GROWING THE PIE
In those days, his viewership could be best described as modest. “Initially, there were only about 10 views, mostly from friends. Afterward, friends shared my videos with others in the university, saying, ‘Hey, this guy makes fun videos. Check him out. Even though he plays games, he’s really funny.’”
His viewership grew slowly but organically as the videos started garnering more shares and were sometimes posted on websites sharing memes. It took about six months to get up to a thousand views and another one to two years to reach 10,000 views.
These numbers may seem inconsequential to those in the big leagues today but this metric was a lot less daunting in the early days. “Back then, having 1,000 to 2,000 views was not that bad. It was not considered slow because fewer people watched YouTube then so 1,000 to 2,000 views were considered quite good,” said Phan.
“There were days when viewership would reach 13,000 to 14,000, which was fantastic but now, if a video does not get a million views, it feels quite disappointing and sad.”