Why Do Some People Get Millions of Video Views?

Tim Street's opinion

Well in my opinion it's pretty simple. They have talent. They have lots of talent and their videos contain the secret ingredients of viral video success.

What are the secret ingredients of online viral videos?

1TimStreet's 5 Secret Ingredients of Viral Video Success:

1. Don't Suck
2. Move Two or More Human Emotions
3. Have Spectacle
4. Have Story
5. Have Talent

DON'T SUCK
Sure it's easy for me to say that but sometimes it's hard to understand if your videos suck. People don't want to admit they have an ugly baby and people that know you aren't going to tell you that your child could cause someone to gag choke and die.

I know that the little videos that I shoot for my blog aren't going to get millions of views because to most people they suck but I also know that to a small group of people who read my blog and watch my little videos the information on my blog videos is way more important than the episodes of French Maid TV that I create that get millions of views. I also know that even if I spent a lot of time and money lighting, shooting and editing my little interview videos I would never see a return on that investment.

MOVE TWO OR MORE HUMAN EMOTIONS
Examine any viral video and depending on who you are you will find that it moves two or more human emotions. What are those emotions?

The Primary Emotions are:

Love
Joy
Surprise
Anger
Sadness
Fear

Combining any two or more of them will get you views.

You are so full of crap Tim. There are no emotions in French Maid TV.

Sure there are, Lust is a sub-emotion of Love and Humor is a sub-emotion of Joy. French Maid TV is funny and sexy. There are however other people who find French Maid TV surprising. Some are full of anger, sadness or fear when they see sexy women dressed as French Maids explaining products and services to young men for money. C'est la vie.


HAVE SPECTACLE
I written before about how according to Hollywood screenplay guru Robert McKee, when ever there is an advance in entertainment "spectacle" comes first then "story." So go use the search box and to find some ideas for a great spectacle that will fit into your online video because you are still going to need spectacle if you want to get millions of views of your Internet video.

HAVE STORY
We are slowly moving into "story" in the evolution of online video as a form of entertainment and if you want your online video to have shelf life make sure it has a story element to it. Two years from now fewer and fewer people will be watching the Star Wars Kid on a daily basis.

HAVE TALENT
I can give you these secret ingredients but you may just not know how to cook. You may not have the talent or the vision to see what emotions are in a script when you read it. There are people that are tone deaf and I think there are also people who can't hear or see when something just "works" or doesn't work. Talented people have little voices that tell them when something "works" or doesn't work. Talented people know when they need to do better.

Being able to create something from nothing, building onto something and making it better or knowing when something sucks and having ideas on how to fix something when it sucks is talent. If you want to have millions of views of your videos you must have talent.

If you don't have talent you can always hire it.