- Let's get very real for a second.
You want more subscribers on YouTube.
In fact, you want this.
What you want is a silver or gold YouTube play button.
You want a silver play button like the other 180,000 people
who've crossed the threshold of 100,000 subscribers.
You want a gold play button like the 16,000 people
who've achieved that milestone
on a platform that has about 100 million content creators.
You want to be in the top 1%.
Make no mistake,
becoming a top tier content creator
is one of the hardest things there is to do
because people have to be able to enjoy your content
and they have to be willing to make a commitment to you
of some kind by hitting the subscribe button.
And when you're asking for people's time and attention,
and when you're asking for big commitments from them,
it should be hard,
but we can find a few ways to where we can make it
slightly less painful for you.
So today's video is gonna be focused
on how you can get more YouTube subscribers.
This has very little to do with YouTube's algorithm.
So if you're living in terror
of the fear of the YouTube algorithm,
then rejoice creator,
because we're gonna focus
on some very important basic things.
So today, I'm gonna be revealing to you
some things that are actually holding you back.
The reasons that you're not getting subscribers
even if you're getting views
because I know that that's a problem
that so many of you have,
you asked me about it.
And the good news is, I went to Twitter
and I got literally hundreds of replies from people
telling exactly why they don't subscribe
to people's channels even if they watch their content.
So we're gonna go and dig into that.
I'm also gonna show you a few interesting tricks
in the YouTube analytics dashboard
that will show you why your channel isn't growing.
And I'm gonna reveal to you the strategy that I've used
over the last seven years on YouTube to grow this channel
from zero subscribers to well over 400,000 subscribers.
How I actually got my first 100,000 subscribers on YouTube
and my coveted silver play button,
and what I think you need to know.
So, let's jump into the video.
Hey everybody, this is Roberto Blake,
helping you create something awesome today.
Welcome back to the channel.
Today, we've got another YouTube tips video for you.
Today, I wanna focus on how to help you
get more YouTube subscribers.
I don't care if you have 100 subscribers
and you're trying to get your first 1000.
Maybe you have 1000 subscribers on YouTube,
and you're trying to climb the ladder to 10,000.
Maybe you wanna get to 100,000,
or maybe you're even a content creator
with 100,000 subscribers that's feeling stuck
and you don't know what you're doing wrong.
It's one of the most frequently asked questions
that I get here on the YouTube channel.
What am I doing wrong?
Let's start with some things that might be holding you back.
Let's start with some reasons
that my audience over in Twitter,
and if you guys ever wanna interact with me on Twitter,
you can follow me @robertoblake over there.
I did like this really just open thread
and hundreds of people responded to it
and told me exactly why they don't subscribe
to a YouTube channel even if they're watching those videos.
It may not surprise you to find out
that one of the key reasons that people don't subscribe
to YouTube channels is they don't relate
to the content creator or they don't respect that person,
or they just don't connect with them emotionally
and they don't like their personality.
Now here's the thing.
If you wanna be an authentic content creator,
there's not a lot you can do about this
beyond focus on the people that do like you.
In life in general, they're gonna people who reject you.
They're gonna be people who say no,
they're gonna to be people you cannot get along with.
And that's okay.
Instead, focus your energy on the people who are saying yes
and focus on attracting more like-minded people
to your channel.
One of the first things that I tell content creators
is to be intentional about who their audience is.
One of the reasons people struggle on YouTube
that we will talk about is a lack of focus,
but it's not just about me shutting down
and just focusing single one single topic.
When I talk about niches,
I'm really talking about what is the culture or community
that you wanna be a part of and where you feel
that you can bring some new value.
There are people who are gonna relate
to your perspective and point of view.
It might be a smaller group, it might be a larger group,
but the thing is there's no point in pursuing people
where the answer is most likely going to be no.
And one of the ways that we focus on the yeses
is we respond to every comment when we're trying to grow.
When you are trying to grow, especially in the early stages
the most aggressive thing you can do is respond thoughtfully
to each and every single comment.
And when you're not getting a ton of them,
it's not that big of a challenge to do.
So this is how we put the audience first
and that is what is gonna get you a subscribe.
You make a commitment to people,
you do right by them,
guess what, it's not that hard to get them to do something
when you ask for just something as small as the support
of hitting the subscribe button.
Another reason that people don't subscribe
to a content creator is infrequent uploads.
We've already talked about whether uploading more
grows your channel faster.
I've done a whole video on that
'cause I know that there's a lot of people
who ask that question constantly.
Would I grow faster if I just upload more?
It's a really complex thing,
and I did my best to break it down for you with real data
and with some good information.
So I'm gonna link to that video in the info card up here
and description down below if you wanna know
does uploading more content to YouTube
grow your channel faster.
Now what I will tell you
is you miss every shot you don't take.
So taking more shots definitely can improve your odds,
improve your chances.
You also get to see what does and doesn't work for people
and you get to see what you enjoy doing more
especially if you're a new content creator.
But even if you're an established content creator,
being consistent and putting out content on a regular basis
makes it easier to get new subscribers.
It also makes it easier to kind of maintain some momentum
with the subscribers you already have
in terms of them checking back for content.
A lot of you may be surprised or maybe you're not,
depends on how long you've been doing YouTube.
You might be shocked to hear me say
that there are a lot of myths around loyal subs.
And the big problem is a lot of people assume
that having more subscribers would get you more views
when it's the opposite that's true.
Getting more views would get you more subscribers.
And in fact, you also may be under the mistaken impression
that YouTube is pushing your content to your subscribers.
If you look at your YouTube analytics,
you'll find that this is not true.
This is you know,
this is definitely something that's not happening
for the far majority of us.
In fact, comment down below and tell me
what percentage have your views on YouTube
when you look it up come for your subscribers,
'cause I'm sure everybody's really curious about that.
My guess is that it's not even 50%
for the far majority of you.
But here's the good news about that.
It means people who are viewing your content
that are non-subscribers are getting the opportunity
to find and discover your content.
And that is actually the path to growth.
The thing is you have to get them to subscribe.
And when someone subscribes,
they're saying and signaling
that they want more of this content,
which means that being consistent
about the type of content you make
and the type of audience you're catering to
is your best bet to not only get new subscribers
but to get people who will come back and be loyal.
And if you wanna avoid the YouTube algorithm
and depending on the YouTube algorithm,
'cause I know a lot of you
are obsessed with YouTube's algorithm,
you're obsessed with what it is or isn't doing for you.
You're obsessed with gaming it.
Here's the truth.
If you actually have an upload schedule
and you honor that upload schedule,
you can bypass the algorithm
'cause there's nothing on YouTube that stops someone
from showing up Monday, Wednesday, Friday
at 5pm Eastern Standard Time to watch your videos
if you have a schedule.
There's nothing in the YouTube algorithm that stops anybody
from showing up Monday, Wednesday, and Friday
if you're gonna upload Monday Wednesday, and Friday
at 5pm Eastern Standard Time.
You could just get around the entire thing
by having a schedule.
Most content creators,
whether they're big YouTubers or small YouTubers,
focus on their most recent video,
the thing that they just put that effort into,
but the channel acts as a whole to grow you.
I get a lot of my growth and momentum
off of the large back catalog of content I have.
The downside is how much the variety of my content is,
and the fact that it appeals
to a lot of different audiences.
It makes it look a little bad to some of you
that my new uploads don't get as many views
as you think that they should have.
I will remind you though that PewDiePie
being the biggest YouTube content creator
has a 1 to 5% subscriber to view ratio.
I've never really felt
the subscribe to view ratios are important.
YouTube says that they're not important,
and the reality is they have nothing to do
with how good your content is.
It has to do with whether people can find it or not.
And so the only way, and the only real guarantee
for subscribers finding YouTube content
is if they use the subscription feed
which is no longer the homepage,
the homepage is driven by YouTube's algorithm.
They would have to go to the subscribe feed tab
and know how to do that which a lot of people don't,
or they would have to just be coming back to your channel
and checking for the newest video,
or they'd have to be alerted somehow through social media.
So I just want to put that out there
that thinking that because you have subscribers
you're guaranteed a certain amount of views
does not compute.
It does not relate to how YouTube works today.
That's something that's from an older
outdated version of YouTube that no longer exist.
Like I said earlier, getting more subscribers
does come down to getting more views
and then people enjoying the experience they have.
And this is where people get confused
about quality versus quantity.
Neither one of these things matter
if someone doesn't feel they will get value
out of the video.
No matter how good your video is,
if I don't perceive value upfront in that content,
I'm not gonna click on it.
Which means that if you're making a video
about something I have no interest in,
there's no way that I'm going to click on it.
You make a video about Star Wars,
I'ma click on it all day.
You make a video about passive income,
I'm gonna click on it all day everyday.
You make a video about Anime, you got me, okay.
You have to appeal to my interests,
my wants, my needs, my desires in order to get me to click.
If you make a good video
about something that is irrelevant to me as an individual,
it doesn't matter how good you made it
or how much of it you made,
I will not click on something that I don't think is valuable
and is worth my time.
Whether that's my entertainment value in my escapism
with Marvel stuff and Cobra Kai and Anime,
or whether it's something practical for me
like financial advice or real estate or investing in stocks,
whatever it is.
Star Wars theory, gets my click,
Graham Stephan, gets my click.
That's how it works,
because those are things that I value and I'm interested in.
Now, if you become a YouTube personality
or at least within a niche
even if you don't become famous as a macro level YouTuber
but you are a dominant name in your niche,
then you could be a personality driven channel for that
and people could be signed up for you.
However, I would caution here that that's very difficult
and very rare to do.
And there are only so many people
who have done it successfully especially lately.
So, these are content creators like Kelly Stamps.
Kelly Stamps can probably make a video about anything
and people will watch it, myself included.
But most of us mere mortals
ultimately have to pick a group of people
that we are catering to,
and then we have to keep delivering on value
and giving the people what they want.
The goal here, I think for a content creator
is to make sure that what they want
is something that we're okay with making
and okay with having represent us.
Something you like to make
married to something they will love to watch.
Creating value for the viewer comes first,
putting the audience comes first.
It's the thing that every big YouTuber does
whether it's PewDiePie, whether it's MrBeast,
whether it's Graham Stephan,
whether it's Kelly Stamps,
all of these content creators,
they have this thing in common,
they put the audience first.
And many of them frankly also put YouTube first,
something I'll talk about in another video.
Now, when it comes to my own personal strategy
and how I grew this YouTube channel successfully is
there was a point where I was making daily content.
I've made about 1400, 1500 videos on this channel
over the last seven plus years.
That's a lot.
And for a two and a half year period there,
I was one of those insane people making daily content.
But I was making daily content usually around
search friendly evergreen topics.
I have tutorial videos that to this day,
get me thousands of views
and still make me YouTube AdSense money every single month.
And a lot of these videos also tie to new content
that I'm doing, so I am constantly getting subscribers
from all of my old inventory in YouTube.
Since July of 2013 to June of 2016,
that's how I got to 100,000 subscribers,
or rather it was May of 2016.
I think I got my play button in June,
but I think I hit that milestone in May.
But the point is, that's how I got my silver play button.
That's how I got to 100,000 subscribers.
'cause I was making search friendly evergreen content
that could keep growing my audience over a period of time
and that just kept stacking and compounding.
Kind of like investing in the stock market.
And the truth is,
if my goal was absolutely to get the most subscribers
I possibly can or rush to a million subscribers,
if I wanted to do that,
I would look at my YouTube analytics specifically
for which content actually produced the most subscribers.
You can actually look at the individual videos
of your YouTube channel
and you can find out which videos in a month
or in a three month period got the most subscribers
to your channel.
And if you notice a pattern there,
you can focus on making similar content
that will continue to grow.
And if you do that enough,
ultimately your channel will grow faster.
This is something that a lot of successful people
here in the community have done.
And like I said, it doesn't just apply
to education-based channels.
Bijuu Mike is a gamer and this is exactly what happened
when he needed to grow his channel.
He ruthlessly went down to making the content
that would make him the most successful.
So, this is something that I want a lot more of you
to take to heart.
Now, it does sometimes result in YouTube burnout,
I'm not gonna lie about it.
But it is the most practical way to grow a channel.
If something's working, do more of it,
double down, do it as much as you possibly can,
do it as frequently as you possibly can.
And when something else that you experiment with takes off,
if it's producing better results, do more of that also.
And so once you have three or four content formats
that are producing massive results,
that's really all you have to continue to do
because your audience says we want this.
Supply and demand.
When it comes to making evergreen content
where I know that there is attention,
where I know that there's demand for it,
I actually use one of the best tools
on the internet today for content creators.
So that leads us to today's sponsor.
My friends over at TubeBuddy.
TubeBuddy makes the number one browser plugin
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It's something I use every day in my workflow
to just speed things up and also to identify
where I could actually have new opportunities
to grow my audience in YouTube.
So I definitely recommend it.
It is free to start with.
If you want check that out.
Link is in the description down below.
If you decide that you want the paid version,
I use the legendary version
and you can use code Roberto's buddy to get 20% off.
So again, that's gonna be linked down below for you guys.
Thank you to TubeBuddy for sponsoring today's video.
Just remember, part of putting your audience first
is making the best quality content you can for them,
making it as frequently and consistently as possible,
so that's the quantity part.
But above all else,
there has to be value for them in the video.
You have to make content that is relevant
to your target audience.
And that has to be a specific group of people
that can relate to you and who will like your personality
and will respect the thing that you are doing.
So question of the day,
how are you going to put your audience first?
And if you're struggling with that one,
then just feel free in the comments
to ask me any questions you have about YouTube
and I'll try and see if I can make a video about it
or link you to a video here on the channel
that answers that question.
Like this video if you like it.
Don't forget to subscribe.
As always you guys,
thanks so very much for watching and don't forget
go out there and create something awesome today.
Take care.
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