- If you're a small YouTuber, and you're struggling
to grow your channel, you're gonna wanna tune in
to this video, because I totally get it.
There are a lot of you, you absolutely hate
the algorithm right now.
You're fighting desperately and making what
you think is good content, and you're still not growing the
way that you would hope.
But what if I told you that if you want to grow
to 10,000 subscribers, if you want 10,000 subscribers
on YouTube and to build your community,
that there are five specific things that you really need
to be doing right now.
And I have something for you guys, because I know a lot
of you are saying, Roberto, it's very different
than you were on YouTube in 2013.
It's a whole new ballgame.
But I've got an answer for that.
These five things, these five tips that I'm gonna give you,
are what helped Chris from The Rewired Soul grow
his YouTube channel this year from 2,000
to 40,000 subscribers, and helped Jason Lewis,
in the last six months, Painfully Honest Tech,
grow from 40,000 to over 120,000 and also get
his first video with over one million views.
These five tips are gonna help you get
to 10,000 subscribers.
So let's get into it.
Hey, everybody, this is Roberto Blake helping
you create something awesome today.
Welcome back to the channel.
For those of you who are newcomers, welcome.
My name is Roberto Blake.
I'm a creative entrepreneur.
I have a social media coaching business.
I'm also a public speaker at events like VidCon
and VidSummit, where I help content creators like
you build your brand and build your business on YouTube.
And today I wanna talk to you about five things
you can do that are gonna help you grow a YouTube channel
to 10,000 subscribers, just like the channels I mentioned.
These are both coaching clients who've worked
with me in Awesome Creator Academy and have grown
their channels by really doubling down on these five things.
And by the way, it didn't mean going out
and spending $3,000 on lights.
It didn't mean buying a $5,000 camera setup.
And I think that a lot of you are really overemphasizing
how much the production value has to do
with whether you're growing, because you want
to look like a big YouTuber, but it's actually a
lot more straightforward than that.
So let's just go ahead and get into it right now.
I'm gonna tell you the first thing that you need
to be focused on.
Now some of you already know that YouTube made a huge
update to the YouTube dashboard.
They introduced what they're calling the YouTube studio.
Right now it's still in beta,
but this is gonna be the default going forward.
And so from 2019 onward you can still access the classic
YouTube analytics dashboard, but this is gonna
be the default.
And there's a very important piece of data
that a lot of you need to be studying that's
in this dashboard, and it's click-through rates.
Click-through rates have always been an important part
of the YouTube algorithm, but it was hidden
from us for years.
When I started in 2013, taking this seriously,
putting out weekly content, guess what?
There were no click-through rates.
I made over 1,000 videos without the benefit
of knowing the click-through rates on my titles
and my thumbnails, so I didn't know what was going
to resonate or perform better with an audience.
But now we have that data.
What you're gonna do with this is you're gonna wanna make
better thumbnails, and there are a lot
of resources out there.
I've made resources.
I'm gonna link to some stuff down below
that can help you, and some tutorials.
And there's free software out there like GIMP,
Photop.com, Pixlr, and of course you can buy
Adobe Photoshop which is, you know, obviously
what I did.
But making your thumbnails better.
And I know you're tired of hearing it,
but here's the thing.
The data doesn't lie.
There are types of thumbnails and thumbnail styles
within a channel that do better than other thumbnails.
Most YouTubers, especially when you're starting out,
but even established YouTubers like myself,
most of our content, we have the same setup,
the same lighting, the same microphone,
the same camera.
The quality of the content is not changing.
But yet there are videos that we can do,
and we shoot them in the same week or even the same day,
and one video might get 20,000 or 100,000 views,
and another video get 5,000 views, 2,000 views, 1,000 views.
Why does that happen?
It's the title and the thumbnail.
And it's these click-through rates on the videos,
and that makes a huge difference.
It's simpler logic than you might think.
If it doesn't get a click, it doesn't get a view.
So how do you improve the click-through rates?
So you into your YouTube dashboard,
you find the style of titles and thumbnails
that are performing best in terms of click-through rate,
but also are getting the best average view duration
and retention rates on the video, because that means
that people who clicked on it aren't being disappointed
and leaving right away, bouncing off of the video.
You don't want that.
So if you just tighten up this,
you're going to see better performance in YouTube,
and you're videos are gonna get served
to more people, which is obviously gonna grow you.
When I had Chris and Jason really buckle down
on their thumbnails and their thumbnail strategy,
they saw dramatic differences in their views.
When they started using titles and topics
that they knew had attention they started getting massive
performance on their views.
So if you care about views, you're gonna have
to do those things.
And believe me, I'm somebody who struggles
with doing what I know will get clicks,
because I'm really stubborn.
And a lot of you are too.
But, I do know that they work and there's a balance
between what your audience will accept,
and there's also the threshold of how much hate
you're willing to take just to grow.
So take that with a grain of salt.
Speaking of hate, I know I'm gonna get it
for tip number two.
Quantity over quality.
Now, I'm not giving you permission to make crappy videos.
Absolutely not.
What I'm telling you is that moving your videos
to 10% better quality is not as important as making
three times as many videos on the quality
of content your audience already said yes to.
And this is why I hope if you're watching this video
you've already watched the video on how to get
your first 100 subscribers, your first 1,000 subscribers,
because, if you haven't, you should really watch
those videos first.
I don't know that this will be helpful to you otherwise.
But you need to make more content.
If you already have 1,000 subscribers,
you have a community of your own.
YouTube actually just gave you the community tab
at 1,000 subscribers.
You have a community.
You have an audience.
If they're saying yes to something,
if you're getting views on it,
if they're engaging in the comments,
give them more of what they've already said yes to
if that that is faster than making the videos 10% better.
Here's why that's going to work.
Every video that doesn't succeed is time
that you've put into it, and maybe it doesn't succeed now
but it might succeed later.
If you keep making videos, for one thing,
you will get better at making videos.
You will get faster at making videos.
You will get more confident on camera.
Your charisma will grow.
Your relationship with your audience will grow.
Which means that every subsequent video will get better
because of your practice and your commitment
to your audience.
Making a huge over-the-top video that you feel was edited
or shot to perfection is only going to be really
emotionally satisfying for you.
And your audience may love it.
And they may not really care about that.
But they are showing up for you.
So if you show up more often,
I think that consistency is going to win.
And I think that doubling down the relationship
with your audience is going to win.
And how do I know that?
Well, aside from doing over 1,000 videos and knowing
that the first 100 videos didn't necessarily grow
my channel over the top, but the next 100 videos did,
and that's how I got to 10,000 subscribers my first year.
And then by tripling down, 20,000 my second year.
And I was only doing weekly content my first year
and well into my second year.
But when I started going more content,
when I went to three a week, four a week,
five a week, and eventually daily,
my channel grew not just because of anything algorithmically
but for the simple face that I had more opportunities
to be discovered by an audience.
And the people who had already made a commitment
to me had more reasons to share my videos,
engage with them, and also I was getting more feedback
that was just making my content better.
And I think that the more videos you put out,
the more feedback and constrictive criticism
you're gonna get.
And you can only improve.
So I think that the quantity of videos
when you're getting started, and a lot of people,
a lot of my friends will disagree
with me, I think when you're getting started,
the quantity of videos that you make, as long
as they're decent enough to represent you,
and someone is saying yes to them,
is much more important than ramping up quality
and production values every single time you get a chance.
I think it's more important than going out
and buying $5,000 worth of camera gear.
I think just telling a good story,
or giving good information, or inspiring people
and making them feel something infinitely beats ramping
up editing and production, as long as it's not crappy
to begin with.
That is my caveat.
And like I said, it didn't just work for me.
This worked for many creators, including Chris Boutte
from the Rewired Soul.
When he started doing more content,
he got views through the roof.
Not to mention, it gave them more opportunities
to experiment and to find his voice,
and to get very comfortable.
And it was also great for Jason Lewis.
Jason Lewis, Painfully Honest Tech, in the tech niche
you have a lot of people that do beautiful cinematic
videos, but Jason figured out that he didn't need
to change the quality of his videos in order to grow.
It was just a matter of increasing the click-through rates
with the right titles and thumbnails,
and getting more views.
And then when you're getting more views,
you make more content that performs.
And we'll get to the rest of that in a minute.
But this will work for you.
And it's very simple logic.
It's not something that's going to change
in 2020 or 2025, because it's based
in human behavior, and it's also something
that will just make you a better content creator.
Number three, we're in the homestretch here.
Hope you've got popcorn.
Hope you've got a snack, juice, whatever
you need to get through the rest of this video,
'cause we're going in.
This is something that is the piece of advice
that I struggle with the most myself
as a content creator: being ruthless with your time,
and being ruthless with your content.
These two concepts are something that carried
over, for me at least, from the business world.
Being ruthless with your time means allotting yourself
a very specific amount of time to complete a task,
and sticking to that deadline.
If you don't give yourself a deadline,
you will spend more time and energy
than is absolutely needed to complete a task.
There are a lot of you that want to make more content.
There are a lot of you that want to hustle
at this and you want things to go well for you.
But if you're not disciplined enough with your time,
it's not going to happen.
If you want to be a full-time content creator,
you want to be able to put out videos seven days a week,
or Monday through Friday, or three times a week,
and right now you are still a part-time creator,
or a hobby creator, whatever, the first thing
that is going to help you move the needle
on growing your channel, because it will affect
everything else, is how you manage your time.
Now that part is not the part of it that I struggle with.
It's being ruthless with the content itself
and killing any content that isn't growing you.
In my case, the content that performs the weakest
on this channel makes me the most money.
So that's a trade off that I usually have
to make and just accept.
While you're in growth mode, if you've already experimented
because you experimented when you were at 100 subscribers.
You experimented when you were at 1,000 subscribers.
If you're trying to grow and get bigger,
you're gonna have to cut loose content
that isn't doing it for the channel,
even if it's content that you enjoy.
You might need to find another outlet for that content.
It might have to live on Twitch.
It might have to live on a second channel
that's just for you.
I don't know what to tell you.
If something's not working, you just have to move
on from it.
I did an interview with somebody from this community
that grew to a million subscribers in two years,
Bijou Mike, Mike Lucas.
He grew in the gaming niche.
And that is probably the most saturated,
most competitive niche in YouTube that
you could possibly grow in.
The thing that stood out in our interview
in terms of the advice that he took away from me
and from my content, and we'll link to that interview
up here, if you're really interested in how
he grew is gaming channel, is by focusing
on the content that he knew was already performing.
And being ruthless he was able to exponentially grow
the channel and give people what they wanted.
It's not always the most fun thing to do.
It's why creators burn out.
But it's also what grows them to where
they get a change to complain about it
to millions of people.
So take that for what it is.
Tip number four.
This one is probably the most important thing.
Content strategy.
When Jason was trying to grow his channel,
he didn't have to really change the content much.
Thumbnails and titles were one thing,
but ultimately forming a content strategy
so he knew what videos to make
and what videos would perform was the key.
The same for Chris.
When both of these creators tried to grow their channels,
ultimately the major pivotal point
in exploding their channel was the fact that,
if they were gonna make more videos,
if they were gonna go to a five day a week schedule
or a seven day a week schedule, the problem
for most creators is, well what content do I make?
That is the is bottleneck that holds a lot
of people back when they first become full-time
content creators, or at least when they're trying to.
Having a plan for your content,
for a lot of you, studying your niche,
and knowing the trends and patterns in your niche is
what would help you the most.
Or being able to tap into something in the culture
of your niche, or pop culture in general,
would give you an opportunity to be able
to farm content.
And once you hit something that's successful,
the thing is, you should look at how many angles
you could approach it from, because again,
quantity will help.
If people said yes to this video,
they will say yes to another video that is related
to that video, and that's where the quantity
and all of these things come in,
because it works together.
Your most successful video on your channel usually feeds
the rest of the videos on your channel.
So if you keep taking swings,
if you keep making content,
the think is, inevitablly you'll get better
at some point.
And the idea here is if you can even get one video
to pop and be successful, and then you can get
another one, and another one,
then once you've hit three pretty big videos,
you've latched on to something
and you can probably replicate that.
So, you know, I would tell you that content strategy
probably sits above almost anything else
you're gonna do, and maybe even more so
than tip number five, and though people will disagree
with me on this.
Tip number five is about engaging more
with the community, and not just your community,
but other communities even in your niche,
and in the YouTube culture itself.
There are a lot of things you can do when it comes to this.
You can comment on other videos in your niche,
but do not go into the comment section
and ask for subscribers.
Go into the comment section and have real conversations
with people, and also compliment
the original content creator.
You could also give people who are smaller
than you, or bigger than you, shout-outs in your videos.
If you're so worried about shout-outs,
what I would tell you, Gary Vaynerchuk talked
about this in his keynote at VidSummit.
He talked about instead of trying to worry about collabing
with him or KC, where the answer's gonna be no,
why don't you look at the people next to you.
And I couldn't agree more.
The reality is that you are more likely to build
an audience and community if you play with the channels
that are at the same level as you
and are in your niche, or they're a little bigger,
or a lot smaller.
You will probably have crossover audiences,
and you'll have massive engagement,
and you'll be able to cross-promote each other's videos.
A high tide raises all ships.
And more creators could stand to work together.
And it doesn't always have to be some big, elaborate collab.
It could just be as simple as referencing somebody's video.
You know, you can either ask them or not.
And if you have something valuable to say,
hey, so and so did a great job on their content,
or so and so referenced this in their video,
you should definitely check it out.
I think think they have an interesting point of view.
Whatever it is, that goes a very long way
to building more community and to tapping
into the larger conversation of your niche or genre.
So there you go.
Five things, five things you can focus on
that will grow your YouTube channel
to 10,000 subscribers and beyond.
Obviously there will be a video where I cover
how to go to 100,000 subscribers.
I have a lot that I can definitely state there.
That'll probably be a multi-part video.
I've revisited it before, but I think
there's a lot more that I can say on it without making
it necessarily an hour long video.
Although I guess I could just do like a three
or five part 45 minute documentary like Shane Dawson
which would actually, maybe that'd be kind of cool.
Maybe I could do that with other friends
that are 100K subscribers or more.
What do you guys think?
Is that how you want me to cover that video?
Let me know in the comments section.
That could be interesting.
Anyway, I hope this helped you out and helps
you understand how to build and grow your YouTube channel.
Drop comments below with your questions,
but I'll be very honest with you,
every question you're gonna ask, I've probably answered
in one of the 200 plus videos that
I've done covering YouTube topics.
Anyway, like this video if you like it.
Don't forget to subscribe.
Check out the other awesome stuff here on the channel.
As always, you guys, thanks so very much for watching,
and don't forget, go out there,
and create something awesome today.
Take care.
(lively music)