How I Got 7 Million Views By Changing One Thing In My YouTube Video

0:00 Creator hooks.com is the simplest website I've ever been to which almost underlies how simple but not simple a YouTube title is YouTube titles are just like five to 10 words but those five or 10 words can mean the difference of literally millions of views tens of thousands of dollars your backgrounding YouTube title creation and maybe a couple more reasons why we should pay more attention to it YouTube title is like the door that kind of opens up to your content and if no one opens up that door you don't get anything from that what kind of scope and scale are you talking about with some of the titles you've worked up and been behind everybody makes successful videos about this kind of a couple topics and I made a a video about that same topic I tweaked the title a little bit my video got 7

0:45 million views let's get into the psychology behind successful titles the simplest way to to ask yourself is this a good title is does it evoke one of the three click-worthy emotions can these things get overused and do you need to pay attention to them Trends come and go a little bit but if you know okay I'm trying to evoke curiosity I'm trying to evoke fear um then you'll set yourself up for Success can you walk us through some of your successes you've had so I started a faceless channel it's about dogs and then I think a couple months into it it made more than my product was making mistakes common mistakes mistakes you see mistakes that people make yeah the the first one is being too wordy and this is very platform dependent and I like what you said when you said like

1:31 hey if you're brand new at this going very formulaic is a great way to do it and really like the formula was all here in this interview when you're just starting I 100% think that you should totally be all right welcome back to the niche Pursuits podcast my name is Jared Balman and today we're joined by Jake Thomas with Creator hooks.com Jake welcome on board Jared thanks for having me yeah it's good to have you I'm excited for what we're talking about today um you and I were chatting before we hit record about all the different little case studies and successes you've had and I think we're going to try to get through as many of those as possible while learning from you why don't you um as we kind of do on here give us a little backstory on who you are tell us about um you know maybe your your history and and how you got involved in what you're doing right now yeah I mean

2:17 just like super General overview I love marketing online marketing I love the the scale and The Leverage that you can you know like especially with so YouTube titles like currently I'm a YouTube title nerd I've been going as deep as possible into YouTube titles for the last four or five years or so and YouTube titles are just like five to 10 words right but those five or 10 words can mean the difference of literally millions of views thousand tens of thousands of dollars um you know so just online content is just has almost infinite leverage if you know what you're doing um so that that I just love that stuff um couple I got my start couple like 10 years ago now um I worked at some ad agencies I ended up going inhouse to a fishing company where I got

3:03 my dream job was running uh Facebook ads there ran the blog ran the YouTube channel it was a blast and then I I ended up going out on my own um just nerding out about YouTube titles started a newsletter now I'm getting into the software game um you know started some some Niche websites and some Niche YouTube channels along the along the way and I just I I love everything content I love everything marketing um yeah just happy to happy to talk about all the stuff all the stuff that we're doing now I mean we're going to dance around I think a little bit at least looking at the agenda but kind of lock in on this YouTube topic that you talked about and briefly teased you know uh how I mean it makes it sound uh almost Elementary but the fact that you spend so much time on literally YouTube titles means also that

3:48 it's not Elementary and that there's tremendous significance to it I mean Creator hooks.com is the simplest website I've ever been to which almost underlies how simple but not simple a YouTube title is like why don't you kind of kick us off to your background in YouTube title creation and maybe a couple more reasons why we should pay more attention to it and why we're probably not paying enough attention to it yeah so uh so when I when I first got my start in YouTube my boss was a really good copywriter and he and you know their channel was growing they were doing really well they had just sold the business before this one um and he he was he was really good at writing YouTube titles so he brought me on he's like all right Jake the like the most important part of your job is to

4:34 write a good title because if you don't write a good title nobody's going to click and watch our video and if nobody clicks and watches our video then we'll have wasted all that time that we spent uh and all the money that we spent making that video and we're not going to get any of those benefits you know we're not going to get any views subscribers leads sales nothing um and it kind of you know it's like the YouTube title is like the door that kind of opens up to your content and if no one opens up that door you don't get anything from that um you know so he really hammered in the importance of YouTube titles to me and I would spend hours literally like like all afternoon writing trying to come up with like the best YouTube title I'd send it over to him and every single time he'd be like try again this sinks try again this stinks and then he would like after like the second or third try

5:20 he would just send over one title and it was always so much better than mine and it's like d he just like came up with that you know so quickly after I spent literally hours trying to write a good title and then of course you know his titles would do better than mine we would get a couple thousand views or you know tens of thousands 100,000 views uh you know off of his title and I almost got fired because I was so bad at writing titles and that was like the most important part of my job um and we had a we had a 90-day trial at that job and I eventually figured it out um and we I think we tripled our subscribers and the time I was there we like quadrupled our Revenue it wasn't all because of me figuring out YouTube titles um you know but uh you know but that that helped helped me save my job um and it helped helped us grow our

6:06 business so um yeah just you know learning what actually makes a good YouTube title kind of change I mean literally it's not to sound lame but it changed my life um and you know it changed our business and it changed my life and and now I'm able to help other people write better YouTube titles because I I don't want to like this sounds stupid but I feel like sometimes I'm kind of dumb we like right I need you to spell it out to me how do I actually write a good YouTube title because you know everybody's like oh you got to build curiosity in your YouTube titles and it's like okay cool now I'm gonna build I'm gonna go build curiosity okay how do I do that like no one actually like shares practically how to actually build curiosity in your title so I kind of set out on that mission of like okay I'm going to figure out what

6:52 makes people click um and I kind of should have known that I end up here I have a degree in psychology uh I have like a an Ever Know list from like 2015 on like blog post titles that that made me click I've always loved the psychology of what makes people click um and it's cool that I you know nine 10 years later finally ended up there hey everyone Spencer here founder of Niche Pursuits did you know that you can find and fix your orphan pages in The WordPress dashboard with link whisper an orphan page is an article you published with no internal links pointing to it from other articles on your site why should you fix your orphan Pages well it makes your site easier to crawl for Google which can lead to more search traffic and improve your ux for your visitors with link whisper there is no

7:40 need for expensive crawlers and tedious spreadsheets link whisper simplifies the entire process the orphan page dashboard in link whisper shows which Pages need attention it even recommends the perfect anchor text for your internal links ready to revolutionize your site's internal linking try link whisper today use the code podcast and get $15 off your purchase what kind of videos in terms of maybe you know watches or whatever metrics you want to you want to use to evaluate like what kind of scope and scale are you talking about with some of the titles you've worked up and been behind yeah so two examples for you so one I um I was doing a little bit of Consulting with this real estate investing company um and you know real

8:25 estate investing isn't the sexiest content but they were getting think like 100 to 500 views before I started um we did nothing I I changed the title and I changed the thumbnail text and then we would often get you know 500 to 5,000 views so um you know we we you know up to 5x increasing views just by changing a couple words um you know we we did nothing with changing the topic nothing changing the um you know the content it was just titles so it was literally just 10 new words instead of the old words that they used um and we went from you know 500 to 5,000 views um and then you know so that that was a that was a huge jump and like you know we're talking about real estate investing talking about big Mone every view is probably so

9:11 valuable in that space right yeah yeah exactly and and then another example I've got a a a faceless Dog Channel and you know everybody makes you know topics about a couple uh everybody makes successful videos about this kind of a couple topics and I made a a video about that same topic I tweaked the title a little bit um and the title or the video that I was modeling got about a million views uh my video got 7 million views um because it was a better title I me it was I like to think it was better content as well um but in this case it was you know seven times more views six million more views so uh you know it can be anywhere from like going from 500 to a thousand to 1 million to seven million views um you know I me it's a it's a big

9:57 scope and it really depends on audience and all that stuff when we're talking about actual views but you know that's the power of better titles I'm glad you shared both sides of that because views are important obviously but it's also contextual based on who you're targeting what you're targeting what type of of business model you have and so to some listening the 7even million is the number they're going after right but to many listening they're like I've got a small business or I've got a product I've got an e-commerce brand I've got something that will never hit 7 million views but if I could go from 500 views per video to to 5,000 that would 10x the amount of leads I get or the amount of Buzz I get that sort of thing so both sides are extremely valuable just depending on where you're coming at it from oh yeah 100% so you know if you're uh if you're doing um you know if you're

10:42 a web design agency you know you could be getting a lot a lot of a lot more money from you know 100 views to compared to four or 500 views U yeah you know because with like with my with the faceless Channel I'm only monetizing through AdSense it's a side project um you know so maybe you know I'm getting like five6 per uh per thousand views so it's like you know okay sweet like that's an extra $15,000 or whatever but if you get a client that they're paying you5 $10,000 a month if you get two clients it's it's a that's a ton more money it's a good point so you teased it a little bit you got a psychology background you've got some sort of science maybe it's part science part art not really sure let's roll up our sleeves I I think this is part what everybody wants to hear like let's get into the pych ology

11:29 behind successful titles um ideas headlines these are different things I mean I I I know we're going to focus on YouTube videos but I I you had you had kind of mentioned before we started recording that this can apply to other things like email subject lines blog post even tweets and stuff like that but in the vein of the YouTube title idea psychology can you give us some insight into how to write these successful headlines and and titles yeah so the simplest way to to ask yourself is this this a good title is does it evoke one of the three click worthy emotions so curiosity fear or desire um most successful titles evoke one U you know two one or two of those three emotions some sometimes all three um but but yeah just you know can you is your is your

12:15 title evoking desire is it evoking fear or curiosity um that's the simplest way and then we can go kind of tactically below that so if we want to talk about um evoking curiosity there's a couple different ways we can open up a Loop so maybe it's um you know uh if if I was to start a YouTube channel in 2025 uh this is the one thing I would do that's a super long title but you know this is the one thing I do you know that opens up a loop um kind of it's a cliffhanger is another way to think about it um or like you know you do this if you want to get more visitors to your blog in 2025 it's like okay what is this um just like the word this is kind of the easiest way to open up a loop guys it's like all right do this like sweet this is what I want to do what is this what i' this is a cliffhanger I've got

13:01 to click I've got to click on this video and see what they're talking about um you know so so that's opening up a loop we can also be counterintuitive um you know so one of my favorite examples of this is uh you know the billionaire that works a normal job it's like wait a minute that billionaires don't work normal jobs um you know that it's counterintuitive it doesn't make sense um you know luxury fashion is for broke people is another example um you those are those are counterintuitive they're contrast they're challenging assumptions those are all kind of three different prompts if you will to build curiosity um and they just kind of make people do a double take be like wait that's that's not what I thought that doesn't make sense to me let me I I got to see what's going on here um and then also you know talk about the future using the word

13:47 weird those are all tactical ways to build curiosity now did you want to you want to dive into curiosity more do you want to go into the next emotion or what do you do I want to ask you a question about the loop concept that you mentioned inside of there can you explain that a little bit more or go in more depth on that like what exactly is a loop as it relates to curiosity and um are there any types of content that that works best with so opening a loop is the most common way to build curiosity so uh so I have a database of over a thousand viral YouTube videos I've categorized it you know a bunch of different ways curiosity is the most common emotion I think it's like 60% % curiosity 60% of the titles and then 40%

14:32 have desire and 40% have fear it's orbe 50% have desire 40% have fear and then and you can have uh you know multiple emotions which is why 60504 doesn't add up doesn't add up 100 um but out of all the out of all the titles that have that build curiosity I think you know almost like half of them have opening a loop um and it's you know you can think about opening a loop as starting a story but not finishing it um it's a cliffhanger uh you can you know you're you're just kind of you're getting someone to be like wait I need to I need to know the rest of this um so a couple of examples of opening a loop um something is about to happen in America it's like okay like you what what is about what is about to happen uh the number one rule for

15:17 calling deer it's like sweet I I understand there's a number one rule for calling deer but like what is that rule um you know the stunt that ended Buster Keaton's career it's like okay what what is this stunt um so it's really just you're just kind of you're saying what something is without actually saying what it is um and you're and you're encouraging people to click and figure out and and usually it's you know open loop is paired with desire or fear so you know the the the stunt that ended Buster Keaton's career it's kind of a a scary dramatic thing uh the number one rule for calling deer like yes I really want to learn how to call deer this fall um you know I'm trying to get I I don't know anything about hunting but you know I'm trying to get a trophy Buck um so so you when you

16:03 pair you know fear or Desire with an open loop that's how you can like you know really get people interested in your content um but the easiest way to do that is just use the word this and don't specify what this is okay that that helped a lot yeah yeah I I I got a vision of like closing the loop in the video but leaving the loop open-ended in the title fear you mentioned that as the second one um you mention mention curiosity is the biggest but fear let's talk about fear so fear a lot of people they don't like fear uh I don't want to use that clickbait crap I don't want to be a fear mongerer uh and I get it I 100% get it however if you look at the news uh it's all fear right there's a reason that it's all fear it works really well yeah so you know and

16:50 when you when we think about our Evolution so let's pretend like we live in the caveman era and I'm like hey jar you know you and I we're in our our little cave we got our our woolly mammoth loin cloths on and I'm like hey Jared there's some berries outside you should go pick them you're going to be like um maybe I will maybe I won't I'm I'm not that hungry right now but I'll I'll think about it but if I'm like hey Jared there's a saber-tooth tiger outside don't go outside you are 100% going to listen to me so we are by and if and the people who don't listen to warnings from their friends they all died right they went outside and they met that sa- tiger and they were not able to pass on their jeans uh therefore that those ltin so we are we're wired to listen to warnings we're lied wired to pay attention to fear um it's in our

17:36 biology it's in our genes and if we use that in our titles you know in in our content people are more likely to engage with it to to read it to consume it now I mentioned uh back in 2015 I had like an Evernote list of titles that got my attention couple years ago I went back and I I reread that and all of those titles were all fear-based titles um and yeah I don't I don't think there's a demographic or or psychographic difference that just everybody everybody's interested in fear so you might like kind of the easiest way to get away from feeling uh like making kind of cringey and clickbaity and fearmonger content is to tell your own story so um my biggest mistake when

18:23 starting my first blog um versus like avoid this mistake when starting your first blog you know it's it just it it's a slight tweak but telling your own story makes it feel just a little bit better um or you know my biggest regret uh you know my biggest regret when I uh you know starting my first YouTube channel it's like okay what is your biggest regret versus you will regret this when you start a YouTube channel um it it it it takes the edge off um it's still using that really powerful um element of fear however you just you know you you feel a little bit a little bit better when you're telling your personal story um as opposed to kind of being a little bit more aggressive and putting that on somebody else and then like some tactical ways of using fear um you talking about regrets mistakes

19:09 actual like scary things you know fears um you talk about conflict and controversy um you know those are all tactical ways to kind of prompt your brain to think about uh fear and I kind of lump fear and negativity all in the same here um negativity wasn't a great emotion it didn't sound it didn't didn't have as good of a ring to it um but I'm you know when I'm thinking about fear I'm also thinking about negativity like drama and conflict um and stuff stuff like that but um but yeah mistakes and regrets are two of my favorites and Incredibly tactical ways to use fear that that's a good I like how you um kind of have these little quick access points to each of these sort of emotions you know the the word this is kind of like a cheat card if you will to get

19:55 into curiosity mistakes are a almost like a an easy way into the idea of fear this I hear a lot of people have uh that have success in this area before I've heard them talk about scarcity is that inside of fear or where does scarcity play into something and and do you see that as another thing to use in YouTube titles so like I said I have a database of a bunch of viral videos and I've been kind of categorizing them based on these so I call them click triggers um you know click triggers are you know regret curiosity fear that kind of stuff um I have not seen that much scarcity or urgency uh which I'm I was surprised that I haven't seen that there I think there are maybe in in my database and it's mostly educational channels

20:41 probably 800 of them are educational channels uh and then you know the other the other two or three hundred are you know kind of more entertainment stuff but uh but yeah I I think I've seen five to 10 titles with urgency okay and I'm not sure maybe if it's a uh if it's a YouTube thing where YouTube is typically more Evergreen it's uh you know it's not as like um you know it's it's not as as quick like the the video the content lasts a lot longer whereas if you are if you're sending out an email then yes urgency would be great because people are reading this email and they're kind of you know deciding whether or not they're going to open it or take action right now however a YouTube video could could last for I mean some last for five 10 years right they're still getting views so orcy doesn't really make as

21:28 much sense there um so that's kind of the slight platform difference um Instagram posts Twitter posts LinkedIn email subject lines could all do great with urgency um you know if you're trying to get somebody to take an action um but most of the things that I've been studying are more just you know how can you get somebody's attention and get their interest um and doesn't then obviously like you know I'm getting I'm wanting somebody to take an action I want them to click on my video uh but uh but yeah it's I'm I'm personally surprised how little I've seen urgency um urgency pop up and same with scarcity yeah um so yeah I I love those as sales tactics just in my in my notes I haven't seen them pop up as much okay good no

22:15 okay um anything else on uh fear or do you want to move on to desire yeah I think I just think that uh the biggest thing with fear is that most people kind of get it most people get it wrong you know it is it's almost almost playing the content game on easy mode when you're using fear and there but there is a delicate balance you know you don't want to I mean I'm not saying you don't want to some people do like a lot of these uh a lot of these Financial newsletters or financial um you know content media companies there it's all fear you know it's all like you know Doom and Gloom about the election about the economy and that can drive serious clicks and attention and money um but you know just you know be a little bit careful about your brand um and and what what you're doing uh but also it's incredibly powerful so if you can use it

23:03 um it's a it's a really powerful tool yeah well that's a good War I mean the news like you said it's pretty much the number one driver for the news and obviously news gets tons of views that's uh that's a widely known category for that um okay let's um let's talk about the third and final one the the desire component desire is I have all these cool analogies and explanations for uh curiosity and fear desire is just straight up you know we just want what we want um the thing about desire is there's a couple different tactical ways to kind of enhance it um or to get people excited about your uh about your topic but for the most part uh you know I think I heard this from Patty Galloway who's an awesome uh YouTube strategist is that if you're telling somebody that they won the lottery you don't need to

23:50 trick them into clicking just tell them hey you won the lottery right so if you're I mean if you are talking to somebody's very specific desire so maybe someone wants to make $10,000 a month um use that like use their exact words use that specific example and use the words that they use to get them grab their attention and get them excited like oh this is exactly what I'm looking for um you know and when we're talking about desires we're talking about benefits hopes dreams um but really really getting to know your audience well um is the best way to leverage this uh leverage this emotion and and really for everything I mean that is like all like click uh you know curiosity fear desire those are all assuming that you know

24:36 what is going to grab your audience your audience's curiosity you know what what are their fears uh what are their assumptions right we I think we talked about challenging assumptions earlier you can't challenge your your audience's assumptions if you don't know what their assumptions are in the first place um you know it's really you know busting myths like and and going against their false beliefs those are all great ways to build curiosity but you have to know what your audience is thinking in the first place um kind of an an easy it's almost like a cheat code now but doing re audience research on in uh like chat GPT or Claude is a great way to ask hey you know what what are my audience's um you know false beliefs what are their excuses what are their um you know what are their what are their fears what are their desires what are their hopes what are their dreams like even be more

25:21 specific you know those are great uh audience research tools and also uh looking up in in comments like look at your uh your competitors comments go see what your audience what your competitors are talking about and then and that's another way to kind of get some more audience insight and and really understand what their uh what their dreams are another thing that you could do is uh heaven forbid you actually talk to them like you get on get on the phone with them and and and just get get to know them I me that's the best way to uh to speak to their desires is to really talk to them get to know them and then use words and phrases and goals that they themselves are actually saying um you know so that's that's what uh that's desire and then to like enhance desire

26:07 uh you know so the the lottery example earlier if you're telling somebody they won the lottery like just tell them they won the lottery however most of your content is not hey you won the lottery right so we need to spice it up somehow so um you can use a time frame um so like you how to get 10,000 subscribers in one month or in 30 days it's like oh cool like that actually enhances the desire it makes it more tangible um it's like all right I know when I'm going to get it um it all increases the desire because you know that it's not how to get 10,000 subscribers in five years it's like oh well that kind of kind of stinks it's but it be broke for a long time if I you know if I can't do that um you know so time frames using Authority um you know how Mr Beast got his first

26:53 100,000 subscribers um it's like oh this is how like the best in the in the world did it like now like that kind of yeah get you excited about it adds some credibility add some name recognition to get your attention um you so time frames Authority timeliness dropping the current year in um is especially at like the change of the year so how to uh how to start a YouTube channel in 2025 um you know it's not just how to start a YouTube channel it's like hey this is relevant right now because the the turn of the Year everybody is thinking about you know about you know something about the the new year the same thing with like you know if you're trying to rank for like best uh best headphones best headphones in 2025 so if you if you look up on YouTube best almost any product

27:40 review will have the current year in there um and that kind of lets you know like this is what's happening right now and uh and that kind of enhances the desire because it's going uh you know you're you're thinking about what is my audience want they you know they want to know about these products and then kind of to enhance that they want to know that this and the this this content and these products are relevant right now um you know so so time frames timeliness using the current year and Authority are three of three kind of simple ways to enhance desire and make those topics more exciting do you ever get stuck in your business and wish you had someone you could turn to for Solutions well I think you should consider joining the niche Pursuits Community you'll get weekly calls with experts on growing a successful online business and you'll

28:26 also get assigned a small Mastermind group where you can solve your business problems as well as share your wins for a limited time I'll let you try out the niche Pursuits Community for just $1 go ahead and use coupon code podcast at checkout in order to get your first month for just $1 again that's coupon code podcast go to community. nitp pursuit. comom today and see what it's all about and maybe I'll see you on our call next week thanks a lot that's a lot to digest I'm guessing a lot of people are going to be pressing pause and going back um I have some fa questions about this maybe I'll start with um you already touched on using more than one of these curiosity fear

29:12 desire how often like well not how often but is the goal to use more than one do you think that if you can use two it's pretty much always going to be more successful than if you just stay specific to one or is it really um you know that you really want to take on a case-by Case basis because it's very very dependent upon the the actual content itself I think it it depends you're most of the times you're just going to fall into two um so uh you with with uh you just talk let's talk about search let's talk about best laptops you know if if we're making uh or best best uh headphones if you know if we're making a blog post about best headphones maybe it's um or you know blog post YouTube video email whatever it is uh

29:59 Pro a great piece of content is going to be five best headphones for 2025 um that's kind of curiosity I guess because it's like oh what are these five best headphones right but it's it's mostly desire primarily desire um and also we could do you know maybe we're making content about uh best headphones for engineers or best headphones for gaming or best headphones for music producers um you know calling out a specific audience and that's you know best headphones for music producers is kind of all desire right um you know it's it's a little bit of curiosity but that's all desire um and then when we're talking about you maybe it's uh more not to rink and search but to more kind of like Interruption marketing you know when we're trying to get in browse or the the homepage for for YouTube um and

30:46 that's often a mix of curiosity and fear or curiosity and desire those are it's usually curiosity and fear curiosity and a desire those are that's the the most common combos that but um but yeah what you know one example might oh go ahead oh I was just going to say you were talking about head example I'm thinking like if you just want to go you know best headphones of 2025 but then you can see people doing a lot of like best headphones of 2025 number four surprised me best headphones of 2025 and the three worst headphones to not buy you know so you got the fear you've got the Curiosity so you can kind of amp it up a bit I see this in this example that would be examples of what I see happen a decent amount yeah no I definitely

31:32 agree sometimes you can dilute the focus of your title when you are adding extra things at the end so um and also it it depends so like a really popular like you know BuzzFeed thing back in like I don't know 2015 was uh 35 uh best gifts for uh for your mom you'll never guess number 17 yep and I think that people got a little bit burned out with that style and that's why I want to touch on it so I'm glad we're going there keep going because you kind of you mentioned a little bit earlier on the fear side of things like how far do you go with it and I I wanted I have on my list to talk about my agenda like what are some of the ones that are overused and is that

32:17 actually a thing can these things get overused and do you need to pay attention to that yeah I mean yeah there's there's so much going through my mind right now but the you can certainly overuse it because you you kind of you rarely see a number 17 and you'll never guess number 17 you know you don't see that as much as but back in you know 10 years ago you would see that on every single blog post on Facebook right so it's the things have changed it's the same exact strategy we're trying to open up a loop right the psychology doesn't change but kind of the Tactical way of how you um how you voke those emotions does so uh you know you can kind of just like kind of pay attention to your Niche just be you know be a member of your of your

33:03 audience and seeing you know what are people using what are people saying um I wouldn't be surprised if in a couple years that kind of comes back in style right um a lot of uh I read a lot of copyrighting books some from like the 1930s like they're almost 100 years old and it's you're reading it it's like oh this is just the same stuff um I I'm reading a uh I don't have it with me um it's a book from the 80s and you I would have sworn that this was a book about how to uh how to have a successful YouTube video in 2025 um it's Joe sugarman's ad week uh copyrighting guide or something um but he's talking about like how important it is to get people to like read your first sentence and then get read people read your second sentence and then like the emotions and it's like oh this is just like this is

33:49 just YouTube in 2025 except this is a sales page that you were writing back in like 1975 you know so psychology doesn't which is why I love this Stu because the stuff that I'm I'm learning now will be relevant forever but it's like okay what are the what are the small changes that we make um and yes you can you can go like regarding fear you can push it really far but it depends on who your audience is um if you are if you're targeting you know this this sounds horrible but like you know if you're targeting White white middle-aged males and your Finance or politicians um or Finance or political company then like yeah like lay lay down

34:36 the fear um if you are targeting more kind of uh you know younger people who are used to the internet clickbait crap then you probably want to light it up a little bit because I you know often times they're going to see it and like immediately think oh this is this is clickbait this is this is crap I don't this isn't my style so it really depends on your audience and your brand um and you know and and what is working um and then also you can you know you can kind of burn out your audience if you're saying this is Doom and Gloom forever I don't know maybe maybe it won't maybe it won't burn out I feel like some of these media companies have been saying that forever and they're still around um you know but but it's certainly something to keep in mind um and then you know and

35:22 Trends come and go so a recent Trend was 10 years of blog experience in 10 minutes um almost everybody made that version of that video right you know for their Niche and those did really well and I don't see them as much now but I'm you know it kind of seems like everybody made them but you know in a year two three four years from now I'm sure that they'll still do well um potentially everybody will be making them all at the same time but that stuff will still do well so Trends come and go a little bit but if you know okay I'm trying to evoke curiosity I'm trying to evoke fear um then then you'll you'll set yourself up for Success um but yeah just just being a being a student of of media and being

36:08 a member of your of your Niche can kind of help you make those decisions I I'm just it sounds like you need you know it's not as simple as utilizing a formula you know the formula is there but it's more than just a formula you have to be a part of what's working a part of what your competitors are doing a part of the industry because you have to understand your audience you have to understand what's trending what's out of out of Vogue nowadays and use this formulaic approach you talked about in a very tactical way but then there's all these other things that you also have to know almost the artistic side of the uh of the of the the puzzle if you will yeah so it depends on where you're at in your journey when I was first getting started when I knew nothing about what made a good title I was only following

36:55 formulas um I would I would never that was that was a thing that help helped me uh save my job was I would let's say we were making a video about um best uh fishing reels so I would go to YouTube and I would type in best vacuum cleaners best makeup brushes um best laptops and I would see how did they write their titles and I would just write my title exactly like theirs um and eventually after I we did two videos a day plus two emails and two blog posts a day for three years years so I wrote like I don't know one or 2,000 titles um so I eventually figured it out um but after modeling mod modeling titles a thousand times and seeing what worked then I finally got my um I kind of I got my own

37:43 style in my own voice and now okay I know it works I don't have to follow a model exactly but when you're first starting you might as well follow a a model you know a formula exact you know to a t um and then you know eventually you'll figure out what you like what your audience likes what your content is but you know for when you're just starting I 100% think that you should totally be formulaic um if you don't if you don't know what you're doing like I did like I didn't know what I was doing a couple years ago um so so yeah I mean that's that's the the easiest way and and you w to you want to look for um for titles in competitive niches um if you go to like some you know totally open wide open Niche and you get the best title it might just

38:28 admire you you model the best video it might just be because there's nobody else to uh to compete with it and it's the only video on that subject so yeah of course it did well um but if you go in uh if you go Fitness Finance makeup you know all those competitive niches the um you know the competition is going to drive the quality so that's you're more likely to find a successful video to model after that and that that was that was what I did I only I only modeled um the model uh titles from successful channels in competitive niches to kind of increase the odds that this wasn't just a fluke that this video did well we've spent most of the podcast talking about what it looks like to make a successful title uh let's transition and

39:14 talk about mistakes common mistakes mistakes you see mistakes that people make we've kind of moved into that topic already talking about some of the stuff that goes into the out ofd or the you know the overused titles what are mistakes people can be wary of and avoid yeah the the first one is being too wordy um and this is very platform dependent uh you if you're writing an email subject line you know you probably want to be under you know a certain amount of characters if you're writing a blog post you want to be under a certain amount of characters you have to rank on Google um and then same with uh with YouTube you the the emotions will they will all be the same but but the specifically the character count will be different um you know and when were you know back to the example of you know 35

40:02 best gifts for moms you'll never guess number 17 that's a very long title uh so there's a couple problems with on on YouTube specifically so we were're G to go pretty deep here but um if you're trying to rank in search you can get you can get away with longer titles because people are actively searching and deciding whether or not they want to watch your video does this title deliver on what I'm looking for right so they will they're they're going to spend some time reading it um so you can get away with longer titles and like kind of answering their specific question and if you are trying to uh to have your videos be on the sidebar or on the homepage you are it's almost like Interruption marketing where you're trying to stop

40:48 somebody in their tracks and like just like kind of pull them right away into your video and first off there are more potential views that way typically um so it's a it's a great if you're trying to maximize these it's a great strategy um and if you have a long title people aren't going to spend that mental energy of reading the whole thing deciding if they're going to click and then watching your video um so typically you want to have a little bit shorter titles uh if you're trying to grab somebody's attention and maybe that's also you know maybe on Facebook you're trying to grab somebody's attention and bring them in you probably want to have a shorter title just because it's less um mental effort to read it and decide if if they want to watch that video or or read that

41:34 click and read that blog post um with email subject lines it's a little different because H with an email subject line you're seeing who it's from which is probably the biggest driver of is somebody going to click or not um you know if I get an email from Alex rosi I'm probably going to read it because I like his content um if I get an email from somebody I've never heard of one I'm mad uh but two it better be a really really compelling subject line because I don't want this person's content in my in my inbox um you know so so those are kind of some difference in platforms but um but yeah you being too wordy is a huge mistake that many people make um and often it's because it requires too

42:21 much um too much mental energy to decide if they want to watch or read the whole the whole title and decide if they want to watch a video but then also um es specifically on YouTube the title could get truncated so um you know after X amount of characters all you see is a dot dot dot so if you you know write this long super long title like the number one thing I wish I knew before I started a YouTube channel well a YouTube channel is a subject but it's probably going to be truncated because the number one thing I wish I knew before I started is all going to be first so um you know so if the main subject is trunk at then you're probably not going to get people to click um so that is that's one of the biggest mistakes is being too wordy um you can also be too specific and you can

43:06 also be too General so um those are those are really tough um kind of tough examples to follow but um you want to so let's say we're making a video about cameras if we can be too specific so like uh you know uh I tried the Fujifilm x100v 2 2.3 or something uh and it's like okay like I I don't know what that is um unless you do know what that is um unless you know exactly what that is you're probably not going to click um because it's too specific um you could also say I tried this camera and it's like okay like what is this about um and now would be an example of being two

43:52 general so you you kind of need to find The Sweet Spot between being two specific and two general um for the most people or for the most part most people can kind of figure that out um but another you know one way of getting around being too specific is to give somebody something a label so I tried the best camera for vlogging or this Fujifilm camera is uh the best camera for beginner YouTubers um talking about um high level benefits is a great way to get people's attention as opposed to saying you know my review of the Fujifilm blah blah blah blah blah um and I know nothing about cameras um so I'm sorry if you listening I'm sorry if you're listening to this and uh and and critique usually cameras have x's in them so you you know

44:38 you're you're doing a pretty good job all right good good um yeah I mean that that's a specific example that I've seen people mess up and people uh do right so um and then too boring uh you know not including the clicker of the emotions being too boring and then I this this is a YouTube specific problem for the most part um although I'm I'm sure it applies to other other platforms but talking about the wrong topic uh and this is this is by far the most common problem so I have a newsletter I each week I sent out five viral video ideas but I also have a flop of the week um it's like all right you know let's talk about a video that did really poorly and yeah 80% of the time

45:24 the it the video is about uh is about the wrong topic and I actually I it kept it came it kept popping up so many times that I had to start like actively looking for new channels that had different flops because people you know making videos that flop that were about the wrong topic popped up so many times I'm like all right I can't write the same exact flop of the week breakdown every single week because it was about the wrong topic um but so let's say you know going back to that that camera um example you know if you have a if you're reviewing Fujifilm maybe people only want your maybe you're only known for Fujifilm cameras right so if you review a Sony camera you're not going to get people's attention um it could be as specific as that it could be you know

46:12 maybe you talk about cameras but now we want to talk about microphones or lighting that's not what people that's not why people come to your Channel or maybe it's social media tips that's not why people come to your channel and then on the other hand there are some some people who could talk about anything and people will love that so a kind of you know one way to kind of kind of balance this is to know why people watch you uh do they watch you because of you or do they watch you because of a topic um you know you'll often see uh educational channels have views like all right a thousand views 10,000 views 500 views 50,000 views it can it can really vary and that's because the audience is there for the topic but if you look entertainment channels like Mr

46:58 Beast his views don't really vary that much because people are there for Mr Beast right um they are there because they they love him they like him they they want to watch his videos so typically entertainment channels have a more have more consistent views whereas educational channels can be more up and down and that's for the most part that's because people who are watching educational videos are there for the topic right um so yeah so just you know knowing why you audience watches your channel and then delivering on that kind of promise or that premise is a great way to uh to avoid flops and to consistently uh have you know successful videos I want to leave a little bit of time to hear some practical stories about you putting this stuff into practice I mean you talked about the

47:45 fishing brand that you were part of for a couple years uh you mentioned um uh a faceless YouTube channel like can you walk us through some of your successes you've had had on um on different projects on YouTube so people can really get a taste for what's possible yeah yeah so the faceless The Faceless all right so back it up so I have a newsletter uh that that breaks down five viral video titles every week and then I was like all right well let me monetize this newsletter somehow I started with Consulting a little bit of Consulting that was cool I like products more than I like clients so I was like all right I need to find um I need to find a product and so I asked people I was like hey do you all what do you all want from me uh do you want a book do you want a course

48:31 and a lot of people were like hey we just want more ideas and a lot of people were telling me um they were saying hey I actually take everything from your newsletter and I put it into a notion sheet like here this is what I'm doing and I figured all right like if that's what people are doing I'll just I'll make a software um so I decided to make a software I'm like you know it'd be really cool if I could have kind of a case study of proving that the stuff works so I started a faceless channel it's about dogs and then I think a couple months into it it made more than my product was making um and I'm like you know I don't I don't want to share this as a case study um because I I think my like fourth or fifth month I

49:16 had a video go viral couple million views and I I well I missed out on a couple thousand dollars I got so with YouTube you can monetize at like 4,000 watch hours and 1,000 subscribers when I launched that video when I published the video I had like 750 subscribers and then that video went on to get like four or five million views in I think it got it got a million views a day two days in a row uh so it went it did like five four or five million views in like a week um which was awesome and that was an incredible uh rush and an incredibly overloaded dopamine Sensation that was my first like super powerful video um getting a million views in a day was

50:03 crazy um very cool and then after that like videos would get like two three 400,000 views like God this sucks so it just totally it totally ruined everything on YouTube for me and I haven't that's that's my best video it's it's been like two years and I haven't had anything close to that but um uh but yeah no so that did I haven't published on that channel in I think over a year now I've been focusing on the software but uh it's almost 100,000 views it's like 90 something it has less than 20 videos so um you know so it's possible to and it made you know I had a couple $10,000 months which was really cool um just through AdSense a little bit of Amazon Affiliates I honestly I thought that Amazon Affiliates was going to be a

50:48 a much greater percentage of what I earned uh but when that video did viral it I think it I think it mentioned like one or two products um and like and told people go to Amazon and buy this you know it's in the it's in the description I made I don't know like 10 15 $20,000 from AdSense and two or $300 from Amazon Affiliates gez I and it's it's probably because of the intent that the audience is watching the video it's just a funny entertaining not it's not that funny but it's just like an entertaining stupid video it's not like here's how to do like you know here's how to do something uh you know go get these products to do it better you know so it's that's probably what

51:34 the I don't want to say the problem is but it's probably the reason why yeah but that yeah I thought I was like oh this is going to be like a 50-50 split between Affiliates and um and AdSense but it was definitely was not um since then I don't I I don't I try to just keep everything on YouTube I'm like well if it's going to be like five two like 2% or 5% % of my income I'm just going to double down and try to get as many views as possible um so uh so yeah so that that was that was awesome um I have used this stuff to ring number one on Google as well um I had a do blog a couple years ago and as I was kind of learning this stuff I was I was ranking number one using you know uh like say you know Authority and then curiosity

52:20 and desire um those were some of the emotions that I used to to rank number one on Google um you know for for a while I had like 50% email open rate um you know just using the same stuff um I mean it's just it's just psychology and I and I love it and once you kind of understand that then it's like oh I can use this for everything um you know and one of my best uh one of my best Twitter threads is 90% of people are making their YouTube videos backwards and that was based off of a uh a YouTube video that was 90% of people are decluttering backwards so you know it was cross Niche crossplatform um but but that did really well for me um you know so I and YouTube is like kind of the best for uh for

53:08 seeing if hooks are working well because YouTube shows you the date that it was published and it shows you the views um so you can see like oh like this did really well it did way better than everything else on its um you know on the channel and it was published a month ago so I know that it hasn't been raking in search for 10 years and that's why it's doing well um you know so it's it's a great way to get inspiration uh for hooks of of really of all all for all platforms you mentioned uh you know your your email newsletter can where can people find you and and learn more I'm intrigued I'll be signing up for the weekly drip of five good titles in one bad one and I'm gonna hope that you don't discover my YouTube channel and I end up on the bad list someday but besides that like where can people fall along with what you're doing and keep up and learn more yeah I always feel so

53:56 I've had a couple people email me like oh Jake I love your newsletter I noticed you included me in the Flop I'm like no um I I try and and I only include people that I also like you know their video did very well I'm not just bashing people but uh but yeah that's a Creator hooks.com so sorry say it again for yeah Creator hooks.com is the uh the most basic website you'll ever see uh but it converts at like 75% uh from like you know visitors to uh email email subscribers um after interviewing you here for the last hour I can guarantee with certainty that you have made sure that that is a great page for conversion because I can tell just how downed in you are so I'm sure that page has a very strong purpose for being the way that it

54:42 is yes yes it's yeah I mean my my single goal of my business is to get newsletter subscribers and everything else will follow yeah um but uh so yeah so that's why it's a very it's a very basic website good as you will see if you go visit it well hey um Jake this has been absolutely fascinating I I really enjoyed this because it was very tactical like you brought so many practical things that people can you know really kind of use to knuckle into your to to your your your uh your approach and I like what you said when you said like hey if you're brand new at this going very formulaic is a great way to do it and really like the formula was all here in this interview but at the same time like there was so much in what you shared with examples and you know

55:28 going Beyond just the formulas so it's a really well-rounded um interview you did I just I really appreciate it and I I'm I'm really excited on my own accord to rewatch this actually and uh take notes this time rather than just being the interviewer so thanks for coming on board yeah thanks jar yeah I I love the stuff obviously I could talk about it all day uh but yeah it was it was it was awesome talking about this I appreciate you well awesome Jake thanks so much until we talk again have a great rest of your day sounds good you too hey everyone thank you so much for listening to the niche Pursuits podcast I just wanted to remind you that if you are ready to start building smarter faster and easier internal links you should check out link whisper you can get $15 off link whisper when you use the coupon code podcast at checkout head

56:14 over to link whisper.com and use the code podcast in order to save $15 thanks again for listening