How ‘Yoga With Adriene’ Crushed the YouTube Algorithm

Needless to say, the pandemic changed a lot of things, and one of them is that, because of the mass move online, there are now a lot more people creating digital content than ever before. And that, in turn, means that getting your content found is more difficult than ever before.

That’s just one reason why Adriene Mishler and her now-near-iconic YouTube yoga channel are so impressive. Because not only is Yoga With Adriene found, it is found often, by millions and millions. A far cry indeed from its humble beginnings, when it was just another YouTube channel vying for eyeballs.

Adriene and her business partner, Chris Sharpe, started posting her friendly, comfortable, free yoga classes on YouTube in 2012. Her following grew slowly until Sharpe began a deep dive into how YouTubers actually searched for yoga classes. It turned out that they did not search for, say, “free yoga.” Instead, they searched for specific classes for specific issues. 

This is where it gets interesting, and this is where there is a lesson for the rest of us online content creators.

Find your niche

By understanding what her audience wanted and was looking for, Adriene was able to create content and classes that fit the most popular yoga-related search terms and keywords: “yoga for weight loss,” “yoga for back pain,” “yoga for seniors,” “yoga for gardeners,” and so on.

By micro-targeting her audience with content that resonated within each niche, Yoga With Adriene surpassed 150,000 subscribers by 2015. That started the Adriene snowball. In 2017, her channel surpassed two million subscribers.

But it was the pandemic that turned Adriene into practically a household name. 

With everyone stuck and home, stressed out, and online, Adriene was in the right place at the right time. or the wrong time, take your pick. People discovered her lovely demeanor and gentle way, her spot-on classes, loved that they were free, and flocked to her channel. In April 2020, at the beginning of lockdowns, Yoga With Adriene received almost two million daily views.

Today, Yoga With Adriene has more than 11 million subscribers.

How much does this earn her in a year? It is hard to say, but here’s a hint: According to Strixus.com, “[Today] Mishler’s most popular video, “Yoga for Beginners,” has had 48 million views and she is estimated to earn over $2 million a year from YouTube advertising alone.”

Adriene’s path to YouTube stardom is instructive in many ways, but for me, it confirms an adage a SCORE counselor once gave me:

Ask them what they want, and then give them what they want.

Correction: An earlier version of this article misidentified Adriene Mishler’s business partner. He is Chris Sharpe