- Kelly Stamps gained over 500,000 subscribers on YouTube in 2020.
- Her success can be attributed to her authentic personality, relatable vibes, and unpredictability.
- She doesn't have a clear niche and her production quality is average, but her content feels like the early days of YouTube when people were just expressing themselves.
- Kelly's authenticity and relatability make her stand out from other YouTubers.
- She doesn't try too hard and behaves naturally, which makes her funny and charming.
- Her low production aesthetic and unpredictable intros make her videos refreshing to watch.
- Personality is key on YouTube and production value is not everything.
- However, Kelly's growth has plateaued because her videos haven't changed much and she has become less relatable as she has gained financial success.

Kelly Stamps absolutely blew up on YouTube in 2020, gaining over 500,000 subscribers in a single year. We’re going to talk about how she did it and what we can take away and apply to our own channels.

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Kelly Stamps absolutely blew up on YouTube in 2020, gaining over 500,000 subscribers in a single year.

We're going to be talking about how she did it and what we can take away and apply to our own channels.

Kelly Stamps started 2020 on 6,000 subscribers and ended it with over 500,000.

Well, her videos are kind of hard to define.

The production quality appears kind of average and she doesn't, well, she doesn't really act like a YouTuber, at least not a YouTuber from 2018 onwards.

Her content feels very much like the early days of YouTube when people were just turning on the camera and talking to it and kind of not really wondering who's watching.

They were just expressing themselves which is why YouTube had the tagline broadcast yourself.

YouTubers in modern-day YouTube feel kind of manufactured, they never really feel as authentic as they used to be.

If you click on any video of Kelly Stamps you'll be faced with a pretty rogue intro that sometimes has nothing to do with the video that she's talking about.

There's no energetic, hey guys welcome back to the channel, that kind of like blow out your eardrums.

It looks like she doesn't even want to be there, which is intriguing considering everyone on YouTube at the moment is having fast cuts.

There's the screaming and the shouting because they want to keep your attention.

But this is exactly where the secret to her growth lies.

Her channel may not be about any particular topic, but they are about her.

Kelly Stamps, along with other personality vloggers like Emma Chamberlain, make videos you'll click on because of them, rather than because of what they're doing or what they're talking about.

We can break her success down to 3 things.

And then the third is the unpredictability of her videos.

You never really know what you're going to get when you click on 1 of her videos.

So let's start with her authentic personality.

Watching Kelly Stamps is like truly peeking behind the curtain of someone's life.

Watching her videos, you see her behaving exactly as she would if there was no camera there, and she acts just kind of strange on camera.

But rather than editing out all of those mistakes and those moments where she stumbles across her words, like I just did, she leaves them in.

And that kind of shows her as a more human YouTuber as opposed to these manufactured YouTubers that we see today.

She's funny, but not in an in-your-face YouTuber kind of way.

She acts herself and it's naturally amusing and quite charming.

With Kelly we're not subjected to a classic vlogger who's super high-energy and just comes across as a bit fake.

She's a normal person and she's just being weird.

This is a great lesson for anyone who wants to get started with vlogging.

Behave as if you were talking to your friend over a cup of coffee.

Obviously, it can be hard to totally behave normal and natural at first, but the more you practice the easier it gets and you'll just forget that the camera is there.

If you're relaxed you're probably going to be funnier and more authentic and you as yourself will just enjoy making YouTube videos a lot more compared to if you are scripted.

Kelly is also incredibly self-accepting and that's why her authenticity is so valuable.

Kelly shows us that you don't have to be a got your shit together vlogger like Casey Neistat for example or Fun For Louis.

You can just be yourself on camera, filming with your iPhone, and you can be that person who's just figuring out their life and you're bringing them along for the ride.

So we've talked a little bit about her quirkiness, but that's not the only thing that makes her stand out.

It's the fact that she's also super relatable.

Kelly may be eccentric but in 2020 she felt like 1 of us.

Her can't be arsed attitude clearly struck a chord with her audience because she behaves like a person more so than a YouTuber.

There are long segments of her videos which show her just doing weird stuff in her home like most of us probably do day to day when we're alone.

It's really liberating to watch because it speaks to that slightly strange side of all of us.

She consciously makes her videos with a low production aesthetic too.

Her camera doesn't appear to be top of the range, it looks like she's just shooting it on an iPhone and this is especially clear when she zooms in and we get these really blurry shots like this.

Kelly will also throw random text up on the screen in super generic fonts and the overall fact is that it kind of looks like she isn't really trying too hard.

Again, this is weirdly refreshing when we're used to seeing big YouTubers with crazy production value.

Her editing style feels like an extension of her personality.

Her most viewed video is literally called, How I Remain Unbothered, and this video probably sums her up the best.

She isn't afraid to show that CBA attitude that we all feel sometimes.

Her videos also span a bunch of topics that would be relatable to anyone from a video titled I don't like people to advice on saving money to her crazy dating stories.

You just feel like she's a friend and you're relating to her in this way.

Video topics like these might draw in a more general audience, but once you're in, it's hard not to get hooked by her personality.

So by leveraging relatable topics, then providing a relatable lens through which to view those topics, Kelly makes us want to keep coming back to watch her time and time again.

The last aspect of her character that makes her so watchable is her unpredictability.

You never really know what you're going to get with a Kelly Stamps video, which is why it's always so interesting to click on 1 of her videos.

Her intros sometimes bear no relevance to the rest of the video.

For example, check out this intro and see if you can guess what it's going to be about.

Well, this is actually a video giving tips for starting a YouTube channel And she begins by emerging from her wardrobe like some sort of Dementor from Harry Potter For absolutely no reason at all.

But this is how she decided to start a YouTube video.

This is not a conventional hook by any means.

Beast would do would be very concise and to the point and you'd be into the video before you knew it.

Whereas for Kelly, she'll spend like 30 seconds dancing to a K-pop video and you'll just be there like, hang on, what's happening?

And that's what makes you kind of want to watch her videos.

And when you see that on your watch page, you say, what is Kelly going to do today?

Really, what can we take from all of this and apply it to our own videos?

Unless you're a very specific YouTube channel who does long form tutorials or something where personality is not that important, Personality is going to be the thing that allows you to stand out.

Don't try and emulate others, be authentic.

The second thing that we can take away from Kelly Stamps is that production value is not everything.

You can go ahead and pick literally any of her videos and you'll see she doesn't really care about audio or video quality.

She just hits record and acts like herself for a little bit.

On this YouTube channel, we have a bunch of videos where we help people get started on YouTube.

And 1 of the things that we do is we tell them to just take out their iPhone and hit the record button and just make their first video.

That's usually the biggest hump that people have to get over before they start to become more frequent on YouTube.

A lot of people always feel like I have to have this amazing camera or this really great lighting rig or something like that.

Whereas Kelly Stamp is proof that you can hit 650K subscribers without worrying about production value.

The third and final takeaway is that this is not actually a complete success story.

For as quickly as Kelly Stamps grew in 2020, her growth has actually plateaued in the last year.

If you go ahead and look at her videos today, you'll see that they haven't really changed too much.

And this could actually be the problem as to why she's not gaining any other subscribers.

As much as being authentic and unique is what got her channel off the ground, her videos don't really change up the formula at all, which is potentially a problem because it starts to get a little bit stale and you kind of think, you know what, I'm getting a little bit bored of Kelly just randomly bursting into dance.

It was funny, it was cool at first, whereas now it's not that interesting.

First impressions, Kelly's videos have this appeal to them because she seems like she's very strange and a bit weird and still figuring it out.

But after a while the whole breaking into K-pop dancing in the middle of a video gets a little bit old and she hasn't really developed over the past 2 years and that's why I think that she's having this issue with not gaining any more subscribers.

There's also the fact that now because she did blow up and she's making a ton of money, which she's very open about on her channel, it kind of separates her slightly from her audience where in the first few videos, She was talking about being broke, wondering how she was going to, you know, pay the rent.

All of these kind of issues have now been solved, and it doesn't make her as relatable as she once was.

You can find small YouTubers who have uploaded videos explaining why they stopped watching Kelly, and it centers around this lack of relatability.

Obviously this is not to shame anyone for making loads of money from YouTube.

It's probably what we'd all love to be able to do, but when this clashes with your style of content and you don't adapt, that's when you can start to alienate your audience.

This is 1 of a few reasons why I think her YouTube channel has stagnated and now doesn't seem to be growing.

So, hopefully you can use these takeaways and apply them to your own channel to help you grow this year.

We thought it was worth mentioning that her growth slowed down.

If you enjoyed this video, be sure to check out our other creator case study videos in this playlist right here.

Thanks for watching and I'll see you guys later.


Speaker 0: Kelly Stamps absolutely blew up on YouTube in 2020, gaining over 500,000 subscribers in a single year. We're going to be talking about how she did it and what we can take away and apply to our own channels. Kelly Stamps started 2020 on 6,000 subscribers and ended it with over 500,000. So how does she do this? Well, her videos are kind of hard to define.

There's no real clear niche. The production quality appears kind of average and she doesn't, well, she doesn't really act like a YouTuber, at least not a YouTuber from 2018 onwards. Her content feels very much like the early days of YouTube when people were just turning on the camera and talking to it and kind of not really wondering who's watching. They were just expressing themselves which is why YouTube had the tagline broadcast yourself. YouTubers in modern-day YouTube feel kind of manufactured, they never really feel as authentic as they used to be.

If you click on any video of Kelly Stamps you'll be faced with a pretty rogue intro that sometimes has nothing to do with the video that she's talking about. There's no energetic, hey guys welcome back to the channel, that kind of like blow out your eardrums. And she often looks very bored on video. It looks like she doesn't even want to be there, which is intriguing considering everyone on YouTube at the moment is having fast cuts. There's the screaming and the shouting because they want to keep your attention.

But this is exactly where the secret to her growth lies. Her channel may not be about any particular topic, but they are about her. Kelly Stamps, along with other personality vloggers like Emma Chamberlain, make videos you'll click on because of them, rather than because of what they're doing or what they're talking about. We can break her success down to 3 things. The first is her authentic personality.

The second is the relatable vibes. And then the third is the unpredictability of her videos. You never really know what you're going to get when you click on 1 of her videos. So let's start with her authentic personality. Watching Kelly Stamps is like truly peeking behind the curtain of someone's life.

Watching her videos, you see her behaving exactly as she would if there was no camera there, and she acts just kind of strange on camera. But rather than editing out all of those mistakes and those moments where she stumbles across her words, like I just did, she leaves them in. And that kind of shows her as a more human YouTuber as opposed to these manufactured YouTubers that we see today. She's funny, but not in an in-your-face YouTuber kind of way. She acts herself and it's naturally amusing and quite charming.

With Kelly we're not subjected to a classic vlogger who's super high-energy and just comes across as a bit fake. She's a normal person and she's just being weird. This is a great lesson for anyone who wants to get started with vlogging. Don't try it too hard. Be natural, be weird.

Behave as if you were talking to your friend over a cup of coffee. Obviously, it can be hard to totally behave normal and natural at first, but the more you practice the easier it gets and you'll just forget that the camera is there. If you're relaxed you're probably going to be funnier and more authentic and you as yourself will just enjoy making YouTube videos a lot more compared to if you are scripted. Kelly is also incredibly self-accepting and that's why her authenticity is so valuable. Kelly shows us that you don't have to be a got your shit together vlogger like Casey Neistat for example or Fun For Louis.

You can just be yourself on camera, filming with your iPhone, and you can be that person who's just figuring out their life and you're bringing them along for the ride. So we've talked a little bit about her quirkiness, but that's not the only thing that makes her stand out. It's the fact that she's also super relatable. Kelly may be eccentric but in 2020 she felt like 1 of us. Her can't be arsed attitude clearly struck a chord with her audience because she behaves like a person more so than a YouTuber.

There are long segments of her videos which show her just doing weird stuff in her home like most of us probably do day to day when we're alone. It's really liberating to watch because it speaks to that slightly strange side of all of us. She consciously makes her videos with a low production aesthetic too. Her camera doesn't appear to be top of the range, it looks like she's just shooting it on an iPhone and this is especially clear when she zooms in and we get these really blurry shots like this. Kelly will also throw random text up on the screen in super generic fonts and the overall fact is that it kind of looks like she isn't really trying too hard.

Again, this is weirdly refreshing when we're used to seeing big YouTubers with crazy production value. Her editing style feels like an extension of her personality. Her most viewed video is literally called, How I Remain Unbothered, and this video probably sums her up the best. She isn't afraid to show that CBA attitude that we all feel sometimes. Her videos also span a bunch of topics that would be relatable to anyone from a video titled I don't like people to advice on saving money to her crazy dating stories.

You just feel like she's a friend and you're relating to her in this way. Video topics like these might draw in a more general audience, but once you're in, it's hard not to get hooked by her personality. So by leveraging relatable topics, then providing a relatable lens through which to view those topics, Kelly makes us want to keep coming back to watch her time and time again. The last aspect of her character that makes her so watchable is her unpredictability. You never really know what you're going to get with a Kelly Stamps video, which is why it's always so interesting to click on 1 of her videos.

Her intros sometimes bear no relevance to the rest of the video. For example, check out this intro and see if you can guess what it's going to be about. Oh, Any ideas? Well, this is actually a video giving tips for starting a YouTube channel And she begins by emerging from her wardrobe like some sort of Dementor from Harry Potter For absolutely no reason at all. It makes no sense.

But this is how she decided to start a YouTube video. This is not a conventional hook by any means. Something like what Mr. Beast would do would be very concise and to the point and you'd be into the video before you knew it. Whereas for Kelly, she'll spend like 30 seconds dancing to a K-pop video and you'll just be there like, hang on, what's happening?

And that's what makes you kind of want to watch her videos. It's what makes it stick in your mind. And when you see that on your watch page, you say, what is Kelly going to do today? And you click because she's just crazy. Really, what can we take from all of this and apply it to our own videos?

So there are a number of takeaways. The first is that personality is key. Unless you're a very specific YouTube channel who does long form tutorials or something where personality is not that important, Personality is going to be the thing that allows you to stand out. Don't try and emulate others, be authentic. The second thing that we can take away from Kelly Stamps is that production value is not everything.

You can go ahead and pick literally any of her videos and you'll see she doesn't really care about audio or video quality. She just hits record and acts like herself for a little bit. On this YouTube channel, we have a bunch of videos where we help people get started on YouTube. And 1 of the things that we do is we tell them to just take out their iPhone and hit the record button and just make their first video. That's usually the biggest hump that people have to get over before they start to become more frequent on YouTube.

A lot of people always feel like I have to have this amazing camera or this really great lighting rig or something like that. Whereas Kelly Stamp is proof that you can hit 650K subscribers without worrying about production value. The third and final takeaway is that this is not actually a complete success story. For as quickly as Kelly Stamps grew in 2020, her growth has actually plateaued in the last year. If you go ahead and look at her videos today, you'll see that they haven't really changed too much.

And this could actually be the problem as to why she's not gaining any other subscribers. As much as being authentic and unique is what got her channel off the ground, her videos don't really change up the formula at all, which is potentially a problem because it starts to get a little bit stale and you kind of think, you know what, I'm getting a little bit bored of Kelly just randomly bursting into dance. It was funny, it was cool at first, whereas now it's not that interesting. First impressions, Kelly's videos have this appeal to them because she seems like she's very strange and a bit weird and still figuring it out. But after a while the whole breaking into K-pop dancing in the middle of a video gets a little bit old and she hasn't really developed over the past 2 years and that's why I think that she's having this issue with not gaining any more subscribers.

There's also the fact that now because she did blow up and she's making a ton of money, which she's very open about on her channel, it kind of separates her slightly from her audience where in the first few videos, She was talking about being broke, wondering how she was going to, you know, pay the rent. All of these kind of issues have now been solved, and it doesn't make her as relatable as she once was. You can find small YouTubers who have uploaded videos explaining why they stopped watching Kelly, and it centers around this lack of relatability. Obviously this is not to shame anyone for making loads of money from YouTube. It's probably what we'd all love to be able to do, but when this clashes with your style of content and you don't adapt, that's when you can start to alienate your audience.

This is 1 of a few reasons why I think her YouTube channel has stagnated and now doesn't seem to be growing. So, hopefully you can use these takeaways and apply them to your own channel to help you grow this year. That's how Kelly Stamps blew up in 2020. We thought it was worth mentioning that her growth slowed down. If you enjoyed this video, be sure to check out our other creator case study videos in this playlist right here.

Thanks for watching and I'll see you guys later.

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How Kelly Stamps Gained 500,000 Subscribers in 1 Year...