you probably already know that starting and growing your authority and your
influence on YouTube is one of the most powerful things you can do for your
branding for your business which is why in this video I'm going to be showing
you exactly how to start a successful YouTube channel so you can grow your
business build your brand and have a whole lot of fun doing it
hey there my name is Adam Earhart and welcome to the channel the number one
place for entrepreneurs to learn proven marketing strategies to grow your
business online so if that's something you're interested in you may want to
consider subscribing and hitting that notification bell so you never miss a
future episode all right let's talk YouTube specifically how to start a
successful YouTube channel one that will not only get you more views and more
subscribers but ultimately revenue because at the end of the day businesses
aren't built on likes or shares or subscribers or anything like that
they're built on revenue and they're built on profit which is why you need to
ensure that you're setting yourself up for success with a profitable YouTube
channel right from the beginning but what do you do if you're brand new to
the world of YouTube and you've got all of these different experts and gurus
telling you all sorts of different strategies about keyword research and
showing up and suggested or how do you appear on the brows or the homepage or
anything like that as well as how to structure your videos and how to get
those coveted likes and shares and subscribers and all of the things that
may make you feel good but at the end of the day well they may not help you
strategically grow your business if they're not being deployed in the right
order and in the right way so that's what I want to do in this video
essentially help you to avoid all of the pitfalls and all of the mistakes that I
made when I was first starting my youtube channel that allowed me to grow
it to a pretty decent level but less so in regards to subscribers and views and
more so into the revenue that it contributed to my business again you
can't feed your kids with likes you're gonna need some revenue if you want to
build a real business so let's dive in now starting with tip number one the
very first thing that you need to understand when it comes to starting a
successful YouTube channel is that YouTube it's pretty much like all of the
other social media networks or pretty much all of the other marketing
strategies available in that in order to be successful on the platform you really
do need to have a pretty solid understanding of some pretty basic
marketing principles and fundamentals things that are really gonna drive the
success of your business or of your social media strategy whether we're
talking about YouTube or Instagram or Facebook or LinkedIn whatever one of the
core principles that you really need to understand is something called the ICA
or ideal customer avatar this is especially true in more competitive
social media networks because there's a whole lot of people that you could be
going after and there's a whole lot of people that you're compared
going after so really makes sense to dial into that exact person that you
want to serve and you want to focus on this is known as your ICA or ideal
customer avatar the reason this is so important is because it's going to allow
you to have alignment between your message and between the content that
you're putting out there and really ensuring that you're staying on point to
the wants and the needs and all of the problems that your current ideal target
market is going through so you can position yourself as the authority and
the expert and essentially the educator helping them get from point A to point B
or whatever point they want to get to so who is your channel for what do they
care about and how are you going to serve them these are all incredibly
important questions to answer when you're trying to craft that ideal
customer avatar now the top-level aspects of an ideal customer avatar are
things like demographic details like age gender income occupation things like
that geographic details like what city state province or country they live in
and psychographic details like what are their attitudes their beliefs their
organizations or affiliations that they're a part of what really separates
the amateurs from the pros however is the ability to take it one step further
into something I call miracles and miseries essentially identifying their
miseries being their pains and problems and fears and frustrations all the
things they're trying to get away from and their miracles their wants and
dreams and goals and desires and all the things they're trying to move towards
well if you can create content that helps them bridge the gap away from
their miseries and towards their miracles again you're going to establish
yourself as a valued and trusted source of information now when you're creating
content and when you're designing the strategy around your YouTube channel and
really trying to figure out who it is that you're going to target or what
audience you're going to serve really important to try to come with a value
first attitude essentially the reason that so many YouTube channels fail
especially in the beginning is because they're very self-centered or very
selfish in regards to the content that's created on the channel essentially it's
content that the youtuber wants to make or the authority or expert wants to make
but less so content that the audience actually wants to see so how do you fix
this well if you already have an audience or you already have a customer
database it's pretty simply just have to talk to them see what they say if you
don't however and you're starting completely from scratch well this is
going to come down to kind of a testing sort of exercise where you're gonna want
to create a whole bunch of different content see what resonates and then go
from there I know not very scientific and for me as a
marketing strategist it's hard to say so obviously I want you to do a little bit
of due diligence a little bit of research into your customers but the
reality is until you create content and put it out there on YouTube you're
really not going to know what hits and what's gonna miss and it's by
identifying those hits so you can create more of them that really allows you to
grow your channel anyway understanding the marketing basics and the proven
fundamentals are incredibly important and perhaps the most important part
which is why at the end of this video I'm going to link up a free marketing
training you can watch right after this one all right so let's move on to the
next tip on how to start a successful YouTube channel this parts a whole lot
more fun and it really comes down to studying other successful youtubers you
see there's no need for you to go out there and try to reinvent the wheel and
come up with something completely new serving an audience that no one's
serving it and really try to go into uncharted waters because the reality is
especially on YouTube there's probably someone similar to you doing something
similar to what you want to do this is actually a really really good thing
though because competition well typically it's going to prove some kind
of market demand so if there's another youtuber out there making your kind of
content serving your kind of audience this is a pretty decent sign that well
people are consuming the content or at least there's some interest in it
especially if some of their view some of their videos have higher views also
there's an incredibly important tactic here that involves essentially studying
and understanding the theme and the style and the attitude and the tone of
different social media networks after all Instagram is very different than
Facebook which is very different than Twitter which is very different than
LinkedIn all of these are very different than YouTube so if you want to be
successful on YouTube you're going to need to watch pretty decent amount of
YouTube videos to try to understand well what kind of content resonates what kind
of tone what kind of theme how are the video structured where are the cuts
being placed what is the style what are the backgrounds look like what does your
competition dress like what do they say all of these things going to essentially
the brand and the style and design of your YouTube channel now what I'm
absolutely not advising here is that you go and just copy someone completely
first of all totally unoriginal second of all what works for them probably
won't work for you because you're different and your markets different
your business is different the way you express ID
and your life experiences are different so use this to model after and to try to
get ideas and inspiration from but definitely don't copy because you're
only going to end up hurting yourself all right the next step in starting a
successful YouTube channel is all about setting realistic expectations now this
one is a little tricky because there is no one-size-fits-all strategy for every
single business every single youtuber every single YouTube channel we're all
kind of different this is why some channels get millions and millions of
views and yet barely generate any income and some channels have generated pretty
much a full-time income from only a thousand subscribers how is this
possible comes down to the business and the
business model the offers that are being made the target market they're serving
all sorts of stuff but the reality is is that very rarely does success happen
immediately or overnight it's gonna take some time
in fact this is perhaps one of my favorite reasons to get involved on
YouTube is because there's a higher barrier to entry and because it does
take a bit of time to build up that traction to build up that content
library and database of assets and videos that are going for you around the
clock well it does mean that a lot of people simply aren't going to put in the
effort put in the time put in the money in order to build their channel this
means as competitive as YouTube is it's actually way less competitive than
pretty much every other social media network after all think about how hard
is it to just send a tweet or to make an Instagram story or to write a post on
your Facebook wall all be done pretty much two three maybe five minutes a
YouTube video on the other hand it's gonna take some scripting it's gonna
take some keyword research is gonna take some planning some recording some
editing some uploading you're gonna need a thumbnail you're gonna need to
optimize it and I don't say this to scare you and to put you off from
starting a YouTube channel but rather to simply be realistic with the amount of
effort it's going to take and the fact that most people simply aren't going to
do it that's a really good thing because you're not most people and if you really
want to be successful no you're gonna have to put in some work so let's just
accept this fact in get down to it all that said and I kind of touched on this
just a second ago but there's a huge myth in the world of YouTube and that's
that in order to generate any decent money from YouTube you're gonna need an
audience of a hundred thousand subscribers or a million subscribers or
ten million subscribers that's simply not the case using myself as an example
I was able to generate an addition hundred thousand dollars a year in
revenue from my YouTube channel back before I had even a thousand subscribers
which just shows if you have the right offer if you have the right market and
you're able to do things strategically you can have pretty decent results
pretty early on the key thing to focus on here is that YouTube really is a long
game and further along that you get and the more effort and time that you put
into it well the better your results are going to be maybe not overnight but
eventually and not to mention that along the way you're going to learn some
pretty amazingly valuable skills like how to communicate to a camera and how
to script a video and how to create engaging and valuable and relevant
content and essentially you're going to be given an opportunity to serve your
market serve your ideal customer avatar at a higher level than most of your
competitors are doing that's incredibly fulfilling and profitable alright so
moving right along on how to start a successful YouTube channel well it's
going to kind of build off that last point and essentially this one is going
to be all about 26 videos now there's a great saying here that every master was
once a disaster and again I'm living proof of that if you look back to my
very first youtube videos well they were filmed with a borrowed camera that was
propped on top of a bookcase with a microphone that was only recording on
one side I mean they're not that good they're kind of blurry was super awkward
and super nervous well fast-forward to today a couple hundred videos under my
belt now things are a whole lot more comfortable and I'd like to think a
whole lot more professional and a whole lot more valuable as well as I've
learned to engage the community talk with you figure out what you want to
learn what kind of content you want and then try my best to align my content
with your needs so as every master was once a disaster and fast practice makes
progress or practice makes perfect because let's be honest we're all
shooting for some level of perfection here well to be great
you're gonna need to be not so great at first and that's totally okay because
again you're putting yourself out there you're trying to create value and you're
going to take a little bit of work to get to the end result but you can't get
there if you don't get started this is why one of my biggest suggestions to my
clients and to my students when we're working them through a YouTube strategy
and getting them started with a new YouTube channel is a twenty six video
minimum quota essentially I want them to create 26 videos before we ever think
about judging themselves too harshly or definitely before thinking
stopping quitting or throwing in the towel we need those 26 videos because
they're going to give us a ton of data they're going to give us a ton of
experience and they're going to enable us to build an even better channel
moving forward so why 26 well 26 videos works out to
video a week for six months or two videos a week for three months the more
that you can record and the more that you can upload the faster you're gonna
learn and the quicker you're gonna get results and the quicker you're gonna get
feedback on what content hits and what content misses so my recommendation is
at least one video a week and if you can do two that's amazing the flip side of
that is I definitely don't recommend doing daily uploads or seven videos a
week because that is a really quick way to burn yourself out and just exhaust
yourself especially before you have the systems and the processes and the team
in place in order to help you create better videos a whole lot quicker this
part is really obvious and I know you understand it but the reality is is that
the more videos you create the better you're gonna be at creating videos the
more comfortable it's going to be the better the production is and the more
likelihood and the greater opportunity you're gonna have to create that one or
two maybe even five or ten videos that really get that home run category I'm
not talking about viral videos with millions of views but there's a very
real possibility you could get a video with thousands of views tens of
thousands or in my case sometimes even hundreds of thousands of views on
different videos but for that to happen you have to start now which is my next
tip on how to start a successful YouTube channel we've already covered the
importance of getting going and the importance of really just pressing
record and starting to make that YouTube video but when I'm talking with clients
and with students and when working them through the process of starting a new
YouTube channel I'm typically met with one of two different objections from why
they want to put it off or wait until another day the first objection is that
they believe it's too competitive and the second objection is that they just
don't think they can do it so let's address those both now first
let's start with myth number one objection number one which is that
YouTube is too competitive now granted YouTube is competitive and there's a ton
of videos being uploaded but when you compare that like we did earlier to
Facebook or Instagram or Twitter you'll find very quickly that it's a whole lot
less competitive and when it comes to YouTube you can have some pretty decent
results and pretty good success on YouTube using an organic strategy
meaning not using paid ads to promote your
channel or promote your content contrast that again with something like Facebook
or Instagram and yes there are exceptions to the rule but for the most
part if you really want to build a multi six seven or even eight figure business
you're probably going to need two runs a pretty decent amount of paid advertising
Facebook ads or Instagram ads in order to get your message in front of more
people Plus like we talked about earlier well with YouTube you got to be on video
that scares a whole lot of people away which again is a really good thing
because it leaves the door wide open for you to walk through to feel the fear to
do it anyway I'm getting ahead of myself so let's talk about objection number two
which is I just don't think I can do it first of all I truly believe that if I
can do it you can do it after all I started on YouTube with very little
public speaking experience and to be honest public speaking doesn't
necessarily relate very well to YouTube because it's a completely different
thing when you're talking to a group of people and talking to just a completely
blank camera lens I mean I know you're there let's still really weird like
super weird like I'm alone in my studio I don't even have a videographer with me
here right now so I'm just talking to a camera
it kind of feels like you're talking to yourself which is kind of weird anyway
before I first got started I put it off for months for years
way too long in reality all I really had to do was just hit record and get
started like I mentioned my first videos well
they weren't that pretty in fact my first five or ten were all with the
borrowed camera propped up they're kind of blurry the audio doesn't work that
well but at least they got out of the way and I improved from there and again
that's what really separates the amateurs from the pros the amateurs let
fear stop them and basically stop them from achieving their goals and their
dreams but the pros well they feel the fear and they do it anyway
because YouTube is such a powerful brand builder it can really grow your business
and can really deliver massive value to your audience and help you live the life
that you want to live but only if you get started alright the next thing
you're gonna want to do is check out the video I mentioned in the beginning on an
introduction to marketing so I've made sure to link that up right here so you
can check it out right now and I'll see you in the next episode