Case study
A YouTube video with a date on it
Tom's videos usually took over a week to reach ten thousand views. This one was a build he had spent a month on, scheduled for a Friday, and he wanted the first day to look like the video deserved. The order was placed the moment the video went public, views first, likes an hour behind, comments only once real ones had appeared.
Published
38 hours
to reach 10,000 views, against a channel average of nine days
Tom Hale
Hale Workshop · Woodworking tutorials, 11k subscribers · Leeds, UK
The situation
The channel had a loyal but small audience. A new video typically collected two thousand views on day one, mostly subscribers, then crept upward for a week. YouTube's first day decides how far a video travels afterwards, and a slow first day meant the channel's best work never left its own subscriber base.
Timing matters more here than on any other platform in the shop. Views placed before a video is public have nowhere to land. Comments placed on a video that has none yet stand alone and read as planted.
The goal
Give the premiere a first day that matched the video, and keep every count arriving in an order a viewer would find natural.
What was ordered
| Service | Quantity | When | Why |
|---|---|---|---|
| YouTube Views | 5,000 | Minute 0, video public | Views are the counter YouTube weighs first. Five thousand on top of the subscriber turnout put day one at three times the channel norm. |
| YouTube Likes | 250 | Hour 1 | Likes lag views on any real video. An hour behind keeps the ratio where a viewer expects it. |
| YouTube Comments | 20 | Hour 6, after real comments | Only once subscribers had left the first dozen comments. Ordered comments sit inside a conversation, not in front of one. |
Views, first 72 hours, against the channel's usual curve
How it went
- 1
Thursday
Video scheduled, links ready
The public link was known before release. Nothing was ordered: a scheduled video has no target for a count to reach.
- 2
Friday 18:00
Public, views placed
Order placed within two minutes of the video going live. Views started arriving inside the hour and were paced across the evening.
- 3
Friday 19:00
Likes placed
Two hundred and fifty likes, an hour behind the views, arriving over the next few hours.
- 4
Saturday 00:00
Comments placed
Twenty comments, once real ones had already started. Tom pinned one of his own first.
- 5
Sunday
Suggested traffic takes over
By Sunday morning the video was pulling views from suggested placements on other channels' videos, which it had never done in its first week before.
Before and after
| Metric | Before | After | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Views at 24 hours | 2,100 (average) | 7,800 | 3.7x |
| Time to 10,000 views | 9 days | 38 hours | 5.7x faster |
| Views from suggested, week one | 12% | 41% | +29 points |
| Subscribers gained, week one | 60 to 90 | 410 | roughly 5x |
What to take from it
- 1Never order for a scheduled video. Wait for the public link, then move fast.
- 2Stagger the counters in the order a real audience produces them: views, then likes, then comments.
- 3Let comments follow the real ones. They are the counter people read word for word.
“I have made better videos than that one. This is the first one YouTube showed to anyone who had not already subscribed.”
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