The two most important numbers on
YouTube right now are 1000 subscribers
and 4,000 hours of watch time. Well let
me introduce you to a third number, ten.
That's ten top tips to help you get to this one.
Let's roll
Hello everyone welcome back to vidiQ
my name is Rob if this is your first
time here we are the YouTube tool and
service that aims to help you get more
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don't miss any of our content.
The YouTube Partner Program or monetization
on your channel, the rules have changed
recently. Now you need 1,000 subscribers
& 4000 hours of watch time. We've already
done a detailed video on 10 tips to get
to 1000 subscribers so if you haven't
already watched that one click right
here right now. If you have already got
1000 subscribers good job, now let's move
on to 4000 hours of watch time. It may
seem daunting but the first thing you
need to look at when trying to achieve
this goal is perspective. There's two
ways of looking at this you can make the
numbers sound daunting or
manageable. 4000 hours of watch time it's
240,000 minutes or 166 days of people
watching your videos. That sounds pretty
terrifying doesn't it? Or you can look at
it from a much more manageable
perspective. 4000 hours is 240,000
minutes of watch time. Divide that by 12
as you need that watch time over 12
months, that becomes 20,000 minutes. Now
you need 1,000 subscribers so let's say
1,000 people watch your videos on a
regular basis that means you need 1,000
people to watch 20 minutes of your
content a month or less than one minute
of your content each day from those
thousand people to reach your goals. So
don't make things harder than what they
appear. break it down into manageable
chunks. And a special mention to Kids vs Dad
gaming who introduced me to this
mathematical concept. So on the one hand
if we have perspective, on the other hand
what we need is patience. Rome wasn't
built in a day, your YouTube channel is
not going to be built in three or four
weeks. You have 12 months to reach these
requirements
And once you do meet these targets
YouTube is not going to immediately
monetize your content the day after.
You'll have to go through a review
process so if you're always chasing
these things that are in control of a
another entity you're going to
continually frustrate yourself. Now what is
much less frustrating is our real-time
stats bar that sits at the top of all
YouTube pages when you install the vidIQ
Chrome extension. It tracks your progress
to 4,000 hours of watch time over 12
months with a breakdown graph and a
progress bar if you mouse over the
statistics. When you hit the 4,000 hours
requirement the metric turns from amber
to green, for more information on this
tool click on the card on screen now.
Okay now for some practical tips
about being a youtuber and getting those
four thousands hours of watch time.
YouTube is often about differentiating
yourself from the crowd, doing something
different but familiar. I know that may
sound odd but the chances are if you
just have a simple idea about doing
gaming videos or beauty videos or
vlogging videos the chances are it's
already being done. You need to
personalize it, take control of your own
content, find a particular niche, be the
best youtuber that you can be for your
content to deliver a valuable message to
your audience: take this as an example.
Brick Built Replicas has 8,000
subscribers and 800,000 video views. The
channel is about recreating life-size
functional Lego replicas of iconic video
game weapons from games such as
counter-strike and Call of Duty. Now
these two topics Lego and gaming are
highly saturated markets on YouTube but
look what happens when you mesh the two
together. You create something unique
something eye-catching. You may be
familiar with both Lego and video games
but you've never seen them used in this
way. As a fan of both it makes me want to
click on the videos and watch what
they're all about. Now there was no
overnight success for this channel. The
Video Creator has painstakingly been
making these videos for a couple of
years now but slowly interest has built
and finally he's had a couple of a
breakthrough videos which have brought
in hundreds of thousands of views. The
YouTube audience is always looking for
something new, something exciting but
something that they can also associate
with
question is can you deliver such a thing?
Now if you're not comfortable with
creating new ideas you can chase
trending or current ideas but if you're
a small channel you've got to be strategic
about this. Let's say you bought an
iPhone 10 when it was first released. If
you're a small Channel do you really
think you can compete with the larger
tech channels when it comes to unboxings,
reviews, general guidance on how to use a
device? You're going to get swamped by all
the other larger tech channels. So you
may want to concentrate on one
particular feature on the device which
you can really dominate with unique
contents such as looking at an Animojis.
When I was a very small tech YouTube
channel I spent years trying to find a
niche and when I finally discovered one
I decided to put all of my efforts into
it and eventually dominated it. try
searching for iPhone screen recorder and
you may see a familiar face. For the full
story on that click right here.
Next up and something that's often
spoken about when it comes to YouTube
fundamentals is consistency. Now there's
a couple of ways we can look at this,
there is the most obvious form of
consistency which is to post content on
a regular basis whether it be every day,
every week, every couple of weeks;
whenever you have the opportunity to
post new content on YouTube that's going
to benefit your channel. Usually the
majority of your video views come from
the first 48 hours of your video's life
so if you can publish regular videos that
obviously means we're going to get more
views and more watch time. Now
understandably for some channels that's
not as easy as it might be. Vlogging may
take an hour to make the video and edit
it whereas if you're doing animation or
drawings that could take weeks even
months. So think about how you can
maximize this opportunity. Maybe you want
to do a time-lapse of a quick
run-through of one of your drawings or a
behind the scenes episode on some
animation, or some way to produce content
that keeps a viewer interested and
engaged in between what you would call
your hero videos. You can also a try and
repurpose content. Let's say for example
you do short tutorials. Well if you
have three or four tutorials on the same
subject maybe you can put them all
together in one piece that's maybe 10 to
12 minutes long
and you've got a perfectly sized Youtube
video. Now the other side of consistency
is your message or your value
proposition. Let's say you're interested
in wrestling, video games, TV shows, the
Dallas Cowboys and you cover all of
these topics in different videos. That's
just going to confuse the audience:
they're not really sure what your
channel is about and I see this time and
time again when I do channel reviews on
vid IQ. So when you're a small channel
trying to find your niche really focus
on what you are truly the most
passionate about and throw everything
into that area of interest. To summarize
this point I'm going to borrow a phrase
from the legendary YouTube consultant
Tim Schmoyer who says: who should be
watching and why should they care. I've
done a whole video on this subject so
take a look if you're interested it's
really quite emotional. YouTube playlists
we've talked about them before and
you've guessed it we're going to talk
about them again. First of all it makes
sense to you as a Video Creator to put
all of your similar content into one
bucket but for the viewer when they
click on a link to take them to a video
playlist if they enjoy one video it will
autoplay onto the next video from your
channel so that's more watch time for
you. When you have good content in good
playlist that really ramps up what we
might call session watch time. The viewer
is in your mini ecosystem on YouTube and
on average audience retention is higher
when viewers watch videos from
playlists because they're more invested
in your content. If you haven't already
tried live streams on YouTube you
should at least give it one try. From a
purely mathematical and economical point of
view if you get 40 people to watch one
hour of a live stream that's 40 hours,
one percent of the way to your watch
time goal. Now yes they can be daunting
and if you want to get a technical setup
like this it does take a little bit of
time but it's really good for practicing
presenting in front of camera and don't
worry if you make one or two mistakes,
on live stream you can certainly be
forgiven for that. A live streams also
represents the perfect opportunity to
repurpose content.
If you have a particularly astounding
two minutes within a live stream you can
clip that from the live stream and
present it as a brand-new video to your
audience. As you may have noticed on the
vidIQ Channel one of our main goals
this year is to do a lot more live
streams and we're certainly benefiting
from creating a much broader community
and connecting personally with our
audience and those live streams are
bringing in more and more views and
watch time every time we do one. Earlier
on in this video we talked about
strategically targeting trending videos
to get an immediate quick boost in watch
time but if you want sustained, long-term
watch time hours the real money is in
evergreen content. Whether you want to
replace the tire on your car, unblock
your toilet or get more YouTube views
those terms were being searched for in
2008 they're being searched for today
and they'll be searched for in 10 years'
time. Evergreen content is a tough nut to
crack because video creators understand
the value of these videos so you again
need to niche down, find something really
specific that really interests you and
you think you may find an audience for
and then start producing content about
it. This video in itself is a form of
evergreen content. We think that
Youtubers are going to be searching for
the term: how to get 4000 hours of watch
time for however long YouTube keep these
new requirements in place. Hopefully if
we're successful with this video it will
rise to the top of the search terms on
YouTube and people will be frequently
visiting this content on a regular basis.
And finally when you put all of these
techniques and strategies together and
you're hustling through the YouTube
world making video after video, keep a
close eye on how they perform. When you
see particular videos on particular
topics or when you use a different style
or whether you do live streams. Double
down on that content. YouTube is telling
you what content it wants to see from
you to deliver to an audience and there
should be no reason for you to dismiss
it. Here at vidIQ we practice what we
preach so this is a classic example. The
YouTube changes to monetization have
been a big story and we've covered it a
lot and every time we do we notice more
people joining in in the conversation and a
bigger audience watching our content. So
we've doubled down with more
content, providing you with more tools
and these are real results.
Eighty percent increase in watch time
two hundred and fifty thousand minutes
we've met those requirements.
And so can you with these ten top tips to help you
get to a four thousand hours of watch
time and as a bonus tip try list videos
yourselves. These small bite-sized pieces
of information contained within longer
videos really do help with watch time.
We'd love to hear your thoughts, ideas
and tips on helping people to get to
four thousand hours of watch time. Let us
know in the comments below.
If you enjoyed this video don't forget
to give it a thumbs up and for more
content just like this subscribe to
vidIQ. Enjoy the rest of your video
making day, good luck getting to 4,000
hours of watch time bye for now.