hey what's up guys so a lot of people think that getting started on YouTube is
super expensive you have to spend a ton of money on equipment I'm going to show
you some of the things that I've tried and learned over the past few months to
get your channel started on a budget so here we go
alright guys so the way I structured this video is I broke it up into some
key points and I'll have links down in the description if you want to jump
right to any of those points without watching the whole video I recommend you
watch the whole video because I'm going to go over some things that I learned
and hopefully they'll help you out too so the areas that broke it down into our
figuring out the topic for your channel planning your videos your sound your
lighting your camera your computer system and the editor that you're going
to be using so let's jump right into figuring out a topic for your channel
all right so the first is figure out your topic so what do I mean by figure
out your topic what I mean is figure out a genera or a topic that you want to
cover on your channel so for instance if you want to do game play do a game play
channel don't do a game play and a blogging channel because that will start
diluting the audience that you want to reach and and kind of make people unsure
as to what you're all about so for instance on my channel I do technical
reviews and tutorials if I ever wanted to start gaming I wouldn't start doing
the gameplay in this channel I would probably start a separate channel and
maybe link those two together cross promote between them but I would keep
them as two separate channels because those would be going after two different
audiences
all right next up is planning your video this is really really important and this
is why I put it as one of the first things over equipment even so when you
might say playing your video that doesn't necessarily mean you have to
script the entire thing you could do bullet points and then fill in the gaps
in between the bullet points with just natural talking and that's typically
what I try to do on most of my videos I don't script my entire video but the
problem is if you don't plan it if you don't at least have a general idea then
you get the videos that you know people are saying okay so next up we're going
to go here oh oh wait I forgot oh yeah this is what I'm going to do you know
you've seen those videos and when I see those videos I click right off them
because if somebody doesn't put in some just basic time to outline their video
then you know I I don't really feel like it's worth watching and I'll click write
often and go find a similar topic for somebody that did play in their video so
planning is key just at a basic level just so you know where you're going to
be talking about there in the video
ok so now we're going to get into some of the equipment and the first piece of
equipment is sound this is the most key piece of equipment when you're first
starting out you're probably going to hear a lot that if your video doesn't
have great quality but the sound quality is good people are more likely to stick
around and that's absolutely true I mean just think of the videos that you look
at when you browse youtube if you click on a video where it's completely blown
out and you can't tell what the person saying or it's real low and you got to
crank up your volume are you going to watch that video probably not but if you
have a video that's a little bit grainy and the the audio quality is really good
so you can hear everything they're saying you're probably more likely to
watch that video at least I know I am so when you're first starting out you don't
need to spend a ton of money on audio but you should get something that's
going to be decent so like if you're recording on your phone the microphone
on your phone can work okay as long as you're close enough to it that it'll
pick up your voice well if you're using it in the method like I'm using it I
have my camera about 4 feet away the internal microphone is not going to do
good because it's going to pick up a lot of the room noise so I need something
that's a little closer so I use a lavalier mic it's plugged into the
camera it's wired and the one I got was about 30 bucks I'll have a link down in
the description and you can hear the audio quality on this is pretty good for
a $30.00 Mike it's not stellar it's not the best audio but it's clear and you
can hear everything I'm saying and for the price of $30 it works really well
some other options are microphones that plug directly into the computer through
USB and then you can record your audio on the computer the blue snowball is one
that I use so if you see a tutorial video that I do on PC Mac or Windows I'm
probably using that snowball the blue snowball mic it's a really affordable
mic I think it's about 60 bucks and it just plugs right in the problem is if
you're using a camera and you record your audio on the computer you're going
to have to sync that up in post-production but honestly that's not
that big of a deal and for the the boost in audio quality
that gives you that is a huge advantage and some cameras especially if you're
just starting out may not have a microphone in point input so you may not
have a choice but to do that so the last one is a shotgun mic a lot of these
shotgun mics plug right into the camera like the rode videomic and I've used
that one that one works really well again if the camera is a little bit
closer to you that will work in cell phones and I believe it works in regular
cameras I haven't tried it it's made for cell phone so it may actually only work
in cell phones that one's about 60 bucks so if you're shooting on your iPhone or
Android phone you may want to look into that because if the camera is a little
bit closer then it is in this kind of shot then
that's a really good option I can't use that again I have the same issue as the
internal mic where it picks up too much of the room noise
so really I'm using my blue snowball if I'm doing a tutorial on the computer or
like right now I'm using the lavalier mic and all these mics I'm talking about
all up links down in the description if you want to go check them out
the second most important piece of equipment next to sound is lighting and
when I talk about lighting I'm not talking about going out and spending a
ton of money on lighting in fact if you have a big window in your house that
gets really good sun exposure you can just use that and you might be fine with
that and honestly nothing is as good as natural light so if you have a big
enough window with enough light set up your camera in front of the window
facing away from it so you can use that light on you or whatever your subject is
and just go that route that's great to get started with if you want to up it a
little bit and have a little more control over your light what I did when
I first started this channel is I built a light stand out of PVC just some PVC
pieces put together with a PVC at the top that I could clamp a shop light on
to so I bought some shop lights I think was like 30 bucks at the hardware store
but the issue I had with that is a the light was a little too harsh it was a
little too direct so I wanted to diffuse it some my and I found a bunch of things
on the internet about using wax paper neither taping it on and using a rubber
band I had a lot of trouble with that because I could not get the rubber bands
to stay on and after the light heated up the the tape would come off and stuff so
I was having no luck so finally what I did was I went to the regular grocery
store and for five bucks I think it was I got a pack of three frosted I think
they call them clear but they're really frosted white shower caps these shower
caps were great you just take it stretch it over the top I use one as a fill
light actually I'll show you right now so it's just a shop light and just it
has this shower cap on it and that's it diffuses the light really really well I
use it as a as my backlight but I used to use those as my my primary lighting
until I got this set up these lights are the lemo studio 700 watt kit I got for
60 bucks I'll have a link down in the description if we're going to check it
out I absolutely love these lights I then in the light that's in the ceiling
above me I got bulbs that matches the same Kelvin value as the light or the
bulbs that came with these lights which was sixty five hundred in this case I
just went to the hardware store got some 6500 Kelvin
bulbs put them in the top I have the same kind of bulb in this backlighting
so I had the same type of lighting all throughout my setup and it works really
well when you're just starting out just either use the window or build yourself
a stand and get the shop lights it works really really well until you get some
traction and really if you're just starting on YouTube it may end up that
you don't even end up continuing with your channel maybe something you don't
want to do so try it with the shop lights get that light going and then if
you decide to stick with YouTube like I did you can start upgrading your
equipment as you go
alright guys the next on the list is the camera so a lot of you might be
expecting this to be higher on the list but in reality this is a really good
spot because if you have good sound and you have good lighting then the camera
is a lot less important so don't expect when you're first starting out to
compete with like PewDiePie and Casey nice then mkbhd and Austin Evans those
guys have been doing it a long time and if you look at their really early videos
they're really not that good as far as quality well except for Casey he kind of
started off well but the other guys you know they started out with cheaper
equipment and it's not real good quality but it doesn't matter their content was
good and they grew their channel and they grew their equipment that's kind of
what I'm trying to do too but you can just get started with your phone a lot
most of you have phones get started with your phone anything within the last few
years is going to shoot decent video even a cheap phone you know a lot of the
the blue phones the blue gets a lot of heat but they actually are decent phones
and they shoot decent quality and you can get those dirt cheap you can go on
Amazon Prime and get one of their prime exclusive phones for like 60 bucks I
still use my iPhone as my b-roll camera so if you see a lot of you know in my
videos when there's some close-up shots of what I'm doing on my desk that b-roll
footage is shot on my iPhone 6s plus so go online if you don't have a smartphone
go on Craigslist or Ebay or check out the prime exclusive phones and you know
see if you can get one of those and just do the recording on that and then just
copy it into your computer or just do the editing right on the phone if you
want to upgrade a little bit one mistake that I made was I saw a lot of videos
about the Canon t3i t2i you know as all DSLR DSLR you got to get
DSLR the problem is these are really excellent cameras don't get me wrong but
the problem is some of those videos that we're recommending the t2i and the t3i
are older and yes you can get a t2i or t3i for like two hundred two hundred
fifty bucks and they're full DSLR cameras and they
do a really nice job but it's really really hard to get good focus with those
cameras you can get some an extension and use a Android tablet to have kind of
remote control that a visual remote control that you can see what's going on
and I have a video on that I'll put up a card and put a link in the description
but it's just really hard to get good focus with those cameras especially if
you're shooting with yourself so I just recently got my new the camera that I'm
using now it's the Lumix g7 I really like it I'm still experimenting this is
only my second video using this camera but I really really like it and honestly
if I could have done it again I would have kept using that iPhone 6s
plus or whatever Android phone I had at the time would have kept using that
until I had the money to go right to this lumix I never would have got the
t3i again it's a good camera but it's a little bit outdated the shoots in 1080p
but it's severely compressed and honestly I'm not even sure it's true
1080p canons are notorious for soft focus much less so on the newer ones but
those older ones the focus is always going to be soft and I was personally
never happy with it but use your camera use whatever camera you got even if you
got a camcorder from the mid-90s use that as long as you can get the footage
into a computer to record it you got good sound and good lighting you're
going to be good to go all right so but these next two I had
kind of a hard time deciding what order to put them in and it's the heart the
computer for editing and then the editing software and the reason why I
had a hard time is for some editing software you don't need a computer so if
you're recording on your phone you can get software on your phone to edit it
and upload it directly to YouTube directly from your phone so depending on
what kind of video are you're shooting and your editing style that might be
enough you might be able to just shoot on your phone edit it directly on there
and send it right up to YouTube all from your phone no computer required and no
software required other than the software that you have for your phone so
you may want to go that route but if you want a little more control then you may
want to put together a computer or use your computer that you have and again
you don't need a top-of-the-line computer especially when you're just
starting out you're probably shooting in 1080p probably not 4k and a lot of
computers I have a gaming computer that I built like six years ago it has a
really slow I 5 processor in it that's what I do all my editing on and sure the
render times may not be the fastest but it's completely smooth on that machine
you can get machines on Craigslist for like a hundred bucks that'll be fine for
editing video and throwing a better graphics card in there I'll help a
little bit the processor for editing and rendering is what's impacted the most so
even an older i7 processor would be better off than my i-5 I'm eventually
going to have to upgrade mine because I've been starting to shoot things in 4k
so it's not quite cutting it anymore but just look at budget machines even
probably an i3 processor for 1080p would be just fine don't go and buy a
top-of-the-line editing machine you don't need it just get what you need and
and start your editing you don't have to spend a ton of money on the hardware
all right so last up in the editing software so again if you're editing
right on your phone and sending it right up to YouTube from there you can kind of
skip the section I'm not going to have anything on phone software because I've
never done any editing on the phone so I can't help in that area unfortunately on
the computer side both PC and Mac I can help a little bit because I've tried out
a bunch of these different applications so on PC for absolute or on Mac for
absolutely free you have iMovie which is a basic editor but it's actually really
good I did my first few videos on my channel using iMovie on an old MacBook
Air which is really a underpowered Mac but it worked really well and it was
1080p video so I movie will let you splice together your video add basic
transitions and send it up to YouTube it works just fine for that something on
the PC that you know I don't like quite as much as iMovie but it's Windows Movie
Maker it's also free and it's a real basic editor but again you can splice
your movies together add transitions send it up to YouTube you're good to go
instead of using any of those the first piece of software I would recommend this
available both on Mac actually on Linux as well and windows would be DaVinci
Resolve this editor is fantastic it's a fully featured editor it's used in for
the studio version is used in the professional market but they have a
completely free version that's feature-rich
it's got effects transitions you can do motion tracking in it but its core
competency is color correction the color correction and color grading that you
can do with this software is absolutely incredible you know Premiere and Final
Cut Pro have some good color correction and color grading tools in them but
nothing like DaVinci Resolve it's fantastic in that area and the
stuff that you can do with the free version is ridiculous you can edit and
color grade and transitions and all that stuff all the
way up to 4k video export it and upload it to YouTube for completely free the
next piece of software that I would recommend and I think this is only on
Windows though is hitfilm for I've used that have really good luck with it again
it's free that ones focus where DaVinci Resolve was really focused on the color
correction stuff hip film apart from being a full-featured editor is really
focused on effects so if you're looking for particle effects or you want to do
some basic effects like something you could do with with After Effects but on
a much more basic level then hip film is a really good option to look at again
it's completely free in my use it was a little bit slower than DaVinci resolved
and it didn't support as many formats so I found myself transcoding the videos
before bring him in the hip film more than I had to with DaVinci but it works
really really well if you want to shell out money to pay which I would not
recommend when you're starting out I would use one of those free pieces of
software until you find out that the some you really want to do and then
upgrade later if you find you need to but Adobe Premiere and Final Cut Pro are
my two favorite I've used Sony Vegas and or whatever it's called now studio I'm
not a fan of that and it's just preference it's not bad software I just
prefer the other two so again when you start now look at the free stuff but if
you want to upgrade it a little bit premiere and Final Cut are two of my
favorites but you should really get the trial on all the different gamut of
software that's available out there and see what works best for you
all right guys so all in all my wrap-up is that you don't need a lot of money to
get started on YouTube here's my recommendation if you have a phone
record on your phone build your you know DUI lights just the the shop lights or
use a window just get that thirty dollar level ear mic that I have down in the
description and either edit on your phone or use one of those free pieces of
software and you're good to go the most important thing is to start
your YouTube channel just get started just don't be afraid of the quality
don't try to compete with the big guys I'm not trying to I'm trying to improve
my channel as I go but I'm so far from from those big guys that it's not even
funny but I've only been doing this for a little less than a year so I'm not
expecting to be there just stay within your comfort level stay within your
budget and get started so hopefully you guys found this informative and useful
please comment let me know if you have any comments about any of the gear I
talked about or if you have any recommendations on stuff that I didn't
mention in this go ahead and leave that in a comment rate and subscribe if you
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video thanks so much for watching guys and I will see you next time