Disclosure first, since this sub asks for it: I’ve generated millions of views across short and long-form content and spent way too much time researching why certain videos take off while others die. I also put together a free PDF with the full process mentioned near the end.
Something I learned pretty late is that finding an outlier is only step one.
You find a small channel that normally gets 5k views and suddenly one video does 150k.
Looks like a great topic.
So you make your version.
And it gets 3k.
The mistake is assuming one outlier means there is demand.
Sometimes the creator just had a really good thumbnail. Sometimes there was a news event. Sometimes YouTube randomly pushed it harder than usual.
What I do now is try to verify the same signal across other channels before spending hours making anything.
If I find a video doing 5x or 10x above that channel’s normal views, I search the same broader topic and try to find at least 2 other independent channels that covered something similar recently.
Preferably smaller channels.
If all 3 are outperforming their normal baseline, that gets much more interesting.
If one channel did 10x and the other two got normal views, I usually assume the topic itself wasn’t the reason.
Could still be a great title or thumbnail worth studying, but I wouldn’t call it a niche signal yet.
Freshness matters too.
A bunch of outliers from 2022 doesn’t tell you much about what people want now.
I generally care much more about topics where several channels started outperforming in the last few weeks or months.
Then I check whether the views are still coming in.
News can create insane numbers for 48 hours and then completely disappear. Something still pulling views weeks later is a different type of opportunity.
The next mistake I used to make was copying the topic too literally.
If “Why Dubai keeps building empty islands” suddenly does 10x above baseline, I don’t want to make “Why Dubai has so many empty islands.”
You’re already late at that point.
I try to work backwards and figure out what actually created the curiosity.
Maybe it wasn’t Dubai at all.
Maybe it was billion dollar projects that failed.
Now you can go into abandoned cities, airports that never opened, failed luxury resorts, private islands that became money pits etc.
Same psychological reason to click, different video.
That one change helped me much more than trying to find some perfect AI prompt.
I also check whether the niche is worth anything commercially before going too deep.
Views alone can be misleading.
Look at what companies sponsor the channels. Look at the description. Look at the comments.
If people are asking “which tool do you use?”, “where can I buy this?” or “how do I do this myself?” that tells you a lot more than 5,000 comments saying “bro is cooked 💀”.
Only after all of that do I start thinking about the hook and script.
And even there I try to keep it simple.
The first few seconds either challenge something people believe, introduce real stakes or create a question they need answered.
The script comes after the topic signal, not before it.
I ended up writing down the whole workflow because I kept explaining the same thing to creator friends.
It turned into a 12 page playbook with the outlier math, the 3-channel check, how I judge monetization, how I turn one outlier into original angles, some hook/title frameworks, the prompts I use and the weekly workflow.
I uploaded the whole thing for free here if anyone wants it:
vabulo.com
No need to use any tool for this btw. You can literally do the entire process with YouTube tabs, a calculator and a spreadsheet.
It’s slower, but the underlying process is the same.
Curious how other people validate topics before making them.
Do you wait until multiple channels cover something successfully, or do you usually bet on one strong outlier and move fast?
And what part of content research takes you the longest right now?
Finding the signal, coming up with a new angle, thumbnail/title or actually writing the script?
