One of the most challenging things is coming up with ideas for your content. It can fell like there is no room or no desire for original ideas, and that everything has already been done by someone else.

But its possible you're overthinking things and that you are putting to much value on an original idea, instead of an original or better execution of a proven good idea...

Why reinvent the wheel, when you can just convince people to buy rims for their tires?

Innovation is often better than invention.

How to Find Ideas for Your Videos

I've but together a 6 step ideation process to help you truly never be find yourself stuck and frustrated when it comes to the video ideation process. We've also come up with 6 distinct methods for you to brainstorm your ideas. And finally a checklist of ways you can validate whether there is even a demand for your ideas.

THE 6 STEP VIDEO IDEATION PROCESS:

1. Identify your target audience - you can't skip this step, you have to know who you're creating for and cater to them
2. Research and Inspiration - you'll use our 6 Idea Engines to help you with this phase
3. Brainstorming Session - this is the open-ended creative part of the process
4. Idea Validation - this is where you confirm their is a demand for the idea and determine that it matches your audience avatar correctly
5. Content Planning - this is where you refine and work through the execution of your idea an its feasibility. It may be a great idea, but you may not be able to execute it properly or at all
6. Testing and Feedback - this is essential to confirm that your idea will land or that you anticipated the needs or desires of the audience correctly

Build an Infinite Idea & Content Engine

There are several ways to generate and validate your video ideas, we usually call these "Idea and Content Engines" within Awesome Creator Academy. When you combine multiple Content Engines you can, in theory generate Infinite Content without friction or frustration at any given time.

Idea and Content Engines:

• #1 Outlier Video Engine - research other videos in your niche that currently over-performing purely on the idea rather than the established audience (usually a video with more views than the channel has subscribers), undeniably proving demand. Use 1of10 as the best tool to find outlier videos
• #2 Viral Vault Engine - research and recreating outdated and forgotten viral videos in your niche, or adapting viral video formats from another niche for your purposes. Usually these videos are 2-5 years old with over 1M to 10M views, proving they have had demand, ideally they would still be getting fresh views, proving there is a want or need for a fresh version. Prioritize videos with high lifetime view counts and low recent competition ; videos that might be older, 3-5+ years are ideal
• #3 Proven Performer Engine - using data from your own content and adapting proven performing videos as either an updated version or expanding on the idea to create an ongoing series. Ideally these videos will be based on your top 10-20% performers over any given time to validate the demand
• #4 Remix Engine - adapting an idea or multiple ideas from a different niche of content or a different content format or form of media. These ideas should also be validated for demand in some way beyond appealing to you personally
• #5 Audience Engine - taking insights and feedback for your audience or from a larger audience within your niche. Generally this involves researching comments within videos, running polls or researching forums such as Reddit
• #6 Inspiration Engine - open ended inspiration that can come from anywhere, often from immersion in other media, or quiet time to reflect. This allows for truly original ideas, but they should be validated for audience demand in some way

Build an Infinite Content Engine or what some call an "Idea Bank", you need to constantly be generating and archiving ideas for your content.

What I teach our students in Awesome Creator Academy is to build 5-6 content pillars around a single theme for one audience.

This helps with focus or even creating different series or shows that make it easier to come up with ideas that you know how to execute and to repeat proven performers when content does well, a single proven performer can become an ongoing series on the channel.

Why You MUST Validate Your Video Ideas

In the framework for the Infinite Idea & Content Engine I have stressed how each Content Engine has a method for validating the video idea and the demand from an audience.

This is important and step that cannot be skipped.

The main reason this is important is because it helps reduce the need for "luck" when it comes to the success of a video.

What you want to make, won't always be what people want to watch, and this is why 88% of videos on YouTube fail to get 1000 views and over 50% of videos fail to get even 100 views on YouTube. Creators refuse to validate their ideas and if there is even an audience that wants them.

This also has the paradox of creating an environment where original ideas are rare, and once they manifest, they are copied relentlessly. This makes YouTube feel more saturated than actually is for most creators.

But without validating a video, using YouTube itself or robust tools like of 1of10, every new idea risks being an absolute failure at launch, and can cost a creator dozens of hours of work on a video nobody cared about, or was packaged in a way they don't understand or can't relate to.

How to Validate a Video Idea:

• Proven demand through lifetime view counts
• Currently trending topic or breaking news within the niche
• Past proven performance of outlier views or viral views
• Upward trending views and momentum over 7-90 days
• Larger than view counts among several smaller channels