The problem
You have a winner and a good idea for making it better. The last time someone had a good idea, they replaced the winner with it and the product lost a month.
This time the brand wants the upside without the risk, and wants to see how that works before the creator films anything.
A test is a new video that keeps everything from the winner except one thing. It goes up as its own post while the original stays live. Three rules keep it safe:
- One change per version. A copy that differs in three ways teaches you nothing you can reuse.
- Same window. Compare two weeks against the same two weeks, not against last month.
- Promote on money, not on feel. The copy becomes the winner when its sales per 10K beats the original’s over the window, once it has enough views to count. Until then the original keeps its spot.
Do this a few times and you have a tree: the original at the root, each test hanging off the version it copied, and the current best marked at the end of the chain. That tree is the history of what worked on the product, and it is worth more than any single video in it.
The example
One product, three rounds. Each version copies the one above it with one change. Same 14-day window each round.
Two ideas were dropped without costing anything, because the version they copied was still earning the whole time. The third round is worth noticing: a different creator on the best script came close and stayed live, but did not take the spot. That is Lesson 27.
Do this in Verdict
- 1Open the branch tree under Build. Pick the winner, add the new video as a version of it, and write the one change in the note.
- 2The tree draws the new version beside its parent, with the current best marked in gold along the chain from the root.
- 3When the new version beats its parent over the same window, the gold mark moves. The parent does not change. A version that loses stays on the tree as a record of what not to try again.