Graham Stephan’s YouTube success through search engine optimization and advertiser matching
This article, titled “Millennial Cracks YouTube Algorithm — Makes $1.8 Million In 2020 (So Far),” follows Graham Stephan, a real estate agent turned YouTuber who posts videos regarding personal finances and his experience making money on YouTube. The article outlines Stephan’s rise to YouTube fame through his own analysis of the YouTube algorithm to predict success. Since 2016, Stephan’s revenue has risen from $0.07 a day to a consistent $4,000-$8,000 a day, making his expected revenue for 2020 over $4 million. Stephan attributes his success to his observation of a pattern involving user engagement, likes, and consistent content. By noticing the way that the YouTube algorithm was pushing his videos, he was able to increase his ad revenue. YouTube, in essence, operates in a similar way to search engines, though it only provides results with local content, and Stephan was able to crack this code.
Using knowledge and models from our course, Stephan’s success came from the increasing popularity of his page as a “slot” for advertisers as well as an “authority” for “hubs” to endorse. If you consider each user on YouTube as a hub or an authority, the likes on YouTube act as explicit endorsements of Stephan’s videos, and subscribers are endorsements of his page. Stephen recognized that consistent, likeable content led to more likes, and more subscribers. He also noticed that when notable YouTube users endorsed his videos, this would lead to even more endorsements through likes and subscribers. This process mirrors the Hub and Authority Update Rules which we discussed in class. Ultimately, a page is important if it is cited by other important pages. Additionally, he found that when he created videos that flowed from one to another through links, he was more successful. Thus, he could also endorse himself and improve his videos’ “scores,” as in the Authority Update Rule. Stephan also created two new pages, the YouTube Creator Academy, and the Graham Stephan Show, which also led to more success on his original page. These additional “hubs” acted as further endorsement of his page. Thinking about his story from an advertising side, advertisers value the videos with the most views, which is similar to valuing a slot per click as in a search engine. As Stephan’s videos gained viewership and engagement, advertisers valued a slot in his video more, so he began to make more revenue. Thus, Graham Stephan’s YouTube success story appears to follow a similar pattern to that of search engine optimization and advertiser slotting; it almost makes it seem easy to be a YouTube star.