This guest post is by David Edwards of A Sitting Duck.
I’ve just passed three years on YouTube and I’m really happy with what I’ve achieved so far.
But over the last few months I’ve become mates with a guy who owns one of the fastest growing channels in the UK—and he started just over a year ago. Dai Ling Ping has gone from zero to over 25,000 subscribers! It’s awesome for an individual to achieve this.
I’m blown away by how quickly his brand is growing and even though you may not be into video games, you will still be able to take some notes from his story and start something of your own. Get your pen and paper ready, here’s what Dai has done!
1. He uploads five videos a week
Most top YouTubers usually produce one video a week. I know that, within the animation industry, the top guys try to get one video live every calendar month, as their work is more time-consuming. But Dai is cranking them out. He’s not dwelling on the fact that some videos get a few hundred views and others are getting thousands, he just keeps on going!
2. He is part of something big
What ever subject you choose, you should always think of yourself as being part of something much bigger than you. For instance, Dai got involved with the Machinima network, which has a database of millions of gamers all over the world. If they like one of Dai’s videos, they can get it in front of hundreds of thousands of people very quickly.
3. He leverages his most popular video
Dai has a video titled “My House”—it even ranks top on the search engines, having racked up over 500,000 views. And his other videos are feeding off the success of this one.
On YouTube, you have two spaces beneath the video to promote your other works. Also, YouTube will line your other videos above and on the right hand side of the displayed video automatically. So, if you have a popular video, be sure to add others—don’t give those valuable spaces away to other YouTubers.
4. He is always looking for the next big thing
Because he’s organized with making videos, if something breaks out on the news, Dai can create a video on that topic within a few hours, and send it straight to his subscribers. Sometimes his videos rank next to the original news story on YouTube!
5. He is original
Many people are getting a bit stuck online now because they don’t know what information to read and what to do.
By keeping it simple, cranking out funny videos and illustrations, and chatting with his fans in the comments, Dai has built something that is growing faster than he could ever control. Because he invented the Dai Ling Ping character, he will eventually be able to make some big profits from original merchandise sales.
You may find some of Dai’s videos offensive, due to bad language. But if I was half as productive as Dai I would be sitting on a lot more subscribers today! Comedian Ricky Gervais once said “always produce more than you hope” and in the online market that has never been more true!
David Edwards is the founder of http://www.asittingduck.com and produces animations over at www.youtube.com/asittingducktv
That’s really cool. I’ve always wanted to focus more of my attention on YouTube, but that’s never quite been my bag. I would be really interested in Dai Ling Ping coming on Problogger to share his story at some point.
Great tips, we are starting to think about using YouTube but have not made the initial first step yet but reading this is making us seriously think about it.
YouTube is definitely a huge platform to successfully promote yourself, great case study as I’ve never heard of this guy.
Originality takes it each and every time. It is important with writing but even more so with videos. Thanks for these lessons from Dai. I wish you both all the best.
Thanks Sharon!…
David,
It’s amazing how fast youtube has grown isn’t it? I remember when I was first hearing about it years ago, and never thought it would turn out to be such a wide-variety, and popular site. I wish you the best of luck with success on youtube, and also tell Dai to keep up the good work!
-Jessica
Thanks Jessica, YouTube has improved a lot over the last year and the opportunities to get search traffic from videos has increased loads in the last few months!.
Thanks David for the useful insights into Dai Ling Ping’s work on Youtube. Youtube can prove to be very helpful in getting more traffic. As long as your videos are original and interesting, you will get visits. One more thing that can make a difference is the length of the video. Most of the viral videos are under 2 minutes in duration.
I think you’ve outlined a lot of the major steps to be able to present some of the basics for also regular blogging. It takes being able to determine those things that are unique and taking the time necessary to be able to start the process of being able to continually build for the future. Dai Ling has figured that formula out pretty quickly.
Thanks for publishing!… ;]
Your article taught me a lot how to apply Dai’s success on youtube to our own blogging. I would love to read some of his tips on Problogger for sure.
Dai’s on vacation at the moment but I’m sure he would be happy to get involved!…
“he will eventually be able to make some big profits from original merchandise sales”… Curious if he’s making any profits now? Is he participating in YouTube’s advert program and if so how is it doing for him?
Hi Charles, yeah he’s an official partner with YouTube, ads are running alongside his videos.
Well, what author of this article forgot to say – “you’ll get as much subscribers as much F words you are using in your so called videos”.
It’s easy to make video with screencasts of video games. Especially when all the value you add is swearing/pranking. It’s just one of those “quantity over quality” articles which makes totally no sense for most bloggers.
I’ll even go further and say, that if you’ll post 5 days a week you’ll loose subscribers, because they are usually not fond of frequent updates even if the quality is high. This is especially true if you tweet every hour.
If your target audience is the army of teenagers hungry for swearing – you’ll get a lot of subscribers. In fact, 26 000 per year is a very modest result. However, if that’s brain you are aiming at, you won’t have this much unless the quality of your content is just outstanding.
For example. Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails / How To Destroy Angels is 2 years at YouTube and his content is just incredible. He has 8000 subscribers at the moment. But these 8000 are much more than 25 000, because they are actual fans, not just teenagers waiting for more gags.
Depeche Mode is at YouTube since 2006. In 6 years they’ve got 50 000 subscribers. They are icons in music – full stadiums and lots of media hype. 50 000. Just twice more than that guy from the article has.
Yet Trent Reznor is incomparably more successful than Lee… What was his name, again?
So the point is – your REAL success lays in your QUALITY, and absolutely not in your QUANTITY. Also, different target audience presents different value. I see no value in creating media content for teenagers, I am doing it for IT guys, for example, so I won’t EVER have this much of subscribers, no matter what.
Don’t aim at what is not yours, know your niche.
Thanks for your comment, things are moving pretty fast for Dai. He’s working on a few different projects but I know he’s going to publish some really cool stuff this year. All the best…