4000 hours! The almighty cloud that is hanging above every new YouTuber’s head since 2017. These 4000 hours? I’ll break it down in the language you will understand so that you will know if this YouTube thing, this YouTube life is something that you want to go into. Let me warn you at the very start, though. Those not into math will get frustrated reading this article, but there is no other way. My mom saved me whenever math got involved; otherwise, writing this article wasn’t my cup of tea either. So let’s use John as an example. John uploads a video that is 3 minutes long.
20 Views= 60 Minutes of watch time
And let’s assume that in the ideal world because that’s never going to happen. In the ideal world, every single viewer starts the video from the beginning till the end without skipping, without clicking away, without doing anything: Start to finish, every single view. That means that for John’s video, for every view, when you have one view, John has achieved 3 minutes on the 4000 hours scale. Another view is 3 minutes… In one hour we have 60 minutes. For every hour John needs 60 divided by 3, which is 20 views. So when you see 20 views on John’s video, it means that John has achieved 60 minutes of watch time.
60 minutes remember is just 1 hour out of 4,000 hours of watch time. So assuming that this ideal situation keeps happening for every single view that John gets on this video, how many views do you think John needs to get to achieve 4000 hours?
80, 000 views
It means one hour, we’ve already gotten here that one hour is 20 views. 4000 hours is equal to, this is a simple proportion. Just multiply 4000 by 20. 4000 multiplied by 20 divided by one. 4000 times 20 gives you 80,000. This means that if all these conditions are met, one John uploads a three-minute video on this channel. Two, John uploads only this video on his channel. And three, every single viewer of this John’s video starts to view the video from the beginning till the end without clicking away. We have this perfect number of 80,000 views. So when this video gets to 80,000 views, he will qualify for monetization.
Some will come back and watch it again.
Of course, he would have to have 1000 subscribers as well. But let me tell you if this video gets to 80,000 views, I guarantee you that at least 2,000 people; 80,000 views do not necessarily mean 80,000 people because some people will watch a video, if the video is so good they can come back and watch it.
How many people will subscribe?
Let’s say that half of these views are the number of people that watched this video. So 80,000 divided by 2 is 40,000. So out of those 40,000 people, I am pretty sure that at least, in the worst-case scenario, 2000 people will subscribe to John’s channel. By achieving the 4000 hours of watch time, John has used 1 stone to kill two birds by achieving the 1000 subscribers as well. I guarantee you that.
Keep uploading, it doesn’t matter if right now, your videos have 100 views or 20 views, it doesn’t matter. It takes just one video. One video can skyrocket you, and propel you above 4000 hours of watch time. And of course like I said earlier, once you get that many views, trust me, your 1000 subscribers will be there as well. The thing I find people doing a lot on YouTube is that they put the cart before the horse.
Even if you have 0 subscribers, it does not matter.
There will be someone that creates a channel now and uploads a very interesting video on youtube today. That video goes viral and gets one million views with zero subscribers or with one subscriber or something like that. You do not need subscribers to get a high amount of views. Just make a video that you feel is helpful, that is interesting.
Start by sharing it on your Facebook page. Share it in a Whatsapp group that you belong to that allows that kind of thing. Tell your friends and family to share it on their Facebook pages as well. And those initial views will propel that video to do well. And once YouTube notices that the video is getting a lot of views at the beginning, it will help promote that video and recommend it to a lot of people.
