- So you wanna start a YouTube channel,
share what you are passionate about with the world,
make some money out of it,
turn it into a business,
become the next Mr. Beast.
But hang on a second.
Not so fast.
Let's rewind a little.
First of all, in the comments,
I want you to tell me why you wanna start a YouTube channel.
Now, I'm going to read through
and reply to as many of those comments as I can
when the video's first published,
but in short summary, and unfortunately,
most of you are likely to write about
what benefits you're gonna get out of starting
a YouTube channel,
whereas what you should be writing about
is the impact you want to have
on your intended target audience.
For example, here at vidIQ,
it's creator obsessed YouTube education.
YouTube helped turn my passion into a career
and that's what I want to do
for as many people as possible
who watch these videos.
YouTube is a life changing opportunity of freedom
and I wanna help you get there.
So let me ask you this again,
why do you wanna start a YouTube channel?
Are you gonna rewrite your comment?
So as you might have gathered,
this isn't a video on the practical tips
of how to start a YouTube channel.
We've already made that video and nobody watched it.
Instead in this video,
what we're gonna talk about
are some of the things that you only start to learn
when you've made a hundred videos
or you've been on YouTube for two or three years,
and that's probably as good a place as any to start.
Longevity.
It's a bit cliche to say this, but I'm gonna say it anyway,
YouTube is a marathon, not a sprint.
Nowadays people crave instant success
and TikTok has only magnified this impatience,
but long form YouTube content has never been like that.
There are always exceptions to these general rules,
but the likelihood is you are gonna make
a hundred terrible videos
and you're gonna get frustrated
because you haven't got 100 subscribers after a month.
News flash!
The likelihood is the creators you watch and admire today
probably went through that exact same struggle.
So try to appreciate
that when you start your YouTube channel,
you're likely going to have a creative awakening.
Over the first few videos,
you're going to learn a tremendous amount
about content creation,
be it filming, editing, sound,
production quality, scripting,
presenting in front of camera, uploading, optimizing.
The list goes on.
But your videos are still gonna be terrible
and nobody's gonna want to watch them.
But that's absolutely fine
and here's the reason why.
Unlike almost everything else you've tried to do in life,
you learn, practice, and perfect YouTube in public.
And once you accept,
you can make as many mistakes as you want
on YouTube in public
and still become successful.
You'll do just fine.
And since YouTube very much is a long term play,
you probably don't wanna give up your full time job
as soon as you start your channel
YouTube can often feel like a high interest bank account,
and bear with me on this metaphor.
You see, what YouTube does for creators
is take a very highly valued commodity
and slowly convert it into tangible currency.
And that valued commodity is time.
This is almost always the case,
but the moment you start your YouTube channel,
you will put more time into it than you ever imagined.
It's addictive.
So addictive, in fact,
that not only will you be giving up a lot of your time,
but you'll end up paying for it as well.
You'll start buying new cameras, microphones,
props to spruce up your set.
You'll buy books, you'll buy courses,
anything to improve yourself as a content creator.
And all of that will reduce a time
it takes you to become a better content creator.
But to begin with, you'll be putting a hundred hours
and a thousand dollars in for a dollar's return
on your first paycheck
when you monetize your YouTube account.
But eventually with longevity,
that balance will start to write itself.
The question is, do you have the patience
and determination to do that?
And on top of that,
to make sure you do actually get money from YouTube,
are you gonna take the time to understand copyright?
So we'll admit this is aimed more towards TikTok users
where copyright is applied more liberally.
YouTube is not a creative wild west
where you can grab any movie clip you want,
any piece of music you want to use in your videos
and not expect ramifications.
In most cases on YouTube,
when you use someone else's piece of content,
you're likely to get a copyright claim,
which means that you can't monetize your content,
but your channel won't be impacted in a negative way.
But copyright claims are always one step away
from copyright strikes.
And if you get three of them,
it's all over before you've even started
your YouTube journey.
Now on top of that,
it's something called repetitious and reuse content
where you may be taking clips from elsewhere,
turning them into montages,
but YouTube has policies against that as well.
Again, you'll probably be fine to upload it
and have it on your channel,
but you won't gain any financial returns from it.
Now we have covered copyright in a lot more detail
on this channel.
And YouTube has tons of resources on copyright.
Ultimately and definitively
YouTube wants to reward original creators
with original content.
Do your research
because from the moment you upload your first video,
you might be susceptible to copyright.
Now, another thing that you need to wrap your head around
is that YouTube doesn't actually start
when you press this button.
If you're just filming stuff and throwing it onto YouTube,
then I'm afraid you're not considering
the optimization that's required for this content platform.
Optimization comes in many different forms
and you might be thinking
of the traditional search engine optimization,
where you have to consider what keywords you're including
in your tags, titles, and descriptions,
and trying to rank your videos as high as possible
in search.
And while that can still be important for some channels,
what's important for all channels
is optimizing your content as much as possible
before you even press record.
And that simply starts with the idea.
Is what you are about to make actually interesting
for the audience you want to watch your content.
Next, and this is something we try to instill in creators
as early as possible as a good habit,
title and thumbnail.
These are the two things a viewer sees first
before they even click on the video,
and yet creators often do the title and the thumbnail
at the very end of a creative process.
When you're excited to just get started,
titles and thumbnails feel like something
that you can just leave until the end.
I was the same,
and it's taken me thousands of videos
and a decade's worth of content creation
to realize that this is backwards thinking.
Having a thumbnail and title,
or possibly multiple variations
before you even press record
will help guide your content.
And it also makes that final upload process easy.
And this is where vidIQ can help you by the way,
because we've got a selection of tools
that will help you optimize your videos.
From title generation, to thumbnail previews,
to, yes, keyword research as well.
We'll link all of that in the video description
and we'll show you how to use all of it
in future videos and live streams.
So do make sure to join us on a regular basis.
Now, notice how I didn't ask you to do this.
Well, that's because, #controversial,
subscribers as a number are massively overrated on YouTube.
Now, yes, they do have significance
when it comes to unlocking tools
such as custom URL, a hundred subscribers,
the community tab, 500 subscribers,
and one of the requirements for monetization,
a thousand subscribers.
But if you think subscribers
automatically lead to future views,
I'm afraid you're sadly mistaken.
Let me explain it to you like this.
One of your videos being in a viewer's recent watch history
is far more valuable than a subscriber on your channel.
YouTube is far more likely to recommend more of your content
to that viewer who recently watched one of your videos
than somebody who subscribed to you three months ago
but hasn't watched anything since.
That is a classic example
of YouTube serving the viewers' needs,
not the creators' needs.
And that's why defining your target audience
and figuring out why they should watch your videos
is one of the crucial first steps
to a successful YouTube channel.
And before you even start,
sub for sub, posting your comments in other people's videos,
promoting your own videos doesn't work.
Never has done.
If you focus on your audience, your community,
the subscribers will take care of themselves.
However, something that you will need to take care of
on a ongoing basis
is your mental health.
YouTube is a massive platform,
over 2 billion, monthly users.
Unfortunately not all of those users are positive.
The truth is you're never going to please everybody
and there are some toxic people out there
who just want to drag you down no matter what.
And you'll see this trolling, spamming, negativity
in the comments of almost all of your videos.
It even happens here at vidIQ,
where we just want to help people
grow their YouTube channels.
Now, obviously everybody has different coping mechanisms
for toxicity on the YouTube platform.
This is what I think.
First of all, there is constructive criticism,
and that is a good thing.
And if you hear any same type of feedback
from multiple sources,
there's probably some truth to it.
But when it comes to downright negativity,
I know that I can go into the comments
and find 10 times as many positive, supportive comments.
And I also accept that no matter what I say or do
some people in the comments of our videos
aren't ready for our help
or simply never want my help.
That's fine.
I'm not gonna waste my valuable time on those people.
I'm gonna focus on those who want help
and are positive about it.
And if the worst comes to the worst,
YouTube does have a few tools that will help you,
such as automatically blocking certain words
from your comments,
hiding certain viewers' comments from your videos,
and also increasing the strictness
of your comment moderation.
So it removes stuff like spam and negativity.
And then there's you.
Did you know you, of it only you on YouTube,
make sure people know about?
I mean, we're not the only YouTube education channel
on YouTube.
So why are you watching us right now?
Why do many of you come back to watch more of our content?
That's what makes us unique.
Viewers are free to watch whoever they watch,
and yet they watch certain creators
because of their uniqueness.
By all means, get inspired by the best creators
on the platform
and take the best elements
of each of your favorite creators
to blend into your own content,
but never try and copy anyone verbatim.
You'll always be second best
and you're also easily replaceable.
This is where we go back to copyright, repetitious,
reuse content.
If you source all of your material from someone else
and add no transformational effort
that makes it uniquely yours,
then you're not doing YouTube right.
You have to make people care about the unique value
you provide.
Or, TLDR, just be authentic.
So when you do start your channel,
inevitably you are gonna end up getting some of these,
whether I think they are important or not.
But what I do know is important,
is building a community,
building an audience around those subscribers.
And if you wanna learn how to do that with this epic guide,
you wanna click right now
All the best.
Let's do this.