How To Make Viral Videos With Outliers (YouTube Guide)

Have you heard about Outliers? The knowledge of outliers have been exploited by the biggest YouTubers to produce viral videos that is picked up by the YouTube algorithm. What are outliers? In this blog post we cover…

• What outliers are

• How big YouTubers use outliers to produce viral videos

• Why YouTube videos succeed and fail and how you can stand out among crowded competition

• How you can produce viral YouTube videos using outliers

• How I used an outlier to create a viral video with more than 1 million views

What are outliers?

Outliers are viral videos that perform exceptionally well compared to a channel’s average results. For example, if a channel has 1000 subscribers and produces a video with 100 000 views it is a 100x Outlier.

The reason that identifying outliers can be valuable, comes from the fact that outliers works as a signal and shows what is wanted from viewers on YouTube. An outlier is a proven video concept that works; outliers signals true demand from viewers. Outliers show what the YouTube algorithm wants.

To illustrate this, let’s look at some examples from big YouTubers.

How big YouTubers use outliers to produce a viral video

This example show how outliers can be used. In 2018, "Miss Mina" uploaded a video about "Tokyo capsule hotel tour" that went absolutely viral. It has since brought in more than 59 million views!

Years later, other channels used this outlier as inspiration for their own videos, and was able to reproduce viral videos with their unique mixes.

Why did it work? It all comes down to supply, demand, crowded competition and spin-offs. Let’s explain it in much simpler terms and break it down.

Why videos succeed and fail

When a creator comes up with something fresh and unique, it grabs attention. However, over time, if the same concept is used repeatedly, it becomes less effective. What made it unique and exciting wears off, because people get used to it. This is called “pattern fatigue”. It's essentially competitors pursuing the same ideas with no unique edge.

Why does this happen? Well, if everyone is doing the same thing over and over again, it starts to feel predictable. The audience is no longer surprised or engaged by what they see. And unless you already have a loyal, large and established fanbase of subscribers, breaking through the competition is extremely difficult.

So, what’s the solution to stand out amongst the crowd? You should aim to attract the same audience that created the high demand for the topic, but instead of competing in the overcrowded competition, you do something different to stand out uniquely. But how can we do this?

How to stand out amongst crowded competition

The brilliant Wono identified the following strategies to successfully stand out in crowded competitive niches:

1. Change the video format and scope

Is everyone doing long 10-minute videos? Try something new! 1 hour long videos of covering the same topic for example. Is someone covering a battle? Why not make a whole video about a small moment during that battle! Or summarize the entire battle in one minute like shown in the example. This is called changing the scope.

2. Make the video 10x better

If you’re not the first to create a particular type of content, then aim to do it much better than everyone else. Whether it’s better video packaging, higher production quality, deeper research, or a more engaging presentation, going the extra mile can make your videos rise above the noise.

3. Find a unique angle

Finding a unique specific angle not already used by competition. Instead of following the broad, generic path, focus on a particular aspect that others might overlook.

What’s important to remember here is that video topics and ideas can become crowded competition, but there is always a potential opportunity by delivering unique format, scopes or angles.

This is exactly why you need to identify outliers and spin-off of them; you find the demand and serve them something new. This brings us to our final question →

How can you find outliers and make spin-offs?

To find outliers one typically browses YouTube for videos that has more views than the channels subscribers (and is max 6 months old). But this process is time-consuming, inefficient and boring. That’s why you should use a software like Viral Dashboard, as it can help you recognize outliers and save large amounts of time.

Viral Dashboard gives you a complete overview of the hottest viral videos and outliers on YouTube; it’s a collection of thousands of video topics that has a proven demand from viewers and the YouTube algorithm. It allows you to quickly search for your topics and find the most successful outliers.

How Viral Dashboard can assist you in identifying outliers and creating viral spin-offs

To effectively use outliers, you need to be vary of the following:

1) The outlier must be able to fit well with your existing content

The outlier needs to fit in with the other content on your channel. Remember that your subscribers subscribed for the type of videos you have already created. Consistency on the channel matters! As you see from this example, when the channel starts offering videos that deviate from the channel's typical videos, the channel ends up sending the viewer away to other channels instead.

2) Change the video format/scope or have a unique angle

As you can recall, if you don't do something new and remarkable, people won't watch your video if there are better existing alternatives. The only way to do this is to know the topic you are creating a video for. You can easily browse the market using Viral Dashboard. Filter by different video lengths, look at the most successful videos, etc. It will give a lot of information of how you can stand out!

3) There needs to be an interest for the topic at the moment

If you don't have many subscribers, you are reliant on recent interest to generate views. The YouTube algorithm uses views to find new viewers. It becomes a "chicken and egg problem" if the video fails to get any views to begin with. That's why recent interest matters! Luckily, this can easily be observed in Viral Dashboard by looking at the market score, or even more directly at "Average video volume" and "Recent views per day".

Average video volume is a great metric as it shows the number of views that flow in from non-subscribers. Recent views per day on the other hand, shows how many views on average the video gets per day, which is also very important when monitoring recent interest.

How I used an outlier to create a viral video with more than 1 million views

In 2020, I had started gaining some traction on the channel “Lore of the Rings”. The market for Lord of the Rings videos was emerging, and the timing was ripe. However, I lacked something to truly set me apart over the long-term.

Most of my videos were basically just clipping together movie clips and narrating analysis. They were not much more complex than powerpoint presentation, although the editing was quite ok.

However, my only differentiation point at that time was the topics. Not sufficient for the long-term I reckoned, if I were to create a competitive advantage! Wondering upon how to differentiate myself, I randomly watched a channel called BazBattles. The channel made videos about battles and wars from the table-top point of view format.

I realized I could try to replicate such a project in the Lord of the Rings market. I could only find one "BazBattle-esce" video in the Lord of the Rings market, and it also happened to be an outlier.

As such, I decided to make my first table-top video about one of the famous battles from the movies, “The Siege of Minas Tirith”. I had no idea how to pull it off, but you learn surprisingly fast when you are curious and passion-driven.

After 3 months with a lot of work (300+ hours), I had learned how to create maps, how to animate map battles, and I had created my first video.

And it was an incredible success. Almost 800 000 views the first year for a channel with only a few thousand subscribers.

These days it's a lot easier to recognize outlier opportunities. I was lucky to stumble upon it randomly. Today you can easily find outlier videos using Viral Dashboard.

If you want to read another blog article, I really recommend this one and this one.