#296: Meet The Man Who Solved YouTube (With Data)—Richard from 1of10

Richard from 1of10 [00:00:00]:
that got 2 million views when he would average 35,000 views. Angelia Moore, who did I Made a Clear Sandwich, we saw that doing well and we pitched it to Mike and that became his most viewed video of all time with 25 million views. And that led to a 6 million views video. And then he did one more recently that led to another 9 million views. So that's an extra 15 million views.

Jay Clouse [00:00:21]:
That's Richard, the YouTube strategist. He's the co-founder of a software tool called One of Ten, and his team has quietly been behind the scenes of some of the biggest channels on the planet, helping them rack up over 2 billion views. And it's not luck. Richard and his team obsess over the data.

Richard from 1of10 [00:00:39]:
We went through over 300,000 outliers to see, like, what makes a video go viral.

Jay Clouse [00:00:45]:
And in this video, he shares it all step by step.

Richard from 1of10 [00:00:49]:
Basically, there are 4 phases of ideation: audience research, remix, validation.

Jay Clouse [00:00:54]:
You'll even learn how you can get more views out of some of your old videos.

Richard from 1of10 [00:00:58]:
Callaway, that video that was stuck in like 10,000, 20,000 views. Became a 150,000 views video. So it's never too late.

Jay Clouse [00:01:06]:
So strap in, grab a notebook. It's time to learn.

Richard from 1of10 [00:01:09]:
Basically, me and my team, we, we try to break down everything. Why does a video go viral? And in the end, like 80-85% of the reason why a video blows up basically is because of the idea, title, and thumbnail, right? Basically, there are 4 phases of ideation, which we call ARRV. Which is audience, research, remix, and validation. So first things first is audience. Audience, basically as a creator, your goal is to understand exactly who is watching you, right? Like what are their goals? What are their pain points? Basically why they're watching you. And like that, you'll be able to maximize your views for your audience without going too broad. I'll give an example. Let's say Film Booth, popular YouTube educator, had hundreds of thousands of subscribers and millions of views.

Richard from 1of10 [00:02:02]:
But the problem was he was going too broad. He was reaching video editors and beginners when as an educator, his offer was more tailored to business people and people more advanced in the YouTube space. So what did he do? He just completely stopped uploading on that big channel and went on a much smaller one at the time, which had 10,000 subscribers, but only focused on the avatar of his audience, which were business people or professionals, people in the education space. And that led to him make— going from $100,000 per month to $400,000 per month. And so that shows really the importance of who's your audience.

Jay Clouse [00:02:45]:
This comes up in our community from time to time. People realize that, hey, there's actually a segment of my audience that I want to serve more or focus on. But they're only a segment of my current channel. The hope is they can kind of pivot that channel towards that audience over time because they're afraid of doing this thing Ed did of losing hundreds of thousands of subscribers that they've worked to build. So when does it make sense in your mind for somebody to rip the Band-Aid and start a second or a new channel?

Richard from 1of10 [00:03:16]:
That's a really tough question because it depends, but In the end, if you've been uploading for a while, if you've been optimizing for weeks and months trying to get that market share of audience that you want, then yeah, maybe it's worth to just create a new channel. 'Cause I've seen a lot of channels where, well, some they've done paid ads, which is really bad. Some they will have gotten one video that went mega viral but brought in the wrong audience. And then they've tried for months and even years to try to get out of it and they didn't succeed. When they could have started a new channel. And so I would say to rip the bandaid sooner than later from my experience, from what I've seen out there.

Jay Clouse [00:04:00]:
Can you expand on what happens when somebody has a video that goes really viral, but it's the wrong audience and why that's problematic?

Richard from 1of10 [00:04:07]:
Yeah, so the thing is it'll go viral and let's say you're aiming, I don't know, for 35-year-old audience, but then that video brought in a bunch of 15-year-olds. The thing is, your next videos that are tailored to the 35-year-olds will be shown on the YouTube homepage of those 15-year-olds, and those will not click. And YouTube will see that as a signal that, hey, it's actually a bad video. It's not getting those clicks. People are not watching until the end. AVD is low, CTR is low, everything's low. So then why am I going to push this video? But then if you do that repeatedly by showing to those 15-year-olds, which YouTube thinks is your audience, then it's a loop downwards basically.

Jay Clouse [00:04:51]:
So this obviously worked for Ed. He pulled the trigger, started a second channel, literally quadrupled his income per month.

Richard from 1of10 [00:04:59]:
Yeah, exactly. So focus all in on that second channel. But really, as you can see with the video titles, it's really just focused to business people. And professionals. It made sense with his offer, a good product market fit. And that's what's important for your audience basically, especially in the education space, is to always remember who's your audience, who you're targeting, what is the pain point you're trying to find for them, to solve for them, and then you just rinse repeat. Okay, so here is phase 2, which is research. So here your goal is to find outliers on YouTube and see which one have a good format and good interest topics, which I'm gonna get to.

Richard from 1of10 [00:05:41]:
But first, what is exactly an outlier? So if you think about a channel that normally gets 100,000 views, but one gets a million, that's a 10x outlier. And the reason those outliers do well is because of ideas, title, thumbnails. So here, for example, on your channel, Jay, this had 200,000 views 2 years ago. Well, that's when at that time you were averaging 20,000. So then that's a 10x outlier here. And then here is a 4.5 million. That's 150x versus the videos around it, versus the average of the videos around that video. You need to inspire from those videos that have performed well in the past.

Richard from 1of10 [00:06:21]:
They are data-backed and see why they did well. And then after phase 3, where you're remixing into your own style. So again, with my team, we're broken down into 5 methods of research. Of finding those outliers. So you have inside your channel, inside your niche, adjacent niche, outside your niche, and external, which I'm going to explain one by one. Now that you know what's an outlier, for those who didn't know, there are two things when you're looking at those outliers that are important to keep in mind. One is the format. The format is what determines the structure of the video and gives context to the topic.

Richard from 1of10 [00:06:59]:
And the interest topic is basically, you could see that as something that gets a lot of views inside a niche. Let me give a clear example. Let's say here, the format is I tried every, but then the interest topic, so something that gets a lot of views inside your niche, changes every time from airline to train to Airbnb. And then you can see it the other way around where interest topic here is water parks., but then the format is changed every time, right? From, I tried 5 levels of water park, 24-hour overnight water park, and so on.

Jay Clouse [00:07:35]:
So you're saying when I'm looking at these different videos, I'm searching for outliers that I can model my future videos after. And each of these outliers have within them these two aspects for me to kind of play with these levers. You have the interest topic and the format. I need to understand that both of these things can be a lever towards being an outlier and I can mess with either one.

Richard from 1of10 [00:07:58]:
Exactly. Because there's a reason those, those did well. Like I tried 5 levels of waterpark in the entertainment niche will do well because there's progression, there's natural progression. You want to see from the lowest to the biggest waterparks how cool it is. And, and it's a— and waterpark does well because it's so broadly appealing, for example., but those you might not have thought of with a blank sheet of paper, but by researching around, you get to see what has worked and then that inspires you into your own niche. This is in the entertainment niche, but it works in the educational niche as well. So let's start with method 1, inside channel. When I joined this creator, he used to do all kinds of skills type videos.

Richard from 1of10 [00:08:49]:
Why I proposed I tested the world's 5 deadliest weapons, which led to a 2x outlier at 10 million views, was because of the phases I said. So phase 1, you're trying to understand his audience. So I asked him like, who recognized him on the streets? Who are the people commenting? And basically they were like teenage boys in the end. That was phase 1. Then phase 2 is seeing what has worked in the past and see if there are ways to double down. And so here I would see the interest topics of karambit knife or nunchucks or butterfly knife, all weapon types videos, right? And I also saw on the channel that he would try, like, I tested, I don't know, 126 skills. This is what I learned. And those would get millions of views as well.

Richard from 1of10 [00:09:45]:
So I just combined it both, combined a few weapons inside one video, natural progression, and that led to that 10 million views video.

Jay Clouse [00:09:54]:
I see. So the format is I tested and the interest topic in his case was some sort of deadly or intense weapon.

Richard from 1of10 [00:10:06]:
Yeah, exactly. Because karambit knife, nunchucks, butterfly knife, they all had like similar characteristics, right? Like weapons types content. So I was like, ah, this could be good if to combine it all with sword and other types of weapon in there. And turned out it worked out quite well. And then that led to doubling down even more inside the channel, turning weapons into ancient weapons. And that led to a 6 million views video. And then he did one more recently, like years after that first video. And again, with ancient weapons.

Richard from 1of10 [00:10:38]:
And that led to another 9 million views. So that's an extra 15 million views because we understood who is the audience, what is the format that worked, and what's the interest topic to play with.

Jay Clouse [00:10:49]:
It's so interesting that he posted essentially the same video with a slightly different title, like he didn't put a number on it. It wasn't the 5 deadliest, but it's literally everything else is the same, different thumbnail. But that video there had 50% more views than the previous version.

Richard from 1of10 [00:11:07]:
Yeah, exactly. Because that's maybe like 2 years apart, those 2. And so there's a new audience that came in, right? But still in the same content strategy where it would bring in the right audience. So then with those new viewers that he kept building over time, it made them interested in this type of content. So creators that end up to the next level, don't only double down, they triple down, they quadruple down. So like here, for example, with HankTime, he did I melted every gum that got 11 million views. But, and so the I melted every is the format that worked. And then the interest topic changes every time.

Richard from 1of10 [00:11:52]:
Same for I cooked 100 years of school lunch that gets 20 million views. So you take the format of I cooked 100 Years of, and then just change the interest topic every time. So if you think about it, had these two not done the double down, triple down, quadruple down, they would have lost on literally tens of millions of views. So it's super important for any creator listening that once you have a format that works and that makes sense with your audience to really try to think, okay, what are different interest topics that would make sense for that format that worked well?

Jay Clouse [00:12:27]:
Guilty. I've definitely had successful videos. I've been like, okay, well, I covered that and moved on.

Richard from 1of10 [00:12:32]:
Exactly. All right. Method 2 is inside your niche. Simple. You look inside your niche and you see what format is working across your competitors or other YouTubers in the space inside your niche. And you see if you can change the interest topic for you. For example, here in the gardening niche, you have this format of buried something and then this happened. So buried common kitchen scraps and then this happened.

Richard from 1of10 [00:13:02]:
But then you change the interest topic of kitchen scraps to bananas or to forests in the ashes. And then this happened. Or you can see more educational. 6 years of trading knowledge in 20 minutes can lead to 27 years of trading knowledge. Like everyone has different ways that they've they've grown as a trader, and so, or as a crypto trader even. And so that's how you're thinking of a format, but then remixing into your own style. Here's more in the gaming niche where we look at the other way around where you have the interest topic of, let's say, cure brain rot or grow a garden, but then you change the format every time based on the game. Method 3 is adjacent niche.

Richard from 1of10 [00:13:47]:
Your goal here is to find channels that are parallel to yours. So like similar in characteristics. Let me explain with a few examples. For example, here again, 30 years of business knowledge is in 2 hours, 26 minutes. That got 15 million views, which went insane and got replicated all around. Why? Because it makes sense. It attracts the audience that he's looking for. People are trying to learn, they're trying to make money.

Richard from 1of10 [00:14:19]:
And so you in the make money niche, you have investing knowledge, you have sales knowledge that's totally transferable to take that format, but then remix it into your own style. Same in the YouTube space, YouTube education space, you could see that as parallel. Why? Well, one, you're trying to grow money. Well, here you're trying to grow views. And so it's very parallel. And maybe there are things in the money-making space that would make sense for the YouTube space. Maybe a little less obvious, you have video editing into music production. Again, at first you might not think you could inspire from one or the other, but when you think about it, it makes sense.

Richard from 1of10 [00:15:07]:
Both have similar characteristics in the sense that Both you're working on the computer, working on the timeline, basically trying to turn raw assets into a finished product. So when you see 5 different editors on— so I hired 5 different editors on Fiverr and here's the result. That can become paid for mixers to mix the same song and here's the result. And so that's one way. Another more concrete way, basically that's one of our consulting clients in the trading niche. We again turned the YouTube into trading, growing views, growing money. So this is boring, but you'll hit 1,000 subscribers fast on the left. We took that format, brought it to this scalping strategy is boring, but made me a profitable trader.

Richard from 1of10 [00:15:57]:
And that led him to getting 300,000 views and a 3x outlier. And so that's, that's one way to— those are ways to, to, to transfer from one to the other using adjacent niches. And then we have method 4, which is an outside niche. Basically, you, at this point, you're getting inspired by literally any video out there. You're trying to see if there's a format that will work for you. Here's another example with a client of ours is I Tried Every Legal Performance Enhancer from Will Tennyson got 7 million views. Well, that was actually inspired by the entertainment niche, I Tried Every Legal Addiction., which had gotten 9 million views. And so by seeing that, and funnily enough, that also led to all kinds of niches taking inspiration from those since they've seen it do well, they just replicated it for them.

Richard from 1of10 [00:16:54]:
It worked in the gaming niche. I tried every legal Fortnite cheat, or it worked in the beauty niche. I tried every legal beauty enhancement. And even in the criminal niche, I tried every legal criminal activity.

Jay Clouse [00:17:06]:
What does that even mean? Every legal criminal activity? I guess that's why I clicked. I guess that's why we click.

Richard from 1of10 [00:17:16]:
It's a good open loop. Exactly. Or here's another example with a client of ours, Dr. Mike Diamond. So the Japanese rule to staying lean got 500,000 views, and that was actually inspired by two videos, two outliers. So one, the Chinese secret to saving money revealed. So we took that format, the Chinese secret, but transform it into the Japanese rule. And then at the bottom, why is it so easy to be thin in Japan? Got 24 million views.

Richard from 1of10 [00:17:49]:
So the thin in Japan, being thin interest topic, combined it both became the Japanese rule to staying lean. So what I said earlier about understanding why an outlier does well here, if you think about it, most people, most, most, most of the viewers would think that a Japanese person is thin. So when a person from his audience in the fitness niche sees that title, they're like, oh, that there's already social proof in his head that Japanese people are thin. Maybe there's information that he doesn't know on how to be lean. And so he clicks to, to watch and that gets 500,000 views. And to show how data back also works across all niches, So we saw that doing well for one client and then we transferred it into another channel in the parenting niche. And it led to the Japanese rule to obedient children, which got 700,000 views and 4x outlier. And again, if you think about it, most people would think that a Japanese child is disciplined in general.

Richard from 1of10 [00:18:58]:
And so when a parent sees that title, they're like, oh, maybe there's a way to better raise my child that I've never heard of.

Jay Clouse [00:19:05]:
So I'm going to click to, to, to, to see what, what can I learn. But even, uh, the idea of the Japanese rule, I could probably change that to really any culture or country that is not the predominant culture or country that your videos are typically for. Because if my audience was Japanese viewers, they'd probably be like, I already know this rule. But an American audience is probably like, oh, this is like some, some secret of a different culture that I don't understand. So this, even this format could.

Richard from 1of10 [00:19:35]:
Have dozens, hundreds of variants, I suppose. No, yeah, exactly. Actually, we saw that recently, like check this out. So we did that and then we saw other like faceless channels taking, uh, why Japanese rule did well and they just did the Korean method to calm tantrums in 60 seconds and that led to 1.9 million views. And then they went with the French rule as well and that got to 360,000 views. So it is quite interesting how once a format works, it can be, like you said, you change the interest topic inside of why it did well and find, try to find interesting way. And yeah, I just want to make it clear that in the outside niche, you can literally transform one format into the other. So like 30 years of business knowledge in 2 hours 26 minutes can become 9 years of photography knowledge or to music., or even in the gaming niche, 10 years of aiming knowledge at 500,000 views.

Richard from 1of10 [00:20:35]:
And from tennis here to filmmaking, and even as niche as 9 years of camera setting knowledge in 29 minutes. And so that got 22 million views when he would average 35,000 views. So as you guys can see, you can literally take any niche and then just transfer it into yours. Wow. And then we have method 5. Yes, exactly. External, which is outside YouTube. So from movies, TV shows, books.

Richard from 1of10 [00:21:05]:
For example, here you've got America's Got Talent that became Discord's Got Talent, or a talk show becoming the Hot Ones, or cooking shows with the Babish world. And even like the mobile app Tinder becoming a popular format for Jubilee, Sidemen, and hundreds of channels out there.

Jay Clouse [00:21:22]:
That's something that I haven't thought about or heard talked about very much at all is like, can you take formats from legacy media or even just other forms of entertainment and bring them into a YouTube context?

Richard from 1of10 [00:21:35]:
I think that's really interesting. Yeah, because the concept of data back works out there, right? Those shows did well, got millions of views on, on TV. Those mobile apps got their, their hands on everywhere. So you try to understand why outside of YouTube those things did well and see if there's a way to repurpose into, into yours.

Jay Clouse [00:21:58]:
We'll hear more about Richard's ideation process after this quick break. And now back to Richard. Okay, so we've looked at our audience, we've found 5 ways of doing research.

Richard from 1of10 [00:22:11]:
What comes next in your process? Yeah, it's remixing. So you have the format, the interest topic, and you can also add a viral vector, which I'm going to explain, which leads to your viral idea. So the 3 ways of turning those ideas, those formats is one is escalation. You can go from, let's say, a gym membership that's $30K per year to ones that's $10K per month that led to a 7 million views video to a 10 million one. Or you have that Ryan series going 1 week, 30 days, even 50 days with a different interest topic. Or number 2, you can go the other way around. You see a format that's work, maybe this is a way to inverse it. Here you have the world's largest becomes the world's smallest Nerf gun.

Richard from 1of10 [00:22:56]:
48 million views becomes 74 million views, 8 years later. And finally, you can replace interest topic for the format that you see working, which we've been talking here. And so those three combined plus the viral vector. So just a reminder, interest topic is something that gets a lot of views inside your niche. Well, viral vector is something that gets a lot of views outside your niche. And so for example, Lamborghini works across niches. Squid Game at the time when it was super popular, it would work in gaming, food, literally any niche possible, Squid Game would go viral. Japanese across the board works well.

Richard from 1of10 [00:23:37]:
We saw with parenting, fitness, DIY, fast food, and even first class. So I want to give a concrete example. I interviewed Dantik and he told me how he got his most viewed video. Basically, he saw the format of I tried every working well for Ryan here. And then he took the viral vector of first class. He knew that that worked across YouTube. And then combined with the interest topic of his channel around gaming, combined it all together, which led to I Tried Gaming in Every Airplane Seat, which became a 39, over 39 million views video. But here's another example with again, Mike Shake, that I'm gonna explain.

Richard from 1of10 [00:24:23]:
Basically the viral format, viral vector here is invisible. Here you have this video, this outlier that got 23 million views, making transparent wood. We have here Angelia Moore, who did I Made a Clear Sandwich, was a huge outlier for her at the time because she saw making transparent wood on oneoften.com, and that became a huge outlier for her. So we saw that doing well across YouTube, the invisible part, and we pitched it to Mike, and that became I Built a Transparent Katana, which became his most viewed video of all time with 25 million views. So that's like how we think around for the first 3 phases.

Jay Clouse [00:24:59]:
I really like these ideas for remixing: escalation, inverting, replacing. Specifically, escalation and inversion are things I haven't thought about, which I think could be really, really interesting. You know, we were showing that example of Simon Squibb of X years of knowledge in this many minutes. You'd try to inverse that and say like 30 years of business knowledge in 5 minutes. You know, like how do you make that really small? It's already kind of crazy to say 30 years in 46 minutes or whatever it was. But going smaller, I think people would be like, okay, prove it.

Richard from 1of10 [00:25:34]:
Yeah. Or like 30 years of business mistakes instead of knowledge, for example. So you're like inverting, okay, that was the pros. What were the cons of running 30 years of business knowledge of business? So yeah, it's like trying to see the opposite of it and see if it makes sense for, for your audience. Finally, we have phase 4 of ideation, which is the validation part. So we have a checklist that we'd like to go through, like, is it feasible? How unique is the idea? Is the packaging good for title and thumbnail, which we're going to get to? Seasonality, for example, you might want to do ideas around fitness if you're a vlogger or something more in at the beginning of the year versus the end of the year. You should try to always experiment 1 in 4 uploads. What does that mean? So basically 3 videos that you know are formats that work well, that have worked well in the past for you.

Richard from 1of10 [00:26:27]:
So inside your channel, you just try to keep doubling down on the formats that have worked well, just changing the interest topics. And then one that is like a totally new experiment just to see what happens, because that new experiment then becomes a new format when one of them breaks out. So it's always good to continuously experiment, which I've seen a lot of YouTubers not do. They'll just rinse and repeat what they know work, and that just leads to a channel going down over time. So you always need to try to keep fresh and try to basically find more unique angles. And then we'll also have like, when you have a bunch of ideas, what is the content for it? What is the video duration for it? And so maybe I can talk a bit about a report we did. Basically using our software, we went through over 300,000 outliers on one of 10. That's worth over 60 billion views, 50,000 channels to see like what makes a video become an outlier? What makes a video go viral? And as you guys can see, this is pretty interesting.

Richard from 1of10 [00:27:35]:
Okay, at the beginning, if you do too short your videos, they're competing with like Shorts, they're competing against other shorter videos, well, that in general, as a median views, it'll lead to lower views. You can see maybe the sweet spot is between 20, 25 minutes, 20 to 30 minutes. That's basically the time it takes to finish lunch or to quickly over a break to watch something. And so that in general will lead to higher median views across all niches. But then what's interesting is when you go over 80 minutes, so the 1-hour-plus videos, it picks up, it picks back up. And that's because TV is being pushed a lot by YouTube. Because if you think about it, it makes sense. In the end, they make more money with longer videos because people are staying more.

Richard from 1of10 [00:28:30]:
On TV, there's less distraction. So when you're on mobile, you get notifications from friends, family, there's like 100 apps that you can just switch to. Whereas when you're watching on TV, Well, there's really just one thing that, that you're doing. So it's a win-win for everyone if it's being pushed to TV, which is why one of the reasons why longer videos are, are getting more views in the end, as you guys can see here.

Jay Clouse [00:28:55]:
So interesting. And there's a lot about podcasting right now. A lot of podcasters are doing longer and longer interviews. So I'm looking at the middle of this curve from a podcaster's lens and saying, okay, from about 2 hours up until almost 3 hours. That's like the big hump, 2 to 3 hours. And then there's this far end, which is, gosh, 4 hours.

Richard from 1of10 [00:29:26]:
Wild. Yeah. But I will say the sample size goes down as, as, as it goes up here. But also you need to think that there's not that many videos at those lengths that will be high quality, let's say. So if you're one of the ones inside your niche that do a very long video that is high quality, there's more chances that that gets pushed because maybe it's less, it's basically much less competitive. And here you can see we looked into per niches, basically the video duration per niche. And we could see where it peaks inside each niche. And it kind of makes sense when you think about it.

Richard from 1of10 [00:30:07]:
Like for tech, for example, you have 28 minutes versus vlog being 14. 28, you want them to be longer because people are watching for those tech reviews. They want the in-depth review of a phone that just came out. Same for engineering and DIY at 26 minutes here. Versus 14, where that's more of a casual entertainment that's bingeable. Same for, for gaming around 21 minutes. And so it's interesting to see. And that doesn't mean you have to do exactly 21-minute videos, but just means that maybe there's a higher probability of success if you go around that area instead of shorter.

Richard from 1of10 [00:30:48]:
In the end, you try to go for longer in the end.

Jay Clouse [00:30:51]:
Very interesting. I love this data. I love seeing some of these things from your study.

Richard from 1of10 [00:30:54]:
That's the goal, to help all of you guys use that report and try to grow on YouTube. Finally, on that checklist, we have the TAV, the total addressable viewership, because you can have a format that works, but how do you know which interest topic to choose as your next upload? So that's where you try to think which one's the— which interest topic will maximize views while not going too broad. So here, for example, in the entertainment niche, I melted every gum is much more unique, much more remarkable than I mixed every fruit, which sounds a bit more normal. Or here, for example, I cooked 100 years of school lunch is much more relatable to a broader general audience than, well, hopefully than jail food and hospital food.

Jay Clouse [00:31:46]:
Okay, very interesting. I mean, this, It's always good to be reminded that so much of what makes a video successful comes down to the idea and the packaging. And so this covered everything around really kind of both idea and packaging. The big question for me still is like, how do I make this process something I can easily do in whatever time I'm able to allocate? And obviously 1 of 10 was built to make that easier. So could you show us how to use 1 of 10 to do this research process?

Richard from 1of10 [00:32:21]:
Yeah, of course. So you can just click random, which I quite like.

Jay Clouse [00:32:26]:
Is there a threshold on how many views is being pulled in when I just hit random?

Richard from 1of10 [00:32:29]:
How does random pull videos in? Random will take any video at all that was an outlier. But then what we do is you can use the filters. And one trick people can use actually is look at let's say sub 50,000 subscribers, under 50K that got 100K views. And that will probably be at least a 2x outlier. And you look at the last 3 months and then like that you're able to see what format has worked well for a smaller channel. And maybe that gives you ideas that you would not have thought of. But it's also fresh because if a small channel was able to blow up, then there's a reason that blew up and maybe there's a way for you to transform it for you. For example, let's say I have a data analysis channel and I see 10 brain boosting activities to make your baby a genius.

Richard from 1of10 [00:33:23]:
That's totally outside your niche. But let's see what comes up. It can become 10 networking tips to propel your data analysis journey. There you go. That's one way or 10 resume hacks that will get you a data analysis job. Basically, the goal of 1 of 10 is that you keep getting inspired by bouncing around and remixing those ideas that have done well for that niche.

Jay Clouse [00:33:48]:
That's cool. So I can find whenever I hit random or I set my filters here and it pops up these ideas. Now, besides just being able to save them and use them as my own inspiration, you add a button there that basically remixes that based on my channel.

Richard from 1of10 [00:34:01]:
Yeah, exactly. It's not always intuitive how to transform a format from a totally different niche into yours. So we try to make it as easy as possible for creators to save time. And basically you can, I don't know, generate here Canada tax changes for 2026, what you must know before the new year, then becomes for a data analysis channel that is inside your community. And that becomes data trends for 2026 you need to understand. That's maybe a new idea that you would not have thought of, or what every data analyst must know about 2026 jobs.

Jay Clouse [00:34:35]:
Very cool. And you guys have now title and thumbnail generators inside of One of Ten also.

Richard from 1of10 [00:34:40]:
So can you show us how those work? But yeah, there's no point in having a great idea if there's no good packaging. So let's talk about titles and thumbnails. So what I learned from Jake Thomas, I've learned that there are 3 core drivers of human attention: fear, curiosity, and desire. Like my team and I, we tried to see if there were like other ways, but really we quite like this. And basically your goal as a creator is to try to find the highest, find the title that will create the highest level of intensity for any of these three. So like for example, curiosity. Your goal here is to create a curiosity gap, make your viewer wonder to force them to click for the answer. For example, how does Bluetooth even exist.

Richard from 1of10 [00:35:28]:
You read that everyone has Bluetooth on their phones, headphones, and you wonder, oh, how does it actually work? And a more concrete example is the one which I work with, with Mike Shake, How Dangerous Is a Whip? at 8 million views video. As you guys can see on the right, How Dangerous Is a Whip? How Powerful Is a Whip? How Deadly Is a Whip? All of these could have been a title. How Dangerous Is a Whip? Is the title we went because it's the most relatable and the one that leads to the highest intensity for curiosity. Because when you think about it, everyone watching, you know what's a whip, you've seen whips on TVs and movies, but 99% of people have never used a whip. So when they see that title, they're intrigued right away. Then we've got desire. So here you want to sell the result so that the viewer is interested in the process. So for example, Hire grew from 0 to 100K subscribers in 5 months.

Richard from 1of10 [00:36:26]:
You see that title, you want that outcome, you want that result, so you click to know the process to get to it. And then you have fear. So here your target viewers are clicking because they want to avoid threats or ease their concerns. So like here on the right, my worst financial mistake, you see that from a financial expert, so you click to avoid those financial mistakes. So those are the 3 ways and your goal is to get as high level of intensity as possible. We have a bunch of best practices, like ideas, like we try to aim for 50 characters, try to see if the hook would be a good hook for the title you're thinking about. And why 50 characters? Again, back to the 1 of 10 report. As we've seen across over 200,000 outliers, if you put more words, basically the median views go down across the board.

Richard from 1of10 [00:37:25]:
Wow. 5 words, 6 words will be much better than 10 to 15. Wow. And same for characters. I always said 50, and the report really confirms it. Like if you go from 30 characters to 70 characters, that's 60%. Less views. So obviously 30 characters is really low, but if you're, but you can see like from 50 and downwards, it really drastically goes down in terms of median views per video.

Richard from 1of10 [00:37:57]:
Very cool. Basically in the title phase, you're trying to find as many angles as possible and try to figure out which one will hit one of those core drivers of human attention. And there are 3 ways to go about it. You can go from question to a strong statement or strong statement to a question. Or number 2, you can try to change the words in a title that you have in mind from can be I tested every to I tried every, or like $1 versus $1,000 can become level 1 to level 1,000. And number 3, you can also try to add a power word. Like any of the 4 videos you see on the right would not have gotten that many views had there not been those like emotional triggers, like extremely, mind-blowing, subtle, brutal. And one way that we made it easy to get all those title angles is actually with the 1of10 title generator, which I can show here.

Richard from 1of10 [00:38:48]:
So this one is one of my favorite features on 1of10. Basically what we said, one is changing a strong statement into a question. So we can try the video we did earlier. So top data trends for data Analysts in 2026. Let's say that's the idea. So you can input either a title or you can put in idea, the idea, the concept of the video. We look at the channel style that you do your titles, and then we try to remix it using the concept you put in. Or we looked at the top outliers on 1 of 10 and see if there's one that makes sense with the concept that you have.

Richard from 1of10 [00:39:29]:
So, well, this one's pretty good. 5 data trends that will define 2026. What you can then do, which is really cool, is the 3 methods of changing that title. Then we can go with turn into a question. So not all of these will be good, but that's where you judge which one you think will lead to the most click for the audience you're targeting. But that's turning a statement to a question. You can do it vice versa. Number 2 is just changing the words.

Richard from 1of10 [00:39:57]:
But then number 3 is add emotional trigger, our word, and make it capitalized so we all see it here. Now it becomes 5 shocking data trends that will define 2026. Just right there, this makes it a lot more appealing than just 5 data trends. Now it's 5 shocking. Obviously it doesn't need to be all caps, but, or 5, or the future, like the word future hits, the word powerful, Hits critical is pretty good as well. So you're trying to find different ways of using those power words.

Jay Clouse [00:40:34]:
Very cool. I didn't know we could add like this second instruction in the title generator here.

Richard from 1of10 [00:40:40]:
That's very useful. And here's a proof of why changing titles is so important basically, and finding multiple variations of a title. For example, this channel here created, I did, I built a tool to predict how much money I'll make. He turned it into I've created a monster and that led to a video stuck at 10,000 views. You see the immediate change and it's actually now at 88,000 views. Or this one, which is a creator we've worked from zero, actually Calloway. We basically turned the dopamine ladder trick that gets viewers addicted to your videos, turned it into how to become a storytelling genius.. And that video that was stuck in like 10, 20,000 views, only a title, that's just a title change, became a 150,000 views video.

Richard from 1of10 [00:41:32]:
Always try to understand why things do well, right? Here, basically we changed the angle of towards dopamine, which is an interesting topic that went viral a bit everywhere. But we put the focus on storytelling, which we knew, work well in the past, had 2 million views. One of them had 2 million views with the storytelling angle. So we transform it here, but we didn't keep the dopamine ladders in the title to keep the intrigue. And so combining all that together led to an explosion in views.

Jay Clouse [00:42:07]:
Okay, so now that we've covered research and titles, the obvious next step is thumbnails. So what are the most important aspects for us to understand about thumbnails?

Richard from 1of10 [00:42:18]:
Yes. So when you're looking at thumbnails from videos that have performed well, you're trying to understand why they did well. And there are two things you're trying to understand. One is what is the composition? And two, what are the elements that are part of that composition? See why they did well and see if there's a way to remix into your, for your own channel. All right. So here you're trying to find a thumbnail, right? For Mike, with who we worked, basically did this video, "Can You Stop a Bullet with an Arrow?" a couple months prior. But what we see in the composition is like Mike, the weapon, and the object getting crushed. And so that was transferred into the whip video, Mike, whip, and phone getting destroyed.

Richard from 1of10 [00:43:04]:
And fun fact, I still remember like I was thinking of all kinds of objects. It could have been a brick, a tree, a car, a house that's getting destroyed. But why I chose a phone was because everyone has a phone, everyone understands how hard it is, everyone has dropped the phone, so you know how solid it is. And so seeing it destroyed like that entices you to click more. And so seeing that composition, but then just changing the elements in it, then became a big staple on the channel. And that actually led to other channels taking that composition and then transforming into their own style for their own niches. And you have also the next level is what I call, which is external. Basically, here's an example of a scene in an anime called Naruto, where I remember the intensity of it and that I wanted to transfer it for a thumbnail for a client.

Richard from 1of10 [00:44:08]:
And that led to this character getting executed or this guy going through a hard workout. Basically, you're able to transfer literally from anything, just like ideas from anywhere and see if you can replicate it to create the same level of intensity. And you can see it here as well. This movie poster became a 9 million views video Once remixed, or this one became 3.7 million views for Dotford. That's how you're taking inspiration from literally anything and then taking that data and transforming for your own thumbnail. And just like ideas and titles, we have a bunch of best practices for thumbnails. Like we try to aim for 3 main elements. We like to have it as fresh and new as possible as well, while taking inspiration of different compositions all around.

Richard from 1of10 [00:45:04]:
The squint test, bottom right, you try to not have any text there since there's the timestamp. Little things like that adds more probability that a person will click on that video. Just like titles, you always want to try to find different thumbnails, test them, and see what works. For example, Here is a video of me interviewing Will Tennyson. It was stuck at literally 3,000 views for the longest time. But then we kept changing titles, thumbnails, and then the guy was so bullish on the video. And then that led to over half a million views video. Or here you have the worst enemy of Tesla becoming why Apple and Tesla are scared of this genius.

Richard from 1of10 [00:45:49]:
You see the title thumbnail change, super simple.. And that's literally the only change we did on that channel 180 days after upload. So after 6 months, so it's never too late. So doing so led to an extra 2 million views video. And so you're really missing out if you're not trying to find like as many thumbnail concepts as possible. And that's also why we built the thumbnail generator, which I can show now.

Jay Clouse [00:46:17]:
While you're loading that up, Is it really never too late to make these changes? Like we've had some videos in the back catalog that I just look at and it's like, wow, the, the click-through rate on this is so far below what is typical. I worry that it'll even get impressions to test new packaging changes. Are there ever times where you think it's just too far gone?

Richard from 1of10 [00:46:37]:
No. Yeah, it's true. So first there's, we look at if the video had like a good retention, right? If it didn't have a good retention, then there's no point. What I mean by good retention is not again the number, but it's more like, was it a flat line? Was it like, was it really lower than most other videos of the same time length? Now, if after at some point you've tried a lot, then it's time to move on onto new videos for sure. All right, let's see how this thumbnail generator works. Basically, we built this thumbnail generator where again, you can put in your channel, you can either put your title or a thumbnail concepts or a video idea., and you put it in and then you'll get your thumbnail generated in literally 1 to 2 minutes maximum. It works in literally any niche and it'll take the context of your back catalog, understand the visual style, and then transform it into your next thumbnail. Like we generated this for some in your community.

Richard from 1of10 [00:47:40]:
You can put it as much information as possible and it'll lead to create to creating the thumbnail you have in mind. What's really cool is that you can also add in your face to be sure it creates, it takes your face, but if not, normally it'll take from your back catalog. But another thing is you can add objects or assets that you normally use inside your channel and you add it in and it'll understand that. But also what's cool is you can do like the most random sketch on a piece of paper and it'll create a thumbnail from what it understands on, on the sketch.

Jay Clouse [00:48:16]:
So what I like about this is from a workflow perspective, what you can do is be on the homepage, click random, find an outlier that you think is interesting, remix that outlier from your channel on that, take that idea over to the title generator and play around and find a title that you like the most, and then drop that title in the thumbnail generator here. And you have the whole package. Exactly. Richard, thanks for sharing so much with us here and showing us how One of Ten can make this research process a lot easier. If folks watching this want to try One of Ten, where should they go?

Richard from 1of10 [00:48:50]:
If you want to try it out, we actually have a promo on oneoften.com where it's $1 for the first month for you to try it out. You can try the title generator, thumbnail generator, outlier search, everything. And you'll see that you'll be saving money and time. And if you want more help on a one-on-one basis consulting, we currently have a 30% off where people can again go in the link below to, to book a call with us.

Jay Clouse [00:49:19]:
We'll see if we're a match to, to work with you. Cool. I'll make sure we have those links at the top of the description.

Richard from 1of10 [00:49:25]:
Richard, thanks for stopping by.