- Hey everybody, this is Roberto Blake,
at robertoblake.com, helping you
create something awesome today.
So in today's video, I'm going to talk about
how you might be able to get 10,000 YouTube subscribers
in 12 months or less.
Now, part of what qualifies me to talk about this is,
one, I've actually done it.
And then two, my current subscriber growth rate
is well over 3,000 subscribers a month.
So I've actually probably gotten over 10,000 subscribers
in just the last three months alone.
So, that's part of it.
As of the making of this video,
I have over 31,000 subscribers.
So my advice is gonna be built off of
what allowed me to be that successful,
what I've learned from it,
mistakes I made along the way,
a things that I now know that I can talk to you about.
So, one of the things I think I did very well
that allowed me to be successful at that was,
I already understood how search engines work.
And YouTube is just a giant search engine,
and it's built off of Google where that's concerned.
So I understood that having good titles, descriptions
and tags was already gonna be a very important part
of my strategy for being successful in YouTube.
I had to make titles and descriptions that let people know
that this information was gonna be helpful to them,
stuff that they were gonna be interested in,
that would grab their attention,
and that they were actually likely
to type into the search box.
So I was able to do that.
The other thing was, knowing that, immediately,
the title and the description and the thumbnail
were the three things that were really
gonna come in a search,
I realized that I had to make interesting
and different thumbnails.
And so I made unique, branded thumbnails,
and a style of thumbnails
for the type of content I was doing,
and that helped me out as well.
So that's how you get the views.
And views obviously funnel into being subscribers.
The more views you get, the more subscribers you get.
The other thing was, producing weekly content.
High-quality weekly content was super important.
In my case, I always started
with doing Photoshop videos on Thursdays,
and then I was doing a random graphic design video
once a week, and then I grew from there
and started branching into other topics,
set a content schedule, and so I was putting out
maybe three or more videos a week at one point.
And that's where I got tremendous growth.
When you're putting out three or more videos a week
on a consistent schedule, you have to understand that
that means that for the year,
you're putting out over 100, 150 videos for the year.
Each one of the videos is an opportunity
for you to be discovered in search.
Each one of those videos is an opportunity
to convert subscribers based on what they're interested in,
and based on discovering your content.
So the more videos you have in inventory,
it's like the more products you have to be able to sell.
So, yes, that's gonna help you on ad revenue
that you can invest back into your YouTube channel,
but it's also gonna help you invest in
the ability to get new subscribers, pull in an audience.
So the more videos you have, the more opportunities you have
to build your subscriber base.
Let's say that in a month, each of your videos
was bringing you 20 new subscribers.
If you have a hundred videos
bringing you 20 new subscribers,
then that's 2,000 new subscribers every month,
because you have those 100 videos out.
So, a lot of YouTubers get impatient.
They're not putting out weekly content,
they're not putting out multiple content,
and then they're wondering why
their subscriber base isn't growing,
this is the reason why.
When you have consistent, quality content coming out
on a regular basis, and at a decent volume,
you've now created a demand, you've created expectation.
You create a reason for someone
to care about your content and subscribe,
and that there's more of it for them to consume.
So, that's a big part of growing your YouTube audience
to 10,000 in that first year.
So, in your first year, if you were doing daily content,
which might be very ambitious,
and I don't necessarily think everybody can pull it off,
but if you're doing daily content,
and it's all quality content,
you have to think that's over 300 videos
that year alone for people to consume from you,
that's 300 opportunities you have to be discovered
every single day, every hour of every day,
in a YouTube search.
So, if you have a niche that you're doing something for,
if you're only doing content for one specific type of thing,
then it's possible that by doing daily content,
or multiple videos a week,
that you might produce the most content
out of anybody in your niche,
in a very shot period of time,
which is gonna build a lot of credibility for you,
makes you easier to discover,
means that all the related videos might be
for you, for that topic.
And that is going to create tremendous value,
tremendous marketing exposure,
and your channel's gonna get very popular
if you're the best, or the person doing the most content
for that type of thing.
It also means that you have more videos for people to share,
which means that's gonna signal to YouTube
that your content is more relative.
So you need to have a strategy
for being discovered in search.
You need to have a strategy
for producing as much content as possible,
a release schedule,
a content schedule and strategy overall,
and then, you need a social media marketing strategy
for your videos getting shared.
When people share your videos in Google+,
and I know a lot of you are sleeping on Google+,
it actually signals YouTube.
That is the highest signal of value
beyond someone liking your video
and commenting and subscribing.
Sharing it in Google+ publicly
is one of the highest signals for YouTube to say,
your content is relevant.
So the more shares, likes and comments
that an individual video is getting,
the higher it will rank in YouTube's search algorithm.
The higher your video ranks in YouTube search,
the more likely people are to view it
and to care about it, and to think that
it's a relevant video to what they're looking for.
Many of you also aren't taking advantage
of YouTube playlists.
YouTube playlists give you another second opportunity
to be in a YouTube search result.
The more playlists you have that are full of videos,
the easier it's gonna be for your content to be discovered.
YouTube also recently started valuing content
based on how many times it appears
in other user's playlists.
So the more people that are favorite-ing your videos,
it goes into their favorites playlist.
The more people that like your videos,
it goes into their liked videos playlist.
The more people that want to add your content
to an archive of all the videos that they're watching
for this type of content, or something like that,
the more relevant your videos are gonna signal to YouTube.
So, that's gonna help you with ranking as well,
and discoverability.
It's also gonna mean that people
who wanna binge on your content, consume it,
can do it a lot more easily.
I have a ton of playlists here on the channel
just to help me, one, allow people to discover the content,
and two, to organize it, and to keep things simple.
I have major featured playlist
on the homepage of the channel,
but beyond that, some of those things might be a series.
So then I'll separate it
into another playlist just for that.
So, those are things you can take advantage of
that will make you more discoverable in search,
and also signal YouTube that you're more relevant.
In addition to doing good titles for your playlist,
and making sure that they speak
to the needs of your audience,
you should also write descriptions
because that's going to help you
with discoverability and YouTube search as well.
You should also be embedding your videos in online blogs.
You should be in Tumblr, you should be
obviously in social media like Facebook and Twitter,
but actually having your videos embedded
on a high-traffic website is gonna be very helpful for you.
If you can become a contributing writer
for a website or a blog,
and let them use your video content,
even if they're not gonna pay you for it,
that can create a lot of exposure for you,
let you reach a whole new audience,
and that can convert to subscribers for you.
Not to mention that, if you've monetized your videos,
you'll be making ad revenue off of those videos anyway.
So, there's a tremendous opportunity there
if you wanna take advantage of it.
So, look for people in your community,
people that you might be thinking of as competitors,
build relationships,
collaborate instead of competing with them,
and get them to feature and showcase
your videos on their website,
if they have a bigger traffic or audience
than your website has.
My final tip for growing your YouTube channel
is one that I neglected early in my YouTube career,
is do collaboration videos with other YouTubers.
So, those live, hang out, on-air collaborations
are just a great way for you to grow a whole new audience,
and also to go deeper with your existing audience.
My recommendation is, you look for people
who have an audience roughly the same size as yours,
maybe a little bigger, maybe a little smaller.
Do as many collaborations as you can
without going overboard.
If you're doing at least one a month,
then that has a substantial chance
of growing your YouTube channel and really helping you out.
If you do, maybe if you have enough of the capacity
to do it, and you wanted to do one a week,
that could be really interesting, because then
there's this whole range of people that you could reach.
But I would say that might be too aggressive in some cases
because, depending on what your niche is
and depending on how many people
are actually creating good content in that niche,
you might burn through collaboration opportunities
way too quickly.
There's a lot of YouTubers out there,
but there might be a limited amount of YouTubers
dong really good, high-quality stuff
that you wanna have an actual relationship with.
So kind of keep in mind that,
it might be better to do a once a month collaboration
instead of every week,
because if you were on the hook to do it every week,
that's over 50 YouTubers that you have to invest
in a relationship with, and that's a lot to manage,
and that's a lot to keep up with,
and be on the hook for,
especially with the other content you have to put out,
doing them once a month means that
you can do 12 for the year,
and that might make enough impact
and generate some interest to where
other people will actually request
to do collaborations with you,
instead of you having to reach out to them.
So, just take advantage of that opportunity as well.
And I think that between all the things
we've talked about here in the video,
that this will allow you, if you're executing on this well,
if you have good video production values,
good audio production values, good lighting,
you're building a good content strategy,
you're building consistency in terms of
the volume of content you have,
releasing on a schedule, doing the collaborations
and engaging with your audience,
you do all of those things, and it's a ton of work,
but if you put in that work,
there's very little chance
that you won't be successful at YouTube,
and there is a very good chance
that you will get 10,000 subscribers
within your first year of YouTube.
Well, I hope you guys enjoyed this video.
I hope it gave you some real, actionable information
on how to get 10,000 subscribers in your first 12 months,
or 12 months from now, from you starting on this.
If you're looking for year recommendations,
I have a video on that,
to help you increase the production value of your videos.
Obviously in the description below,
I have links to everything I'm using
in my current YouTube setup, as of the making of this video.
The majority of this stuff is what I've been using
over the last 18 months to be successful
and to build these 30,000 subscribers.
I did this YouTube channel and started doing everything
that I've been talking about here,
in July of 2013
is when I started doing weekly content on YouTube.
So that is when I really started executing
on everything I'm talking about here,
just like, maybe 18, 20 months ago,
as of the making of this video,
and that's why I can say that, if you do these things,
I've gotten, again, 30,000-plus subscribers
in that time period.
If you do these things,
you're more likely to be able to get
to 10,000 or more subscribers within 12 months.
Anyway, like this video if you like it.
Don't forget to subscribe.
Check out the other awesome content on the channel.
As always, you guys, thanks so much for watching,
and don't forget,
create something awesome today.