- Are you looking to grow your YouTube channel?
Are you a small YouTuber?
Are you just about to start?
Here are my realizations that I learned to grow my channel
that you can harness.
Here we go.
(upbeat music)
Hello and welcome back to another video.
I'm Alan Spicer, your YouTube certified expert.
And if you're looking to start a YouTube channel,
grow your YouTube channel,
or put your brand up there
into the second-largest search engine on the Internet,
you should click Subscribe.
Start creating.
I've been creating content for the Internet
for around about seven years now.
I'd been making websites for over 11 years
and I decided to turn my hand and come to YouTube
to experience the community,
create content and educate people.
But there are a few things that really pushed me forward,
really continued to grow my channel
and continued to help me focus on the long term.
YouTube is a marathon, not a sprint,
and if you want to survive that marathon
you need to put things in place
to understand that you'll get to the end
but you have to do a little bit of leg work to start with.
Sacrifice.
This is possibly the more controversial idea in this video
and some people will hate the idea.
But for you,
if you truly, truly want your YouTube channel to grow,
you need to consider what you're doing,
how you're wasting your time,
how you need to focus on the thing that you want to do.
If you're at college, if you're at school,
if you're going to school every day, right?
That's fine, I understand that,
the education system is there.
But do you really need to be playing
seven or eight hours of Fortnite when you get home?
Could you not just set up your camera
and record four or five videos each evening?
Edit videos each evening?
Sacrifice can be baked into everything that you do.
Sleep is very important, don't get me wrong.
I love my sleep more than anything.
But what time did you get up this morning?
Did you get up at eight?
Did you get up at six?
Did you go to school?
That's fine.
What happens if you got up an hour earlier?
Two hours earlier?
What if you went to bed slightly later?
What if you could manipulate a little bit of you time,
a little bit of one-on-one with the camera time,
a little bit of editing time,
a little bit of learning to draw time,
a little bit of blogging time.
I'm not suggesting that you stay up all night
and miss the exam the next day,
but if you're getting eight hours of sleep,
could you do with seven?
Could you do with six?
If you truly want it,
if you truly have the eye on the prize at the end,
then a few extra hours working
rather than sleeping and dreaming
might be helpful.
Young people,
take advantage of the environment that you happen to be in.
If I could turn back time
and go back to when I was 14, 15,
all I had to do was go to school and walk home
and then from 4:30 onwards
until I went to bed at 10 o'clock at night
all I could was play Final Fantasy 7, right?
Or go and swap stickers with my friends.
Swapsies for Premiere League stuff.
Playing my Tamagotchi and my Digimon.
Now, I realize that that ages me.
But if I could go back and realize
that I'm not paying these bills,
I'm not paying this gas or this electric,
so I don't have to worry about earning money,
all I have to do is create content.
If I didn't have to pay any of my bills right now
for two or three years
and I was just cleared,
I'd pump out content every day.
I'd make videos, I'd help people, I'd create stuff,
I'd look at my analytics.
You don't have bills so you have no excuse not to hustle.
You don't have to go and get to your paper round
to pay for the electric.
And if you do, all respect to you.
I had a paper round at 16,
I had to help my mom,
unfortunately my dad wasn't around by the age of 17.
But once I'd done my paper round
I could have still done an hour's worth of recording,
still could have done an hour's worth of editing,
I still could have done an hour's worth of blogging.
Do you see a pattern here?
Find time to create content.
Also, if you're younger,
there is no responsibilities upon you.
You don't have a mortgage, you don't have a toddler,
you don't have to worry about, I don't know,
going to jobs every day.
So if you are young, this is made for you.
This Internet thing is your ticket to whatever you want,
all you have to do is create the content.
Because if there is not mortgage, if there is no whatever,
then you can take that risk.
Gary Vaynerchuk is someone
that I've come across very recently
and I'm blown away by him.
At the end of the day he says
if there's no responsibilities,
if you're right now at the age of 20,
if you fail now at the age of 20,
there's no problems.
At 25 you can pick yourself up.
At 30 you can pick yourself up.
Prime example, my first business as a web developer failed.
It cost me 19-20,000 pounds.
Let's be honest, none of us have that kind of money.
But I was able to learn at the age of 25.
I went out, tried to be freelancing,
did it two, three, four years,
learned that maybe I need to tweak this,
got a normal job again for two years,
rebooted, tried again,
and now I'm here.
I'm on YouTube, I'm full time,
I've got consultants and clients,
and I'm at the tender age of 35 this year.
If you're young, sofa surf, it doesn't matter.
Now, for the old people like me
that aren't going to school every day,
this doesn't rule out you.
My life currently consists of getting up,
making sure that a toddler goes to nursery
or is fed and watered and doesn't die.
You know, all those wonderful things.
Making sure that my other half gets to go to work,
making sure that the house is clean and tidy.
And we've recently adopted a cat, yada yada yada.
There is a lot of responsibilities
but I'm still able to find a period of time
where I can get a camera for an hour,
I bulk record seven videos
because I've been doing it for long enough
I've learned to bulk record seven videos in an hour.
And then over the course of the week
I'll find an hour or two to edit those videos
and then I'll publish them or write the blogs accordingly.
And if I needed extra time,
I'd find that hour at one o'clock in the morning.
This morning I woke up at half five, right?
I'm wide awake now.
I won't be late up,
I'll probably have a sofa nap 'cause I'm knackered,
but still.
I'll still be recording four, five, six, seven videos today.
Stop making excuses.
Can you find an extra half hour?
Can someone look after your kid for a half hour?
Can you go and walk the dog and record a video?
Can you sit in the car and talk to the camera?
Can you sit on the train and talk to the camera?
There's no excuse not to create content.
You just have to sacrifice something.
Is it sleep?
Maybe you sit there at night playing FIFA with your friends,
maybe you're playing Call of Duty,
maybe you've been watching Game of Thrones,
maybe you've watching Orange Is the New Black.
Well done,
that's eight hours that you could have been doing something.
If you truly want this, you have to give up something now
to get where you want to be later on in life.
Do something now that your future self will thank you for.
If you need help in grabbing that bull by the horns,
I've got a playlist up here.
Go out there, start creating.