Daniel Trevor

If you have plateaued as a creator the most common reason is that your surrounded by people that won't tell you the truth about your videos.

CREATOR BUSINESS MODELS EXPLAINED (bookmark this) If you’re an ENTERTAINER, most of you’re revenue SHOULD come from Brand Deals, Membership/Donations and lastly Ad Revenue, to be sustainable, unless you can move into DTC, or Merchandise effectively. If you’re an EDUCATOR, most your money SHOULD come from either Courses, Cohorts, Coaching/Consulting, Affiliate Marketing , or SAAS products. If you’re a LIFESTYLE BRAND, most of your money SHOULD come from UGC and Brand Deals, as well as affiliate marketing until you can move into DTC. Entertainers run a Media Business… and largely just like traditional media the model is ad revenue, product placement, endorsement and merchandise. Basically the MrBeast model. He’s also moved into DTC with his food/beverage brands. The DTC products and IP are the leverage. They win on licensing. Education Companies run as a Venture Business… it’s built on knowledge products and services provided by knowledgeable workers. This type of business is also usually built to sell at some point. The business model is selling not only unique information, but perspective as well as the means of implementing. This not only takes the form of courses and coaching/consulting… but conferences, software and done for you services as well. The proprietary IP and the operating business and its systems are the leverage. It’s meant to outlive the founder and be sold. Lifestyle Businesses run as a cultural commodity business. They are built on the identity of the consumer and are a largely product oriented business. This business model is directly based on selling products that are widely consumed and have repeat customers. The primary leverage is brand recognition and loyalty. Keep in mind that Creators can overlap through hybrid approaches. Most Creators who thrive, evolve over time throughout their career. A Gaming Creator COULD become a developer, moving them into Software… or they could build a Lifestyle Brand around consumer electronics… A career is not static.

1. How to Set Up NotebookLM for This Go to notebooklm.google.com and create a free account. Create a new notebook and call it the name of the channel you want to analyze. Now collect your sources. Go to the YouTube channel you want to reverse engineer. Copy the URLs of their 10 to 20 most viewed videos. Paste each one as a source into NotebookLM. Also add any public interviews, podcast appearances or blog posts from the creator if available. NotebookLM now has everything it needs to understand exactly why this channel works.

What do these four viral YouTube videos have in common?

YOUTUBE OUTLIER STRATEGY Take what's working and make it better (Bookmark this for later) Here’s how it works 👇🧵

Announcement: I’m looking for 100 YouTube creators to implement our 2026 growth strategies with. 🎉 Today we are opening applications for cohort 9 of my 8-week accelerator program. You get to implement the entire playbook that gets our clients over 10 billion organic views a year. - 25 hours of live teaching from me - Full growth playbook - Personalised strategy feedback - Accountability community - Focused on getting real results We have taken creators from literally 1k views a video to 300K+… $500 a month to $30,000+. 14k subscribers to almost 1 million. Just check out the case studies on our site. People often say we undersell it haha, because of how much work my team and I put into it during the 8 weeks. If you want to crush 2026 on YouTube get an application in below! Don’t be discouraged if you’ve applied before and haven’t got in… we had a student in the last cohort who had applied 5 times. My team reviews every single application. And it’s New Year’s… so f**k it One person who likes and RTs this tweet will get a 100% paid for scholarship (worth thousands) ❤️

If your video spends its first few minutes waiting for something to happen. You’ve already lost the viewer. Viewers don’t want reaction. They want decisions, mistakes, escalation.

Most Gaming videos don’t fail because the idea is bad. They fail because nothing happens if the player loses. Stakes aren’t optional. They’re the engine.

If your YouTube script sounds like: “We did this… then we did that… then we went here…” you’re writing a travel log, not a story. Try this instead: – State the goal – Every scene either pushes you toward it or sets you back – End when the goal is clearly won or lost

Watched a recent @LukeTheNotable video and realised why it feels flat: it’s pure “and then” storytelling. You do a thing… and then another… and another… but there’s no final event I’m waiting for. One clear end goal (“we’re doing X so I can Y”) would double the pull.

Most creators don’t have a “hook problem”. They have a clarity problem. If I don’t know: – What you’re doing – Why it matters – What happens if you fail within 10 seconds… I’m gone. Loud energy doesn't fix that.

Watched PointCrow’s “Largest Pokémon Nuzlocke Tournament”… and the idea is god-tier. The issue? The intro is four minutes long. Viewers don’t want the entire rulebook before the story starts. Integrate rule explanations as they become relevant and the video feels twice as fast

Just watched @eystreem’s “Realistic Minecraft” video. The wild part? The animation is the real hook… but it’s buried under 35 seconds of warm-up jokes. In 2025 you don’t have 35 seconds. You have 3 (if we're being generous) So show the core idea first, then talk. Clarity before chaos.

An important lesson for any creator: Patterns + Novelty = retention

A lot of videos die in the first 60 seconds because the creator is busy explaining instead of pulling you in. Start with motion, conflict, or a moment that makes us lean forward. You can always explain the “how it works” later, right before it matters.

In any video good sound design is key but its especially key in a horror video

@derapchu Subscribed

please subscribe and I’ll upload again 😁 youtu.be/HYswmjP_ulU?si…

I finally uploaded 😅 sorry for taking a while. I Got Chained To Parrot and Wifies

Just watched @michaelreeves’ Facebook Marketplace video — the chaos and comedy are top-tier as always. One thing I noticed: the why of the video (getting a motorcycle) disappears for long stretches. Even I forgot the goal until it was mentioned again. In long-form, when everything builds toward a payoff, the audience can’t lose sight of the destination. A quick reminder every few minutes keeps the tension alive and the story glued together.

If you want to keep high retention on gaming videos you need more than a fast intro...

An important lesson to never have humor at the expense of tension. It was always lower retention.

Just watched @BrentTV spongebob card unboxing video and while he has great energy a way to make it even more powerful is to add a small “boxes left” counter on screen. It turns a simple unboxing into a rising challenge and gives viewers a built in reason to stay to the end.