On this article, you'll learn the
proven strategies and current best practices for growing your subscribers and
creating passive income with YouTube.
1. Just Get Started
It's so important not to wait for
all the answers. You need to upload your own videos so you can have something
for people to subscribe to. And secondly, you need to learn what it takes to
make compelling content that will get people to want to be going to your
channel. - Totally, and always remember, that your first videos are gonna be your
worst videos.
2. Share Your Channel
You know, your friends, family, those
are gonna be your best supporters when you're just starting out. And you need
to share it with them that you're starting a YouTube channel. You know often
times people have at least a couple hundred friends on their Facebook page which
would be perfect people to be your first subscribers when you're just starting
out.
Your goal here is not to spam
anybody, and not all of your friends or family are even going to care, but
think about starting with your network. And also think about putting links to
your YouTube videos in your Instagram bio, posting on social media. You need to
let the world know that you're posting YouTube videos. Do this a lot. Do this
everywhere. Talk about it all the time. Put some passion around your vision for
YouTube and tell some people.
3. Focus on a Niche
When you're starting from scratch is
really understanding that having a focus niche is a lot more powerful than
having a general channel. The reality is if you try and reach everybody, you're
gonna end up reaching nobody. And so you really want to define who is your
target audience.You know, what are they interested
in? If you have a gardening channel, then it's people interested in learning
gardening. But people who are not interested in gardening won't care but that's
good. Start small in order to get big. And really take some time. Maybe even
pull out a piece of paper or a phone and write down an answer to this question.
What value would it have to a specific audience?
The second thing you want to define:
What is your value proposition to that audience? Now if you cooking channel, you
want to deliver valuable cooking tutorials to that audience, right? So what is
your value proposition? So many of you are trying to emulate some of these more
famous YouTubers, these creators who have been around that have millions of
subscribers. Not understanding that it is hard to be them right away. You want
to focus on a niche type of content that's very specific because it's gonna be the
easiest for people to find you as a new channel, cause they're interested in
that same type of content. And that's where you're gonna have the best success,
the quickest success to gaining subscribers.
There's a recent article in
Bloomberg that was actually describing this struggle of smaller creators trying
to make it on this platform. And it talked about a vlogger named Asher who
decided he was going to vlog every single day about his life at college. And
vlog is opinions, his day to day life, what he's eating, and we can actually
look at the numbers, after 180 uploads, Asher has 174 subscribers and 10,000
views. So he's grinding, but it's not really growing that fast because it's
general. It's trying to reach everybody and it's just kind of a vlog. You're
trying to get people interested in your life. I'm not that interested. I can't
watch a thousand people's different lives personally.
4. Engage
This is so important to do and
remember to do because it's not necessarily about the video that you upload,
this is something you do after you upload your video or maybe before or during.
Go to other people's videos, comment. Go on social media, find the people that
are interested in your type of content and vibe with them. Comment back, reply
back, answer questions. Don't just straight up ask for their subscribership, add
value some way. You know, one of the mportant things that we YouTube in the
early days was it was a small community and people were supporting each other and
that's how people grew so quickly. Because you're supporting other people, they
might want to support you. If you do it enough times, people are gonna be like
I wonder what this person's all about? Especially if you have a dope avatar, your
name is compelling, they're going to your channel and if you've got videos
uploaded that are interesting, specific, they're more than likely to subscribe or
at least watch your videos.
And i kind of like to call this hand-to-hand
combat on social media. This is one-to-one and what we are not recommending is
don't go on people's channels and say sub for sub. Don't go on people's
channels and just blatantly self promote your channel. What you want to do is
go on channels and add valuable content, and valuable tips to the current
conversation. That's also why it's powerful if you have a niche. If you've got
a focused cooking channel, you can go onto other cooking channels share tips,
share your favorite spices, share your favorite perspective on how you like to
cook things. Not in a spammy or pushy way, but if it's valuable, that comment
will get thumbsed up and you actually get discovered based on the algorithm of
the comments on YouTube.
The same is true, search Twitter
hashtags. Get into conversations with people. Go to the hashtags around the
events of your niche. If you're in cryptocurrency, go into the cryptocurrency
communities and engage with people. If you're in tech like me, I talk about the
latest cameras on forums, on Twitter, on hashtags, and then people can check
out my profile and see, oh this guy reviews tech as well. He reviews cameras. So
spend some time doing this. And we mean put in the work. Don't just spend five
minutes a day. Early on, the people who break through, they take every spare
second and they do some at night. They do some in the morning. They do some at
lunch. They put in the time to build their channels one subscriber at a time.
5. Focus on the Fundamentals
Focus on the YouTube fundamentals which
reminds me of a quote from Michael Jordan himself.
"Focus on the fundamentals and the
level of everything you do will rise". It's a great quote from one of the greats
of NBA history that applies to every industry and definitely on YouTube. So ask
yourself, are you doing the basic things? Are you focusing on a good title? Are
you focusing on a good thumbnail? Are you tagging your videos? You know, often
times when people start, they discount things like tags, and
they're not properly letting YouTube know what's inside of their content. So
you've got to do this. I can tell you this, every YouTube success story starts
with basics.
If you didn't know about some
resources available for this, there is a lot to learn, but even YouTube has put
together The Creator Academy or The Creator Playbook. Study the basics. Study
the fundamentals. And don't just study them, work on mastering them. You know,
we are empathetic because when you are trying to grow your YouTube channel, you're
trying to learn graphic design, you're trying to learn how to do camera work, you're
trying to learn branding, you're trying to learn how to be on camera. There is
a lot to learn. So put in the time. Practice and work the fundamentals.
6. Content is King
You know, we're talking the
fundamentals we're talking about other things you should be focused on and
don't forget about your content. You know, one of the first things I can tell
you about that, when it comes to getting subscribers is add value to someone's
life. Is your video making someone laugh? Is it answering a question? Is it
solving a problem? What is it actually doing for someone's life? If you can
answer that and make that happen in your content, you're on the right track.
We've all probably heard the phrase content
is king and so at the end of the day, success on YouTube comes down to consistent,
strategic, quality content. And one of my biggest tips is before you press
record, do some research and some preparation. Spend some time going to the
YouTube search bar looking for video ideas as you type in a couple words it
starts predicting some searches. That gives you some ideas for your videos and
for your titles. Spend some time even asking questions on Twitter or in the community
looking for hot topics that are trending in culture, and then plan your videos.
That will improve the strength of your content.
Lastly, we can't emphasize enough, about
consistency. So important to commit long term to be consistent. I suggest at
least one video a week, long term because you're gonna learn so much from those
uploads. Realize as time goes on, and you observe the results, you're gonna
learn the strategies that work. You're gonna learn the tactics that really get
people interested in your videos their attention on your content and ultimately
subscribing.
7. Created Searchable Content
For when you're starting from
scratch is focus on creating searchable videos. YouTube is the second largest
search engine in the world, and so if someone types in something that they're
interested in, they're trying to learn about makeup, or cooking, or interior
decorating, or gaming, whatever it is, you want your videos to show up in those
top search results. We call this ranking videos. And when you do that, it
really can help your channel grow when there's hardly people watching or when
you haven't got discovered yet.
Well... one of the biggest reasons why they're not
is because you're not following these best practices. Your content isn't
interesting, it's not compelling enough, it's not actually doing something for
somebody's life. Ask yourself this, what channels do you watch? Why do you
watch their videos? Why do you subscribe to somebody? Those are the things you
have to ask yourself of your own content because if you don't you might be posting
up hundreds of videos, not getting the subscribers, and wondering why not. So
it's not just about that content and adding value, but are you doing all these
seven things that we're talking about in this video.
At the end of the day, keep in mind,
be patient. Great things take time and great things take work, a lot of work. Pace
yourself, be patient, keep learning, and keep uploading and you will grow.
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