- Hey everybody, this is Roberto Blake at robertoblake.com,
helping you create something awesome.
Today, I'm with my friend, Mike.
- Hi, I'm Bijuu Mike.
- Yeah, so today we're gonna talk about
how to grow a YouTube gaming channel
because Mike grew to 750,000 plus subscribers on YouTube
and he did it with a little bit of advice from...
Yours Truly.
- Yeah, he helped tremendously.
I think he's underplaying the value
that he brought me for real.
- You still have to make good content.
- No, yeah, you're right, you gotta put the work in
but your advice really pushed me forward.
- So, ultimately, if you're gonna say like,
there were like maybe, like what?
Three main core things that really made
a difference for your channel.
First of all guys, go look at his channel,
I'm gonna throw in some screenshots up.
But, Mike does some really interesting
and different gaming content and I'm not gonna like,
spoil it, you just kinda have to
check it out for yourself if you're a gamer.
And one thing that I like and appreciate it,
is that Mike did really good thumbnails,
it matters in this genre, people.
- Oh my god, that was a huge thing.
- So like, what are like three or five things,
what is five things people in your genre
that want to do YouTube gaming need to do,
to stand out, to be different and to crush it.
- Well, I mean, yeah, you already said it, thumbnails.
Thumbnails are so huge.
You can make the most amazing video in the world,
but if your thumbnail looks like crap,
no one's gonna click it, so it really doesn't matter.
- Cause clicks are views.
- Yeah, I mean a lot of gaming YouTubers I see,
put just you know, just this plain
boring text with a picture.
- From the game and...
- Yeah, yeah, it really just has to make sense
to whatever game you're playing.
- So you think it's closer to like how
packaging on the game itself, sells the game
and the way that they brand, like in social media,
that if you do similar things and it looks like,
the company could have made this.
- Exactly, another really good strategy for a gamer
that has really worked for me, that I still use,
is to focus on a certain aspect of the game,
so if you find out that you can do something
in the game that a lot of people don't know of,
you put that, that's a great way to discover.
- Okay, give an example of something like that.
- Well, like, okay, I play a lot of Hello Neighbor
or Yandere Simulator on my channel
and there's a lot of secrets or maybe glitches.
It could be something as simple as a glitch,
so if you can find the glitch and show people how to do it,
that's enough.
- So you can make it your thing,
you make your quote on quote, like I almost
have to use the word, gimmick, but I think
you kind of, an entertainment genre,
everyone needs what they call a hook or a shtick
or a gimmick, you need something unique
so it could be that all glitches revealed.
We talked about The Completionist,
we talked about Achievement Hunter,
we talked about like, okay, if you can do 100% completion
on a game, that makes you unique, you own that.
- Yeah, that was, yeah.
- If you're gonna be the person that covers
YouTube gaming but you always do character development
or you do something like with Gaijin Goomba did,
where he covered culture of gaming.
- Oh yeah, his videos are really good.
- So, you gotta have something,
you gotta have good thumbnails and a great visual branding,
style and aesthetic, we talked about that.
But then, you also need some kind of
very specific unique hook for your channel.
Like what's your channel do differently?
- What does my channel do differently?
Well, I mean, it's really probably the videos,
- To your personality?
- Yeah, my personality's definitely different,
I know that kinda sounds cliche, but really, that's it.
That's what's gonna keep people from coming
and plus, you can't miss this crazy bright hair.
- Yeah, so I guess another tip for
YouTube gamers is, dye your hair.
- Just dye your hair, that's all you gotta do.
- Apparently.
- No, no, it's a lot more to that,
you have to have personality and you know,
dying your hair is not enough.
- Now, well, from like a technical standpoint
cause I know that's probably a lot stuff that helped you
besides just, obviously, the just do it stuff like,
what from a technical standpoint really helped?
- Well, technical, I mean, I don't know,
would hardware count as far as that?
- We can go hardware or we can go like,
the YouTube side of things like...
- Well, I mean tagging your videos and titling them,
you have to, it works with the thumbnail,
your title has to really work with the thumbnail
and that's one thing.
So like, I was talking about the
glitches and stuff like that, well,
the title's gotta represent that,
you can't just put anything and
that's how it's worked for me.
- Do you feel like a lot of people in your genre
put titles that don't help them?
- Oh yeah, yeah, people just,
what they do, let's say for instance,
they're playing Grand Theft Auto or something,
they'll put Grand Theft Auto Episode 1,
do you think anyone's gonna watch that?
- No, there's no context and everything like that.
- Exactly.
- What if I put something like, Sick Car Flip GTA V.
- Yeah, and they put like a thumbnail of you
on top of a giant building or something,
it's very visual and nice.
- Curiosity.
- Curiosity, yeah, curiosity is a big one.
- Yeah, so I think that's important.
We talked about, okay, the SCO,
the title, descriptions and tags.
When you start doing that, what subscriber level
were you at when you started taking that seriously?
- Yeah so, I don't even know, I think
I was well under a thousand for sure.
- Under a thousand, how long ago was that?
- It was...
Oh my god.
I would say, it's almost two years ago.
- Okay, so in two years, you went
from a thousand subscribers in two years,
to where you're almost at a million,
getting ready to get a gold play button holder.
Right, okay.
- It's absolutely amazing.
- So, that was 20...
Two years ago, late 2015 or early 2016?
- Oh, it was '16.
- Alright so, it was 2016, so it was like, 18 months ago,
not quite two years.
- Well, maybe it was end of '15, I don't know,
I'm so bad with times.
- Either way, it's less than two whole years, I guess.
The reason I'm bringing that up is interesting
because what I keep hearing is,
it's impossible, it's impossible,
it's 2017, it's 2016, it's 2015,
I've been at this for three years or four years,
doesn't work, blah, blah, blah.
I keep hearing it, two years and
by far, surpassed me and I started out
with more subscribers than you,
different genre of course, but everyone
talks about YouTube being saturated.
Everyone especially talks about the gaming niche
being saturated, you still found a way to be relevant,
in the last two years and yet almost,
to a million subscribers and you're still climbing.
Still climbing, I'm watching.
- Yeah, I see a lot of people doing the same things
and yeah, I do have friends and people
that I see that kinda just are the same
as they were years ago, I mean, for me,
the hook for me, this really helped me is,
certain aspects, focusing on certain aspects of the game,
that's one thing that definitely helps me
and just developing a personality
and having inside jokes that people can relate to,
they'll keep coming back.
- Did you figure out a format for your videos?
Like a structure that you go with
that you saw like, keeps your audience watching longer.
- Well, yeah, I wouldn't call it too unique,
but yeah, definitely adding something really funny
that happened to the video in the beginning
and then the intro playing and then,
getting into the video from there, really helps people.
- And leading up to that funny moment
of what led up to that content.
That's a TV show thing to do.
- Yeah, I didn't even know that.
- And I've seen vloggers doing it now too.
I see them doing that between their thumbnail
and like, the first 10 seconds of a video.
It's like, oh, I need to see what leads up to that.
- Exactly.
- And then they get like five minutes in,
which gets the watch time and it's like,
ah, okay, or sometimes, eight minutes.
Even GaryVee, we saw him a couple minutes ago
and he started doing that with DailyVee.
- Yeah.
It really works, it works a lot, definitely.
- Yeah, so, I mean, I think all of that is important.
What's an unexpected piece of advice
you think you can give people,
like something they wouldn't expect.
- Oh man, it's hard to think of.
Unexpected?
- Yeah, something like you think gets overlooked.
What do you think gets overlooked?
- It's kinda what I've been saying,
I think it's the certain aspects of a game,
a glitch or anything like that,
I feel like that's overlooked,
people, especially gamers and new gamers especially,
they think they can just play the game,
a popular game and will get views.
That's not always...
- You need an angle.
- Yeah, you need an angle, people don't focus on that,
they just put it out there and expect people to watch it.
- Now, with your thing, when you started,
how engaged were you with your community,
even though you only, when you had almost nobody watching.
How responsive were you, how much
were you engaged with your fans?
- Always.
I responded to every single comment.
- Until you couldn't.
- Well, yeah, I mean I can do it more,
I'm not gonna lie, I can do it a lot more
and especially hearing Gary talk,
makes me really, feel bad for not doing it more.
- Yeah, you know like, Gary makes
everyone just wanna work harder.
- He really does!
He really does and that's why he gets
paid so much to do what he does.
- Yeah, I think it matters.
If you were starting your channel over tomorrow
or starting a new channel tomorrow,
what would your advice to yourself be?
- Oh my god, so many things.
Get decent lighting, decent quality,
it doesn't have to amazing, but just get decent...
- You look back at your old videos and you cringe right?
- It's so bad and the funny thing is,
I thought they were good back then.
I was like, oh, this is good.
But I look back on it now, it is not good.
- If people were just getting started,
what do they need in terms of hardware,
a lot of the gaming community is younger YouTubers.
What do they actually need and is it affordable?
Can they make the money they need, mowing lawns
or working fast food, to do a gaming channel?
- Yes, I can even tell you what to get.
Get a Logitech webcam, that'll work just fine.
- That's 60 bucks.
- Yeah, yeah, I'm sure you use it too,
plugs right into your computer.
I used that for the longest time,
I think even Markiplier uses that,
you can see where that went.
- Yeah, we use the 90 dollar one, the new one.
- Yeah, if you can do a hundred, you can get
a pretty good one, a hundred something,
I can't remember the exact price.
- What about microphones?
- Blue Snowball.
- Blue Snowball?
Not the Yeti?
- Well, that is the go to one,
but I use the Blue Snowball since...
- Your audio's pretty good so, wow.
- No, no, don't get me wrong, I use the Blue Spark now.
- Oh.
- But, I used the Blue Snowball
since like, 400,000 subscribers.
So you know, that just proves that
you don't need the best to grow.
- Wow, I mean I still do a lot of stuff budget
and people were like, really?
I'm like, yeah.
- You'll be surprised.
- What about like, video capture and things of that nature?
- Alright, well, I use Fraps, but if you have
Windows 10, they have a free program,
there's Razor, I think Shadowplay?
There's a free capture program?
- I think that's where I've heard about that.
- Yeah, and there's OBS.
- OBS?
Have you used it?
- I use OBS mostly now.
- Okay.
- And it's free.
- Yeah, alright so, again, not that expensive to get into,
so like, aside from the gaming itself,
maybe this is like, at best, a 250 dollar investment
modestly speaking, between video and lighting and audio.
- And the cool thing about it, is that
most of the games that I play are free.
- Okay, so that's even interesting.
So yeah, so again, 250 bucks, I know I can make that
in a summer, like not even a summer,
like in a week, mowing grass.
- You can make that.
- Yeah, as a kid, I could have done that.
- Yeah.
- So that's easy enough.
In terms of a computer then?
- Now, that's where you can't really cut the corners.
- Build a 400, 600 dollar gaming rig, right?
- You can do that, see I didn't do that
because I don't know how to build that,
I could have learned, but I didn't.
- Oh, so you bought.
- Yeah, I bought a more expensive one at Best Buy.
- Cyber Power?
- No, no, it was actually Asus.
- Okay, Asus is good, Asus is solid in the gaming community.
That makes total sense, that's something you can save up for
like, Walmart has it, you can lay them away if you have to.
You can lay it away, you can work it down,
you can figure it out, you can build it piece by piece too.
If you know how to do that or if you like,
Austin Evans is one of my favorite tech
YouTubers for his PC builds.
LinusTechTips too.
Even I am considering just doing
another PC build because there are
brands that wanna work with me on that
and I could teach people from scratch,
how to build a video editing machine, but guess what?
Video editing machine for YouTube
and a gaming rig, almost identical.
- Yeah, it's true.
- Yeah, so, you have everything
you need in the one machine there,
for whether you wanna edit YouTube videos
or make your gaming videos, same time, it does both.
- Yeah.
- It's irony.
- I bought my PC on a credit card and it paid off.
- You can get your whole YouTube set up,
if you're a college kid, you can apply for
an Amazon credit card, they'll approve almost anybody,
apparently and you get like a thousand
or 1,500 or even 2,000 dollars credit,
you buy the right stuff, in fact,
go to robertoblake.com/youtubegear
and you'll see all the things you need
to buy to start a YouTube channel.
But like, you can buy that stuff on Amazon,
credit it, figure out how to make your money back
and even if you don't, you just down the credit card,
little by little piece by piece
and you have all these gear to just do something
at some point, so like, you know.
That's just one way to do it, I like buying things cash.
- Oh yeah.
Yeah, it's a lot easier.
- Yeah.
- And nice.
- But some people, not everyone has that situation so.
- That is true, but yeah, if you're a gaming YouTuber,
it doesn't have too much of a startup
and it definitely pays off if you're consistent.
You always say it all the time, consistency,
if I didn't have that, I would not be here.
- What do you use to make your thumbnails?
- Photoshop.
- Photoshop, they can have 30 day free trial of Photoshop
if they're Windows or Mac and an alternative,
they can use Infinity Photo,
because it's like 50 bucks or whatever.
- Yeah, GIMP too, it's free right?
- GIMP is free, but it's clutchy and everything like that,
Infinity Photo, if you don't worry about the eco system,
you just need something to make graphics,
Infinity Photo can be competitive with Photoshop
as a standalone product, but not comparatively
to the eco system and I wouldn't like say,
for professional designers, like
I think the eco system matters.
But if you're just a YouTuber
or you're just trying to do stuff on the internet,
and you have a few bucks, Infinity Photo
is actually a great program.
Like a lot of people mistake my stance on that,
because they know I'm pro-Adobe
but like, for the eco system.
I dump on Apple all the time, as far as their hardware,
but their eco system is amazing, so I still bought.
So guys, don't think you have to be fancy,
don't think you have to have this brand
or this thing, or that thing, you can use
most of this stuff, free or affordable or cheap
and it will work.
- Yeah, exactly, it's really about the personality.
You gotta be yourself.
- Personality and packaging.
- No, seriously, you can have some really bad
video quality, I mean, sound is probably more important,
they need to be able to hear you.
- But a good thumbnail gets you to click
and the personality gets you to stay
and that watch time and those two things, they're the key.
- Yeah, I know of a YouTube channel
who still uses their webcam and they have
well over a million subscribers, they still use that webcam.
- No, I think Pewdiepie does too.
- Yeah.
- I think it's literally the same webcam
he uses for streaming, like, I mean,
it's just the one that everyone uses,
the Logitech webcams are just like, the best.
This video not brought to you by Logitech,
but Logitech, we're homies, like keep sending me stuff.
- Yeah.
No, it's great.
People overthink it and they wanna get
the most expensive stuff, but no.
- Do you even use like a fancy keyboard and mouse.
- No, I don't, my keyboard is actually,
I can't even see the letters anymore, some of it,
some of the letters I can't even see them anymore.
- But it was like what?
Like a 40 dollar keyboard or something?
- It came with the computer.
- Oh wow, so it was like a 20 dollar keyboard.
- I did had to replace my mouse cause it stopped working.
- What'd you end up getting?
- It was a Logitech.
- MX Master?
- I don't, it's some wireless mouse
that I found for like, five dollars.
- Oh wow!
- I'm not even joking.
- Jesus, okay, so I'm fancy, I have like,
you know, 50 and 60 dollars mice
because wrist, I can't have my wrist being cramped.
- It would probably benefit me a
lot if I do something like that.
- Just reach out to Logitech and get them to send,
Logitech, send Mike like, the MX Master mouse
or send him like the, something from the G600 series
or anything like that.
Talking about a mouse, what are you using for your headset?
- I have a Razor Kraken.
Yeah, just the regular ones.
- Logitech, hook him up with a headset, please.
Like, real talk, like reach out to them,
do some kind of brand integration like,
because like, you have a tremendous channel,
you influence a lot of people,
I think you're gonna inspire a lot of people
to start this YouTube gaming thing
and I think you're proof that it's not over
just because it's 2017, you started two years ago,
with a thousand subscribers, you have tripled what I have,
you get tremendous views, your videos
went over a million views, you knock it out of the park
and you do get stuff.
- Oh yeah, thank you, thank you.
- So thank you for being on the channel, Mike.
Guys, go ahead and check out Bijuu Mike,
subscribe to his channel if you want to be a YouTube gamer
or if you just enjoy watching YouTube gaming content.
Thanks for just helping me explain
cause I can talk about how you can grow
this type of channel, that type of channel
but helps to hear it from somebody who's actually doing it.
- Exactly, I love being here, it's
still crazy to be sitting here.
- Yeah.
- Yup.
- Alright you guys, so you know what to do,
like this video if you like it,
don't forget to subscribe to both of our channels.
Leave us your questions in the comment section,
both of us will take a look, we'll try and see
what we can help you out on, as always you guys,
thanks so very much for watching
and don't forget, go out there
and create something awesome today, take care.