- Hey everybody, this is Roberto Blake of roberoblake.com
helping you create something awesome today.
Today, we're gonna cover 10 small youtuber problems
and how to deal with them.
You guys may not believe me, but I really do remember
what it's like to be a small youtuber.
Even with 100 thousand-plus subscribers,
you gotta remember February of 2015, I only had 20 thousand,
and the year before that, 10 thousand,
and in July of 2013, zero, goose egg.
So I remember what it's like to be a small youtuber.
And I actually know how to work through a lot
of the problems that you guys are facing right now,
the things you're struggling with,
and the things that you think are true that aren't true,
I can explain them.
Before we jump into this video and I give you guys
these 10 tips for small youtubers,
I want to thank our friends over at Grapevine Logic.
If you're a small youtuber, you should definitely
check them out.
If you have a thousand subscribers or more,
you can apply for sponsorship brand deals.
This actually helps you grow a Youtube channel,
because the brands and sponsors might actually
share your content if you do a good job for them,
not to mention the money you make from brand deals,
you can use that to invest back into your Youtube channel.
So make sure you're checking out grapevinelogic.com,
links are in the description below.
So let's jump into it with 10 small youtuber problems,
and how to actually fix them.
Number one: not getting noticed and discovered in Youtube.
A lot of you are under the mistaken impression
that you need a huge subscriber base in order to get noticed
in Youtube and for Youtube to "favor" you appropriately.
The Youtube gods are not that serious
and are not that complicated.
I will explain exactly how that works.
You need good titles, descriptions, and tags,
and relevant information in that description
that ties the video stuff that people would search for,
and the tags, maybe seven to 12 of them,
they need to be things that people would type
into that little search box.
I've seen time and time again,
in fact I was working with a client,
and we were looking at our competitors,
and a channel with 3000 subscribers ranked above a video
for a channel with one million subscribers.
So it all comes down to: are you making it easy
for people to search in Youtube and find you?
Big youtubers dominate the first page of Youtube search
because they've been doing this for years, and they get it,
and they know how it works.
It's the same thing like playing basketball.
If I've been playing basketball for five years
and you've been playing for five days,
you are not gonna dunk on me.
Number two: not getting subscribers.
There's a magic formula and secret to getting subscribers
that almost no one on Youtube talks about.
Are you ready for it?
Are you sure?
Get more Youtube views, and you will get more subscribers.
You get more views, by making more videos,
and also by getting them out into the world
as much as possible.
Subscribers don't generate views.
In fact, the Youtube subscriber box is a little broken
sometimes, and most of your subscribers don't get notified
about your videos unless they click that little gear box
and say "send me email notifications"
or "send notifications to my phone."
That is usually the main way that subscribers know
you put out a video, unless you have a schedule.
So, subscribers don't generate views,
views generate subscribers.
You want subscribers?
Get more views.
Get more views by promoting your videos,
putting them out on Twitter and Facebook,
in appropriate places, not spamming,
and that will help with your channel growth.
The more views you get, the better shot you have
at getting subscribers, and that means,
what Casey Neistat said, "Just make more videos."
Big secret, right?
Small youtuber problem number three:
when should you monetize your videos?
We'll, I'm a fan of monetizing as early as possible,
because I really think that money does matter,
since it means you can invest back into your equipment,
you can spend more time on this because you're not
taking away from your job or your family
or whatever your situation is.
So I think monetizing as quickly as possible matters,
but I also know some people can be turned off by that.
If they see that you haven't made a certain amount
of videos, or you haven't been doing this very long,
they might be turned off by that.
Then again, a lot of people have just come to accept
Youtube ads as a normal thing, so it might not matter
how many videos you've done
or how big a subscriber base you have.
So I would just say, if money matters to you more,
then monetize early.
If you really are invested in trying to build your audience
as quickly as you can, then maybe you wait a little bit.
So that's what I would say about it.
I'm also a fan of monetizing in as many
different ways as possible.
Go ahead and look at a previous video that I did about
10 ways to make money on Youtube.
Small youtuber problem number four:
you can't afford professional video editing software.
Oh trust me, I get it.
A lot of you are younger, so you need to use
cheap or free stuff.
I've actually done one of my more popular videos
on free video editing software you can use
for your Youtube channel, great stuff
like HitFilm, Windows Movie Maker, DaVinci Resolve.
There are so many editing programs out there that are free,
and guess what: a ton of them are on your smartphone.
You can just make Youtube videos with your smartphone
and edit them if you don't have the budget for professional
gear, and you can use apps like FilmoraGo,
or Adobe Premiere Clip, or CyberLink PowerDirector.
So there are so many different free apps and affordable
five dollar apps that you can use to edit your videos.
If you can't afford the most expensive software,
like Final Cut Pro or Adobe Premiere Pro,
which I use, then you can use things like
Adobe Premiere Elements, it's $70, you can make that
with an afterschool job or a summer job.
Or you can use CyberLink PowerDirector,
which I'll have more tutorials for here on the channel
coming up soon, cuz that's affordable, it's like $100.
You have Corel Video Editor.
So there's a ton of software that's affordable
or free that you can use to just get started
and put something out there.
Small youtuber problem number five, cinco:
big youtubers won't collab with you.
Well, guess what.
It doesn't really matter.
I know a lot of you think the only way to grow a channel
and get noticed in Youtube is for some big youtuber
to shout you out or collab with you.
And it's just not true.
There are people who've done zero collaborations
and any of that, that've grown from zero to 100 thousand
in the last year, some in the last six months.
That Creepypasta Guy is a great example.
(another youtuber) in the last year went from zero
to like 40 thousand, 30 thousand,
something in that neighborhood.
There are a ton of people who never do Youtube collabs
that do just fine.
I did the majority of my content without doing
Youtube collabs, and the collabs that I've done
all are people smaller than me.
So instead of trying to get big youtubers to collab
with you when there's not really a real reason
or incentive for them to do that, collab with people
at your own level that are crazy super excited
or people that are even smaller than you that'll be
crazy stupid excited about doing it,
and that look up to you.
Give back to your community in that way.
Number six: no one is watching your videos.
It might feel like no one's watching your videos
if you only have like a few hundred views,
but that's actually a lot.
If you walk into a room of a couple of hundred people,
it gets very scary very quickly.
It gets very intimidating.
I get it, it could feel like a lot of people aren't
paying attention, but 20 people is a lot of people.
If you had to get up in front of a room
and do the same content to 50 people,
that would be hard on you.
I know I get up, I do public speeches in front of hundreds
or thousands of people, it still is something that gives me
butterflies, it's like going on a date.
So I would just say to take comfort in the fact
that the numbers will grow over time if you're consistent,
and that the numbers mean more than you think they do
if you think of them as actual human beings,
and you don't compare yourself
to other youtubers with bigger numbers.
Small youtuber problem number seven:
you have a lot of people viewing your videos,
but nobody's subscribing.
Or, you have the opposite problem: a lot of people
are subscribing, and no one's watching your videos.
This could all depend on the type of channel you have.
You guys know that I have 100 thousand subscribers,
but you see that the averages on my videos fluctuate wildly.
There are videos that I do that get 100 thousand views,
there are videos that I do that get 10 thousand,
there are videos that I do that get five thousand.
In my case, I have a how-to channel,
so if that video doesn't help a specific person
in the audience, then there's no reason for them to watch.
Or if they watch that and it helped them,
they subscribe because something else might come
that helps them, then that works.
But it could go the other way.
A lot of times, people will watch my content,
they'll watch a lot of my videos, and they won't subscribe
because they don't want everything the channel has to offer.
So it really just depends on what type of channel you have.
If you have a niche channel and your channel is one specific
topic, like you had a Pokemon Go channel, then the odds are
most of your subscribers will view your videos,
and most of the people viewing your videos will subscribe.
That's why a lot of people do niche channels on Youtube.
If you're building a community and it's a diverse community,
then some people will watch your Monday videos,
some people will watch your Wednesday videos,
and those people probably won't watch your Friday videos.
That's just the way that it is.
So instead of worrying about it, I would just focus
on doing the content that you think matters the most.
Or, go down to a niche channel.
But again, it doesn't always work.
There are youtubers I know with like a half a million
subscribers that still average 50 thousand views.
Youtubers with a quarter million subscribers
still average 30 thousand views per video.
So there's no guarantee one way or the other.
That's just the way it is.
Number eight.
Number eight is probably the thing I think most people
take for granted.
The Youtube dashboard has a lot of great information
that can help you understand
how to grow your Youtube channel.
I think the majority of small youtubers don't know
how 90% of the tools in the Youtube dashboard work,
what most of these menus and these terms mean.
Some of that is because people are young and it might
just be a little over their head, and then some of it
is just, frankly, people not doing the work and the research
and their homework, and just expecting to post videos
to Youtube and magically get results.
And it doesn't really work that way.
There are some people who are lucky enough to have
a viral video, or for stuff to catch on.
But for the most part, if you wanna be successful
in Youtube, there's a lot you have to learn
and it starts with understanding Youtube dashboard,
and the free tools that Youtube has to help you.
Youtube has the creator hub, they have
the creator community, there's so much that Youtube
gives away for free to help you understand this.
They have the Youtube playbook for chrissakes.
There's so much that you can learn from the free tools
available in the Youtube app, the dashboard, the mobile app,
all of it, and it's just right there for the taking.
So I would encourage a lot of you small youtubers to really
just learn the dashboard, learn the basic mechanics
of Youtube and how it works, and I think
that you'd go a long way if you did that.
Number nine.
Number nine is a biggy.
One of the biggest problems among small Youtubers
is comparing themselves to other youtubers,
and also looking at what the "big" youtubers are doing.
I understand trying to reverse engineer success
and learn from people who've been successful.
What you guys are failing to realize is the way they're
operating now is not how they operated to get
where they are, it's what's going to take them
the next way or it's what makes them happiest
now that they can afford to do it.
It's all those things, it's not what's gonna get you
to where they are.
You have to go back and, if you were gonna do anything,
I would look at their humble beginnings,
and I would realize, wow, the majority of them took
forever to get here, and it was slow, and I would also say
that their journey is not your journey.
My journey is not necessarily your journey.
That's why I give practical, actionable advice,
and telling you the mechanics and the breakdowns
and all this stuff that seems a little boring sometimes,
or mundane, but it's like this is what works generally
across the board, and is not necessarily specific to me.
If you look at what other people are doing
and you compare yourself, you're running their race
instead of your race.
You can't just take on somebody else's diet
or somebody else's lifestyle and expect it to go well
or have the same results for you.
You have to figure out what's gonna be best for you,
you have to do the content that you care about,
you have to do the content that works to your strengths,
and not your weaknesses.
So I would say stop comparing yourself to other youtubers,
big or small.
The final and tenth small youtuber problem that we're
gonna address is you wanna give up on Youtube.
The reality is that not everybody is going to get
a million subscribers.
Not everybody is gonna get 100 thousand subscribers.
But that doesn't matter.
If you like making videos, then you should make videos.
If you have an audience that's 1000 people,
you should care about them the same way that you would care
about an audience of 10 thousand people,
or a million people.
You should do Youtube and do videos because you want
to do videos and do Youtube, not because you get subscribers
or don't get subscribers.
It shouldn't be about that.
You shouldn't give up on Youtube just because of numbers.
You should do Youtube as long as you enjoy it,
as long as you're excited about it,
as long as it's somehow making a difference in your life.
That's what being on Youtube really comes down to
and should be about.
That's what everything should really be about.
Worrying about numbers is called going to work.
And I get that some of you wanna do this full time,
that's great, but it requires patience,
it requires patience just like any other thing.
Being an artist and learning that craft requires patience
and doing thousands of drawings that no one will see,
that no one will clap for, that no one will praise you for,
things that you're gonna ball up and throw in the trash,
that's the life of being an artist, and in a lot of ways,
that's what being a Youtube creator really is,
and what it comes down to.
So I would say don't be discouraged by that,
I would say be excited about your next challenge,
about the next thing you're gonna create,
and just gear up for that.
Anyway, I hope this advice was helpful
to you small youtubers out there.
I hope it gives you some encouragement,
some things you can do that will help you grow your channel,
stay committed to it, grow your audience,
and deliver for them.
If you have questions, well, there are a hundred videos
on the channel in this Youtube playlist
that probably can help you.
So there are those, but other than that,
you can feel free to ask stuff in the comments.
I wanna thank our friends over at Grapevine Logic
for sponsoring this video.
They actually do a lot that helps youtubers,
especially small youtubers,
they have a platform where if you have 1000 subscribers,
then you can actually apply for Youtube sponsorships
with brands, maybe you can make a few bucks
or get some free products to review for your channel.
Also, with the money you make from doing paid sponsorship,
you can invest back into your channel,
get that professional video editing software,
get that new camera, so I think it's a great way to grow.
It's definitely helped me to do those kind of sponsor deals.
So thanks, Grapevine, for helping me out on this video
and for everything you do for small Youtube creators.
Anyway, like this video if you like it,
don't forget to subscribe, check out
the other awesome content on the channel.
Remember, Youtube advice videos are usually on Fridays.
As always, you guys, thanks so much for watching,
and don't forget, create something awesome today.