DUDE CONGRATS ON THE SUCCESS

my experiment was flawed for many reasons- I was impatient and was more focused on an entertaining video than an objectively accurate experiment- so I'm happy to see you perform it much better. Keep making video I believe you can make one of the great ones

"Maybe THIS video will get a million views." This statement aged like a fine wine.

You just basically proved what Ludwig was talking about at Streamer University, Youtube growth comes from dedication to your craft, not being beholden to what you did before.

8:29 Little did he know, this video did in fact get 1 million views.

I smiled a lot when he said that this video might not get 1 million views, and then seeing it had gotten a million views. Congrats so much!!!

The LUCK seems to just be finding the chord that truly resonates with people. You were preparing for years until you found it and by then had the skill to take it home. Congrats. So well deserved.

Hey, youtuber from Brazil here who reached 1 million subs. Your video was recommended to me after I saw others about algorithm and youtube. I clicked out of curiosity, I stayed because your presentation was genuine and inspiring. There is no magic formula for being successful on YouTube, but I think being genuine helps a lot. I wish you the best!

There's definitely skill involved, and a lot of it, but it's never gonna be something that's ever 100% luck-free, and blaming luck for your failure in this scenario is definitely a fair complaint.
JHXC got lucky, really lucky even. There're countless of BANGER videos out there on YouTube, all with under 1k views, it's actually so depressing.

"Maybe THIS video will get a million views someday" with the "he was right." thumbnail in the background is so funny lol

This video proves that there's absolutely an intersection of luck and skill. You're damn skilled at editing and making videos. Keep it up :)

Sad truth is that, one viral video can't guarantee your success. But you're already having your second quite successful video.
Keep going and may the algorithm be with you.

8:24  little doses he knows 😭💔

There is many reasons why a video can explode, one of those is people liking a certain topic, and I find very interesting talking about the intros, EVEN THIS VIDEO!! you don't talk about "Ludwig" in the entire video, no, you talk about an experiment, and that's pretty interesting!!!

Keeep it up JHX!! something that I can say with youtube is perseverance and experimenting is what makes the waters moves!

Edit: and just to add to the pot, Ludwig is a smelly cheater

I never fucking noticed, YOU made the music?
Holy shit, that's sick. Doing absolutely everything for the video, even the music

Hey! Congrats on the success mate!
I was one of those who saw your video that popped off, and one of my mods informed me of this video which directly relates to a video I made so I wanted to give some thoughts due to having researched this a bit.

At 1:32 you say "the algorithm did eventually pick it up" referring to Ludwig's video. This is true but unlike your video having this naturally occur, for Ludwig this was only because he promoted it on his main channel. After Mizkif watched the video, it got 2.5k useless views with no watch time and it was effectively dead. However, a few days later Ludwig mentioned on his podcast that the video existed, and that is what caused the spike of searches hitting it to 11k and boosting it in the algorithm. I have spoken to Ludwig and he claims he was unaware that he tainted his results, so when he made his video attributing this growth all to his 'method', it was merely in error. It was however an error he has done little to dissaude people on, and the video itself had many comments showcasing that they found it through the promotion he gave it so I question how he missed it.

The main flaw of Ludwig's video is that it does take luck to succeed, because it takes luck to get "skill". You need to be in the right place at the right time to get the right information and to have the right variables to survive long enough to get it. It took MrBeast 5 years to grow succcessful, it took me a whole 6 years, hell it took Ludwig about as long. We were each passionate, driven people, but you do need things to coincidentally go your way and not everyone has half a decade of their lives to throw away on trying to become successful online. What most people need is an idea, a spark of inspiration that leads them to see an opening in the market, an idea that hasn't been capitalized on. Whether it be MrBeast saying he would be "trying random things" and stumbling onto spectacle videos, or me happening to see WitWix speedrunning GTA 5 and thinking "Maybe I can do that too". MrBeast once upon a time said "I think I might quit", and I almost had to quit for financial reasons. There were dozens of things that had to go just right for me to still be here, and not working as a counsellor in the public sector or something.

People who grow successful here tend to be quite lucky already in the place that they happen to be in life, as not all life circumstances are really condusive to grinding YouTube. Saying "Luck isn't involved at all in succeeding on YouTube" is very different than saying "if you have sufficient skill you can make a successful video on a new channel". A person who has already succeeded as a surgeon, and has 20 years experience, is obviously going to have a much better chance at becoming a surgeon if they keep all that experience and re-enrol in university. That doesn't mean it doesn't require some luck to become a surgeon the first time round. Ludwig was relying on endless resources he only had because he had already succeeded, to make the channel and video he did. Starting from the ground floor and surviving long enough to get sufficient skill to make something good on YouTube is no easy feat, and there are endless things that can bump you off your path that you need to be lucky to dodge. But you can probably imagine how if you personally had Ludwig mentor you to make content, your chances of success would massively increase as it would in any field gaining a mentor who is a master of the craft. But not everyone is lucky enough to get a mentorship with Ludwig, as his new channel effectively recieved.

YouTube constantly promotes small videos, even if the amount of space they give to them is limited relative to the size of the platform, and I have seen many small channels pop off or individual videos blow up. I actually keep a collection of them should I ever want to use them for a video. YouTube even now has particular places small videos tend to be shown (3rd down on the right side bar for example). YouTube has an invested interest in finding new talent, it is just a really hard thing to do given the insane amount of content that is uploaded. I just wish Ludwig hadn't wrapped testing the viability of new channels, in the very limited capacity he did, with philsophical claims about the nature of how success is achieved and I wish his original test was not done so very poorly. I guess the silver lining will always be inspirational stories like yours, but I suppose we will never know the portion of people who did exactly as you did but failed miserably. I do think, as you do, that a great video on a new channel can get somewhere. But I do know for certain that videos on already established channels are given far more reach than new ones, I have uploaded similar videos on a new channel and an established one and received a quarter of the views. The growth of the video isn't JUST about how good the video is. Ludwig found this out when he uploaded a MrBeast video to his channel, having it only recieve 12 million views when ANY video on MrBeast channel get 50+ million. Failing to succeed on YouTube shouldn't be reduced to a 'skill issue' nor should those who gained success be suggested to have only got their because they 'worked hard'. There are endless hard working talented people on this site who will just never be in the right place to make something algorithmically viable, but at least it does seem like YouTube does give people a chance to get somewhere.

02:17 - This whole second segment of the video is precisely where I’m at. When I focused on Armored Warfare I went from 250 subs to over 4,000 subs pretty rapidly. However the game had a troubled history as time went on and it’s just not a viable long term title anymore. Now I’m just trying to feel around in the dark for the “next best thing” only to be behind right out the gate.

I think the hardest part of youtube is keeping consistant in terms of content ideas and fanbase, while yes you can have viral videos it isn't guaranteed that all of your videos will become hits. You have to make things that will keep your viewers coming back, which can be very hard to do motivation (and insperation) wise.

8:23 foreshadowing

I felt like Ludwig’s video ended up proving that Youtube growth was all about having money to pay other people rather than skill, but your video actually did what I had hoped Ludwig’s would. Great stuff!

9:03 felt this God Damnit