With no effort at all I mean that I cut together compilations of clips (Won't tell the niche because my channel could be found very easily), upload them, and make a thumbnail. I have 6 videos on my channel right now. (Have my 7th video on unlisted right now while it's getting views.) Compared to the amount of revenue I'm making, it's really easy.
And yes, the unlisted method works. Buy retention views, get an appropriate amount of likes from like4like (or buy some) and write some fake comments with other channels. After making the video public, you should wait 2-3 days and the video should be at 1-3 rank (Depending on the competition. I ranked above videos with 200000+ views).
Also. The length of the video is pretty important. Make the video at least as long as the competitions videos. If you buy 6000 HR views on a video that is 30 minutes long, you get 180000 minutes of watch time which is a crazy amount for like $6.
I also buy some social media shares. (Very cheap, but I'm not sure how much it helps the ranking) They cost like $0.25/50 shares.
Probably the second most important info (or maybe the most important one) is SEO. There's lots of articles on that.
Tip: Try to use some random short slogan and put it in the title, description, tags of everyone of your videos. Because this way, if you have one viral video, your own videos show up on the recommended video side which means, you could make 5 views out of 1. (Depending on how many videos you have).
That's all I do and did. Also. Don't produce shitty content that no one wants to watch.
Btw. I would love to show you my channel proving that I'm not bullshitting, but I don't trust you. haha