How to Grow a New YouTube Channel Fast: 37 of 38 Videos Past 100K Views

How a fully human made cartoon space channel built a huge returning audience in 3 months

37 of 38 First videos hit 100K+ Success Gravipull · Space & Science By Kai Jörgsen Väss · Frame 117

So, how do you get a 77% 100k+ video rate when LESS THAN 1% of ALL Youtube videos get 100k? And how do you start a channel with 37 of the first 38 videos, not only hitting that, but AVERAGING well over 200k views per upload including a 2 million view outlier?

Remember, this happens over the course of 11 months when you upload quality over quantity. So, each idea not only has to hit and resonate with your growing and changing audience, but you also have to keep delivering. Keep pushing. Keep getting the thumbnails right. Keep the sound design evolving.

Well, it also means you have to START correctly. So, after literally 5 channels and being on YouTube for 8 and half years at the time, there was one thing I hadn't done: built a channel around my astrophysics and teaching degrees. But the content on YouTube was ALWAYS clickbait filled with lies and A L I E N S. Yeah, we get it…. Some Noble Prize Winner said he "thinks there are aliens just by chance because of the size of the Universe", and fuck doing that. I can't because it's just unethical as a teacher.

So, what is left? Simple: find a format that's banging and that HAS NOT been in your niche. Cartoon Space! I asked the question towards the ideation launch partner, Leander, who noted that "Why it sucks" was doing particularly well, "What if we do…. Why it Sucks to be a Black Hole?"

"Risky… but it's never been done.", he said…. "It's your unfair advantage sooo"

"Yeah, fuck it. Let's do it.", we both agree. " I'm gonna be the VO by the way". I mean, on every channel I ran for the purpose of views, cash, back end offers or just fun: I was the voice over artist. I love making voices.. And high quality videos.

The most viewed videos of Gravipull

We get to work, find an animator (I can't do that yet.. I've been an editor for over 20 decades but animation? Oh boy…)

Nevertheless, I write the script, get a thumbnail LITERAL artist(pay your people, get quality. AI can't do what people can do as you can see from Gravipull's thumbnails), do the voice over, & three weeks later we have our first video - which I spent 5 days on sound design alone.

I won't go into the long term launch strategy here as that's for another time, or when building a channel from zero, but it took 3 videos only.... and then Gravipull went NUCLEAR. When that happens, you either want to increase your quality/length and focus on delivering each time… or you can increase your upload frequency from once every 2 weeks into once ever week. Which is what we did.

This resulted in even more beautiful graphs until Video #9 went NUCLEAR IN SPACE for the first 1 million hit… which is now almost at 2 million at the time of writing.

So, what allowed each video to basically smack 100k and then go beyond? And how long would this last?

Simple, my friends: when you have momentum on Youtube, you don't give it back. This means when people watch one of your videos, with the right end screen click out, playlists, and topic selection, you're getting BINGE WATCHERS. (Hell yeah)

This signals so much to Youtube that they will now be spreading all your vids far and wide... that is, if they are also high quality. It's not one video that's viral, it's your whole channel. But there's a secret to what I've just said that saves you down the line….

Hard work but it's still getting 1k views a day almost a year later

Because down the line momentum will slow, maybe your animator quits, and you learn to animate from the assets you have and literally make videos yourself just to KEEP GOING (yeah, 100% me taking over video creation.). This part shouldn't happen unless you're a creator… if you're a faceless/running B2B? Pay your team. Keep them happy. BUT in this case, our artist needed to take personal time and that's also okay. She's back with Gravipull now and is so much the reason for the channel's success!

Anyway, while was away for a few months... we had to find a replacement, but that training would take time. So..."Sounds of Space"? That video? 36 hours in a row, 3 hours of sleep. After a new animator failed to deliver more than 60 seconds. I grinded none stop and did 70 hours of work in 36 hours JUST to get it out on time. However, the IDEA was good. The packaging was SAVANT. And the video creatively? Perfection.

The point is that so many things will get in your way… only you can decide to keep pushing through.

Because by August, the channel had so much of a feedback loop even weaker uploads were getting 100k over a month just by the BINGE WATCHING mechanisms… which… only work if you have high viewer satisfaction and a strong returning audience. Which you can only get by making good fucking content that people want to actually watch. They should always learn something or be entertained.

The original animator rejoined us on a part time role to guide new animators and create new assets after I had done most of the work for a while with temporary animators alongside me. Finally fleshing out a REAL team solved a lot of friction, but meant only 2 uploads in August. We had lost momentum of upload, but would we lose the momentum of views?

Nope.

Because…. Say it with me: RETURNING AUDIENCE and BINGE WATCHING LOOPS. This is basically what Youtube calls "session time" where they want viewers on as long as possible as if your channel/content keeps 'em on, Youtube will love you and recommend you and fly you out to… okay, not that part sadly.

However, this did seem like natural momentum would slow down. Ideas were harder to come by as we exhausted viral/successful outlier formats and competitors and other channels try to compete. We had already taken one AI slop channel out back and sliced it's kneecaps back in April with better ideation, but no one could touch my creative direction quality and sound design which now has me spending 4-8 hours per video - finding the right music too.

Fortunately, investing in my team and good systems meant we were able to keep going with solid ideas vs not even uploading. And the "suggested" videos, "end screens", and "playlist" keep people in a loop… the worst performers would slowly and slowly climb up until they hit 100k MONTHS later. In one case it was like 200 days? That's crazy. It's evergreen content on some kind of juice because Gravipull is EDUTAINMENT and not an actual Educational channel. There is no backend. But people who watch one, watch many, and it keeps getting recommended across the platform.

So, why did the streak end? Because every channel is like a TV series. Ratings aren't the same each season and interest comes and goes. The part of being a Youtuber is riding these down waves with smart content and diversifying your income so you can handle it.

In Gravipull's case I took a sponsorship's required idea 4 times to get those fat paychecks on top of adsense (yeah, make your money), but those ideas naturally did not perform as well organically. But after the 38th vid? It doesn't matter anymore other than your ego because the view floor (the amount of views you get every day and month) is the only thing that matters because THAT'S what converts into RPM (revenue/adsense), not the fact that a video got "500k in a 5 days but then my next one got 2k views" like slop channels.

Sadly, I felt an urge to coach and teach all my 10 years of Youtube knowledge so Gravipull has become less of a focus but it's still profitable, still fun, and still something you keep going because you never know when a niche or format will present an opportunity to go boom again. Every channel that has 100k - 1 million+ subs? They approached it the SAME way.

But the result of everything I've said here means you can max your audience retention so you can max your RPM(and link out to your backend/service if that's your channel's thing). To learn from Andrew: the king of out of bound storytelling, read Case Study 02 below!

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