How One Bearded Bass Fisherman HACKED the YouTube Algorithm for Explosive Channel Growth
If you’re interested in fishing and outdoor content, chances are, you have heard of Lojo Fishing. This big bearded bass fisherman from Alabama has truly cracked the code to growth on youtube and beat the YouTube algorithm, amassing 400,000 subscribers in just a few years!
Over the past few years, he has demonstrated constant channel growth and now it’s actually accelerating. In fact, if you look at trending content for fishing, he absolutely dominates it on a regular basis. And I’m going to UNVEIL the 6 HACKS he used to master the YouTube algorithm. If you are interested in growing your own channel on Youtube, or you just want to know a lot more about one of your favorite bass fishing content creators, then you are in the right place.
You can WATCH THE VIDEO here, or you can continue reading—this is a lengthy post, so grab yourself a beverage, and maybe get ready to take some notes too!
How LOJO Fishing Beat the YouTube Algorithm & EXPLODED His Channel Growth!
OK now let’s get into what you’re here for: a deep dive into how one popular fishing content creator beat the YouTube algorithm, exploded his channel, and changed his life forever.
I’ve been a subscriber of Lojo’s for about 3 years, and I have watched him grow his content in truly LIFE CHANGING ways for him and his family. He has gone on quite a journey from being a suburban Army vet with 1000 subs in 2016, to today. This is a guy who now is able to fish and make fishing content every single day, he has 400K subscribers, he just bought his dream ranch, and has just joined the Googan Squad, arguably the most disruptive and hottest brand in all of fishing. In this video I am going to share with you what I have learned about how Lojo Fishing is beating the youtube algorithm, enjoying explosive growth, and honestly: making a TON of money. Maybe you and I can use some of this information to grow our channels too!
Let’s start at the beginning. The very first video Lojo has listed on the channel was from September 2016, and was an MTB unboxing and Slam, shot in his garage and from a kayak. To this day, that video has only 1700 views. There’s a website called Youtubers.me where you can see a historical timeline of youtubers sub and view growth. While it doesn’t go all the way back to September of 2016, and I do not know the exact number of subs he had at that time, we know it was only a thousand or so, based on some comments that Lojo himself made in his recent “Why I Joined the Googan Squad” video. The point here is that way back in 2016, he was a very small YouTuber making, frankly, very average content. If you’re reading this and you have a YouTube channel about fishing, I can almost guarantee you’ve made an MTB unboxing video of your own!
Let’s fast forward a couple of months in Lojo’s journey...to November of 2016. He had a moderate hit with a video that now has 37K views...that is the first time any of his videos had more than a couple thousand views, but he actually had hit upon a phenomenon that growth marketers call “trend jacking”. Basically, he took a trendy or trending topic, and made a video about it in a timely fashion. This is the same thing that gaming content creators like Dream, who makes Minecraft videos, has done, but he’s done it on, uhhh a bit bigger scale than 37K views.
The video Lojo did was about a double whopper plopper lure. That is a lure that had just come out that August, and of course it took the bass fishing world by storm because everybody loves a good topwater blowup. But it took Lojo all the way from August until November to make that video, so it’s not even like he was super fast on the draw. He certainly was not the first to make a video about the double plopper, in fact, Tactical Bassin seems to have that honor and had a video out in August when the bait was just hitting the market. But it didn’t matter that Lojo was a few months later. Demand for this lure, and interest in seeing it in action, was enough to give him a nice boost--and it was also helped by the fact that he did a GREAT job of SEO for this video.
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What is SEO? Search engine optimization, which basically just means making sure that your title, description and tags as well as your actual words in the video, tell YouTube exactly what your video is about.
Lojo was able to get his video to the #1 and #2 ranks for double plopper and double plopper topwater blowups search terms, which is awesome. According to TubeBuddy, this video had an SEO score of 90.
This is Lojo Hack #1: Trend Jacking
And then?
The very next month, he followed up that moderate success with his very first BIG video! That video has 408K views as of today, and it is about fishing with live minnows. Can you believe it? The most basic kinds of fishing, and in fact, it’s even a kind of fishing that isn’t even legal in every state or place. But this time, he managed to get a TubeBuddy SEO score of ONE HUNDRED and he also ranked for 4 tags related to fishing with minnows.
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Ranking for tags means that your result shows up on the FIRST PAGE of search results for a specific term.
By the way: To get TubeBuddy for your own channel, check out this link!
OK, and this is important, Lojo also did one sort of sneaky, not entirely kosher trick to growth. He used the name of every member of the Googan Squad in his tags. Now, I don’t actually know if this tricks the youtube algorithm or not. I suspect that it doesn’t have that much influence now here in 2020, but it is certainly possible that the video got some uplift from that way back in 2016. What we know for sure is that SOMETHING made this minnow video blow right up!
That’s Lojo Hack #2: Optimizing Keywords in Titles, Descriptions, Tags and video content.
But even though this minnow fishing video now has 408K views, we don’t know the exact subscriber growth he got but we DO know it wasn’t massive. How do we know this? Because he still only had 7K subs a year later, and was only getting about 55K views a month! Does that mean that allllll those people who watched that minnow video decided not to subscribe? Well. Yeah. That is what it means. But why would they not subscribe? The most likely reason is because they did not find other content on his channel that was as relevant to their interests. Fishing with minnows was kind of a one time thing on Lojo’s channel. It is not a common occurrence for him to be fishing with live bait back then, just like it’s not really now. He has always been more of a lure fisherman. So if someone wanted content on fishing with live minnows, they watched his one video on that, and then looked at the rest of his content, they’d see that the rest of it might not have been as relevant to them so they would just click off and not subscribe.
What does this teach us??
Well, a few things.Including a NEW Lojo Hack.
1) trend jacking isn’t everything, but if you can use a trend OR a popular youtuber’s name to get a leg up WHILE STILL adding something new and unique to the conversation, it is likely to help you,
2) optimizing keywords across titles, descriptions, the video itself, and also in your tags DOES make a big difference,
3) similar content matters: even if you do have a video that gets a ton of views, the vast majority of those viewers may not sub to you, especially if you do not routinely produce other content that’s directly related to that subject. You will get MORE subscribers (as well as much better overall engagement and boost from the youtube algorithm) if you have multiple videos on similar topics In other words, dig into a specific niche.
Lojo Hack #3: Similar Content
Okay, moving on into 2017...what is really interesting is that in Lojo’s account of this time frame, he describes himself as a very low level YouTuber with only about 10K subs and about a year into his youtube journey. He goes on to explain that he got a DM from Lunkers TV, one of the Googan Squad, saying basically, hey we’d like to connect with you. That was the first sort of “official” contact Lojo seems to have had with the Googans as a business entity, even though he mentions he had met them briefly before. It definitely seems like that conversation with the Googan’s business manager (Manager Matt) gave Lojo the inspiration and excitement to really push forward with youtube more seriously. At this time, he was still working a day job, as a physical therapy coordinator or something related to physical therapy.
But the interesting thing you and I can notice is that really not a lot of growth happened on his youtube channel in 2017. AT ALL. In fact, by April of 2018, he still only had 9K subs. But...then things changed.
In just ONE month, from April to May of 2018, Lojo experienced his biggest subscriber jump yet: growing his channel by over 66% in just four weeks.
How did he do that??
The question is how did Lojo leap from 9K all the way to 15K subs in just one month! The answer is that he had another big video, but unlike the one that now has 408K views, this one took off RIGHT AWAY and amassed over 200K views in an extremely short amount of time. What was this video? Well surprisingly, it was the one about his wife picking his fishing lures.
Something cute actually happens in the early part of the video… he was at the point where he wasn’t even sure he was going to get 400 likes on a video--that video now has 11,000 likes! So how did this video do so well? A few factors I observed as I dug into it:
Ranked #1 for the search term “wife fishing challenge”, which has a surprising amount of search traffic
Ranked #2 for “wife picks lures”
Tagged the entire googan squad by name again LOL
And uhh the search term “hot wife” was included
All of these things, plus a really good thumbnail, added up to very rapid initial views on the video. It was something that was related to his channel, which was doing a bunch of challenges, and semi-funny setups related to fishing...but it also introduced the element of an appealing woman, and established Lojo as a good family man too. There were a lot of ingredients that worked together to make this a great formula. But the biggest takeaway here, and the TRUTH is: Youtube’s algorithm heavily favors momentum. If a video does well in its first hour, first day, first few days, Youtube will continue to promote the video to more and more people. And it will have a greater chance to become viral. AND since it was more relevant to the rest of the content on his channel, far more of the viewers “smashed that subscribe button”.
So within one month, Lojo grew his subscriber count by well over 66%, on the basis of just one simple video. How? He built upon the first 3 Lojo Hacks, and added the factor of Momentum, which is Lojo Hack #4.
Lojo Hack #4: Momentum
The very next month. Something amazing happened. On June 18th, 2018, Lojo had his first HUGE video hit. It was the first video that he ever filmed that got over 500K views...in fact, it got over 600K, it got over 700 hundred...right now, this video has over EIGHT hundred thousand views! Why??
Well, he took the success he had seen from LOJO HACKS 1-4, and he added yet another element to the mix. Are you sensing a theme here? He is experimenting, and building on a winning formula as soon as he finds elements that work for his audience. He is beginning to really understand what his specific viewers want to see, and what kind of content they will reward. And that itself is LOJO HACK #5: Double down and BUILD on your successes.
Lojo Hack #5: Double Down
This 800K video had a 100 Tubebuddy SEO score, he tagged all the googans, it was directly relevant to his channel (in the sense that it’s a fishing challenge that involves a trip to a store), it built upon the family man persona he had established with the “wife picks lures” video, but it used a KID instead. Also, the thumbnail is interesting to analyze--but actually, that is going to be a topic I go in depth on in another video--so make sure to head over to our YouTube channel and subscribe now and hit that notification bell if you want to hear what I have learned about LOJO’s THUMBNAIL GAME!
OK so we are now in summer of 2018, and this is actually where Lojo himself says he began to transition to being a full time youtuber. Now, I have to tell you, I don’t know if I would have had the guts to do that at this stage, so I absolutely give him huge credit for the leap of faith, and for investing in and BELIEVING in HIMSELF so heavily. Bear in mind, that at this point, he has a sponsorship from Lew’s Fishing which is paying him every month, he has a deal with MTB and Karl’s, he’s making some money off youtube but by my estimations it’s definitely not enough to support a family on.
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If you are interested in a video detailing how much fishing youtubers earn, let me know in the comments!
Right around that time, Lojo started hanging out with the Googans a bit. He went to the Bassmaster Classic as a Lew’s representative, and ended up actually staying in the Googan airbnb with them. At this point he had around 70K subs, so he was really growing pretty fast. This is also around the time the Googan Baits actually hit the market, and according to Lojo himself, he was actually the first YouTuber they sponsored, paying him to use their baits on a non-exclusive basis. Looking back now, it is easy to see that Manager Matt had plans for Lojo! But our boy didn’t actually get another truly viral video hit for quite some time. In fact, not until April 24th of 2019! At this point, Lojo had about 83K subs, which is awesome, and definitely gave him enough of a built in audience to really explode the views on the video that is to this day the top performing video across his entire channel.
That is the video entitled “Teaching a Kid to use Baitcaster”, with ONE POINT FIVE MILLION views. Wow! If you know your own EPM number (earnings per thousand views) you can calculate what you would earn on a 1.5M view video by multiplying your EPM by 1,500. It is a lot of money, folks.
So what were the ingredients Lojo used here? Well,
Optimized KW: optimised to the moon, 100 SEO score 4 ranked tags, added kids, and ranked #1 or #2 for 3 separate tags about how to use a baitcaster reel--this is a massive search volume term!
Trend jacking: tagged Googans AND Milliken Fishing and First State: all big Youtubers who had absolutely nothing to do with his video.
Similar content: it is another pick your lures challenge, it involves his family again
Momentum: I don’t have any way of knowing for sure but I have a very strong suspicion that Lojo used the Premiere feature, which was brand new, on this video, which could have activated his 83K subscribers and helped momentum massively.
Double Down: this video is almost identical in a lot of ways to the various picking lures challenges, but it tapped into an even stronger SEO vein because of the baitcaster keywords AND the use of another major hack…Answer a burning question your viewers want to know! “HOW TO”.
Lojo Hack #6: How To
This strategy accomplishes many things. One, it ensures you will rank high in search and discovery and suggested videos. Two, it actually provides valuable information, not just entertainment--now, entertainment is awesome and we all like to kill some time watching other people fish when we can’t, but the fact is, youtube is the world’s second largest search engine. That means people use it to LEARN STUFF. Like...how to use a baitcaster. That is the magic phrase to remember: HOW TO.
Shortly after this massive hit video hit the channel, Lojo earned his silver play button for 100K subscribers. He passed that huge milestone in May 2019. Guys. That means he went from 15K subs to 100K subs in ONE YEAR. All on the strength of 3 videos, each of which got more popular, because he was zeroing in on EXACTLY how to beat the youtube algorithm for massive channel growth.
And if we fast forward to January of 2020, Lojo hit 200K subs...that’s only 8 months later! Now here we are 9 months after that and as of right now, he is sitting at 400K.Basically what we are seeing is that for the past 2 1/2 years, Lojo has doubled his subscribers every 8 to 9 months. And it’s all thanks to these 6 principles that I am calling Lojo’s Hacks, that he discovered and has used to BEAT the YouTube Algorithm and EXPLODE his channel growth!
I hope you have enjoyed this blog post, I hope you learned a lot, and I hope you’ll take just one second to hit the subscribe button on our YouTube Channel too, because I have lots of additional content to share about how YOU can grow your YouTube fishing channel and live out your dreams too! Oh and one last thing, if you’d like to get TubeBuddy for yourself, check out this link!