How Mark Rober Became Successful

A common topic online (full of webpages) is how Mark Rober became successful?

Again, this is not a bad page, we love Mark Rober. Anything that introduces people to science and how it can improve lives can only be a good thing (ZipLine should get more attention).

Reading through (a lot) of webpages you find that there are a few thoughts of what people are determining what successful means:

how much money he earns
why his videos are successful

And that is roughly it.

So, to answer quickly the 2 questions:

who cares about how much he earns. If you like the process then the end result is a bonus. He makes money from sponsorship, appearances, own products and Youtube ads
his videos are successful because of "he follows a process". Riiiight. Ultimately, for most of his videos he does a Columbo reveal. He shows you the end at work (or a thumbnail), and the video is the process of getting to the end. In this process you see the ups and downs and the "process" of product creation. In some videos you don't get the reveal at the start, but you have to wait to see. This only works if the videos are edited well so that there is suspense and "bread crumb" trails of anticipation. It is not accident that there are quick edits and jumping around talks. It keeps you entertained.

Not many (if any) explain how he actually got video love. They are all explaining how he is now successful, which is easy to explain.

But for Mark Rober to became successful, his videos should get tons of views?

Now, this is where I wanted to see how those videos got tons of views. Actually why were they successful. Case in point, the very first video:

But...lets see some stats:

This is his first video. 13 years ago- so uploaded roughly Oct 2011- Halloween
As of 2024 it has 13 million views
49 seconds in length

After that he posts roughly monthly with views ranging from 432k all the way to 151 million (2020)

As of 2024 he has 50 million subscribers.

So, how on earth does a video that is less than a minute spark a ton of views and Youtube career?

It all started with a different Youtube channel that is not named Mark Rober

The start of how Mark Rober became successful is actually with his Youtube account. His first channel was called "Onemeeeliondollars's" - a take from Austin Powers Dr Evil. Here is the channel:

Remember Youtube like that? So looking at this he:

Actively gathered friends- there are 23
There are 144 subscribers
13 comments
1.7 million views
released it at a very opportune moment- Halloween theme at Halloween

Remember- first video.

So, there is something else going on. We are getting pre-promotion first.

Remember that Mark Rober is a brand and he had positioned himself very specifically. You want to see:

A NASA engineer create things. What can they do?!
An exclusive Apple engineer

So most interviews, most text clearly state this or at least mention it. This alerts your curiosity and also adds a lot of "social proof" which in turn creates curiosity.

But there is a piece of text that also alludes to how this one small video became "viral". "Here is the Gizmodo article that really kick started it all: http://gizmodo.com/5854649/best-costume-use-two-ipads-to-..."

So like many products it was either pushed to Gizmodo (Oct 30th 2011) or they found it online through networking. So what does the article state? Seven guesses what comes up first :)

If you get onto Gizmodo it alerts people and influencers about new tech. So again we have social proof and now curiosity of what this "best Halloween costume" would be. The stats from this small article:

319k likes
279k Facebook likes

Here is actually where the video went viral and why a small video go so much love. But that is not the end of the Mark Rober story.

One video does not maketh a fortune, so what happened then?

Now we have what you should textbook do with your 15 minutes of fame and how Mark Rober became successful.

With so much Internet love and so many people jumping on this video, Mark created a company.

According to Wiki:

[After Oct 2011] The following year, Rober launched Digital Dudz, an online Halloween costume company that specializes in Halloween costumes based on the same concept as the video (to which Rober holds the patent). The company took in $250,000 in revenue in its first three weeks of operations, and by 2013 his app-integrated costumes were sold in retail stores such as Party City. The costumes were widely featured on news channels such as CBS News, CNN, The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, Fox, Yahoo! News, Discovery Channel, The Today Show and GMA. He sold the company to UK-based costume company Morphsuits in 2013.

So now you have:

a Youtube channel fund (if that is what he did)
lots of backlinks to his channel from very large and trust worthy corporations

His videos after that (with only a handful dipping under a million views) were in the millions. This then further winds up the Youtube generation machine:

more views equals more Youtube love
more views equals more subscribers
more subscribers gives Youtube love
more subscribers gives more views and video interaction.
and on and on

As a side. Curiosity also makes people watch the video for longer. The longer you watch a video the more Youtube thinks that the video is good and you get more Youtube love.

Pre-marketing is one of the main marketing methods to how Mark Rober became successful

Now in this sense pre-marketing is to do with who Mark teams up with and what he does to promote way before his videos go out. He might contact sites and tell them what he is up to.

Most successful Youtubers will partner with someone. MrBeast did this and was a major reason to his success. Mark Rober collaborated with various Youtubers which generated more subscribers and views. He did large projects which generated more publicity. Jimmy Kimmel brought out Mark Rober due to the "Prank" videos he did.

Also, the audience that Mark Rober seems to target are mainly Youtube audience who will also get family members to watch. So elephant toothpaste, Orbeez, Worlds Largest Super Soaker all seem to have a specific audience in mind. We get some "adult" style videos but have still the younger age at heart- like the glitter bomb videos and squirrel maze.

Obviously, worlds largest XYZ also gets attention. Especially when at the time they are in fad. Like the elephant toothpaste, escape rooms etc.

As per always we wish Mark all the best

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