Youtube — How to GET LOADS OF VIEWS with NO ADSPEND.

4 min readJun 15, 2017

So if you’re reading this you most likely read my last blog about how to make video content that looks pretty decent with £0 budget. I consider myself lucky not to have been assassinated by the corporate video industry (yet) so I’m going to keep dropping knowledge and let you know what to do once you made that video to get HELLA VIEWS.

So a lot of advice in this space is simply “pay for ads”. Now pre roll ads on YouTube are great and massively undervalued by the market. However the issue is that 1. most people starting from 0 have no budget to spend on pre roll ads and 2. Even if you have budget for pre roll ads, these are only a means of building a following to get organic traffic eventually.

Well here goes, my sure fire methods to get free views. Now before I start why should you trust me? I’m no Pewdiepie but I have stumbled upon a few techniques to rack up views fast. The first time I realised the power of these methods I got 30,000 views by accident on a reaction video I made late one night after being stood up on a date. I’ve seen whole channels and influencers built on these techniques, the only difficult thing is getting off your arse and making the content. So you’ve jumped that hurdle, this is all you have to do for that sweet viral growth.

1. Identify the hot topics of the time.

What is popping right now? This second, not last week, last month, last year, RIGHT NOW? I got 5,000 organic views on a new channel with 0 promotion and existing subscribers when I made a video about Jeremy Corbyn’s video content during the election. These were real views and engagement, with genuine comments of people sharing their views and completely organic shares. The key here is identifying what the hyped topic is of the time and capitalising on it this very quickly. This allows you yo capture any traffic searching for it on youtube.

2. Relate your objectives to the current trend.

Unless you’re a traditional vlogger or commentator, it’s not going to be appropriate for you to just talk about current affairs for no reason. If you want to get true engagement that’s relevant to your aims. E.g. if you’re trying to grow a business you need to take pop culture and package it in a format that will educate your audience. I made a video telling my followers how Jeremy Corbyn had used video well in his campaign (before the election, so you could say I called it ;) ). If you don’t do this you’ll find your self in a tight spot, creating content that’s irrelevant for your existing fanbase and racking up views from an audience that learn nothing about what it is that you do.

3. Titles Over Everything

Not too long ago YouTube changed the way things work and much more emphasis is now placed on the titles of videos as opposed to tags. This means that your search ranking will be influenced by the relevance of your title. Working in tandem with the last 2 points, once you are sure your video capitalises on a current trend, aligns it with your objectives and audience expectations, you now need to title the video something sensational that will be view worthy. Just calling it ‘Corbyn Video Analysis’ is a dead strategy. You need to go with ‘How Corbyn is WINNING the election with video’. This is kind of clickbatey, but it doesn’t lie and it makes it clear this is about a current topic, with a fresh approach and exciting content.

4. Make Effort With the Thumbnail

As an extension of the previous point, people are making a click decision based on a combination of the title and the thumbnail image. This needs to take a sensational image that represents whatever the hot topic was the video is based on. Then throw some thick bold text over it to give viewers a concise but clear description of what they’re going to find in the video at a glance. Remember in 2017 people’s capacity to process information is at an all time low.

5. Chain Videos Together Over Time

Every time you post a new video on a new hot topic, leave a blank space at the end and use this to allow viewers to click through to your previous video or one that has a lower view count on your channel. This will allow you to keep capitalising on new trends whilst diverting retained viewers to your older content.