[00:00] If you are interested in the personal development space on YouTube, the chances are you've seen this guy before. Matt D'Avella has dominated my YouTube homepage for well over a year now. His high production videos which offer insights into areas such as consumerism, personal finance
[00:16] and business all through the eyes of a minimalist have racked up millions of views and propelled the LA-based filmmaker to the forefront of YouTube. At the time of recording this video, Matt D'Avella
[00:28] sits on 1.6 million subscribers. Now while this is a huge number there are over a thousand channels which have surpassed the 1 million subscriber milestone. What's interesting about Matt is how quickly he grew despite being air quotes late to the party. I often hear people use the excuse that
[00:47] it's too late to start a YouTube channel, that it has become too competitive. Matt D'Avella has well put this myth to bed. At the start of 2018 he had 4,000 subscribers and at the start of this year
[01:00] he had 780,000 subscribers. Yes it is true that YouTube has never been more competitive but Matt found a way to get to the top very quickly. Numbers are one thing but it also must
[01:12] be said that Matt's audience is one of the most devoted and supportive I've seen on YouTube. For example, his live video ratio often gets close to the 8% mark, which trust me is very high.
[01:25] His comments are always flooded with support and encouragement as well. This is also reflected by the estimated $8,000 to $24,000 he has pledged every month through his Patreon account.
[01:39] On this channel, I like to analyse successful creators and pinpoint the factors they used to grow an online audience, with the aim of helping you on your own journey to building a successful YouTube channel.
[01:51] So why should we be paying close attention to what Matt D'Avella is doing? What is setting him apart in a very competitive niche? I'm hungry, God damn it. Hungry to reach further.
[02:04] To push beyond what was previously thought possible. To grab my habits by the ball and say this time I'm going to do things differently.
[02:16] The first thing I want to talk about is how Matt wins the click with his thumbnails. Basically, over the last year, the most important ingredient to a video blown up on YouTube
[02:29] is the CTR which stands for click through rate It is essentially the percentage of people who see your video and go on to actually click it YouTube recommended section will show your video to a sample size of people If a high enough percentage click it will show it to more people and so on and so on
[02:47] This means that in 2019, video thumbnails have never been more important. They are the variable that pushes you to click on one video and ignore another. Matt's thumbnails are one of the biggest factors that give his videos the competitive edge.
[03:00] There are thousands of videos in his niche that are uploaded every day, but Matt's thumbnails stand out from the crowd. There's a lot of lessons to be learned here, but by far the most important is his attitude
[03:12] towards them. Thumbnails are often the last thing creators think about when making a video. You're just so excited to make this unique, high-quality video and then shoot yourself in the foot by doing up a boring and generic thumbnail.
[03:26] Matt puts serious effort and intention into his thumbnails. Just for example, on the left is a thumbnail that didn't make the cut for Matt's meditation video. He travelled all the way to Joshua Tree National Park that sunset to take a thumbnail, but
[03:41] at the end he didn't even deem it good enough to use. He even has a full video on his Patreon account where he shows the behind the scenes of making some video thumbnails. It showed the hours of experimenting, choosing and testing that went into just one thumbnail.
[03:55] incorporates thumbnails into the workflow of making every video. Taking a closer look at its thumbnails we can analyse what makes them so special in a YouTube feed full of clickbait.
[04:07] Here are 4 things to take note of. One they are extremely high quality. They are photos not screenshots. They are carefully framed, the lighting is perfect and they have been edited in post production to give them a glossy cinematic look.
[04:22] by looking at them you want to click them, but please don't because that would cause my video. Number 2, they are minimal and clingy without text in general. You wouldn't really expect any different from a minimalist, but Matt actually did use text in his thumbnails previously
[04:37] until he opted for the no text look which was mastered by Peter McKinnon. I love the no text visual only style as it is not too in your face and leaves a level of mystique about the video.
[04:50] Number three, because of their lack of text, Matt's thumbnails represent the video through props and actions in the shot. Just by looking at the two thumbnails without any context or title, you can get a fairly
[05:02] good idea of what each is about. So if you were going to go with the no approach you still need to tell a story in the thumbnail picture Number four is his use of eye props Now you often see people use bright yellow or green fonts to grab eye attention but Matt does this in a different way He quite
[05:22] regularly uses props in the videos with these bright colours to catch your eye. Even in the thumbnail on the right, if the journal he was holding was a darker colour it would be dramatically less striking. Now you might think this is a coincidence, but if you look
[05:35] through his videos you'll see it's a very common theme. Now of course, I'm not telling you to just copy and paste Matt's style of making thumbnails here. There's a lot to take influence from, but if anything it's a mentality shift to
[05:48] understanding just how important they are. You don't have to over complicate things too, just analyse your current thumbnails, ask yourself, will this stand out in a YouTube feed of 10 other videos, and go from there.
[06:04] So let's look at another growth hack Matt has used to grow his channel. Trend jacking. Trends are a huge part of YouTube and social media in general. Algorithms by design help to create and accelerate trending topics,
[06:17] and it's something that as a YouTuber you need to be paying attention to. Trend jacking is in simple terms the action of leveraging current trends on the platform to reach new audiences and grow your channel.
[06:29] Ignoring this is a huge mistake. It's like creating your product without doing your market research. Matt's channel blew up with the minimalism wave that started to gain some serious traction over the last two years. But I'm sure he knew even back then that if he wanted to keep growing
[06:45] he would need to diversify his videos. He realised that if he kept making videos on minimalism he would quickly run out of things to say. On YouTube you adapt or you die. So Matt needed to branch out into other areas of the self improvement niche. He identified
[07:00] the topics and keywords that were getting the most attention and traffic and leveraged them to make videos that would keep his views and channel discovery growing. Matt has made videos on some of the biggest trends we've seen in this space over the last year.
[07:15] Waking up at 5am, meditation, cold showers, journaling and low sugar dieting. The key thing is though, he remains authentic to the values he has built his channel upon.
[07:27] He is not betraying his roots in minimalism by just chasing after whatever gets him views. He trends acts but only when it's applicable and fits his brand. He has done this in a very clever way by starting a series, I tried, Insert Trending Self Improvement
[07:42] Method for one month where he puts trends to the test and reports back not just endorsing them for the sake of staying relevant So how can you find trending topics to make videos on On a surface level it quite easy See what other topics people in your niche have had success with Check what common topics
[08:00] come up in your recommended and search results. However I suggest going a little deeper to analyze what's trending before the crowd. If you can be one of the first people to make a video on a trend you give yourself a huge head start. I
[08:15] I really recommend using a tool called TubeBuddy to help you with this. It's much more effective than guesswork and allows you to make data based decisions on what videos to make and even how to title them. For example here is a screenshot of me using TubeBuddy to research
[08:30] the tag journey and ideas. It scores the keyword based on how often it's searched, how competitive it is and also gives it a rating based on your own channel. It also gives you related
[08:42] tags which is great for video ideas, along with so many more features that I don't even have time to go through. A link to install for free is in my description below, but to access these features you will need to upgrade to a paid version. If you're serious about
[08:55] growing your YouTube channel though, it's worth every cent. Ok, I want to finish up with one quick final point. Matt puts quality over quantity every
[09:07] single time. I find it refreshing to see a YouTuber growing at such a fast rate without just grinding out as many videos as possible and ultimately crashing and burning a few years down the
[09:19] line. It can work for some people but it can also discourage many others who get overwhelmed by the idea of creating so much content. I think I've talked enough in this video on that's behalf so let's listen to the man himself explain his reasoning for this in
[09:32] a recent interview with Thomas Frank. of me that always feels like, oh, I should do two videos this week. Not that I have three months of ideas, I'm like, oh, it would be great to really put out just a couple extra videos in there, but I try to release that temptation because I
[09:47] just know that's the fastest way to lead to burnout. Have you tried it in the past? Yes. I did about two months of two videos every week, and I just noticed that one of the videos would always suffer in quality, and my personal life would certainly suffer in quality, and
[10:01] it just wasn't worth it. So, that pretty much wraps up the video. If you want to apply Matt's YouTube principles, you should 1. Focus on winning the click with better thumbnails, 2. Leverage your channel by making videos on relevant trends, and 3. Put quality over quantity.
[10:17] I really hope this video has helped in some way, and if it has, all I ask for in return is a like and subscribe. Thank you for your time, and I'll see you at the top.