Ali Abdaal is a former doctor turned YouTuber, entrepreneur, podcaster, and author. He started posting Youtube videos in 2017. Now he has over 4 million followers on Youtube and is one of the world’s most-followed productivity experts.
In this 17-minute video, Ali Abdall recommends 9 things to do for everyone who is eager to start Youtube today:
- No one cares about your videos
- Architect v.s. Archaeologist
- Importance of supply and demand
- Thinking in systems
- Importance of Titles & Thumbnails
- Importance of the first 30 seconds
- Gear does not matter (at the start)
- Find your unfair advantage
- Outsource video editing ASAP
1. No one cares about your videos.
Two categories of people you think would care just do not care.
- Your friends and family.
- You audience.
Friends and family (0:11)
- I was so worried when I started YouTube that people were going to say bad things about it. I was afraid people were going to judge me. But no one cared!
- Lesson: People are busy with their own lives, people are doing their own stuff.
- Yet, so many people get held back by the worry of what their friends, their family, their co-workers, their boss would think.
Audience (0:48)
- I started making videos about me and my friends singing songs. Still, no one cared!
- Lesson: videos on YouTube are not actually free!
- People pay with their time and attention while watching your videos. Those are two currencies that are even more valuable than money.
- When you are new to Youtube and do not get views, it’s NOT ‘oh, the algorithm doesn’t like me’.
- It’s that your video is not worth watching.
- If people are not watching the video, the algorithm will recognize that no one’s watching it and is therefore not going to recommend it.
- Your videos will start to add value; you’ll start to figure out what your niche is.
- When people give up their time and attention to watch your videos, it will actually be worth it for them. → Youtube algorithm is going to start recommending you.
2. Architect v.s. Archaeologist
Two different ways to find your niche. (2:23)
- Archaeologist: trying and experiment with different ideas here and there until you find those that work.
- Eventually, by exploring enough hot zones, just like an archaeologist would, you’ll be making that video, and then something good will happen.
- Architect: planning the entire strategy in advance.
- Have the blueprint, know exactly what’s going to happen, take actions when all the information is out there.
If you are new to Youtube and have no experience with making videos, the archaeologist approach is recommended for most people to begin with. (3:32)
- Focus on making the videos, digging like an archaeologist.
- Over time, as you get better at making videos, you will then start to figure out what works.
Ali’s own journey: He finds out his niche of productivity essentially using the archaeologist approach. (3:52)
- Attempt 1: making videos about singing. (No one cared.)
- Attempt 2: making travel vlogs about my adventures on my medical elective in Cambodia and Vietnam. (No one cared.)
- Attempt 3: making a series talking about how I was building a medical app. (No one cared.)
- Attempt 4: vlogging about life as a medical student. (No one cared.)
- Attempt 5: People started to care when I started making specific educational videos helping people who were applying to medical school. (4:09)
- People started to ask: How do you do all this studying for exams? What study tips do you have? → Started to make videos about study tips. And people cared.
- Then people started asking: How are you so productive? → Made videos about productivity. → Become the world’s most followed productivity expert. → Write a book on productivity (Feel-Good Productivity: How to Do More of What Matters to You📘), a New York Times Bestseller.
- None of this was intentional.
- It was all the archaeologist approach of digging: making the videos, and consistently just sticking to producing one or two videos every single week, even while I was a full-time medical student and trying to prepare for my final year exams.
- None of this was intentional.
3. Importance of supply and demand
More supply of a particular type of content there is → the higher the bar gets raised for you to stand out. (4:57)
- Example: YouTube is absolutely saturated with videos from students teaching people how to study for exams. (5:16)
- That means if you’re a brand new YouTuber, without any camera gear, without any experience talking to the camera, without any experience editing, just filming on your phone, it is very unlikely that you’ll be able to stand out.
Two solutions: (5:35)
- Improving quality of videos
- Generally, it’s very hard to make videos stand out in a crowded market.
- Key: need some kind of unfair advantage (See more on this in #8: Find your unfair advantage).
- Not competing in a saturated niche
4. Thinking in systems
Not-so-systematic workflow when Ali started out: making one video at a time. (6:22)
- First, making that particular video:
- Writing script; filming; editing; publishing.
- Then, thinking about the title and the thumbnail.
- And then moving to the next one.
- This is an absolutely exhausting way of making YouTube videos!
Learned from a book which boosted Ali’s video making process. (6:54)
- The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do About It📘by Michael Gerber.
- The book is about how small businesses grow and fail.
- Initially, I thought I wouldn’t learn anything from it, but then I realized that a YouTube channel is a business, and businesses grow through systems and operations.
- If you regarding making Youtube videos as a business instead of a hobby, you need a system.
Think about what is the system that I can build that would make the process of making every subsequent video way easier than it currently is? (7:28)
- Instead of thinking: What video can I make today? What video can I make tomorrow?
- Examples of systematic thinking:
- Having a content library, a database of video ideas.
- Systematically brainstorming titles and thumbnails in advance.
Systems can take your YouTube channel to the next level without it completely ruining your life. (8:00)
- Benefit: economies of scale.
- Especially true if you just get started as a part-time Youtuber and have other stuff going on (like a day job).
5. Importance of Titles & Thumbnails
I don’t like YouTube is so reliant on titles and thumbnails, but that’s the status quo. (9:03)
- Unless the packaging for it is sufficiently intriguing for the target audience that you’re aiming for, no one is going to click on that video.
- If no one clicks on the video, they don’t even have an opportunity to watch it.
Very important: think about titles and thumbnails before you even think about writing the video. (9:23)
- Workflow now: only when we can think of a really nice title and thumbnail for a video do we then even consider what the video outline is going to be or think about making the video.
- Find this is what other successful Youtubers do, who learn it the hard way.
- When doing so, think hard about what titles and thumbnails would resonate with your target audience.
6. Importance of the first 30 seconds (11:10)
Second most important part of the whole package aside from the title and thumbnail.
- Most people click into a video and then leave during the first 30 seconds.
- Any effort you put into the first 30 seconds of the video will be disproportionately seen by way more people
- For the remaining part of the video, maybe only 10 or 20% of the audience will watch.
- Try your best to frontload the effort into the video.
- So that people will get the impression that you’ve put a lot of effort then they’re more likely to stick around.
7. Gear doesnot matter (at the start) (12:05)
High-end gear is not essential when starting out.
- Many successful educational YouTubers have achieved significant success and earnings by filming solely with their iPhones.
- Key: content quality rather than the gear.
That said, investing in better production gear can help your content stand out. (12:22)
- This depends on your target audience and niche.
- Each content type and audience has a ‘sweet spot’ for production value.
- Tech niche: higher production value is expected.
- Lifestyle vlog niche: a more relatable, less polished look would work.
8. Find your unfair advantage
Unfair advantage: something that is very difficult or impossible for someone else to replicate. (13:45)
- Hard work is NOT unfair advantage. It’s actually totally fair advantage.
- Example: I leaned into my unfair advantage when I started Youtube.
- I was a Cambridge University medical student: there weren’t many Cambridge University medical students making videos about how to get into medicine at Cambridge.
- But, being a Cambridge University medical student + trying to make videos playing the guitar ≠ unfair advantage
- Found the unfair advantage in productivity.
9. Outsource video editing ASAP (15:13)
Outsourcing frees up a substantial amount of time, allowing you to focus on things you can do better at (e.g., creating content, filming, etc.).
I was held back so much at the start by thinking: (15:28)
- No one could replicate my editing style.
- It’ll be very hard to find a good editor.
- Outsoursing didn’t work and it’d take so long to train someone, I might as well continue myself.
- I enjoy video editing, it is fun and I should continue doing it.
A mentor convinced me to outsource. (15:45)
- That’s when the channel really started to skyrocket.
- My own time was freed up to be able to make more videos, to be able to think more strategically about the channel, to be able to learn more stuff and share it in videos.
- Compared to the routine before: every day I’d get home from work in my day job as a doctor, and I’d be editing videos for hours and hours and hours on end.