Case Study: How We Scaled BigWilly — the #1 Schedule 1 YouTube Creator

The Problem

His channel was doing great, but since the game just went viral competitors started to pour in. He came up with video responding to his comments from a data-mining video to connect with his audience. So we needed to come up with something fresh. Competing thumbnails were dark, cluttered, and identical, blending into the feed.

The goal wasn’t to fix poor performance, it was to design a YouTube thumbnail that stands out in sea of competition and give BigWilly a push to scale his channel.

The Fix

We developed a funny, high-curiosity thumbnail concept inspired by WIRED’s viral interview format, where guests answer questions about their work.

Our team recreated the clean, minimalist Wired-style layout and designed a custom BigWilly’s logo only for this thumbnail, giving it the vibe it needed.

The main hook featured a bold question:
“Does Being Black Change The Game?”

It was provocative but relevant, tapping perfectly into the theme of the game — a story about drug dealing and moral choices.
This kind of emotional tension triggers instant curiosity, leading players to click just to see the context behind the question.

We also designed a B-version of the thumbnail referencing a follow-up video where the comments were left, then A/B tested both versions inside YouTube Studio.

The Result

As expected, the version with the controversial question dominated. It drew strong engagement and positive audience feedback, and the Wired-style design stood out visually among the sea of dark, oversaturated Schedule 1 gaming thumbnails on YouTube’s homepage.

That thumbnail hit a 17% CTR and pushed the video to nearly 1 million views, cementing BigWilly as one of the top Schedule 1 creators—with a community so engaged they even write about him on Reddit.

What He Says About Us:

BigWilly - "My biggest challenge was that I didn’t have the skills to properly make thumbnails. My photoshop skills are abysmal, and I don’t really know how to make eye catching thumbnails that make people click.

Thumbnails and Titles are extremely important to videos. Hiring you allowed me to focus on the other aspects of content creation more, such as editing and script writing, because I knew I could rely on you to deliver a quality product.

My CTR’s are consistently between 8% and 12%. It’s hard to say where I would be without you, because we’ve been working together basically since the start of the channel. It takes a ton of stress off of my shoulders. I don’t have to think about thumbnails or packaging at all, because I know you’ll handle it and I’ll be satisfied.

Everything you’ve ever given me has been excellent and exceeded my expectations. If you’re at the point of content creation where you are making money from videos. It makes sense to outsource thumbnails and titles. It saves you time and it will likely be better quality than something you can do on your own. Every little bit helps. "