Welcome to YouTube Millionaires, where we profile channels that have recently crossed the one million subscriber mark. There are channels crossing this threshold every week, and each has a story to tell about YouTube success. Read previous installments of YouTube Millionaires here.
The channel in the spotlight for this week’s YouTube Millionaires column delivers a massive amount of information to its subscribers. InformOverload — the name is short for “information overload” — posts several news videos each day. Its rotating cast of anchors often discusses tech innovations, scandalous stories from pop culture and politics, the latest scientific discoveries, and other offbeat items.
Over time, channel creator Landon Dowlatsingh and his team (who are partnered with BroadbandTV) have been rewarded for their dedication to their viewers. They now have more than one million subscribers, so we chatted with them about their journey:
Subscribe for daily Tubefilter Top Stories
Tubefilter: How does it feel to have more than one million YouTube subscribers? What do you have to say to your fans?
Inform Overload: It feels exciting, we’ve been waiting for this moment for a long time. It’s nice that people appreciate the work that we do. We wanted to say to our fans, thanks so much for coming to watch us every day for the news. Our fans are the best! They have the best sense of humor, they’re easy to get along with and they’re very engaged in our comment section. We love you potatoes (fans)! They make coming to work fun and enjoyable.
TF: What in your mind makes online video news different from news content on other platforms?
IO: It’s more personal. We cater to what our fans like. We don’t cover all the news. We cover the news that we know our fans want to hear. We like to keep our news upbeat, fun and exciting for the new generation of internet users. Watching the news can be such a drag with all the depressing stuff you see every day so we look for the positives.
TF: Would you say there is an overarching philosophy that determines which stories you choose to cover?
IO: We generally just like to cover stuff that is current and interesting. If it’s noteworthy and remarkable, then we’ll cover it. If we don’t care about what we are talking about, we know are fans won’t care either.
TF: What topics tend to resonate very well with your audience?
IO: Stories typically revolving around internet trends, tech, the universe as well as aliens, ghosts, and paranormal things which tend to resonate really well with our audience. Basically anything cool or stuff that we find interesting, they all love. They love hearing about the fascinating stuff that is going on around the world that they otherwise might not have heard about.
TF: What steps do you take to verify the sources that your stories come from?
IO: We tend to look for eye-catching headlines. Then we’ll check other news sites that to also see if they’re covering the story as well. We’ll even go to Snopes.com to verify if a source is real or not. If we find out that a story is a hoax, we’ll always make sure to say that in the headline or in the video itself. We really do our research when it comes to each and every video.
TF: How much work goes into the titles of your videos?
IO: We workshop titles constantly. Typically, we’ll come up with an original working title and go from there. We analyze the keywords through SEO and then determine what keywords to use based on the analysis. Even after the video goes up, we’ll still change the title if we feel that it doesn’t accurately describe what’s in the video.
TF: How do you deal with the grind of posting new videos every single day?
IO: We don’t look at it like a daily grind because we have so much fun doing what we love but some days are harder than others. There really is such a thing as a slow news day. However, over the course of the years that we’ve been doing this, we have a database of websites that we pour over to find all the stories that we need. It’s become kind of like a routine for us now.
TF: How much do you analyze the YouTube algorithm? Do you try to create videos with the intention of having them go viral?
IO: We go over the algorithm constantly. We tend to look at what’s going viral and what’s not working, and change our course of action. Our intention is for every video to go viral and reach as large an audience as possible. However, there are news stories out there that we know won’t go viral but we find it important to cover for the sake of the community. Sometimes being a news channel isn’t about being the biggest channel on YouTube. Ultimately, our intent is to keep people as informed as we can.
TF: What’s next for your channel? Any fun plans?
IO: We’re excited for the channel to grow even further but we’re not looking too far ahead. Getting to two million subscribers is next on our list and then we’ll maybe start thinking about the long-term vision. We plan to celebrate this milestone with a staff party as well as do a Q&A with our biggest potatoes. There are a lot of big changes in the works that we think our fans will be into, some of which will be rolling out in the near future and we’re excited to see how our fans will react.
