How Did Ray William Johnson Become So Popular On Youtube?

One of the most popular people on Youtube is Ray William Johnson who is currently the 2nd most subscribed person on the website with over 2 million subs. He averages about 30,000 new subscribers every week! Ray's main channel (Equals 3 or =3) could eventually take over the Most Subscribed spot on YouTube from Ryan Higa (known as Nigahiga and he is closing in on his 3 millionth sub).

According to Ray's main channel, this is what he says about himself: "I'm just a regular guy with an entertaining hobby. I review viral videos twice a week -- every Monday and Thursday. I'm paid to clean the urinals at the local strip club."

Take a look at the growth in subscribers to Ray's channel:

06Sep 2009 145,938

27Sep 2009 205,179

25Oct 2009 258,900

22Nov 2009 358,303

14Feb 2010 803,977

18Mar 2010 1,000,000

28June 2010 1,500,000

25Sep 2010 2,000,000

18Oct 2010 2,115,547

How did that happen? And how can you do the same thing?

Ray's channel suddenly appeared on the Top 100 Most Subscribed List in early September 2009 with 145K subs - good enough for 91st place. That doesn't just happen. He had been uploading great videos for months before that and was being discovered by other youtubers who subbed and passed the word to others that "You gotta check out this guy's videos." Here's Ray's first available video from April 17, 2009:



He kept uploading videos and just 3 weeks later he broke the 200,000 sub mark just 3 weeks later. By Christmas last year his Equals 3 channel was closing in on 400,000 subscribers. At this point, Ray started posted daily vlogs to a 2nd channel he started called BreakingNYC. This was a great channel, but because of time constraints, Ray stopped posting on it in May 2010. That was too bad because the vlog gave fans of his main channel a chance to see Ray "behind-the-scenes" and a closer look than his Equals 3 persona allows.

Plus there was great music, street scenes from around New York City and appearances by several youtubers. Meekakitty and Ray's roommate TheWillofDC were both featured in many BreakingNYC videos - and the funny thing is that I was subbed to both Meekakitty and TheWillofDC long before I even heard of Ray. If you haven't watched any of the BreakingNYC videos, I'd recommend you do so especially if you are fans of Ray, Meekakitty and Will. The channel still has over half a million subs. Wish it had continued.

Breaking The One Million Subscriber Mark

By February 2010, Ray's main channel was steadily gaining more and more subs and shot from 350K subs at the end of November to over 800,000 in February. Just a month later Equals 3 had 1,000,000 subscribers and was in the Top 10 Most Subscribed of All Time List. To say it was a wild ride would be quite an understatement. As the graph above shows, he steadily gained new subs and just hit the 2 million subscribers mark this past September. Every month of 2010 Ray William Johnson has outpaced all other youtubers averaging about 30,000 new subs each month and should hit the three million mark sometime in 2011. I think he can probably quit his gig at the strip club mens room now.

Below is his latest video dated 12 October, 2010.



He does have another new channel he's started called Your Favorite Martian with just one video uploaded so far (called "Be Patient") lol, c'mon Ray! Get on this! This channel already has 100K subs and will probably jump to half a million when he starts posting on it too.

Here's some more Bradshaw's Blog posts about RayWilliamJohnson.

Hey, and feel free to comment below about Ray's channel, or this blog. Nothing worse than writing something and getting no feedback.