How To Get Popular on YouTube, Part 317

Do a favor for someone with more subscribers than you. And I don’t mean a favor that you expect something in return for. I don’t mean saying “sure Anthony Padilla, I’ll do that for you, if…” I mean honestly and sincerely doing something that needs doing for no remuneration.

Recently I landed the final, and one of the biggest, interviews for the book I’m writing about YouTube because of a favor I did for someone else. That final interview is with Liam Kyle Sullivan, better known as Kelly, the artist behind the popular “Shoes” and “Let Me Borrow That Top” viral videos.

Here’s how it went down: Liam subscribed to me yesterday. I naturally recognized the screenname when I received the email notification that he had subscribed, so I clicked through to his channel. At first, I thought it might be an impostor channel, you know the ones that use capital I’s to look like lower-case L’s. But it was actually him. And he’s only subscribed to a total of 32 channels.

I wrote Liam an email just to say “thanks for subscribing”. I wasn’t really expecting a reply, it was a public general contact email afterall. In fact, I thought he may have subscribed by mistake. The two of us had never had any contact before this.

Later that afternoon I actually received a reply from Liam, from his personal, secret email account. He said he “really enjoyed” my channel and website. He said he found me through WhatTheBuckShow. Seems Liam really dug Buck’s banner and was looking into getting a new one himself.

I’ve been making Buck’s banners for months now. And I always do them for free whenever Buck asks. Buck is a friend and our bartering of banners for collab clips and the like has always felt fair to both of us.

I offered to design Liam’s new banner in exchange for a short interview with him for my book, “YouTube: An Insider’s Guide to Climbing the Charts”. He was more than happy to do so, and even offered to pimp the book when it is released in November. Liam’s audience is over ten times the size of my own – his offer of promotion alone is worth more than any time I will spend working on his banner. And his interview lends yet one more voice of credibility to my book.

This topic is covered more in my book under a section called “Art Karma”. This is just one more simple, real-world example. When new or less-established YouTubers ask you to appear in their collaboration videos, try to record a clip for them. When someone private messages to ask how you designed your channel background, send them over to my previous blog post. You never know when that person will be able to return the favor, or will mention your name to others.

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