Is this accurate in all cases? Isn't Jenny Nicholson one of the bigger YouTubers, with videos coming out maybe once or twice a year?

Seems like it might be the exception proving the rule. People say “every” restaurant these days needs to use something like Toast to provide online ordering and needs to play nice with DoorDash for delivery and needs to host ghost kitchens to increase income, etc. Of course there’s that one old-school place with the established reputation that does simple dine-in only and is thriving. But the new upstart can’t just not play the game - that privilege is reserved for those who have already won.

I know it's been a while, but I think Jenny Nicholson grew her audience with shorter content. I recall "script meeting" videos about a lot of movies as they came out, and those were shorter and more frequent. Now that she has a dedicated audience, she doesn't rely as much on the algorithm to surface her.

There are a few 'long form' creators like Jenny Nicholson (I recommend the one about the failure of the Star Wars Hotel!).

Contrapoints (eg the Twilight one), Big Joel's (recently made a 6hr one!), FoldingIdeas and so on. It's a very different model, and a number of these creators also make videos for Nebula.

They also use patreon as a significant source of recurring revenue, so they can create a small number of high quality videos instead of putting out content constantly.

It's a very different business model, and it doesn't have the potential to become as profitable as Mr Beast.

Patreon subs also boost their video's performance on YouTube, since a subscriber committed to paying a monthly fee will definitely want to "get their money's worth" by watching videos as soon as they drop and participate in discussions and comment sections.

If you have 15k patreon subs those are guaranteed views around your video's publish time, which presumably is a good thing for their algorithmic weight.

Jenny Nicholson and similar accounts rely on other channels than YouTube notifications. basically their video releases become events big enough to get minor news attention, chatter on discord, xitter traffic, etc.

if your channel doesn't have dedicated enough fans to do that it's not gonna work on you. and you almost certainly aren't getting news coverage of your review of a star wars hotel, you know? Jenny is rare for that.

Well, no:

On the "not even wrong" front, in the Pauli sense of the phrase: she's a relatively minor success, you'll find 20 police bodycam video accounts created in the last year that get 10x views.

There is a pattern with well-known creators that are more video-essay than intensifying whirlpoolers or whatever, where they keep YouTube productions to a handful of high-quality videos a year, and monetize via Patreon with less well-polished videos published much more frequently.

People seem to have a good reasoning for your specific example, but they’re not addressing the question. I can think of a number of YouTubers that have longer schedules that have had success (Mark Rober, Cleo Abram, to name 2 but there’s clearly more).

My guess is that if all you want to do is work the algorithm to get views then you’re going to get worked by the algorithm.