There used to be a huge secondary market for MrBeast videos. We'd come up with an original idea: ‘press this button, win 100 Grand’ and then the next day you'd see people in Japan, Russia, all over the world do the exact same video.[5]
Everyone would rip off our videos. That was a huge strategy. People would see who can copy our English videos first in their country. That has decreased a lot, now that we dub our videos.[5]
Only 6-10% of the world speaks English as their primary language. It's higher if you include secondary, but most people consume content in their primary. Before I launched channels in other languages, 90% of the world couldn't watch my videos.[3]
It's unfathomable that most of us only do English content. It's like we hate views.[3]
Q: Wait—so you created separate channels for different languages, but once YouTube allowed multi-language audio on a single video, you deleted those?
Yeah. We just told people, “We’re moving everything to the main channel.” The videos were all there, and we started quietly deleting the old ones. The transition was smooth.[15]
If you take 12 multi-language channels and combine them into one, it supercharges the heck out of the videos.[15]
We get more non-English views than English views.[3]
Our Espanol channel was doing over 20M views a video and some of the videos were getting a hundred million views. Our Portuguese channel was doing 5M to 10M views a video. Our French channel was doing millions of views a video.[15]
It's much easier to run 1 channel than 12. Rather than uploading, replying to comments, and making thumbnails for 12 different channels, you can have it all in one central place. It's a lot simpler for the fans, too. Now whether you're in Mexico, Brazil, or India, all the dubs are in one place, on one video, on one channel.[15]
Once I backed up my whole catalog and drove some Spanish speakers over to the channel, YouTube connected the dots: ‘People that speak Spanish like this video, let's give it to more people that speak Spanish.’ Then the next thing you know, every video you upload gets served to 10 million people that speak Spanish.[15]
Q: How'd you know what languages to prioritize, at first?[15]
We looked for the biggest languages on YouTube. In short, the more people speak it, the more views you'll probably get.[15]
On YouTube, you can upload one video with multiple language tracks. If you click my video in Mexico, I'll speak Spanish, but if you click in America, I'll speak English.[27]
Most people don't even know this is a thing yet. Even people who watch my main channel in other languages will randomly be like, wait a minute, this isn't a side channel. How does this happen? Because it auto plays in their language when they click on a video. But people are starting to catch on.[15]
It took years to build our dubbing system, but once it worked, we thought—why not help other creators too? So we started Creator Global. Now we help people dub their content into any language quickly and effectively.[15]
Most of the world doesn't speak English, so if you only make content in English, most of the world can't watch your videos. I'm not saying your views will 5-6x, but the second you do videos in every language, your potential reach will. If you have the resources, it's a no-brainer.[15]
Part of why my videos do well with dubs is because the content transcends culture. People of any age can watch it. That's why no matter what platform I put my content on, it always does well.[72]
We also localize some of the jokes. If we make a joke about a meme in America, they'll pick the joke equivalent in Spanish culture.[3]
When we go into these markets, we hire celebrities to do my voice, and local people freak out. The guy who does my Spanish dubs is the same guy who dubbed Spider-Man. A lot of those comments are, "Why does he sound like Spider-Man?" It’s because he is.[4]
Love Naruto. Getting the same voice actor as Naruto to do my voice in Japan was crazy.[15]
Are you worried that they might not translate exactly what you said?[4]
I was at first, but we built a system with quality control. Two people review every translation, and if it doesn’t match the original, we flag it.[4]
When we cleaned a beach in the Dominican Republic, there were thousands of people there that didn't speak English. One of the kids said, "Before your Spanish Channel none of us knew who you were, but now everyone in my school loves your videos. We all watch it every time you upload." Before launching the Spanish channel, I could have gone there and no one would've known who I was. But after, everyone does.[3]
India is YouTube's largest audience. YouTube gets more views per month from India than the U.S. But it’s not even a fair comparison. There are 1.5 billion people in India and only 300 million in America. Even if every American watched ten videos a day, half of India watching five would still generate more views.[3]
The future is in India. You need to build a fan base over there, because as their middle class grows and more of them come online, they're going to become a juggernaut.[3]
You should do dubs, unless you hate views.[72]