#196: Aprilynne Alter – Breaking down the video that blew up her channel (755,000 views with <1000 subscribers!)

Jay Clouse [00:00:00]:
There is a 6 step formula to making a breakthrough video that will blow up your channel, and she's proof that it works.

Aprilynne Alter [00:00:06]:
I'll tell you what I do now and then I'll tell you what I'm going to do in the future.

Jay Clouse [00:00:09]:
That's April Lynn Alter, a YouTuber who abandoned her 20,000 subscriber channel to completely start over a year ago. Over that next 8 months, she tried everything, but nothing worked. Until

Aprilynne Alter [00:00:22]:
This is how to make a killer YouTube intro to blow up your channel.

Jay Clouse [00:00:26]:
755,000 views on a video she posted with less than a 1000 subscribers. In this episode, she'll take us through the process of how it happened from ideation to upload, so you can do it too. Thank you to Artlist for sponsoring this video. Let's talk about your ideation process and how many ideas for videos you have at any given time.

Aprilynne Alter [00:00:49]:
I definitely have a very long laundry list of ideas, not as long as what I've heard from some of the big YouTubers have. Mine's probably around a 100. I'd say I have around a 100 ideas just kind of sitting in my backlog, yeah, at any one time.

Jay Clouse [00:01:07]:
How do you narrow down the ideas that you wanna work on when you're moving things along? Like, how are you thinking now? We can use what you've learned now as to what is the most promising idea that you wanna move to the top of your list.

Aprilynne Alter [00:01:19]:
So there are a couple of key things that I normally check for when I think about a video idea. First, I think about, am I genuinely interested in making this idea? If the answer is no, it's probably not going to be a good idea to make it just because so much effort goes into any single one video. And I really do try to enjoy the process as much as possible. So if I don't have that genuine excitement, from the idea from the very get go, it's probably not going to work out. That's kind of more from the emotional standpoint. And there's a lot that goes into the validation of an idea. When I say validation, what I mean is, has, like, is there any sort of proof of concept that this video will work, that this video idea will work? Is there something that I have done that has shown me that this will work again, or is there something that someone else has done that has shown me that I can do it again, but in a slightly different way. So I look for that validation to give me a pretty good idea that, okay, if I were to make this video, at least there's some sort of proven potential.

Aprilynne Alter [00:02:19]:
There's some sort of ceiling that I can verify that if I were to execute on this 100%, this is around kind of the cap of the views on this video. Once kind of those those are the big two kind of categories that I look to look at first. There's a lot more later on when it comes to branding and making sure that aligns with my individual video recipe, making sure that that there is alignment there before moving on. But those are kind of the the big two things that I normally check for.

Jay Clouse [00:02:48]:
Validation is an interesting aspect that I hear from other YouTubers as well that goes counter to what I think a lot of creative people might think. A lot of people think, like, the best ideas are the ones that are totally novel, never been done before. And, theoretically, that makes some sense. But I also agree with you in that there's a lot of value in finding examples of similar videos or similar topics that prove there's viewer interest. Have you ever, had an idea that you really wanted to make, but you just couldn't validate that there was, interest on it?

Aprilynne Alter [00:03:25]:
100%. Absolutely. Absolutely. My most recent video is an example of that, which is, like, for the overachievers of YouTube. I will say, though, that I tend to balance. When I think about ideation and my channel as a whole, I've kind of broken it down into 3 categories of videos. There are the banger videos. If I'm looking for a video and the goal is to bring in views, the goal is to especially bring in views from new viewers or people who have no idea who I am, that validation box needs to be ticked.

Aprilynne Alter [00:03:53]:
If that box is not ticked, then that the goal of the video if I'm if I'm measuring the success of the video from how many views from the viewers it gets, I'm shooting myself in the foot if I do not validate it. But it doesn't mean that every single video I make has to be validated. I have these other kind of 2 categories of videos, one I call connection videos. The the goal there is not to get as many views as possible. The goal there is to connect with my existing viewers on a deeper level. That video doesn't have to be validated because the goal is to not have a huge number of views. Right? The goal is to connect on a deeper level with my existing audience. And the final category is soul videos, videos that we make because we're creatives.

Aprilynne Alter [00:04:32]:
And we're here because, yes, we want financial success, but we also want freedom and creativity and the opportunity for self expression. And sometimes you just really need to make a video because you have something out there that you just want to say. And for those, again, I don't at least I don't believe that you need validation. You need validation in order to make the videos that your heart wants to make.

Jay Clouse [00:04:53]:
Yeah. It's interesting. It's like a it's like a question of expectations. You know, if you if you're gonna go against if you're not going to have validation, then it's an exercise in asking yourself, am I okay with this video not hitting some theoretical number I have in my mind of what success would be because we don't have a, basis for those expectations, probably setting ourselves up for disappointment more than we need to.

Aprilynne Alter [00:05:22]:
Yes. Absolutely.

Jay Clouse [00:05:24]:
With the intros video, why did that idea get chosen? What did you see to say this is worth making?

Aprilynne Alter [00:05:31]:
Yeah. So I'll give some more context into that idea because where I am now is very different from where I was in the making of that video. At the time I had maybe 747 subscribers. So I, I was in the midst of a 90 day monetization challenge. So I was doing everything in my power to get my channel monetized. That means 1,000 subscribers, 4,000 watch hours within 90 days. I was around halfway through my challenge at that point. And I had done a lot of I've tried a lot of different things.

Aprilynne Alter [00:06:04]:
I had tried making 3 videos in a week. I had tried slowing down and focusing more on quality over quantity. And I had tried looking for things that other people had done well. That's kind of what my mindset was at the time. I was looking at what what topics are other people covering that I could cover, but in my own way. For the intro video, that kind of changed. Instead of looking for what topics other people had done, I looked within one of my existing videos, which was a little bit of a high performer for me. Again, everything in context.

Aprilynne Alter [00:06:40]:
I had a a video that had over a 1000 views at that time, which for me, again, 747 subscribers, that was a bit of a high performer on my channel. That one went over kind of like, I think the title is How Mr. Beast Solved YouTube or How Mr. Beast Solved YouTube Retention. And I broke that into chapters And there were a number of different chapters, but one of the chapters was intros, how he treated intros. And the retention on my video for that particular chapter was quite high, was the highest over the entire video. And so I got to thinking and also some of my comments were specifically calling out that section as particularly interesting or useful. So it was a bit of an experiment for me for the intro video of, okay.

Aprilynne Alter [00:07:23]:
I have this kind of comprehensive video. What if I just took out this one section that had the high retention on a previous video of mine and took that and blew it up? Made it his own video, get even deeper into this sort of thing. So that was kind of how it shows the topic of let's talk about YouTube intros.

Jay Clouse [00:07:41]:
I wanna talk a little bit about packaging next and, how you thought about packaging this video once you've realized, okay, I'm gonna go into this sliver of intros from this other video. I'm gonna make an entire video about it. How did you go about packaging that video?

Aprilynne Alter [00:07:55]:
So there is this other video from this amazing creator named John Doorman, and he had this video that I had watched, like, a year prior called how to make a killer YouTube video, parenthesis, to to love your channel. And I had watched that video again, like, a year before, and that video had always stuck out to me. And I revisited it, and I looked at the packaging time. Like, why did this stand out to me so much? There are a couple of key things. One was the word killer, the adjective killer. Adjectives tend to do pretty well in titles in general, especially superlatives, things like, you know, biggest or crazy or things like that. But the word killer was something that I hadn't seen very much before. And we might get into this this later, but there's this concept of remarkability of, yes, there is some degree of validation of how things worked before, but there's also the degree of remarkability in that other people probably have not seen a lot of this before.

Aprilynne Alter [00:08:52]:
It's not mainstream. And the word killer to me as an adjective was quite remarkable. Let's yoink that. I really like this idea. What if instead of how to make a killer video to blow up your channel, it was how to make a killer intro to blow up your channel? And then I was, like, go going back and forth with a friend of mine, Jake Thomas, about that that title, because he is very good at titles. And he said, what if instead of to blow up your channel in the parentheses, it was for the 2023 algorithm? Like, that's interesting too. I'm gonna put pull that in there. With the thumbnail, another element of John Dorman's title and thumbnails packaging that I really liked was the words up at the very top, his thumbnail text, which for him, I believe was, you're one video away.

Aprilynne Alter [00:09:39]:
And I thought not just like, okay. Those words are cool, but why why do those really resonate with me? And for me, it was this feeling of encouragement and inspiration. The idea that, okay, it's sure, it's hard, but it is possible. We do have the agency to make a change here. And I wanted to do have a evoke a similar sort of feeling with my thumbnail. So for for for me, instead of your your one video away, it became, this is all it takes. The idea that, okay, to go with that title of this is a, how to make a killer intro, this is all it takes to blow up a channel or for the the the the 20 2023 algorithm or whatever it is. And then kind of deeper into that thumbnail as well.

Aprilynne Alter [00:10:25]:
I guess it depends on how how deep you wanna get. But there are also a couple of key things I did there that were, I will say, quite a bit risky. I took a big risk on this thumbnail because it was very different from the thumbnails that I was seeing within this niche. A lot of my thumbnails leading up to that point, I was kind of taking from the broader YouTube education ecosystem. Like, it tended to be darker. There tended to be a lot of red and black or white. There tended to either be a graph or a number or, you know, someone's giant face taking up part of it, whether it's the creator's face or a well known other creator's faces. For me, I thought, okay, I'm talking about intros.

Aprilynne Alter [00:11:08]:
What is the best way I can visualize an intro? And the idea that I had was we can take a video timeline. Okay. Sure. Timeline. Let's cut out just the beginning part because we're talking about intros. Great. That's not enough. I wanna draw more attention to it.

Aprilynne Alter [00:11:22]:
Let's make it a different color. Let's avoid the color red because let's try to be different. Let's try to be remarkable. Let's go rainbow colors because I like it. It looks pretty and it stands out a little bit much. That's that's not enough. Okay. Can I have this text here? Let's even let's draw even more attention to it.

Aprilynne Alter [00:11:40]:
Let's put an arrow. I talk in my thumbnail video about the idea of thumbnail hierarchy and that you should really kind of focus on what is the main character of your thumbnail versus what are the supporting characters. That's something that a lot of people get wrong. They believe that they are always the main character of their thumbnails, but that's not necessarily true. In my intro video, I was not the main character. I'm a supporting character in that thumbnail to the intro. So I do include myself, but I'm quite small. And if you look deeper, you can see that really the entire thumbnail is designed in a way to just draw more attention, draw the eye to that beginning intro part.

Aprilynne Alter [00:12:14]:
So I'm small, I'm centered, but I'm looking up. I'm looking directly to that, to that intro part. There's an arrow directly to that intro part. And it all kind of comes together. The last thing I'll say is it's a more minimalistic thumbnail versus a lot of the other ones I was seeing in the space were more maximalistic. And all of those factors together came into the creation of my intro thumbnail.

Jay Clouse [00:12:36]:
Wait. What is going on? Hey. I thought you guys could use a little ambiance. What do you think of this? Where did you find this? Oh, this song? I got it from Artlist, the sponsor of today's video. Artlist is the best place to find creative assets to level up your videos, and it's super easy to use. Check this out. Let's go to artlist.i0. We'll click the footage tab.

Jay Clouse [00:13:03]:
Scroll a bit until we see something we like. Okay. Let's check out this guy swimming. When you click in on a video thumbnail, there are two things to notice. The first is the suggested sound effects box. These are sounds that Artlist thinks will go well with the footage you clicked on. The second is you can scroll a little and see that each video is part of a larger collection, so you can piece multiple shots together if you want to, which is what we're gonna do. Let's take this shot of the moon over the water, this underwater shot, and this one of him walking around in the pool.

Jay Clouse [00:13:43]:
Let's head to the sound effects tab to get some ambiance. We'll search quiet night and nature. Perfect. We'll use the first one. Then I'll search soft water because we're building a scene. Let's use this one, Then underwater ambiance for that second shot we're gonna use. First one is perfect. Now the music to set the mood.

Jay Clouse [00:14:09]:
Let's search calm and peaceful. Look at that. First one is perfect again. Let's put it together and see what we got. It's that easy. We use Artlist for all of our videos and absolutely love it. And with Artlist Max, we can get music, sound effects, footage, and motion graphics for one price without having to worry about any of the licensing. Sign up with our link in the description and you will get 2 months free on any annual plan.

Jay Clouse [00:14:45]:
Thank you to Artlist for supporting the channel. So that's what we see live now. Was that the first title and the first thumbnail that you uploaded? Did you have other concepts for this video?

Aprilynne Alter [00:14:57]:
It's a good question. Let me check out my Figma. Okay. So this is like my massive Figma. I use Figma for, like, everything. Like, it is it's ridiculous. It's also chaotic, but my brain works like this. So if we, if we scroll into, like, this section, this is when you kind of get into there really are not that many variations here.

Aprilynne Alter [00:15:17]:
Here. I do more variations in the future now. But in the making of this particular one, I had this concept of the, okay, we have, like, this as the the the original title was to top up your channel in the the parenthesis. It became for the 2023, and then now for the 2024 algorithm. I think the overall concept of this is all it takes as the text and the check mark and the overall structure was something I was pretty set on from the very beginning. I did some, like, whiteboard variations of it on my on my physical whiteboard board to think about the overall composition, and I really liked this one. So I took this one and I ran with it in, like, a digital version. And there are a couple of variations.

Aprilynne Alter [00:15:59]:
Not not as many as I normally do. But like, okay, one, I'm centered, but I'm like looking at it. This this this was my original idea, the one that I like sketched out on my whiteboard of, like, oh, like, a cool shot from the back. And I was like, this looks like a mop. That's not going to work. That doesn't work very well at all. And then I'm like, okay. Well, I can can I can I look at it? That if I'm face it.

Aprilynne Alter [00:16:20]:
So I took more pictures, came back. I'm like, okay. This this is starting to look good. I did different variations of grading. I was like, Well, you know, we could do a darker one. And then I was like, That doesn't look very good at all. This looks so weird. I didn't like that.

Aprilynne Alter [00:16:36]:
I didn't like the red either. I like the pink better than the red, just because it stood out to me a little bit more. I played around with different pictures of myself, but, ultimately, I just went with the kind of original. Like, one of I think this one. I like the more up close version of myself versus the further away version. And that's just the one I went with.

Jay Clouse [00:16:58]:
It's so interesting to hear you describe your thought process as you're going through this because I think a lot of people can relate to this. You're an interesting case because now you've done a 33 minute deep dive on thumbnails. So you have more thumbnail knowledge than the average person. But as you're describing this, there's a lot of I liked, I felt this way, and there's probably a subconscious level of you that understands why you liked this versus this, or why this seemed better than this. You could you could intellectualize it, but it also sounds like you were trusting your gut in terms of what feels right, what looks good. I can see on the right, you have, like, this this mock up of the YouTube homepage. So I imagine you're dragging your own thumbnails into that and comparing it against the other things that you would see. So it sounds like at the time, you were trusting your own taste a little bit.

Jay Clouse [00:17:51]:
Did you did you share this with anybody else to get their feedback in real time?

Aprilynne Alter [00:17:55]:
100%. So at the time, I was just starting this YouTube mastermind that I have now. It's it's grown a little bit from then. We have 4 people now, including myself. But back then it was just me and my friend Stella. And so it was just us and we met up together for 2 hours every single week just to talk through YouTube and to give each other feedback and ask questions and all of that fun stuff. And we were in our we weekly sessions, and I was working on this next video. And I showed her the the thumbnails and got her opinions on it.

Aprilynne Alter [00:18:31]:
I also asked, my partner, Rox. He didn't like it very much. He was like, I'm not really the right person to ask. I don't really know these types of aesthetic thumbnails. So his his his opinion was kind of moot, which I think is a good point in that you can ask a lot of people for feedback, but you do have to put all of their feedback in the context of what they know and what they're interested in and what their own taste is. Because taste is also a factor that we kind of alluded to that is going to change between different people. So I looked at this, and I go, okay. My gut is, I think this is interesting.

Aprilynne Alter [00:19:02]:
So I looked at this, and I thought, okay. My gut is, I think this is interesting. I'm a little bit scared because it's risky. I haven't done anything like this before. I haven't seen anything like this before. But in that kind of, like, YouTube mock up screenshot that I had, I thought, oh, this is interesting. My picture of myself, my thumbnail tends to stand out when I look at this just because it's so different from what I'm normally seeing on the YouTube homepage. I asked my my friend about it.

Aprilynne Alter [00:19:27]:
She also really liked it. And so I was like, okay, it's not just me. I might be a little bit delusional, but at least the 2 of us are delusional together if we both think that this is good. And 2 is better than 1. So I did get a little bit of feedback on that as well.

Jay Clouse [00:19:41]:
Something I really admire and respect about your work is the level of research that you do. And you use the amount of research that you do as a signal for input bias in a lot of your videos, which we'll talk about in a little bit. But when you are doing the packaging process for videos, maybe now that you're thinking about when you have an idea that you're excited about, but now you're thinking about packaging, how do you research these ideas for packaging? How do you research titles? How do you research thumbnails that you think can serve as inspiration? I think that's a that's a point of friction for a lot of people is saying, I have this idea. I have to come up with a package. How do I think about the best title? How do I think about the best thumbnail? Where where's your head go?

Aprilynne Alter [00:20:24]:
I will say my my my process now is a bit different from what it was when I made that first video because I just I know a lot more. That's the kind of beauty about being within this niche, which I'm sorry, you might relate to as well is that the more we learn, the more we're able to apply to our own videos to become better, which is just a super cool feedback loop. Like, I love my job so much. So I I've learned a lot. And now I think my process is different. 1, one amazing place that I like to use, one amazing tool that I like to use is the tool 1 of 10, which you may have heard about before. It is an outlier tool. And I love 1 of 10 because it's just kind of like you could type in a topic and it just shows all of the outlier videos.

Aprilynne Alter [00:21:06]:
What that means is, like, a video that is far, like, far overperformed the average for that channel and just shows all of them related to a specific topic all at once. That's made the process a lot easier when I'm thinking about something like, can I put this in? But I will say that there is this kind of push and pull of how much do you want to take inspiration from what has proven to work versus how much do you just wanna go into it yourself? I usually like to start by seeing what I come up with myself before I'm influenced by anything else. So I start there, jot down some concepts. I start with kind of the curiosity gap. I guess I I take a much more holistic view to titles and thumbnails now. When you look at an outlier, you don't necessarily know why that outlier is an outlier. You have to dig a lot deeper into, okay, like, is this an outlier because of its idea, this topic? Is this an outlier because of its packaging? Is it an outlier because of its content itself? Is it an outlier because of timing? Right? And it's like which just kind of goes into topic. Right? You have to get really deep into these things or else it's very easy to start pulling stuff that you assume is good, but actually isn't good from an outlier.

Jay Clouse [00:22:21]:
And even when you're thinking about why is this an outlier, that's still assumptions that you're making. They can be educated guesses.

Aprilynne Alter [00:22:27]:
Mhmm.

Jay Clouse [00:22:28]:
But this is a this is the hard thing about this type of work is you can see data, and data tells you something and then you start to like assume a story based on the data, but you might be wrong. You might think this performed really well because the package was really great And then you yoink packaging inspiration from this and your video doesn't do well because it turns out maybe that wasn't why that video outperformed. Maybe it wasn't the package at all, but that assumption now has led you down potentially the wrong path. It's hard to know. That's a hard thing about looking at data and making assumptions from it, But, there's not really a different way.

Aprilynne Alter [00:23:01]:
Yeah. Well, I mean and that's and that's and that's why I think that but I think there is a slightly different way, which is don't just take like, I I I would avoid just taking from a single piece of data. Right? Thinking like, okay, This is interesting. Let's take from this. I like to view things as a whole. Right? Like, okay. What sort of patterns am I seeing across lots of these things? Because then then your educated guesses become a little bit more educated. Okay.

Aprilynne Alter [00:23:27]:
It's not just it's not just this this sort of like, this these texts or these words here. It's also here and here and here and here. And also, I would say, you don't have to just look within your individual niche as well. When I went into a lot of the research for my thumbnail video, right, I was looking across as many thumbnails as I could across many different types of niches across YouTube. And there were certain formats or types of thumbnails that tended to perform well regardless of niche. Right? Like a typical transformation thumbnail. Right? You have a before, you have an after. That can be the case when you whether you're in the YouTube education space or if you're in the health and fitness space phase, or if you're doing a, a room transformation video or nearly anything else can be applied, to this transformation before and after thumbnail format.

Aprilynne Alter [00:24:20]:
And there are a couple of other key formats that are repeatable across a variety of different niches and do work across a variety of different niches because there's something psychological drawing us to those things. A lot of that also goes into feeling. So there's a reason why we are interested in these things. Are we curious at all? Curiosity is usually a a strong driver. But also desire can be a strong driver as well. If you, like, show something on I call those results result thumbnails. If you show a result on your thumbnail, that is very desirable, and people want to click because they want that result. I think when you have a more holistic view about thumbnails and packaging in general, you don't like, outliers are incredible, and that is one tool.

Aprilynne Alter [00:25:03]:
And then you start to, like, piece everything else together in a way that can create your very own thumbnail and one that is unique to you and has the chance of being remarkable as opposed to just being drowned out in the sea of what everyone else is making.

Jay Clouse [00:25:17]:
I like your point about taking data points in aggregate to derisk, the assumptions that you're making. I heard a story recently of a professor well, first of all, there's this there's this paper called The Wisdom of Crowds, and it's, like, decades old that talks about how when you have more data points, the data becomes more accurate. And there's a professor who would start his class by, like, having, a jar of jelly beans and tell people to guess how many jelly beans are in this jar. And on an individual basis, the average individual was off by, like, 50%. But in aggregate, when you controlled for how many people guessed, the group guess calculated together. It was only 15% off. So anytime that you can look at more data, I like that as a way to make a more educated guess. Okay.

Jay Clouse [00:26:15]:
So we have where the idea came from. We went into packaging. We green lit this green lit this. We said we're gonna go talk to me about your research and scripting process because I've seen the research documents that you've done, sometimes 70 plus pages long. Talk to me about how you go into these processes and when you know that you're done.

Aprilynne Alter [00:26:38]:
Sometimes I can get carried away with research, partially because I love it. The document that I have on my most on the video that I'm working with right now about ideation is a 180 pages now. So I think it's around done now, which is good. I'll I'll split those up between, research and scripting. So when it comes to my research process, there are 2 phases of my research. One is information collection, and the other is information connection. When it's when we're in the information collection phase, it's truly consuming as much information as I can about a certain topic, like, as is possible. So I'll start by going into my previous gigantic research docs and pulling from there.

Aprilynne Alter [00:27:21]:
Like, okay. I know other things I have talked about, I I've researched before, have talked about the certain topic. Let's pull in those, like, those bullet points. From there, I'll look into into new things. And I'll usually take from a variety of sources. I'll start off by taking from interviews. I love primary primary sources of information. So it's like, if I can hear a creator talking about their own individual, process, like I'll take from that first.

Aprilynne Alter [00:27:47]:
So after I've exhausted a lot of the interviews that I can find, then I'll move into videos. Like, okay, what videos have other people made on this topic? What are they talking about? Let's pull in from there. After that, I take from things outside of YouTube. So I'll either take from, like, Twitter threads that people send me that I think are really interesting, and I'll take from outside of YouTube as well. In this ideation video that I'm working on now, yes, there's a lot of information on YouTube about ideation, but a lot of what I've taken has come from not just YouTube, but also film and science fiction and fantasy writing and game development. Because these interviews have been around a lot longer than YouTube has. And there might be some, like, new pieces of information there. Not new, but new to YouTube pieces of information I can take there and apply.

Aprilynne Alter [00:28:38]:
And then I'll also conduct my own interviews sometimes where I have I'm lucky enough to have different friends in the YouTube space. So when they know that I'm working on something, if they're interested, I can interview them and ask them point of questions about what their own process is like and record those. So that is my information collection phase, just collecting as much information as I can, time stamping all of the bullet points on my notes so I can go back to them if you have question.

Jay Clouse [00:29:02]:
Alright. What what comes next after collection?

Aprilynne Alter [00:29:04]:
So after collection comes connection. So after I have all of this information, you asked, like, about about when I think I'm done with the at least the collection phase. Usually, it's it's when my mind is so ready to to jump into the connection phase. Like, I've been consuming a lot of information. I'll usually have, like, a, like, friends will send me things or I'll see things and just, like, add it to my list of like, make sure to check out later. Once I've exhausted that list and like no new stuff has made it onto that, that list, I'm like, okay, I'm done. Then Then I'll move into the con the connection phase. And there are also a couple of phases within this connection phase.

Aprilynne Alter [00:29:43]:
First is the condensing phase. So I have all of this information again, like, lots of bullet points and everything. And I take those, like, huge notes and then I condense it into, okay, other types of notes, that is a lot less fluff. Right? So that's I kinda sort between this is something that's not relevant. This this is the stuff that is relevant. After that, then I'll go into my buckets stage, which is, like, the the main part of the connection phase, which is I go through all of my sources of, of information. I'll do like a, a dual screen. So I have my notes on one side and then my notes further down on the other side.

Aprilynne Alter [00:30:21]:
And I'll take each bullet from my condensed notes and sort it into a bucket. Outliers. 1 bucket can be, you know, how how to stay original. And I have all of these buckets that I kind of see patterns between. If I have a bullet that doesn't fit into a bucket, I'll either make a new bucket for it or put it in the IDK where this goes bucket and come to it later. I'll put everything into buckets. And that's, like, one of the most magical parts of this process for me because then I can see how different things that people have said at different times can kind of all feed into each other and align within certain buckets.

Jay Clouse [00:31:01]:
Mhmm. And I

Aprilynne Alter [00:31:02]:
just it's just it's so cool. It's so cool to see all of it come together.

Jay Clouse [00:31:06]:
Sounds very useful for structure.

Aprilynne Alter [00:31:08]:
Yes. Absolutely. Which is then kind of we can go into the outlining stage. So after I have all of my buckets, then you asked about feedback. That's that's like a crucial feedback point for me. I'll have all of these buckets, like, everything sorted into buckets. I might have like an idea of like a general outline, and then I'll bring a friend on. Like, Hey, okay.

Aprilynne Alter [00:31:29]:
I have all of this information sorted into buckets. Can we go through this together and give me your sorted into buckets. Can we go through this together and give me your thoughts? And what she'll tell me is either, you know, when something is particularly, like, neat or useful to her, when something is new to her, so she hasn't heard it before, which is really great information, what she has more questions on, what she, like, lights up out and says that I should talk about more, what she's like, I don't think this is that relevant. And I'll take all of the notes about what how she feels about all the information within my buckets. And then from that, I'll turn that into an outline for my video. Do you

Jay Clouse [00:32:05]:
ever get to a point where you have some number of buckets and you get in that feedback phase and somebody's like, this is not interesting. And the the feedback is telling you to cut something that you've become, like, attached to?

Aprilynne Alter [00:32:18]:
Yeah. The it's I'm usually not attached to things that other people don't find interesting. What happens more often is, you know, they'll get really interested in one thing and then say, oh, but that's probably its own video. You probably shouldn't include it here because it's it's its own video. And that's that's what happens more frequently. Usually, if I think it should really belong and it needs to belong, I'll use that logic. I'm like, okay. Well, I can include it just like in, you know, intros.

Aprilynne Alter [00:32:48]:
I had intros included in the mr. Beast solve YouTube video, but also was its own video. I could do that too. So So I could include maybe, like, a 3 minute section, like, portion of it in this video, and then later on can blow it up and make it its its own video if you think it's, you know, that informational.

Jay Clouse [00:33:06]:
So you you have this outline, you've gotten feedback on it. When it comes to filling out that outline and creating a script, what do you think are the most important areas that you're directing your time and attention to?

Aprilynne Alter [00:33:18]:
My my script writing process goes in through a couple of different versions. Version 1 is always the April in a sad version where it it's just so hard to get started and to start writing. And I just I just like word vomit. And so, like, I'll I will for it's it's always torture to write the first version of my script. It's always, like, the worst writing I have ever written. I have to, like, listen to music or watch something else while I do it so I don't think about what I'm writing. And I've stopped multiple times saying, this is the worst thing I've ever written. This is a terrible video.

Aprilynne Alter [00:33:52]:
No one's going to care. This is gonna be horrible. So version 1 is always, like, sad April inversion. But it's necessary because that's just the beginning. And then from there, I start to go through and, like, edit and edit and edit and add things and edit. Also, in my in my first draft, I will say just, like, a tip that I do to help me go along is whenever I get stuck, usually this comes into, you know, when I wanna talk about something, but I haven't done like, I don't wanna get very deep into it. I'll just put things in parentheses. Like, talk about this thing here.

Aprilynne Alter [00:34:23]:
Mention this, this, this, and this. Or else I like, put example about this thing here. So I can it allows me to move through that sad April and script phase quicker without being stuck into it. And then kind of as I go through, I go through in each stage and I come back to those parentheses and I start to fill them out. Sometimes I'll put, like, more parentheses. I'll fill stuff out and I'm like, okay. Well, make sure to conclude this better here. I'll leave myself notes as well.

Aprilynne Alter [00:34:49]:
So it's just, like, not stuck in my head of like, okay, this is bad. And I'll just, like, put a comment to myself, of this is bad, rework later as I continue to go through. I was, like, in terms of what I typically look for or optimize for when I script, there are a couple of things. One, I mean, intros are just super important. I spend a lot of time on my intros, making sure that my intros hit really, really, really hard. I wanna make sure that obviously number 1 is the, like, the, the quality of information is exceptional. It has to be something that people hear it and they're like, wow. This is amazing.

Aprilynne Alter [00:35:24]:
This is great information. Beyond that, I want the script to feel good. I optimize a lot for feeling. You we we kinda have this concept in design called UX. Right? The the the user experience of it. And not just how a design looks like, but how it feels to use. And I treat my scripts very similarly. Like, how how does the script feel to read? Does everything flow into each other quite neatly, or are there, like, jagged edges that don't feel as great? There are things that people snag on.

Aprilynne Alter [00:35:56]:
I wanna make sure that those are all smoothed out, and it feels nice to go through. Things like humor and jokes kinda, like, add to that feeling as well. And I always make sure that at the end, we leave on a high note. It's inspirational. It's encouraging. I want people leaving feeling like, wow, that was a whole lot of video. There's a lot to work on, but I can do it. And then finally, I make sure again to go back to my my group, share my script and see where they get bored or fatigued, especially in educational videos when you have so much information, it can get quite dense.

Aprilynne Alter [00:36:30]:
I never want people to get fatigued while they watch it. So how do I make sure that I alternate between, this is a lot of information, but then you don't have to focus as much because we get to, like, watch something or watch it applied. And then there's this alternation of moments of, like, dense information versus lighter information, high energy versus low energy, and making sure that that all feels good throughout the entire portion of the script.

Jay Clouse [00:36:53]:
The success of this video leads me to believe that retention was really good, at least relative to other videos on the channel. What if you reflect on it, what about the structure or the script of this video do you think helped retention?

Aprilynne Alter [00:37:13]:
There are a couple of things. I think 1 in the very beginning, introducing something as a formula. So, like, a a like, a 4 step formula or, like, 4 parts of that instantly creates this desire to stick around to the end. Because you don't just wanna hear, you know, first two parts of a formula. Like, you wanna hear all four parts of the formula. So by by being very specific with that promise of what exactly we're going to cover, how many steps, that tends to inherently be a retention improver. Beyond that as well, kind of like, again, breaking everything into sub formulas, each part tends to be a sub formula. So within each of those 4 steps, right, we tend to, use that principle more than once.

Aprilynne Alter [00:37:56]:
It's not just great for retention. It's also great in terms of accessibility of information. It helps people organize information better, which is great. Also, when I go into kind of like high energy and low energy, there's this, this alternation that tends to happen of, introduce a principle and then see that principle in action in an intro. Right? Then introduce the next principle and see it in action. And intros are inherently high retention because other people's successful intros are made to be interesting. So by breaking that down, right, you have not only, like, hey, I get to see this principle in action. I know that steps are being taken, but also I want to see the rest of this intro because this intro seems interesting, like, like, the one that I'm analyzing through the course of my video.

Aprilynne Alter [00:38:40]:
People want it to be complete. We're talking about an intro. You don't wanna just stop at I guess this goes back to formulas, but you don't wanna just stop in the middle of an intro. You wanna see how the entire thing plays out. It also helps that it's truly useful information. Right? If someone clicks you you think about the reason why someone clicks on the video, they usually click on it because they want to improve their own intro. And as long as I can show in the very beginning and kind of like front load value as much as I can, it's okay if the future stuff is in, in the video is a little bit less interesting or a little bit more boring, but still useful. As long as the the beginning points, hopefully, it can make, like, an moment happen within the first three minutes of the video to help them continue on and convince them that it's going to be worth it.

Jay Clouse [00:39:31]:
I wanna talk a little bit about editing, but only only a little bit for, you know, what people sometimes call, like, talking head videos. I find that your videos have more b roll, more on screen text, more animations than is common. So I'd love to hear just your mindset when you go into an edit on how you think about how often you change the frame or when you use on screen text or animation? Because you use a lot of it. And I'm wondering what level of intentionality you have there.

Aprilynne Alter [00:40:03]:
So there there's this crucial, a crucial step that happens between scripting and filming. And my intro video, I believe was the, was the first video where I started to do this. And it shows, which is I have an annotation phase. And so before I film, I go through my finished script and I comment out on every single line or phrase or word what I want to have happen on screen during that time. And I have that all written out, and then I kind of, convert that into at least, like, the parts that I have, want to film. I've turned that into a shot list. And between those things, the the main things that I comment out are, 1, if it's talking head footage, right? If it's going to be me on screen like this talking to you. 2, if it's texts.

Aprilynne Alter [00:40:52]:
So if want if I want, like, text, like, full screen text on screen. 3, if it's b roll, or I guess it's, like, something else that I have to film, not my talking head footage, but something else that I'm filming. And 4 animations. So, like, some sort of, like, illustration or animation that I'm going to be making. Those are typically the 4 categories of stuff that I have in my videos or at least visual stuff that I have in my videos, and I sort everything between those four things. And that makes the editing, well, first filming process so much easier because I don't like, I know exactly what to film beforehand. I can go off and film all the b roll that I need because I have a list of apps, which is just so useful in the editing process. Like, no.

Aprilynne Alter [00:41:33]:
Also, the editing process becomes a lot less of critical thinking about what needs to go here and a lot more of just execution. So I've already preloaded that work. I've already done that work beforehand of the critical thinking of what needs to go where.

Jay Clouse [00:41:47]:
So the video is done. It's shot. It's ready. Is there anything worth mentioning about the actual upload or publish process that's a part of your process that people might not, properly understand or value?

Aprilynne Alter [00:42:00]:
2 things. 1, I do like to include timestamps. I know some people don't like to include timestamps because they think that it might hurt their retention. Personally, I like including timestamps because it's an educational video. I want people to be able to jump around. Also, it's just good information for me to know, like, okay, are people jumping to a particular chapter or not? Like, do I see, like, a spike on a particular chapter or not that's just good information? I think it's worth any potential downside in retention. I haven't experienced downside and retention, but that's one thing. Second thing is ad placement.

Aprilynne Alter [00:42:34]:
I know this will only apply to the people who are monetized, but this blew my mind when I heard about it. Normally, YouTube auto places your ads, and you're like, oh, it's fine. Just auto place it. No. Instead, you go through and you put down each individual ad and do so around every 2 to 3 minutes. You might think, April Lynn, that's ridiculous. No one's gonna watch all those ads. Here's the kicker.

Aprilynne Alter [00:42:56]:
They won't see all of the ads. YouTube doesn't put an ad there just because you say this is an ad break. All you do when you, when you put, like, an ad break on your video is give YouTube the opportunity to place an ad there. And this has becomes really crucial because YouTube has their own algorithm for determining when they show an ad dependent, not just on your video, but on the viewer's entire viewing experience as a whole. So if someone watches a video right before yours and they're shown an ad close to the end of their video, and then your video comes in, they might like, like if the ad break that you have in your video is towards the beginning that YouTube auto places, they might never see that ad because in the overall scheme of it, that's not enough time. Versus if you put your ad breaks, the opportunities for ad breaks every 2 to 3 minutes, you're, they're almost guaranteed that they're gonna be shown an ad. It'll probably be in the latter half of your video or in the beginning of your video, depending on the, again, their overall viewing experience. But when I did that, I hope I hope that's making sense.

Aprilynne Alter [00:43:57]:
But when I did this, I saw that my my AdSense doubled. It Mhmm. Doubled overnight just by placing, ads manually every 2 to 3 minutes.

Jay Clouse [00:44:09]:
This is hard to know, but I'm interested to hear your working opinions on why this video was such a high performer for your channel. What what you did differently or what might have been perceived differently. Any opinions you have.

Aprilynne Alter [00:44:26]:
I do think the packaging was quite good. And to, to go back to that, concept of remarkability one last time, it it was remarkable. It was a remarkable packaging. In in this YouTube education space, people had not seen something like that before, if, you know or or in a very, very long time. And so first of all, the packaging stood out and it did a really great job at creating curiosity. The topic was also relatively novel too because there weren't a lot of other people talking about intros in general in the YouTube education space and that meta. So with all of those swatches together, it became a very clickable video. Again, the topic was relatively novel and interesting, and the packaging was remarkable and also drove curiosity.

Aprilynne Alter [00:45:14]:
So that succeeded in catching attention and getting the click. When it comes to the video itself, the intro was a big factor. It's a kind of meta, but a video about an intro, of course, people are going to judge the intro of that video so much and determine their decision of whether or not to continue watching based on how good my own intro was for that video. I might be a little bit overconfident here, but I think that, for one, the information that I provided again was relatively novel. I hadn't heard a lot of other people break down intros and specifically that way before ever. And so that was a lot of people's first time hearing about the formula or makeup of a good intro that was mind boggling to them. A lot of moments were made. And my style was very different in that video as well.

Aprilynne Alter [00:46:05]:
As you mentioned, right? It's not just talking head, but it's a lot of animations and a lot of, like, b roll filmed kind of, like, reactions. And that was relatively novel in the space as well. People don't tend to do that a lot. And finally, when it comes to the end, right, just like making sure that they end on a high note and on a, like, encouraging, inspirational note. I have that infographic that I put in there as well. Just like, you can get this for free as well. Truly just like trying to give this video as a gift to my viewers. And that's really how I view all of my videos, but so much love poured into it.

Aprilynne Alter [00:46:37]:
Like, I want this to be a phenomenal gift to my viewers to just be able to enjoy and use. And I think all of those factors together made for a banger video.

Jay Clouse [00:46:47]:
And you can make a banger video too, but that starts with a great idea. If you wanna come up with an idea that will blow up your channel, watch this interview with Patty Galloway, a YouTube strategist who has worked with clients like MrBeast and Ryan Trahan, where he breaks down exactly how to do that.