views.
His YouTube success changed after that as he now went upwards and averaged millions of views. For clarity, this was his 404th video and the umpteenth try at twisting the content to fit his subscribers.
Ever since, Mr Beast has been doing videos with ridiculous, extravagant and strange titles that are bound to keep his audience entertained.
Some of his video titles include;
“Last To Leave $800,000 Island Keeps It” – 37 million views
“I Gave My 40,000,000th Subscriber 40 Cars” – 26 million views
“I Bought Everything In A Store – Challenge” – 73 million views
“I Spent $1,000,000 On Lottery Tickets and WON” – 27 million views
Pretty sure you get the idea behind his videos.
It would be interesting for you to know that in 1,574 days (4 years and 3 months), and 448 videos later, Mr Beast surpassed the 50,000 subscriber mark.
Even more interesting is that 26 days later, he grew past the 100,000 subscriber mark. He eventually grew to a million subscribers and went on to make outrageous videos that each got tens of millions of views in each video.
He has also consistently donated the money he earns from YouTube to random people as his way of appreciating his audience.
Conclusion
The key lesson from Mr Beast’s example and from the utility of loss theory is that to build a great business on social media, one must be willing to take endless losses but the brave enough to survive until the moment of success comes.
The good thing is that this is not wishful thinking but rather a statistical principle.
