- So in this video,
I'm gonna show you how to get to 10,000 YouTube subscribers.
But it all starts by doing something you may hate
and not fully understand.
You need to stop worrying about this.
(air whipping)
(metal banging)
(bell dings)
(screen beeps)
Come on.
This is somewhat of a personal opinion,
and you are free to argue with me
in the comments below.
But there comes a point
where you need to just forget about subscribers,
and I think beyond 1,000 subscribers is that point.
Let's be honest with ourselves.
Why did we want 1,000 subscribers?
Because we want to monetize our content.
They're just a means to an end,
along with 4,000 hours of watch time,
and if we're honest, here at vidIQ,
it's a means to an end for us,
because we know people search for
how to get more subscribers.
And you've been watching
the rest of the videos in this series,
and you've reached this goal of 1,000 subscribers,
now you can start to focus
on other important YouTube things.
Now, yes, it is true that you may unlock
more YouTube features with more subscribers,
such as Stories.
And yes, far off in the distance, at 100,000 subscribers,
you will get your first Silver Play Button.
But aside from that,
and much more importantly,
you have the beginnings of a community.
You will have noticed more and more
that you're getting comments from regular viewers
every single video.
You will have also noticed
that your baseline for views per video
is rising slowly but surely.
Those are human beings actually watching, enjoying,
and engaging with your content,
and that's who you want to focus on.
Because you see, the thing is,
subscribers can play tricks with your analytics.
Take this one as an example.
You're confused as to why you get so many views
and watch time from non-subscribers
and assume that's a bad thing.
Well, that isn't necessarily the case
for two reasons.
Sometimes viewers never subscribe
and still watch channels on a regular basis.
That's me.
I genuinely cannot remember
the last time I subscribed to a channel.
I just put my trust in YouTube
to serve up the right content I want to watch.
And if non-subscribers are watching your videos,
YouTube is constantly testing out your content
with new viewers.
And that surely can't be a bad thing, right?
You need to dedicate your message,
your creative endeavors,
to the people, your audience,
who are watching you now, today.
Not subscribers who pressed that red button
six months ago,
and have never watched anything else on your channel.
Here's a tinsy winsy little insight
into how the YouTube algorithm works.
Oh, and by the way,
that's another phrase I'm not a particular fan of.
When you say YouTube algorithm,
people think of it like a system
that is there to be hacked,
and that's just not the way to do YouTube.
Anyway, back to my point.
If somebody watches your content last week,
and doesn't subscribe to your channel,
they are still far more likely
to see another one of your videos
come up in the Home Feed or through Suggested
than a person who subscribed to your channel
three months ago
and has never seen one of your videos since.
Or to put it another way,
a viewer's recent watch history,
combined with their current personalized watching habits
are far more valuable signals to YouTube
than whether they have subscribed to a channel or not.
I religiously watch MKBHD for tech stuff,
I watch a channel called Wrestling Bios
for 1990s wrestling stuff,
and I watch Oliver Harper
for anything to do with film retrospectives and reviews.
Now because I watch these channels so regularly,
at least once a week,
these channels frequently appear on my Home Page,
(bell dings)
even though I'm not subscribed to two of them.
I pulled that clip directly from a video I made recently,
titled "How to Beat the YouTube Algorithm in 2022."
And I'm gonna reinforce what I said there now.
Your goal isn't to beat the YouTube algorithm.
It's to build an audience on YouTube.
And you do that by paying attention
to what your audience watches on your channel,
not by paying attention to this.
(metal bangs)
(bell dings)
Now I've brainwashed you out of the concept of subscribers,
let me show you what you should be
paying attention to instead, return viewers.
I believe this to be one of the most insightful tools
in the YouTube Studio.
And by now, your channel should have enough data
to display it to you.
It basically shows you how many viewers
brand new to your channel
watch you every day,
along with how many return to watch another video
on your channel,
regardless of whether they are subscribed to you or not.
Obviously, when you publish new videos,
these two lines will spike.
And so it illustrates how effective you are
at reaching new audiences
and maintaining the audience you already have.
Now, in a perfect world,
you would want every single new viewer
to transition into a return viewer,
as YouTube goes out to find more new viewers,
and that would build up your core audience
very, very quickly.
We have seen examples of this,
particularly in the YouTube Shorts space.
Jake Feldman grew his channel to 10 million subscribers
and billions of views within the space of the year.
And just look at how many of his new viewers
transitioned into return viewers.
Now there is a caveat here,
and I do love using the word caveat,
certain channels will find it very difficult
to retain an audience over a long period of time.
Education and how-to channels
are a prime example of this.
People usually just want an answer to a question,
they get it from a video,
but they're not willing to commit
more time to your content.
Variety channels struggle with this same challenge.
Only certain videos may appeal to a viewer,
or the channel is chasing trends
and the latest news stories
that maybe interest the viewer once,
but not again.
In these situations, the views will certainly be more spiky,
sometimes even viral.
Now let me stress,
this isn't the wrong way to do YouTube,
it's just a different approach
with more risk and more reward.
But if you want to grow your channel
more consistently, more reliably,
then return viewers is where it's at.
And this is almost the perfect example
of a small channel doing just that,
slowly building from nothing
but consistently producing valuable content
for their audience
that slowly builds over time.
We know this because it's our return viewer data
from our Russian vidIQ channel.
(voiceover speaking Russian)
I literally have no idea what I'm saying.
As another quick example,
this is the data from the main vidIQ channel
in the last 90 days.
And it seems to suggest
that as we have been more successful
at bringing viewers back to our content,
YouTube is now more willing
to test our videos with new viewers.
Admittedly, this is somewhat anecdotal evidence
from a single channel.
But your channel,
which now stands at over 1,000 subscribers,
should have a decent amount of data,
enough for you to start detecting patterns
in your channel when it comes to your audience.
And if you want to know how the YouTube algorithm
is treating your channel,
then look no further than this panel,
which, again, you should now have enough data to see.
If these are the videos
viewers are watching from other channels,
then this is what YouTube is recommending
against your content.
And so again, here's another itsy bitsy journey
into the YouTube algorithm.
YouTube knows from its billions of data points
that if a viewer watches Video A,
they are then likely to watch Video B, C, D, or E.
Because of this,
it is your job as a content creator
to make videos that form
the connective tissue of your topic.
At a recent conference,
this YouTube employee,
his name is Todd, by the way,
said, "What the algorithm is designed to do
is follow the audience and make them happy."
That is exactly the same as what you need to do,
which is why this data is so helpful.
It's also why this data is handy, too.
You can follow your audience onto brand new channels
that create content similar to you.
And this is where vidIQ can offer a helping hand.
Once installed, you can use this button
to add any channel to your competitor list
and track their best performing videos.
Remember, you share these audiences,
so it makes sense to make similar content,
but with your own approach, style,
opinions, and personality.
You have already proven with the subscribers you've earned,
and more importantly, the views you've gained,
that you can capture an audience.
Now your responsibility is to keep them satisfied,
to keep them watching,
to keep them on the YouTube platform.
Another tool worth checking out is Daily Ideas,
again from vidIQ.
This will suggest up to 50 video ideas every single day,
based on the type of content you create.
Hey there, YouTube monetization,
increasing subscribers, YouTube updates,
I do that type of stuff.
And yeah, reused content can be a big monetization problem.
I should probably make a video about that.
Good idea.
When we started this series
about getting more YouTube subscribers,
we didn't want to to talk too much about analytics,
numbers, metrics to begin with.
When you first start a channel,
these analytics can be quite daunting
and difficult to understand.
And because you have such a small sample size,
the data can be a little sketchy.
And, as we've highlighted throughout this series,
we don't want you to stress too much about the numbers.
But now that you have over 1,000 subscribers,
and you're working towards 10,000 subscribers,
you have the right to good data.
And because you now have hundreds,
if not thousands, of hours of experience behind you,
you have a better understanding
as to what to do with this data.
As well as a wealth of experience and good data,
what you also likely have on the platform now
is a decent amount of time,
which enables you to reimagine your best content.
So what we're gonna do this time
is go into the Advanced Analytics of the YouTube Studio.
I would like you to change the time period
to the last 90 days,
and then we want to look at the traffic sources
of data for your channel.
The next thing I want you to do
is click on the Suggested Videos Traffic source,
because this is going to show you
what videos are directing traffic to your content.
In other words, when somebody watches a video on YouTube,
the next video they watch is one of yours.
So just like the YouTube algorithm,
what you're doing here is following the audience.
And my advice is to remake one of these videos
or a very similar video.
Now you can see why we're making all of these videos
about how to get YouTube subscribers in 2022.
Even if you've made very similar content before,
as long as enough time has elapsed,
or you can provide a fresh perspective,
new information, a different angle,
and, of course, by now you're a better creator,
it's really gonna resonate with your audience,
because they know what to expect from your content.
On the other hand,
if you drive a lot of views from Search,
then just change the traffic source accordingly,
and make videos based on the results.
Again, this is why we're making videos
about getting subscribers
and mentioning the YouTube algorithm
as frequently as possible.
Now even though I've been advocating throughout this video
that you need to stop worrying about subscribers,
if you are dead set on gaining more,
you can use the same data.
All you need to do in the Advanced Analytics
is click on the Subscription Source tab,
and then click on YouTube watch page,
and then this will show all of the videos on your channel
that are generating subscribers for you.
And yet, I can see the irony here as well.
The more videos we make
about how to get subscribers on YouTube,
the more subscribers vidIQ get themselves.
But the ultimate point I'm trying to make here
is that given where you are in your YouTube journey,
you shouldn't need to worry about subscribers anymore.
You've reached that magical number
that unlocks so many possibilities, 1,000.
You've monetized your content
if you've got 4,000 hours of watch time.
If you really start to focus on your target audience,
that ideal viewing candidate that Dan talked about
at the very beginning of this series,
I guarantee you subscribers will take care of themselves.
I'm not going to tell you
to stop asking people to subscribe in your videos.
Just don't let it get in the way
of the value of the content.
I'm not gonna tell you
to get rid of these subscribe call-to-action lower thirds,
other than to say I stopped using them
after we hit a million subscribers,
and we've noticed absolutely no difference
in the amount of subscribers we gain.
What I will tell you is this,
always do what's right for your audience.
Because not only will subscribers take care of themselves,
but so will the YouTube algorithm.
If you don't believe me,
check out the video over here.
Right, what should I do with this?
(air whipping)