If you want to really dominate on YouTube and be a full time content creator like me, the best thing that you can do is generate content that will draw reactions. Right now, almost everybody is trying to just react to other people, but the ideal, the homeland, the holy grail is to create content that other people will react to. A lot of content creators are just doing reactions to extreme content, which carries problems like potential copyright strikes, reused content, et cetera. But what I'm doing, I am getting other people to react to my content. I've gotten millions of views over the last six months, starting brand new accounts. And I'll show you exactly what kind of content I'm creating that is getting people to react to me.
This is what you really need to do if you want to hit the top. You need to make content that other people who are just going around and reacting will react to, that they'll be like, wow. So let me give you a great example of this. And shout out, Who Are These Podcasts, Carl as well. I've built a following of hundreds of thousands of people who are watching my videos every month now. I've got four monetized YouTube channels within just six months of starting, restarting from zero on YouTube.
Who Are These Podcasts and the fan channels
One of the biggest sources of views across all of my content has been Who Are These Podcasts. Why would they have 25 different episodes tagged Jerry Banfield? Why? Because I make interesting stuff worth reacting to, which I'll give you examples of in a minute. But this is where you want to get to with your content. I have had so many people who've given a bunch of money in super chats, who've talked with me, who've paid, and even the Who Are These Podcasts team. Carl was kind enough to come on and drop a $250 tip at jerrybanfield.com/tip that says, thanks for coming on WATP, Jerry. Let's do it again soon. Give the queen my best. I've now actually been on their show as well.
But six months ago, I had no YouTube channels. I deleted everything last year. There was hardly anything, almost nothing. Almost nobody or nothing was happening about Jerry Banfield. So what have I done that's made it so? I mean, some of these titles might not look complimentary, you know, like Jerry preys on lonely people, Bipolar Jerry Banfield is back on top, Meet the world's dumbest cult leader, Jerry Banfield dumbest guy ever lets AI run his life. But they're not actually that toxic in the show itself. And I had a very nice time. I was on the show, and if you'll notice, one of the top views they've gotten recently on one of their live streams was when I was on there.
This is what you want to do, and here's another example before I start getting into my own videos. There's a new channel that just started up, and all this channel does is react and summarize my videos. Literally, that's all it does. I allow fan channels, so I never copyright strike. Anybody is free to take any of my videos and do whatever you want with them. And that's what this guy's doing. I said that and this guy started his own show and he literally does a show every day. He shows my gaming videos in there. He shows my crypto videos, shows my eBay videos in there. He even showed that I was on Who Are These Podcasts. This is a channel where all it does is talk about me. It's a fan channel, but this channel gets organic discovery itself.
Now, there's another channel that does the same thing. And this channel literally paid $2,000 to publish a video I sent a woman I was dating. Then there's an older fan channel from back in the day, and that channel put up some of my old gaming live streams that I deleted.
So this to me is what you should be aiming at on YouTube. You want to make videos that create so much emotion, that people enjoy so much, that they will create channels just to talk about your content. They will create a whole channel just about you. Or if they have an established show, then they will start making episodes of their show about you, even if it's to roast you on their show: desperation has turned Jerry Banfield evil. Even if it is to roast you, this is where you want to get to. I mean, look at how many views these things pull. And it's not just that they've talked about me. This guy covered me for the first time four years ago. Wow, Carl, and Who Are These Podcasts, world's most mentally ill streamer works out jokes. But most of these are new. They had found me from years ago, but the content I've created recently has really got their attention.
How I get these reactions
So let me give you an example of exactly how to do this content, because most people don't even know that this is the ideal strategy to do to grow. So how do I get these reactions? Here's how I get these reactions. I share my most embarrassing stories, my most polarizing ideas, and I use AI. I'll do a vlog or a video, and I'll use AI to help me pick out the best, like most clickbait thing I said in the whole video, and then I slap that on the title.
So here's an example. Last night on my dating channel, I did a video that said I'm using YouTube as a dating app. I saw a woman that did a video that said I tried using LinkedIn as a dating app. I literally took the exact same basic title idea, but I've set it up so on jerrybanfield.com, a woman can actually apply for a date with me. Then on future videos, I will have actual dates with real women on Jerry Banfield Dating.
Embarrassing failure stories
This is how I've got so many reactions. If you look at my most popular videos on that channel, one of them from eight days ago tells you everything. And keep in mind, this channel was created in May 2026. That is four months ago. Look at the title of that video: I paid $625 to argue with a woman for 30 minutes. Then there's this one: She said her date was a waste of time, and then she walked out. What do these videos have in common? I'm telling embarrassing failure stories. I'm telling stories of things going wrong and me struggling.
Here's another one where the shoe was on the other foot this time. I was really into her, then one comment that she made ended the date, talking about how she's disciplined kids. I'm like, oh god. Nope. I'm done. So this was a dating flop, and this video draws reactions. It gets people commenting. The average watch time on this video is like 10, 15 minutes. The click through was like at scales like 10, which is amazing. And then I just used a quick AI generated thumbnail in the background there.
This one, I dated 22 women after my divorce, my biggest mistake wasn't trying hard enough. This one, I made a leaderboard for the women I'm dating. This one, I started talking to 14 women at once, I hate that it works. You see what I have in common here. I'm not telling people what to do. I'm just showing what is actually happening in my life. I'm discussing things that most people wouldn't want to admit. I've tailored my entire life to be a person that doesn't think like everybody else. I read different books. I'm careful about who I listen to.
If you want to get people to react to you, you need to share things that are unexpected, that are unusual. One of the best things to do is share your stories and the things that other people wouldn't want to admit. For example, here's a recent video with 2,000 views on my Jerry Banfield Money channel. It says I'm having fun being $215,000 in debt. This is an idea that most people would be horrified to share these numbers. But even someone just seeing this thumbnail that doesn't even watch the video, people are then talking about it, they're reposting about it, they're sharing, they're reacting to it. Just this thumbnail by itself is enough to generate reaction videos. There's a similar one that didn't go off as much so far, but what happens lots of times is you'll do one video that gets a reaction, and then that video will bring in more of an audience.
Watermark everything
And you always need to watermark as well, because if you notice, when other channels react to me and I have a watermark on my videos, then people are coming into jerrybanfield.com. And when you go into jerrybanfield.com, you've got the ability to tip. You've got links to all my YouTube channels and you've got links to my other platforms. This way, when somebody reacting to me is just using my content, I am getting something back out of that instead of getting nothing.
So I watermark all my videos so it always says jerrybanfield.com, and obviously somebody can try, but I try and be kind of close to it so that it'd be difficult to crop it out or to black it out. So most of the people reacting just leave my watermark on, like one of these where it's a watermark right underneath me, so that's kind of a difficult one to cut out. Most people then are just leaving the watermarks on and they're giving me a bunch of free traffic when they react to my videos.
Now, I'll give you another example of a reaction video. This channel, I've never heard of this channel before, and they do a reaction video and it gets more views than my original video, and that's what you really want. You want to get more views than your own original video. Because if you can do that, that is where you really can go nuts.
That was the one I was actually having a hard time finding. I had it pulled up before, the man show, Jerry Banfield, or something like that, and some guy reacted to my video. Ah, shoot, I lost it. I lost where it was. But this same basic dating story got 3,900 views. I told the same basic story twice, also three days apart. It's the same basic story that I told in another video, and I got about 8,000 views on that same dating story. I just told it two different ways with two different titles. And then somebody reacted to this and their video got 8,000 more views on it, and the watermark was directly in the middle of their video. And then they also reacted to a couple of my other dating videos as well.
Make yourself look bad
So one of the easiest ways to generate reaction content is to actually make yourself look bad, make yourself look like a failure, make yourself look dumb. Make yourself something that somebody would react to and talk a bunch of junk about, because look at what almost everybody is doing on YouTube. For example, on my dating channel, most people with their dating channel are trying to signal authority and look smart and try and tell other people what to do and sell a course. And you have to, every single video starts off with, look what an authority I am. I got 180 bodies or whatever the authority is, I've coached 10,000 men on how to jerk off better. Like, that's the thing, you have to start off with that and authority signal.
And most people aren't going to be able to do that successfully, but it's all kinds of people try and sell you courses, and most people can't do that. And when you do it, it's not even going to be fulfilling. I know because I've done it. But what almost anybody could do is come out here and be like, this didn't go well. That didn't go well.
Almost anybody could come out and share their embarrassing failures, things they hoped for but didn't work out well. Almost anybody could do what I'm doing and come out and say, this date went terrible, here's the main mistake I made. I made a leaderboard for women. My dates keep failing, so I'm a dating coach. I spent hundreds of dollars on Hinge and got no results, and that was a recent video someone reacted to. I spent $5,000 on matchmaking, zero second dates. These are the kind of videos people react to. And I just keep doing that.
So what I'm seeing is that what happens is a lot of people don't want the negative attention. They don't want to be on a show and see that. This title is pretty friendly: Jerry Banfield's worst date ever, hilarity ensues. Another channel besides Who Are These Podcasts also reacted to this one. And then you know this one, desperation has turned Jerry evil. A lot of people wouldn't want to have a video made about them like that, but that's 9,000 views from an engaged audience. The average watch time on that video is probably 15 minutes.
And then Who Are These Podcasts does a live show, so I popped into a few of their live shows recently. And I went back and watched some from before, like this creep off episode, and the whole thing, it doesn't say Jerry Banfield on it anywhere, but the whole beginning of it was talking about me, and it doesn't even say Jerry Banfield.
Be interesting enough that people talk about you
So if you really want to succeed as a content creator, you need to be interesting enough that people will talk about you and react to you. Because yeah, some people might see my videos on Who Are These Podcasts and be like, yeah, that guy's a loser. But other people are like, that guy's awesome. I'm going to give him super tips. I'm going to be a member on his channel. I want to pay for his shirt.
There's literally people right now that have been, and some of these found me on Who Are These Podcasts. I put up this shirt that I was wearing on the first show, and somebody's bid this up to $7,000 for the shirt. And then I had this whole story I told about the queen, which was mostly painful and embarrassing. Somebody's bid this up to $10,000 now. So I'm doing something that's incredibly effective right now. All I have to do is talk off the top of my head, tell the stories I don't want to tell. And then people are giving me all kinds of free views and coverage because I'm giving them something interesting.
Rule number two: don't be boring
What almost nobody does is actually give you real raw content that's actually interesting. So to me, the number one rule on YouTube, well, I mean, maybe follow the community guidelines so you don't get banned, maybe that's rule number one. Rule number two is don't be boring. Be interesting. And to be interesting, the easiest thing to do is be willing to get embarrassed, be willing to have people talk a bunch of shit about you, be willing to have people react negatively to your content. And then they post a video reacting negatively and talking shit about you. Good. Because not everybody who watches that video is going to agree with them. Some of them will become your fans.
So if you want to talk to me, if you'd like to, if you want what I have, I can help you get it at jerrybanfield.com. I've got a Skool community. I got one on one Zoom calls. I have a cameo. If you have a YouTube channel and you want to ask me a quick question or something, I got a cameo. I have this jerrybanfield.com/chat, which you can post anything indefinitely in there. I've got YouTube coaching that is on my website. Yes, that's right, I have dating coaching also. I have clothes I'm selling on my website. I even have it where you can go out on a date with me. I have tips, and thank you to Who Are These Podcasts for being one of the top tips, or the number one tip of all time on the website. I have a game and I got a whole ecosystem.
So thanks for watching. Hope to see you again soon on jerrybanfield.com. If you want more of what I've figured out about making content that other people can't help reacting to, I keep putting it all in my YouTube Coaching playlist.