MrBeast is one of the top YouTubers in the world, and I have spent hours and hours listening to his podcast appearances, for example with Joe Rogan and with others, learning from him. I'm a full-time YouTuber and I want to understand what he does. I've researched and studied everything I can, and here's what I've concluded he does well, based on what he says he does and what I can see for myself.
Number One: He Makes Videos That Age Well
The number one thing he does is he makes videos that age well. For example, look at the videos on his channel. It's just as interesting to watch him spend 50 hours in solitary confinement now as it was two years ago. 50 hours buried alive? I watched that whole video, and it's just as interesting to watch that now as it was when it first came out.
This is where you can really take off in the YouTube algorithm. When somebody watches one of your videos and then YouTube recommends or suggests a video you did a year ago, two years ago, that's the whole game. I call this strategy making videos that age well. In my experience, if your videos on YouTube aren't worth watching a year or two after you put them out, you're going to struggle to grow.
Putting Real Time, Energy, and Money Into Each Video
MrBeast also uses a strategy he has explained himself. He says most YouTubers don't put enough time and energy into thinking about the title, the thumbnail, and the idea for their video. He says most YouTubers just crank a lot of crap out, and there's already a lot of crap on the platform. What he does instead is put out a video or so a month and pour a ton of time, energy, and money into making a video that's truly spectacular.
Now, this strategy is basically the opposite of what I've done on my channel. I've just cranked crap out on my channel over the years, and I got some really good growth at various points doing exactly that. The problem with MrBeast's approach is that it's something most YouTubers simply can't do. You're not going to have a million dollars to make a video about Squid Game, or a whole team to film you and build a prison. MrBeast himself says it's often very stressful being him, doing everything he's doing, and he has other channels as well. He often loses money on individual videos, especially in the short term.
For most YouTubers, it's impractical to only put out a video a month and then bank everything on that one video every month. Because if you put out a single video each month and every one of your videos sucks, that's not going to work out so well. You could spend a ton of time, energy, and money putting out videos that nobody watches.
How MrBeast Actually Got Started
Here's the part I find most encouraging. If you go all the way back to MrBeast's very beginning, back to his oldest videos, he cranked a bunch of crap out when he was getting started on YouTube. He's made some of his videos private and hidden some of his old ones, but the truth is he just cranked out a bunch of crappy videos when he was starting out.
It's fascinating to see how he's evolved from that. One of his early videos is literally called "Channel Update," with 82,000 views. He kept going. He put out a video on how much money PewDiePie makes. He put out one on Battle Pirates. He just cranked out a bunch of videos until he started getting videos that worked really well, and then over time he lasered down and made these huge, all-in videos. He has a video from seven years ago, "20 Best Websites," and you can watch how he's evolved over the years from that.
I hope this is helpful for you. In my experience, this is the arc almost every big channel goes through: you crank out a lot before you find what works, and only then do you narrow down. If you'd like to go deeper on this, I put a lot of what I've learned about growing on YouTube into my YouTube Coaching playlist, and the best way to work through it with me directly is to join the Jerry Banfield Family community.
In one of my next videos, I'm going to analyze a channel that does pretty much the opposite of what MrBeast is doing today. Whereas MrBeast is now cranking out about one video a month, going for huge popularity with a video that everybody could watch and that could be watched indefinitely, I'm going to show you a channel doing basically the opposite. I think what that channel is doing is more of a realistic strategy for me, and it's doing very well too.