Pongfinity: Getting 4,000,000 YouTube Subs by Playing Ping Pong

From mind-boggling trick shots to ridiculous challenges, Pongfinity’s table tennis content has garnered 4M subscribers and more than 1.4B total views on YouTube. Learn Pongfinity’s keys to success that any creator can replicate.

1. Pongfinity gets creative while building around their superpower

It’s no secret what Pongfinity’s superpower is — they’re really, really, really good at table tennis. In fact, Emil, Otto, and Miikka were all part of Finland’s national team at some point in their careers. But it’s the way they built around their superpower that’s so interesting.

The first thing Pongfinity did was take the formula behind Dude Perfect and apply it to their superpower. Dude Perfect, one of the biggest sports + comedy channels on Youtube, originally went viral with their trick shot videos. But while Dude Perfect took a more blanketed approach (covering trick shots across all kinds of sports/activities), Pongfinity niched down on table tennis. And with their professional table tennis experience, Pongfinity had the ability to execute on the idea better than almost anyone else in the world could.

Another thing Pongfinity does really well is getting creative with their collabs. Instead of simply working with very particular creators i.e. Youtubers in the table tennis niche, they’re not afraid to work with people doing things in a completely different realm. A couple cool examples: they’ve worked with Zach King, known for digital magic and illusions, to do some cool table tennis trick shots and bonus illusions, and Airrack, a comedic vlog Youtuber, as part of a $120,000 YouTuber ping pong tournament.

2. Pongfinity is genius at getting the community involved

One of the most important metrics for a creator is community engagement. Pongfinity has a couple of cool ways to get both their online and offline communities involved.

A running video series Pongfinity has is “Challenge Pongfinity.” In this series, Pongfinity asks viewers to challenge them in the comments. This could be anything from “Do your video intro in Hindi” to “Try to split a tennis ball by hitting it at a sharp upright knife”. Pongfinity then takes the most creative of these challenges and tries to do them in following videos. It’s a fantastic way to figure out what your viewers want to see while getting new video ideas without having to think about them yourself.

Pongfinity also has multiple videos where they challenge the public. For example, “Return My Serve, Win $100” and “Ping Pong Battles Against Strangers.” In these types of videos, Pongfinity not only engages with their community in person, but also unlocks the opportunity to reach people who would not typically stumble on their Youtube channel. It’s also a super fun way to make someone else’s day!

3. Pongfinity always shows their work

We’ve all heard the adage “show your work” in school. And funnily enough, the saying fits perfectly with Pongfinity’s video strategy.

A lot of Pongfinity’s videos revolve around difficult tricks and challenges that almost never work out on the first try. And Pongfinity does an amazing job of documenting every step of the process to tell a compelling story.

One example is in the video “How Fast Do You Need to Shoot to Split a Ping Pong Ball?” In this video, Pongfinity attempts to cut a ping pong ball in half by hitting it against a blade. (Check out the video here after you finish reading this, it’s super cool!)

To start out, they tried hitting the ball against the blade of an axe. However, each time the ball hit the blade, it would only make a tiny chip in the ball, not split it cleanly in two. After 45 minutes of trying over and over again, they still had no luck. Thinking that the axe blade might be the issue, they switched to a knife instead. Still nothing but chipped balls.

Pongfinity did not give up. They took several packs of ping pong balls and put them in the freezer to make them more brittle. They took the axe and the knife and got them sharpened by a professional blacksmith. 24 hours later, it was finally time…

Several more tries. No split balls.

That’s when Miikka pulled out his secret weapon — the blowtorch. He heated the blade of the knife to a blistering 1000 degrees Celcius. And with that, the very next ping pong ball got lodged onto the knife, something that had never happened before.

Progress!

A few more attempts after that, a massive shot by Miikka resulted in the very tip of the ping pong ball getting sliced off.

Technically the challenge had been fulfilled, but Pongfinity was not satisfied.

Swapping out the ping pong paddle with a badminton racket, Otto launched several more balls into the blade. The combination of frozen ping pong balls, searing hot knife, the badminton racket’s power, and Pongfinity’s tenacity was enough. Finally, countless hours after the initial attempt, the ping pong ball split in two down the middle.

Now imagine if the only thing you saw was the very last clip of the ping pong ball getting split in two.

See the difference?