How Market Power Videos Went Viral

Before I tell you the crazy story with the YouTube channel, I wanted to announce that I’m giving a free webinar on my research process on June 27.

I’m going to talk about how I came up with my dissertation idea and how AI tools would have made my life so much easier. It’s like a “If I were in grad school now, here’s what I’d do” talk.

The webinar is being hosted by SciSpace. It’s free, and you can find the details at the registration page.

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Market Power has been on a little bit of a tear lately. Here are the analytics from the last 90 days.

40% of the total views that Market Power has received since 2018 have come in the last 90 days.

How?

I made a deal with the devil.

Well, not really. But it feels like it. I’ve decided to commit to the world of Shorts.

I’ve known since 2022 that there was a market for Shorts. I wrote about my experiment that year with short-form content and how it led to a video that now has 6.8 million views.

Despite my near instant success, I resisted short-form content for two reasons. First, the views felt fake. How much was a viewer really engaging with economics by watching my 30-second video? Was I really achieving my mission of changing the way students are introduced to economics? I thought I could achieve more through long-form.

The second reason I didn’t do more is that I did not like the culture of short-form content. To do some research, I started watching Shorts, and I didn’t like what I was seeing. Not only was the content garbage, but the culture of viewing short-form videos felt terrible. People sucked into their phones, constantly scrolling to the next video, consuming hours dedicated to quick dopamine hits.

But two months ago I decided to try them again. What changed?

The subsequent 3 years showed that I was not amazing at producing long-form content. Now, if you read this newsletter, chances are you actually like my videos. Thank you. But we’re in such a strange moment in politics where economic illiteracy is costing the world billions of dollars. I want to get more people interested in economics so they can think more critically about the policies we’re discussing. I made videos specifically about the biggest policy issues, thinking that the national interest in the topics would drive people to the channel, but they struggled to bring in views. Right now, I’m just not that good at long-form content.

The other factor was deciding to be a force for good. Yes, I still think the culture around Shorts is bad. But what if instead of snubbing the form, I tried to improve it on the margin? If my video can replace one person from seeing Italian brainrot, then maybe that’s a worthwhile effort.

So I started my experiments on Shorts, and it became instantly clear that I have a comparative advantage in short-form.

I decided to start with a two-fold strategy. Like the original videos of the channel, I wanted to do some economics in pop culture. And since I know there’s a strong book culture on YouTube and TikTok, I went for some economics books recommendations.

Unsurprisingly, the pop culture videos did really well. I started with some Bluey videos, which did fine. Then I went to Harry Potter. That’s where the big views were. My first one on banks and competition is currently at 1.8 million views. My follow up on whether wizarding currency fulfills one of the basic jobs of money is at 2.8 million. Hedonic adaptation is real, because the third one on incomplete contracts in betting markets is at a disappointing 0.6 million views. For comparison, I made many of these points in two long-form videos, but combined they only got 3000 views, or 0.003 million views.

The one that has surprised me the most is a book recommendation. I shared a fun insight from Leah Boustan and Ran Abramitzky’s book Streets of Gold on why immigrants tend to succeed in America. It just passed 1.0 million views. Again, for comparison, my long-form video featuring the book only got 9000 views (0.009 million).

There’s definitely a part of me that is still reluctant to make short-form videos. But it’s also hard to argue with how much more reach Shorts are getting me. Plus, the opportunity cost is much lower. Making YouTube videos is a net loss for me. It doesn’t bring in much money, and it crowds out time that I could spend on research. You might be surprised to hear that making a 60 second video takes much less time than making a 10 minute video. So Shorts are giving me an avenue to continue making videos and spreading economics while minimally impacting the other important activities in my life.

This isn’t the end of long-form content on Market Power. But it is the beginning of a new phase in how Market Power will reach its mission.

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Remember to check out my free webinar!