--- title: 'Small Channels: Do This and the Algorithm Will Love You!' source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=gg7evCvRhMo' video_id: 'gg7evCvRhMo' date: 2026-08-03 duration_sec: 1441 --- # Small Channels: Do This and the Algorithm Will Love You! > Source: [Small Channels: Do This and the Algorithm Will Love You!](https://youtube.com/watch?v=gg7evCvRhMo) ## Summary This video provides a three-step strategy for small YouTube channels to gain views and grow, focusing on diagnosing algorithm issues, analyzing competitors, and scaling ideas beyond one's niche. The presenter uses real examples from refrigerator and washing machine repair channels to illustrate how to improve titles, thumbnails, and content concepts. ### Key Points - **Diagnosing Channel Issues** [00:26] — To find out why a video isn't getting views, check the analytics 'Coverage' tab. If impressions are low (e.g., 1,800), YouTube is showing the video but viewers aren't clicking, indicating a problem with the video itself, not a shadow ban. - **YouTube Compares You to Others** [02:45] — YouTube evaluates your video against competitors in the same niche. If their videos have better CTR and retention, they get the majority of views, leaving you with leftovers. This explains why some channels get millions of views while others struggle. - **Views Are Not Gradual** [03:27] — YouTube doesn't give views in stages (500, then 600, etc.). Instead, a video might suddenly gain hundreds of thousands of views, pulling other videos along like a locomotive. Beginners often give up before this happens. - **No Shadow Bans, but New Channels Are Limited** [05:13] — There are no shadow bans, but YouTube limits impressions for new channels to protect the platform's reputation. It tests videos with a small audience and increases impressions only if the video performs well. Channels older than 5-6 months get more trust and test impressions. - **Self-Diagnosis: CTR and Impressions** [07:28] — If impressions are low but CTR is high, that's a good sign. If both are low, YouTube is still testing. But if you had many views (over 2,000-5,000) and then views drop to 20-30, the video is likely not liked and won't grow. - **Step 2: Analyze Competitors** [08:22] — Create a separate YouTube account to watch only competitor videos. This trains the algorithm to recommend popular videos in your niche. Use YouTube search with relevant keywords, filter by views, and take screenshots of top videos to build a table. - **Build a Competitor Table** [10:38] — Create an Excel table with screenshots and links of top competitor videos. This helps you understand what works: titles, thumbnails, and hooks. Copy the video links to quickly analyze how they hook viewers in the first seconds. - **Find Trends and Triggers** [11:20] — Every niche has trends and triggers. For example, 'top 10' lists were popular 10 years ago but are now overused. Look for new trends that are just gaining popularity to capture the 'whole pie' before others. - **Example: Refrigerator Repair** [12:55] — A competitor video with 475,000 views used the title 'How Refrigeration Technicians Deceive: Replacing a Compressor.' This triggered curiosity. Another video 'Refill Your Refrigerator Yourself for 500 Rubles' used a cost-saving trigger. Combining triggers works well. - **Applying Triggers: Case Study** [14:04] — The presenter created a video 'Three Ways to Fix 99% of Refrigerator Malfunctions with Your Own Hands' with a thumbnail showing a crossed-out repairman. It gained 283,000 views in a year, proving that combining proven triggers works. - **Washing Machine Example** [15:11] — Competitor videos about fixing washing machine vibration gained 5.8 million and 1.3 million views. The presenter made a similar video with a cup on the washing machine and the title 'Washing Machine Jumps? Fix It Yourself,' gaining 71,000 views. - **Using Deception Trigger** [16:04] — Competitors used 'how they deceive you' in titles about buying refrigerators. The presenter created 'Don't Buy This! Sellers Are Silent About This' and got 741,000 views, showing the power of combining triggers. - **Step 3: Scale Ideas Beyond Niche** [16:59] — To get big views, make content that is broader than your niche. The wider the topic, the larger the potential audience. Even expert channels can benefit from making videos that appeal to a general audience. - **Analyze Global Trends** [18:07] — Search for the most viewed videos in any niche (except gaming, sports, music, religious, children's) to find universal trends. Limit to 30 videos in a separate table. Look for common patterns like 'top 10' or 'cheap vs expensive'. - **Substitute Trends into Your Niche** [19:54] — For example, a video about digging up a 60-year-old car got millions of views. Apply that idea to your niche: 'Found a Refrigerator from a Landfill and Restored It – Genius Makes 1 Million a Month.' This expands your reach. - **Gadget Niche Example** [21:40] — A video 'Testing Cheap and Expensive Summer Gadgets' got 7.9 million views. Apply that to your niche: 'Testing Cheap and Expensive Refrigerators.' The 'evolution' concept (from primitive to modern) is also a scalable idea. - **Repair Niche Example** [22:43] — A video about taking apart a car and not being able to fix it was popular. Apply that to a refrigerator: 'Took Apart a Refrigerator, Broke It, No Result.' This creates unique, engaging content. ### Conclusion Success on YouTube requires consistent effort, analyzing competitors, and scaling ideas beyond your niche. Not every video will be a hit, but applying these strategies will increase your chances of getting views and growing your channel. ## Transcript beginners on YouTube. From tiny views to like these. Some of them take off literally from the first video. Moreover, many channels continue to grow rapidly, even though nothing has been released there for years. But no, one thing still works out: collecting money and clients. This is precisely why they stop being conducted regularly. Just three steps separate you from failure to the coveted views and earnings on YouTube . Let's go through each of them. Step one. You need to figure out what's wrong with the channel and why the algorithm isn't promoting you. problems with promotion will say that the algorithm doesn’t like them or doesn’t notice them on purpose. And, most likely, the channel was hit by some kind of shadow ban. But there is a way the algorithm really doesn't like you or whether the problem is deeper. Let's one of the unsuccessful episodes as an example, see just how much the algorithm dislikes a video it doesn't promote. If we open the analytics section, we section. Here we see a graph with views, viewing time and enough for us. You don't even need to run anywhere else . And in the views graph we see that, well, there is a certain small number of views, but how did it come about, yes, second tab, coverage. Before we get those coveted views, YouTube first gives us impressions. And these shows are that very promotion. If we saw zero in this column , then we could confidently say that YouTube doesn't like us and doesn't promote us; they've shadowbanned us probably won’t see such a picture on any channel, but personally, I’ve never seen it. But since we see the figure of 1,800 impressions here, this tells us that showed it in the recommendations feed on the main page and in the recommended videos feed. He showed you so that, well, people would start watching you. And he tried 1,800 times , but without success. Of these, only so few people discovered you. And if YouTube sees that it is showing, and is reluctant to open you, showing further. Here is such a simple pattern. And it's worth admitting that the problem isn't entirely with YouTube, but rather with you and your bad video. If they don't open you well and don't look at you well, well, sometimes you have to be able to admit to yourself that your videos aren’t perfect. Moreover, they n't become perfect. There is always something to work on and something to improve. And just by the cover and title, but open it and watch the first 10 seconds, I’ll show you right now. Hello. Have you ever heard of one-room apartments being rented out for 120,000 rubles? It becomes clear that attractive to the viewer, that there's room for improvement, yes, everything is too boring , there aren't any catchy lines, well, those very hooks are missing. It is was opened, it was quickly closed. I know what you might be thinking right now: "Stas, if my family, friends, and colleagues watch my content and say I'm doing really great work, they even leave comments and likes," then everything is cool. But here's what I'll say. Indeed, you could have made a great video. And the thing is, YouTube evaluates and compares you with other creators. If their video has a better rating, it has been viewed more than few percent higher than yours. It will collect all the big views, and you will only get the leftovers. And, unfortunately, this is the bitter truth. That's why millions of views in their niche, while others have only a few, barely making it to 100, or even 500. And if they reach 1,000, they're lucky. Here YouTube works with a slightly different progression. It doesn't give you views in stages. First 500, then 600, then a week later he gave 1,000. No, the following pattern applies here . You might not get any views at all, but one of your videos might suddenly gain hundreds of thousands, or tens, hundreds of thousands, or even millions, and your other videos will start to follow like a locomotive. This is what beginning authors often wait for , but unfortunately, they often don’t wait for it and give up. I would same niche. Just like we just saw a bad example of a video, we saw how competitors who have gotten more views do it. This is what they have better than this video, views. If we now type a similar keyword into YouTube, yes, had a video about that, then we see that, well, these are the videos that come up, we'll adjust them based on the number of views so that we can watch the best versions of these videos. And so we see, yes, 50 apartments in 2 years chose apartment flipping as their main business and 247,000 views. That is, in the viewing niche, yes, something should have been done better and, perhaps, it would have achieved the same result. And this is our commission, yes, I am showing an example of our commission, its independent same result if she had done everything correctly. Well, maybe not right away, maybe not with the first video, yes, but she has to make videos at a high level to have a chance roughly the same numbers. Let's also watch the next video, yes, he bought it from us for 3,500 and sold it for 5,700. That is, even the cover itself attracts we also see that they are made more dynamic and interesting. We Here you are. This means it becomes clear and understandable why YouTube likes someone more. He doesn't like them, he's just, from a commercial point of view, yes, ah, he promotes them because it's profitable for him to do so, simply turn off your video, what's the point of promoting it. Everything is fair, everything is honest, there is seem that the channels I use as examples are promoted, which is why they have so many views. But the channel with a bad example, where there are 1,800 views, is We were just launching this few videos. And those first videos were made completely differently. And to my surprise, they got a lot more views. And if you want to get into the develop your blog wisely, I'll leave my contact information in the description. It follows from this that there are no restrictions or shadow bans. But YouTube may initially limit the number of views if you create a new channel, so as not to push videos on your engaged viewers and damage the platform's reputation. That 's why he very carefully and precisely shows new authors. This is precisely why there are so few of these shows to begin with. And only when whom your video is suitable will he begin to show it more actively and more often. And created a channel may think that the algorithm hates them. It’s not that he does n’t like it, he hates it because he publishes a video and it has practically no views. But this is a completely normal situation: even if you have very especially if it is expert, like on my channel, you may notice that you have few views. And it won’t even be about the video, but about the quality of the recommendations. It is for this reason that all newly created channels that have only first video have practically no chance of getting many views. Yes, newbie bonus, where the first video gets more views than the next one. And this is a most often occurs when your channel was not just created, but at least 5-6 months ago. Then you will have an advantage, that is, the platform itself will trust you a little more than newcomers who have just created. This provide more test impressions. So here is a simple recommendation. If you have an opportunity to take some old empty channel, go ahead and take it. Even if there are a couple of videos there that are not relevant created channel. I myself specially created a new channel so that you could see how the channel develops in a normal situation . If everything turns out correctly, but the topics are expert and not entertaining, everyone doesn't like them, which means the algorithm will take longer to adjust. That's why you . Well, and the last thing. How can you diagnose yourself that you're in a deadlock and something's wrong with the video if you're a beginner? When you go into your analytics section, and see that the number of impressions is very low, but the CTR is high - this is always a good sign. And if the CTR is low and the number of impressions is small, screenings to test the audience. But the opposite situation is when you already had a lot of views on a new channel, more than 2,000, even more than 5,000, but the views remained 20-30 and no more, this situation is very bad. This means that the video was definitely not liked and, most likely, it will not grow later. In general, I like the situation when there are few shows. This means that YouTube will later test your channel with other videos and increase views on this old video . So the situation with small shows is a win-win. with losing views. Let's move on to the second step. The second step is to work of my favorite ways to create great videos in any niche and still get a lot of views. This method is great when you have little money can do a better job on your own than an experienced YouTuber with a large team of eight people. And now I'll tell you how. Your main task is to develop familiarity with the topic and understand what works best in your chosen niche. refrigerator and washing machine repair technician and you want to make your first video, this stage, you may have no idea at all about the future topic. Your competitors will tell you about it themselves do is create a new technical only separate. Not the one where your videos will be published, but the one where you will view your competitors' videos. This channel will niche. Because you will only be watching targeted videos and only your it. YouTube will soon that are gaining popularity on this topic. And do you know what’s good about that? In some cases, when we are trying to find something popular and are typing in some may not be able to come up with a cool video title or its keywords. This means that once we've built a recommendation tile like this, competitors that are doing really well, and they might have such unpredictable and unusual titles that they'll be a great hint for you on how to becomes just as cool, unpredictable, and popular. So, how should you correctly? First, go to search. Now we enter keywords on the topic into the YouTube search . Well, the first thing that comes to mind will do. Well, here's the refrigerator repair, yes. How to choose a refrigerator? You can write the best refrigerator, yes, anything, yes. Using this keyword, we can find the best videos on the topic and understand what precise wording would be appropriate for our first video in the future. And so it gives us a selection of, uh, videos that match our request. We now filter by the number of views year, so that the videos are as fresh as possible. And let's look at what we've refrigerator niches there is no need to even limit the freshness, because this topic is 4, or 5 years. Therefore, I will not install this filter. In general, post videos from the last year, so that you show the most popular ones. And now we have niche-leading videos , yes, we now take screenshots of them right away and add them to our table. Let's create a table in Excel. We just throw everything in a list, yes, there is the first, second, third, we threw in a screenshot, we the videos yet. The only thing I'd advise you to do is copy the link to the video so quickly open it and understand what the author did to hook you in at the beginning of the can then partially borrow these hooks from other authors and competitors. And your competitors. This way, YouTube will understand who else to show you, and yes, it will push similar authors at you. And when we open the videos, another recommendation feed appears on the right side of the selection of recommendations. Here we can see open them, because these are suitable videos on the topic, or they are very similar, and we subscribe to all new authors. This is the kind of work that works. In general, in every niche there are trends in bytes and triggers. So, 10 years ago in Mol there were selections, some comparisons, something against something. And it was very popular back then. This is now considered a reused byte. That is, it will collect views, but too much of this kind of content, people are simply tired of watching these top 5, top 10, best-of, know what to film, even this will do. Ideally, you should be able to follow trends and just starting to gain popularity. This would be an ideal case when, at the start of your popularity, you start collecting, it turns out, the whole pie. And those who climbed only manage to collect small pieces of this pie. But to find these new trends, we will use the table that was thrown into popular understand why, in principle, all these videos have become interesting. I really popular videos because they didn't become popular by accident. This means become popular by accident. This means that in any case, 100%, if he views, then he did not do it by accident. This means there was good retention, this means there was an attractive preview and there was a cool, attractive came together in one. And this gives us a clue. This means that everything we see in the pictures now works well. Everything we see in the titles also works great. But many inexperienced experts don't take into account that this can work even better if you strengthen the trigger with a combination. That is, we will understand, now, when we look through them, we will understand that somewhere one thing works well for us let's start with an example. I really like to show examples because it makes complex things clear. Here we see a competitor's video that has garnered 475,000 views. Everything is great. We see the hand of a master in the refrigerator niche, the compressor to do something there. And the name, how refrigeration technicians deceive, replacing a compressor. That is, we see that this attracts attention. We made a note of this for ourselves. Next, we see that refueling is 500 rubles. Yes, something , you should do it yourself, since it only costs 500 rubles, because calling a title. Yes, you can refill your refrigerator yourself for 500 rubles. Well, here you go made with your own hands also attracts Let's watch the next video that catches our attention. Anyone can handle it. That is, again something like doing it yourself . The freezer works, but the refrigerator doesn't. Very good. Do-it- yourself repairs. Again, it means that we have several times in successful videos. This means we take 100% for ourselves. Well, we’ll continue to improve it. Well, it wouldn't be so interesting if I reasoned but didn't show what I got, yes, when we carried out this analysis and drew these conclusions. We released a video on the channel "Let's Set Up Life Together." And so, based on what I just said above, we made a cover like this, where a crossed-out man climbs into the compressor with his hand, some kind of master, yes, and our, in fact, main doing?” Yes, and the title itself uses this, yes, three ways to fix 99% of refrigerator malfunctions with your own hands. As a result, we see that the video, which has a much younger lifespan than competitors' videos, has already garnered 283,000 views in a year. Amazing. Amazing. copy often. We just combined them and made something of our own. This is how it is done. This is for those who... how can we copy each other? No one take into account what works well. In the next example we see that there is a cover. Apparently, the owner is leaning over the machine. But it says that beating and vibration can be eliminated. They missed the beech, but that doesn't matter. Now we have a name for a washing machine that jumps and moves during the spin cycle. How to fix it? That is, we topic could be raised about the washing machine, that it could somehow come up, but we saw that there because the customer himself did not tell us that they often contact him with questions about vibration. We saw this from competitive videos. And here below is the same video showing how I removed the vibration during the spin cycle. And both of these videos are popular, they have gained more than millions of views. 5.8 million, another 1.3. This means that it will work 100%, but you just have to do it well. cup on the washing machine. We simply took this cup and transferred it to our washing machine example and wrote an elementary solution. If we saw in the title that something there can be easily eliminated, yes, that people can, then we wrote we didn't experiment much with the title itself in our video . The washing machine fix it yourself. Again, with your own hands. The trigger they used was like this. We got 71,000 views, which isn't exactly super cool, but better than nothing. I know what the problem could be there. This is already with the content itself. Well, the least according to analytics. And here's another example, the top one we two videos from competitors that talk about choosing refrigerators. the refrigerator, the door and said which refrigerator is better to choose and buy. It's some kind of deception, yes, about the refrigerator, how they deceive you, yes, how they cheat you. And then I became interested in how they cheat when buying a refrigerator in 2022. Yeah. mistakes. We looked at these and thought, “ Aha, since someone is cheating, let’s use this as a trigger for the title.” And they made this video: "Don't buy this, it's did it like triggers. We didn't repeat it exactly, we didn't open how to choose a reliable refrigerator in 2024 is in the title. The sellers are silent about this . That is, we adopted this deceptive trigger that we saw in the into the title. And that's it, we got 741,000 views. And in principle, this video showed itself well, despite the fact that it was not super cool made on the inside. And step three. So, I address team members. Step three is scalability of ideas. Friends, if you want to shoot your video straight into the stars, you need to make content that is tens, hundreds of times better than your competitors. But even if you create a perfect video, the reach may be small. It all has to do with the globality of your idea. The broader the topic of the video, the larger its scope, the greater the potential for views. So, the overall advice is: go beyond your niche. standard pace of development of any channel and give you big views even on random first recommendations, when there is no history of this, yes, who to audience is unknown, when your content is made as broad as possible, you are watched well even by all casual viewers. Therefore, there is an exception when channels are made on an on an expert one, which do not solve a specific problem, like my video, but which are interesting to everyone, which tell a story, and this is watched by each viewer in a casual, engaging, interesting way. That's when even the first videos views. I think you've come across channels like this quite often. So, now to practice. We do the same work of entering keywords into the search and select the best videos from the last year into the same table. But now we select keywords and choose those videos that can attract a huge number of viewers. That is, we are not even tied to our topic and minds for now. Our goal is to find the most viewed videos in the world. What is there in the world, in Russia? We also record content in different languages in a table. Any DIY projects, expert videos, tutorials, and reviews are suitable for analysis. collections and even entertainment niches, but only if they have some kind of even remote, but expert subtext. But we should definitely not include gaming, sports, music, religious, and, God forbid, even children's niches here. This is not suitable under any circumstances. This whole process can take you an infinite amount of time. I recommend limiting yourself to 30 tyrep videos in this table. This is completely separate. You should make some indentation in the table so as not to mix it with your suitable global, large-scale topics should be done separately. It can even be in a separate table. Now we will have a different task. Find common trends, yes, what works in principle in the world. This is exactly what I gave you the example about. Top 10 general trend. It's not in a specific niche. Top 10 refrigerators for 1,000 rubles. cars from China are also popular. This means that this is a trend that is universally suitable , because the same old ones don’t work. Now, when we gaining momentum, because we've been looking at this for the last year, we'll record these trends as something constant and try to substitute our own refrigerators and washing machines. That is, put the washing machine in the refrigerator and it fits well and it is, in principle, possible to remove, then it should be removed, yes. This will precisely expand the potential for broad coverage within the niche. How I Now we enter keywords into YouTube search in the same way are trying to find keywords that can have a large reach. Well, for example, we write the word machine. Well, you can remove a lot of things from a car, yes, a lot of coverage. So, they pressed the machine and again filtered by the number of views. And over the past year, we've been looking at what's recently gotten the most views, and we'll be checking to see if there are any catchy bits in the preview or title niche. Here's an interesting option I found. They dug up a car from the sixties . She lay underground for 60 years. And we're like, can we somehow apply this just try to substitute. If we take this constant, we dug up a car, the sixties, or maybe we didn't dig it up, we found, yes, there's , let’s say, for the same 60 years. It will be interesting to see. There will You can try. Let's move on. Let 's see. Now here is a girl who bought a used car for restoration. Yes. And we watch her buy them and sell them. Yes, it makes money, judging by the cover. This is also a good video. It got 2 million views in 5 . Apparently works well. So, after all, the idea that something will happen to refrigerators or washing machines that are broken and super old will understand what exactly. But if we apply this idea to our niche, then our an old refrigerator with a sign saying it's for sale with a phone number. And the title finds refrigerators from a landfill and restores them. The genius makes 1 million a month on this. Interesting? Well, just tell me if you're interested and you'll . Here is an example. Let's move on to the next one. Let's try to dig a little more write, for example, here's a good niche. Gadgets. Vilskom somehow made millions from this. Yeah. Here. And here we see that there are very cool roles, a lot of cool videos, but here is one of the most popular from the first level to the hundredth, yes. but some scientific gadgets. And if we take the idea and concept with gadgets, then we might get something like this. And the evolution of refrigerators from the most primitive, or primeval, to the latest developments. entertaining format, interesting for everyone to watch. This means that such a video will also have the potential to be viewed. You can even, well, not take from level one to 100 here yet, but the idea of ​​evolution itself is cool. That is, we can show it as a trend. Now the next thing. And here's another example in the gadget niche, so as not to get too carried away just yet. Well, in principle you will understand. Here's a video that got 7.9 million views, where I tested cheap and expensive summer gadgets. And on the cover there is something for 10 bucks, and something for 10,000. And here is an excellent example. We can simply maintain this constant, I tested it, cheap and expensive ones. And just insert washing machines or refrigerators. You can make some other signature some byte in the preview. You can even take an idea from a competitor. But again, I would look at a few more competitors for the cover. But the idea behind the trend is cool. refrigerator. Yes, it changed my perception of refrigerators. Yes, I will refrigerator again, no matter what. That is, here you can depict anything, even repair niche. Let's write something about repairs. It doesn't matter what kind of repair, just repair. And we came across this video about a car from Eldar write about a car, yes, here we took the car apart, broke it, took the money, but there is no result. Let's put our refrigerator in place of the car , please. All. And off we go. was taken, but there was no result. It was interesting there. Perhaps it will be interesting here too, yes, we have gone a little beyond the usual topics that exist in the niche. This is how unique videos that you don’t see on YouTube are created. Essentially, I just told you how other authors supposedly come up with super-unique out of the head. Often we saw something somewhere, stole it, then saw something else in another direction, stole it too, put together some combination, and do the same here. We don’t often take everything from the authors, but rather we put together, well, a kind of another from another. And we get the most engaging, large-scale video possible your viewers will want to watch because they've already seen it all, just different niche. Do you understand how it works? Remember, not every video you make will be successful, but consistent effort will definitely lead you to success. Don't give up and graduate more often . Bye.