- If you do these six things every day,
you're gonna get better at making videos.
You're gonna better understand your competition
so you can compete better.
You're gonna understand your audience in a whole other way.
And you're gonna turn yourself
into a content making machine
even if you don't have a lot of time to make content.
And it's not gonna take long at all
to start seeing improvements.
So let's get into it. Starting right now.
The very first thing you wanna do
is you wanna study the homepage of YouTube
and suggested videos for 15 minutes per day.
When you're doing this,
you wanna write down any titles that stand out to you,
any titles that you think are good.
You wanna make sure that you are looking
at the structure of the titles
that stand out to you
and the structure of the titles on high performing videos.
You can usually tell what those are
because they have a lot of views on 'em.
But as part of this title research,
you wanna look at character length,
you wanna look at the specific words being used,
you wanna look at the placement
of the words being used
so you can get to understand
how people write effective titles.
You also wanna make sure
that you're looking out for any thumbnails
that grab your attention,
any thumbnails that you can use for inspiration,
any thumbnails that have really good designs
or that pop out to you or grab your attention in some way.
When you're doing this for the thumbnails and the titles,
you wanna make sure that you're screenshotting anything
that stands out and that you are filing that away somewhere.
I recommend Notion for this
because you can just create a page in there
and drop all the thumbnails in that you like.
You can make a title area
and drop in all the titles that you like and so on.
Makes it really easy to keep everything organized.
Plus, if you use Notion, you can add notes if you want to.
Doing this every day
is going to help you write better titles,
it's gonna help you make better thumbnails,
and it's going to help you better understand
what people are responding to right now on YouTube.
It can also help you come up
with some unique video ideas
that you see people doing in other niches
that you might be able to apply to the niche
that you're operating in.
The second thing to do is go to the YouTube search bar
and type in the type of content that you make
and click on one of the videos that show up
in the top five spots.
Or of course, if one gets recommended to you
on your homepage, you can click on that one as well.
But the idea is to make sure
that you are clicking on something
that has to do with the type of content you make.
Once you click into the video,
click on the channel name,
and then look at all of the videos
that have been the most popular recently.
You can also use vidIQs
or TubeSpanner's view per hour tool
to see which ones are consistently getting traffic.
And then you wanna watch those videos
and note how they start the video,
how they move through each part of the video
and how they end the video.
Next, while you're in one of those popular videos
or you can do this across multiple videos,
look at what they're linking to
or doing in their descriptions
and read some of the comments
and note anything that stands out to you.
For example, if you see somebody say something
in the comments, and they're like,
"Hey, I really liked that part
that you showed that was a little bit behind the scenes
about that tool that you were using."
Write that down
so you can consider adding something similar
if you make a similar video.
When you are looking in the descriptions,
make sure that you are looking at the things
that they're promoting as an affiliate.
Look at any sponsors they're linking to,
look at any links that they have
of products that they promote.
Doing this is going to help you learn
how the other people in your space are making money.
You also wanna look for community links.
Community links are where they're linking to a Discord
or Facebook group or some type of community that they have.
And when you see that type of thing,
you have the option to join, of course,
but you can also use that as kind of proof of sorts
that people are joining those types of communities
and that those types of communities can be built
around your type of content.
And as a quick side note,
if you are gonna be taking notes on a bunch of videos,
there is a tool that can help you with that
called TubeSpanner.
They have a notepad as part of their browser extension.
I'll put a link down in the description.
Next, go to their channel page
and click on the content tabs at the top
to see what else they're doing.
Are they streaming?
Are they using shorts?
Are they posting in the community tab?
And if they are posting a bunch
of different types of content,
you wanna make sure that you're taking note
of how they're using that content
and what type of content gets the best response.
You also wanna note
how often they're publishing each content type.
Doing this is gonna help you better understand the people
that you're competing against with your content.
It's gonna help you get more in tune with the audience
that you're trying to reach from reading the comments.
And it's going to give you some insight
on exactly what is working well in your space
when you start matching this
across a bunch of different channels in your space.
Next, at the beginning of every week,
you wanna write down one skill that you're trying to improve
over the course of the week.
Every day, as long as you have time,
you wanna make sure that you're watching at least one video
or reading something about that skill
that you're trying to develop.
For example, if you know
that you need to get better at making thumbnails,
then, in that case, you need to be watching seven videos
over the next week at least
in order to get a better understanding
of how to actually make a better thumbnail.
These could be tutorials that take you step by step
how to make a thumbnail,
or these could be concept videos.
So for example, it doesn't have to be a video specifically
on how to make a YouTube thumbnail.
It could be a design tutorial or a color theory tutorial.
Doing this every single week is going to ensure
that you're continually working
on improving your skill sets as they relate to YouTube.
And keep in mind,
you don't have to change that skill set every week.
You can work on the same thing
for a month if you want to,
but the idea is to watch something every day
that will help you level up.
And of course, as part of that time
that you spend doing this,
you also wanna make sure
that you are practicing that skill as well.
Next, watch a YouTube help video.
It doesn't have to be mine.
Listen to a YouTube podcast,
or read something from youtube.com/creators,
or the YouTube help pages on Google.
In addition to all the YouTube help content,
YouTube also has free resources to help you out.
They have the Creators section
of YouTube that is an educational resource
that's free for you,
and you should be learning from that.
And there's also the Google help pages
where you can get more granular information
about things that are happening on YouTube
and things that you're gonna be dealing with as a creator.
This is gonna take you anywhere from five minutes
to one hour because the podcast option.
But the idea here is to make sure
that you are educating yourself
because YouTube is in a constant state of change.
And as a content creator, if you wanna do this for a while,
you need to make sure that you're staying up to date
with what's happening now,
the things that are working now,
the things that are not working now, and all of that.
And the best way to do that is
by watching this type of content.
Again, doesn't have to be mine,
just anything related to how to get better at YouTube.
Next, you wanna spend some time looking
around your YouTube analytics,
even if you don't know what you're looking at.
YouTube gives us stats on every video we publish.
It's extremely helpful information,
but it can be confusing.
However, if you're looking at them every day
and you're trying to make sense of them,
you're gonna start to get a better understanding
of how people are engaging with your content.
So you can modify things if you need to.
Focus the most on your audience retention reports,
click-through rate and how it relates to watch time,
and comparing videos against each other.
When you're in your analytics,
if you hover over some of the information
that you're seeing in your quick view dashboard,
YouTube actually shares some additional information
to help you better understand what it is
that you're looking at as well,
just in case you're brand new.
But doing this is gonna help you get better
at understanding a part of YouTube
that most content creators are intimidated by.
But once you learn how to interpret
what it is that you're reading,
it can really be a game changer for you
and your YouTube channel.
And as a side task on this one,
if you're not digging around in your YouTube analytics,
you want to dig around
in your Creator Studio just for a little bit
so you can make sure that you do know all of the options
that are available there.
And when you see something that you don't know,
what it's actually used for or the purpose of it,
then hop on Google and try to figure it out with that time.
Next, you wanna make something every day. Now, hear me out.
What you're making doesn't have to be long.
It doesn't even have to be published on the Internet.
The goal here is to get more comfortable creating
and also to train your brain to move quickly
when it's time to make content.
This also isn't something
that you need to spend a lot of time on.
The whole goal here is kinda like muscle memory, right?
So all you need to do here is
if you're somebody that's on camera,
get your phone, go into selfie mode,
and sit there and talk to the camera.
And look, this isn't something
that you need to spend a lot of time on.
If you're somebody that's on camera,
then in that case, just do selfie videos in your phone
and practice talking to the camera
in the way that you talk to the camera
when you're making videos.
If you have a faceless channel
where most of what it is that you do is voiceover work,
then in that case, you don't need
to actually show yourself on camera,
just practice recording your voice
and speaking the way that you do on video.
Then view or listen to some
of what it is that you've recorded.
And when you do this,
what's going to happen is
you're gonna start noticing things like,
"Wow, I'm using a lot of filler words,"
or, "I repeat that particular word a lot."
Or you're gonna notice,
"Um, uh, um, so, and uh, you know."
But when you do this,
this is gonna help you create momentum
in terms of taking action every day to make something
and just getting used to hitting the button
and going for it.
This is also gonna make communicating on camera
or through your voice become pretty much second nature
because you're gonna be doing it so much.
And it's gonna make you a lot more efficient
when you're making your real content
because you're gonna have your brain trained up
on you being able to go a lot faster
and a lot smoother without making tons and tons of mistakes.
Now, as a quick side note,
when you're doing all of this
and you're studying other channels,
eventually, you're gonna run outta channels
and eventually, you're gonna get an understanding
of your YouTube analytics,
and eventually, you're gonna know all
of the features inside of YouTube
that you can use as a creator.
When it comes to this point,
that's when you also start studying other niches
so you can start to see
how people edit their videos and other niches.
You can start to see
how they optimize their videos in other niches.
And you can use that for inspiration
for what it is that you're doing.
And look, as you're doing these things,
it's gonna help you get a better understanding
of YouTube overall, and you're gonna start doing better.
And you wanna make sure that you are prepared
for what happens when you start doing better on YouTube.
So I want you to click into this video right here.
It's gonna show you how to set up your channel properly
so that when you do start having videos take off,
if you don't already,
that you can make sure that your channel's properly set up
to absorb that traffic.
So go ahead and click into that now,
and I'll see you in the next video.