How Graham Stephan made 3M views with a shitty thumbnail

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How @GrahamStephan made 3 million views on YouTube with: - a shitty thumbnail - an (almost) unedited video - him speaking in front of a camera for 25 minutes straight.

Those of you who read my threads will see me coming with this one: Every single success on YouTube can be explained in 4 words: Beat the attention market.

The attention market is easy to understand but hard to disrupt: - your content is remarkable, it will go viral - your content is not remarkable, it won't As. Simple. As. That. And this video is no exception.

However, to beat the attention market, you must have an edge (a competitive advantage). You can't make your content stand out without one. So how did Graham build his edge?

The world's total population is 7.7 billion. 63 million are millionaires, representing 0.8% of the world's population. Before 30, 8% of this 0.8% become millionaires. That's 0.07% compared to the world's population.

That's undoubtedly remarkable, but that's still 5 400 000 people. That's only the foundation of his edge. Many people have shared their own "how I became a millionaire" story with far less success than Graham. How did he reach 3M views with such a video then?

First of all, he makes the "in real estate" precision, it's important because that's his core target, and it adds up to the credibility.

For the rest, the answer lies in the first 2 minutes of his video, let's analyze it together:

He starts by introducing his video with a sentence that will act as both: - a hook (opening a curiosity gap) - value proposition emphasized, implying, "Yup, it's not clickbait, you'll get what you came for"

He then cut to the chase by setting up the context right away: - Quick summary to get the big picture - Mentioning big numbers not to lose attention - Hook the viewer again "it actually takes quite a lot more than just making X amount of money..." (implying there are secrets)

Now the best part: - He makes it about THE VIEWER instead of flexing how smart of a person he is & how much money he made. It is crucial in the attention market: What's in it for your viewers? Graham serves the answer to this question on a silver plate for his audience:

And he doesn't stop here. A good marketer (especially in copywriting) answers his client's objections before they are even formulated. That's what he does here:

🔸 First objection: "Why would I watch a video about someone flexing his wealth and social status?" Answer: - Positioning against the competition by explaining why they bring no benefit to the viewer

- Offering a benefit the competition is not offering by providing a structure ("from start to finish"), so the viewers can extract some value for themselves.

🔸 Second objection: "He grew up in a wealthy family for sure." Answer:

He brilliantly pre-shot these objections to keep his viewers' attention, leaving them eager to know more.

I don't know if he calculated it or not, but in the end, it doesn't matter. He did the right thing, and this is what you should learn from it: - Find a remarkable topic/concept/idea - Make remarkable content out of it

Even if the thumbnail is pretty bad (sorry Graham if you come by 😂), the topic and content are greatly remarkable. If everything but the thumbnail is perfect, it will work in the lon grun, remember this: twitter.com/wono_strategy/status/1569298001943748608

Now that his personal brand is strong, if I was him I'd replace the thumbnail with this instead:

📄 To summarize what he did: - Use a remarkable edge - Build it by: - Open a curiosity gap - Setup the context - Make it about the viewers - Position the content in a unique way - Answer objections (Instead of jumping right away into the story as others did)