Somewhere in the world right now, there’s a 17-year-old kid who just hit 100,000 subscribers on YouTube. And he didn’t figure out some secret. He didn’t buy better gear. He just uploads videos because he enjoys it. And you are sitting there wondering why your channel won’t grow. Why you’re stuck under 1,000 subscribers.
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Why every video you upload gets a little bit of attention, but then it stops. And at some point, you start asking yourself if maybe you’re just bad at this. Because no matter how much effort you put in, nothing seems to change. It feels random. It feels unfair. And everyone keeps saying, just be consistent. Without ever explaining what you’re actually supposed to fix.
I know this feeling because I was stuck there too. And if you look at the analytics on this channel, you’ll see months where nothing happened. No momentum, no growth. Until one moment where everything started working. Not because of luck, but because I finally understood the algorithm. In this video, I’m going to show you what changed for me and how you can use the same way of thinking to finally grow your channel. So if you want YouTube to stop feeling confusing and start making sense, this video is for you.
Let’s start with a simple story. Imagine you walk into a big store and you ask someone for help, but you don’t explain what you want. You say, I need something. And the person looks at you confused because they have no idea what you mean. So they start asking questions like:
Okay, what do you want?
Do you want cheese?
Do you want milk?
Do you want sugar?
How the YouTube Algorithm Understands Your Videos — And Why Clarity Matters
And they have to keep guessing because you didn’t explain anything. Now imagine you walk in the same store, but this time you say exactly what you want. What kind of product it is and who is it for? Suddenly, the person doesn’t need to guess anymore. They don’t need to ask 10 questions. They know exactly where to send you. That person is the YouTube algorithm.
When you upload a video without clear tags or clear description, YouTube has to guess. It has to watch your video, listen to your audio, test it with different people, and slowly understand what it’s about. And yes, YouTube can do that, but it takes time. When you add a clear description and clear tags, you’re telling YouTube exactly what your video is about and who it’s meant for. So the YouTube algorithm doesn’t need to guess as much.
That’s why there’s so much talk about this right now. Some people say tags don’t matter. Some people say descriptions are useless. And at first, I wasn’t sure either. But after looking at my own videos and my own results, my opinion is simple. I think tags and descriptions still matter a lot because they help the YouTube algorithm understand your video better and faster.
Can you upload a video without tags and descriptions and still get views? Yeah, that can happen. YouTube will still understand your video over time. But in my experience, it takes longer because you’re making YouTube make all the work on its own. That’s exactly why I always use tags and long descriptions. And if you open my videos, you’ll see that I explain what the video is about and I include tons of keywords in my descriptions.
And to make this fast and easy, I use a tool where all I do is copy my video title, pick my niche, and it gives me a full list of tags in seconds. Then I just copy them and paste them into my video. And I’m done. It’s that simple.
But even if YouTube understands your video, even if your tags are good and your description is clear, there’s still one thing that matters more than all of that. And this is where many people fail. Think about when you start watching a TV show for the first time. The first episode usually feels a bit strange.
You don’t know the people in the show yet. You don’t really care what happens to them. You’re not even sure if you like the show. But then you watch another episode and then another one. And slowly you start to recognize the people. You understand them more. And at some point you care about what happens next in the show.
Why Familiarity, Thumbnails, and Momentum Matter More Than One Viral Video
People act the same way on YouTube. When someone watches one of your videos for the first time, they don’t care about you yet. Even if the video is good. But if they watch a second video and then a third one, something changes. You start to feel familiar to them. Watching your videos feels easier.
This is where many creators make a huge mistake. They make thumbnails that all look very different. Different colors, different text font, different style every time. At first, this doesn’t look like a big problem. But it is. Because someone might watch one of your videos, like it, and move on. The next day, YouTube shows them another video from you. But the thumbnail looks so different that they don’t realize it’s from the same channel. It’s from you. So they don’t click it.
Now imagine the same thing, but this time the thumbnail looks familiar. Maybe the same colors, maybe the same style, maybe a small detail they remember. And without thinking too much, they say to themselves, Oh, I remember this channel. I watched it yesterday or last week. And because of that, the chances of them clicking on your thumbnail are way higher.
This is the hidden power of thumbnails. Your thumbnails can help people recognize you. When I started applying this strategy, something changed. People didn’t just watch one video. They watched another one, and then another one. This is how you help viewers watch more of your videos and just like a TV show, they start caring for you, they start trusting you more. And this is also how momentum starts.
But creating thumbnails can feel confusing. You always worry if they will get clicks or not. To make sure my thumbnails look good and feel connected, I use the same tool I talked about earlier. It doesn’t just help with tags, it also lets me create and test the thumbnail. And after testing the thumbnail, I can make edits that make sense, that make it connect more with my channel in order to improve the click-through rate.
I pretty much use it on every single thumbnail you see on my channel because instead of guessing and hoping it looks good after upload, I can check it before. That way my thumbnails look clean, familiar and easy to recognize. It’s really why I think my channel blew up in the last four months just like that. Because I was able to create thumbnails that connect to each other.
So if you want to make better thumbnails that get clicks, I’m going to leave a link down in the description to this tool where you can try it out for yourself. And like I said before, keeping your thumbnails connected helps build momentum. And momentum is very important on YouTube right now.
But why? Why is momentum so important? And what is momentum really? Let me explain. Think about movies and TV shows. In 2023, around 10,000 new movies were made. At the same time, there were around 150,000 new TV show episodes. Maybe even more. That means there are many more episodes than movies coming out every year. And you’re probably asking yourself, how is this relevant to YouTube? Why does it matter? What I’m about to tell you might shock you. Shows keep people watching longer than movies.
That’s why platforms like Netflix care so much about them. Netflix wants people to stay. The longer someone stays, the more likely they are to pay the subscription again next month. A movie ends after two hours. A show doesn’t. A show can have many episodes and each one can last an hour. That’s how people keep watching. And that’s how they keep paying again and again.
YouTube works in a very similar way. YouTube doesn’t really care about a video by itself. It cares about what the viewer does after watching that video. If someone watches your video and then closes YouTube, that’s pretty bad. But if someone watches your video and then clicks another one, and then another one after that, YouTube likes that a lot. That’s momentum.
You’ve probably seen this on your own channel. Every new video you upload pushes your older videos a bit. Now imagine you have 1 million subscribers. The amount of push a new video can bring to the old videos is huge. You just don’t see it right now because your channel is small so the numbers are low.
That’s why momentum matters more than one good video. One video alone doesn’t change much. But one video that leads to another one can change everything. And this is why the things we talked about before matter. Thumbnails that look familiar, topics that make sense together, videos that don’t feel random.
How to Build Momentum on YouTube by Guiding Viewers to Watch More
All of that helps people click again without thinking too much. That’s why I use this tool to create and test my thumbnails before I upload. I want my videos to look good next to each other. I want them to feel like they belong to the same channel. If you look at my channel, you can see how my videos connect, not just because of my face but because they have a certain look. And I do that on purpose.
But there’s one more simple thing that helps build momentum and most people don’t use it even though they’ve already seen it work many times in real life. Think about buying something online. You go to a website because you want one thing. Maybe a keyboard for $30. You add it to your cart, you’re ready to pay and right before you click the final button, the site shows you something else and says, do you also want this mouse for $10?.
Sometimes it even tells you you can get a discount on the mouse if you buy it together with the keyboard. Most people didn’t plan to buy the mouse. They came only for the keyboard. But in that moment, it makes sense. They already trust the site. They are already in the buying mood. So they add it to their cart and they buy the mouse as well.
The same thing happens on YouTube. When someone finishes watching one of your videos, that moment is very important. They already stayed until the end. They already liked what they saw. They trust you more now. And instead of letting them leave and decide for themselves what to watch next, you can gently show them another video from your channel that makes sense to watch next.
That’s what it means to build your videos around other videos. Your video shouldn’t end with a silence or a goodbye and hope the viewer clicks something else on their own. It should guide the viewer. It should say, hey, if you liked this video, you should watch this next video from me because you might like it as well.
So when you write your script, you’re not only thinking about this video, you’re also thinking about the next video you want people to watch after it. And YouTube gives you an easy way to do this with end screens. At the end of your video, you can show another video from your channel.
So when the viewer finishes watching, the next video is right there, ready to click. Now, if all of this feels a bit confusing or overwhelming, you’re not alone. I’ve been doing not alone. I’ve been doing YouTube for more than 10 years and I know how lonely it can feel when you upload videos that don’t get views. It makes you feel like you’re not good enough and that you’re never going to succeed, and that feeling sucks.
I had days where a video didn’t work and I couldn’t let go. I changed the thumbnail in the evening. I waited, nothing happened. I changed it again, then again late at night. Instead of sleeping or relaxing or playing video games, I was still thinking about one thing: the video and why it isn’t working. Not because someone forced me, but because I cared. Doing YouTube means dealing with emotions over and over again: doubt, anxiety, comparing yourself to others, seeing people grow faster than you and wondering what you’re doing wrong.
I just want you to note that those feelings don’t mean you’re failing. They mean you’re trying. If you look at creators you admire today, every one of them went through this phase. But what separated them wasn’t talent. It was that they didn’t stop caring. They kept learning. They kept changing things. They kept showing up.
If you expect YouTube to feel good all the time, you’ll stop. If you accept that some days feel hard, you’ll last. That’s the difference.
When people ask, how do I grow on YouTube? The real answer is not a trick. It’s not a hack. It’s not a setting. It’s staying:
Staying when it’s quiet.
Staying when it’s uncomfortable.
Staying long enough to get better.
Also Read: Ghana’s Emerging Startup Opportunities in 2026
But as I’ve shown you in this video, there are ways you can speed up the growth of your YouTube channel. And this is exactly what I teach inside this video over here. So if you want to learn how to grow faster on YouTube and understand the YouTube algorithm, you should watch this video over here.
And as you can see, I’m doing exactly what I’ve been teaching you inside this video: end your video and send the viewers to another video, which will help them.
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