The media calls the blogger the person who found the key to YouTube's recommendation system. Donaldson even gave lectures on this subject. Here are the lessons that can be learned from his story.

Hard work pays off. Success has taught Mr. Beast that viewers appreciate the effort that goes into creating a video. “The beauty of YouTube is that double the effort doesn’t double the views. It doubles the results tenfold,” he says. “You can get your first million subscribers for years, but the second million will come in a couple of months.”

The videos have perfect timing. Mr. Beast's videos are about 20 minutes long, so as not to bore the viewer but to capture their attention. He also actively films shorts. "Short forms of content have firmly taken their place and will only gain popularity," the blogger notes. Donaldson knows what he's talking about: he is also in the top 5 most popular TikTok users.

The cover is the most important part of the video. Many people will decide whether to watch the video based on it. Mr. Beast has a team of six people who draw covers for him. They make about 20 options for each video and choose the best one. But they are always ready to quickly change the cover if the video does not collect well.

The title should immediately grab attention. Yes, Mr. Beast is one of the culprits of the clickbait epidemic. Sure, videos about “$10,000 to the first bank robber” or “I survived a plane crash” are not entirely true. But Donaldson at least somehow plays up the “bait” in the video. And he always tells the essence of the video in the first 30 seconds.

The main thing is to retain the audience. The main indicator that Mr. Beast pays attention to is not the number of views, but the retention rate. This is data on what percentage of viewers watched the video to the end and at what point the rest closed the page. As a result, the algorithm gives priority to videos with the highest percentage of views.