The Stories Behind: The Singaporean who drew 11 million YouTube subscribers by making ‘cringe’ videos
HOW HIS VIDEOS GAINED OVER 10 BILLION VIEWS
Mr Ng was a national taekwondo athlete who won medals for Singapore on multiple occasions.
But after finding success making prank videos with his dad on TikTok during the pandemic, he pivoted to content creation full time, eventually starting his own creative agency, Boom Digital Media.
The entire aforementioned shoot involving the laptop and the bike lasted 10 minutes, with the resulting video garnering 84,000 views in a week.
His most popular skit on YouTube has been viewed a whopping 581 million times.
So why do his videos — peculiar, dramatic and, in his own words, “a bit cringe” — perform that well?
Mr Ng insists that “when it comes to creating content, it's not about what you'd like to see yourself”.
He’s clearly not a fan of his own videos. But they “somehow work well”, so he keeps on making them because ultimately, he gets “paid by the views”.
This admission does not mean his success is due to luck, however.
The former psychology graduate from Nanyang Technological University takes a methodological, almost obsessive, approach to his videos, with a keen sense of what works and what doesn’t.
For instance, he started posting YouTube Shorts — vertical videos that are 60 seconds or less in length — while the format was still in its infancy, capitalising on its rising popularity thereafter.
YouTube Shorts was first launched in Singapore in 2021, and it is now used by around two billion users every month.
“With YouTube Shorts, it’s so easy to watch different content. So even before you get people to watch your content, you need to stop people from scrolling,” he said.
He studies the specific moments in which a viewer swipes away from a piece of content, and uses that insight to inform the next video he makes by creating “hooks” and interesting storylines that keep them engaged.
And much like the global icon Mr Bean, who spoke little to nothing at all, Mr Ng said his wordless videos reach a wider audience because there is no language barrier to overcome.
HOW LUCRATIVE CAN A CAREER CREATING CONTENT BE?
Can creating content be a lucrative career?
I posed that question half-expecting Mr Ng to urge me to give up journalism for a shot at making it as an influencer rolling in dough. But alas, his response was a lot more reserved and sensible.
“It’s subjective”, Mr Ng said, and it “depends on how you want to live”.
According to a YouTube spokesperson, the number of channels in Singapore making an annual revenue of S$100,000 or more had increased by 20 per cent from 2021 to 2022 — though they did not provide specific numbers.
While Mr Ng also declined to share how much he makes a month through YouTube, he pointed out that there are multiple ways of making money off one’s content.
For instance, creators on YouTube are paid based on how many views they receive on their channel, but this means that their income can fluctuate from month to month depending on how well their video performs.
It’s also not all just about the views. Branded or “sponsored” content — those that integrate a brand's promotional message within it — is also a lucrative avenue. A sponsored video with 20,000 views can earn you more than a YouTube Shorts video with a million views, Mr Ng said.
Content creators’ potential for income is not limited to their geography either.
Like Mr Ng, whose audience hails primarily from countries around South-east Asia and the United States, YouTube said that over 95 per cent of watch time for content produced by Singaporean channels come from outside of the country.
PRIORITISING IMPACT OVER REACH
With his online reach and pedigree in producing viral short-form content, there is no shortage of brands who want to work with Mr Ng.
Boom, his creative agency, boasts an international portfolio of clients like ONE Championship, Huawei and Hard Rock Cafe.
But he can be picky with who he chooses to work with. It’s all about the impact he can make, he said. If he does not have the right expertise to help, he would not take the client on.
This emphasis on impact has extended through to Mr Ng’s goals for the content he intends to make.
He points to an eight-minute video he made in 2021, where he travelled around Singapore tipping taxi drivers a not-so-paltry sum of S$500, as a way to raise awareness for those who had struggled during the pandemic.
Videos like these can make a difference to people’s lives, he said. And his reason for making them is not, he insisted, for any sort of attention.
“My normal videos have much more views,” he quipped.
“I feel for a lot of people, when they go to work, they think it’s not something that they want to do… So I want to do things that are enjoyable and to make sure that my team enjoys doing what they’re doing, too.”
BE PATIENT, ASPIRING CREATORS
After our lengthy conversation that afternoon, I tried to figure out what it is about Mr Ng that made him so successful at such a young age.
Two things stood out: His willingness to pursue what he believes to be right in spite of judgement (he said he has received over a million “hate comments” for his videos), and his determination to challenge himself.
But ultimately, what struck me was how “normal” of a person he is, which left me with the impression that I, too, could achieve what he has achieved.
Indeed, Mr Ng’s content creation journey started off with him filming videos with his phone during the pandemic “just trying to kill time”, and editing them with free applications.
“Now is the best time to be a creator,” he insisted, owing to the tools available at one’s disposal and the algorithms that platforms like YouTube have that can make one’s content go viral in an instant.
To that end, he offers aspiring content creators one simple piece of advice when starting out: Take your time.
“Don’t put pressure on yourself that you have to do it full time. Even spending one hour a day is good enough,” he said.
Mr Ng has seen many talented creators who eventually gave up because they put too much pressure on themselves to succeed too quickly, resulting in lots of unnecessary stress.
His advice is to put in more focus only after you have started to gain some traction.
“One video can validate everything you have done,” he said.
