If you're a small YouTuber, here's the bad news: no title and no thumbnail is going to get you the success everyone's promising. Most YouTube advice is garbage, and I say that as someone who's been on YouTube since 2011, uploaded thousands of videos, and got so hopeless I deleted all 15 of my channels and hundreds of thousands of subscribers in 2025 — then started over. This is my honest take, not a pep talk.
The two things that actually drive YouTube
First, if you already have an audience, you can post almost anything and get guaranteed impressions. Small channels don't have that. Second, if you want to really grow, it's pay-to-play — that's how I built my original hundreds of thousands of subscribers, spending $100k+ on ads in a flywheel: pay for ads, get traffic, sell courses, reinvest in ads. When I stopped paying and stopped selling courses, the whole thing collapsed. Expecting to break in on a well-researched thumbnail alone is survivorship bias — you see Mr. Beast, not the thousands who did everything "right" and you never heard of.
Why I'm skeptical of courses and viral chasing
I've sold millions of dollars of courses to hundreds of thousands of students, and most never finished or went anywhere — other creators tell me the same. Most people selling you a course are either confused themselves or just want your money. And chasing one viral video rarely lasts; I've watched channels hit millions of views and a year later be right back where they started.
What actually works for small creators
Get hopeless about the guru advice — then do what genuinely works: grind out videos fast, and offer collaborations. YouTube now lets you tag both channels, so a collaboration is one of the easiest ways to get discovered, and it adds value to both people even if nobody watches. I've cranked out 122 videos in a month across five channels, and the one edge a small creator has is simply making videos that are in demand and helping a real person. I offer paid collaborations and believe coaching should be public and recordable — record a video with me, show me your channel, and get real-time feedback. The brightest future for small YouTubers is collaborating with each other. If that resonates, watch my YouTube coaching playlist here.