- You would like to get to 100,000 subscribers on YouTube,
and that's great.
What I need you to do first is stop asking for subscribers.
Getting to 100,000 subscribers
is about developing the perfect content strategy.
By now you know the best way to grow on YouTube,
is by simply focusing on your audience.
You know exactly who they are, you know
why they watch your channel
over the countless other options they have,
and because you are providing value
in every single video you make,
you don't need to ask for subscribers.
That is the kind of attitude and mindset
that it's going to take to get you to this number.
Because by now, if you're still focused
on the actual number of subscribers you have,
then that means you're inherently less focused
on the audience you're catering your content to.
Up to this point, Rob and I have been working together
to get you first subscribers, your first 100, 1000,
and 10,000 subscribers.
And naturally this video is next.
In each one of those videos
we dove deeper and deeper into the strategies and tactics
it's gonna take to reach those certain milestones.
For this video though, we're taking a big step back.
We're gonna worry more about your creative insights,
building up your YouTuber intuition.
You'll be using this YouTuber intuition
to consistently get all the videos you make
to reach those top five slots, upload after upload.
When you're over 10,000 subscribers,
you've been digging into the data,
and you've been learning exactly who your audience
is, and you've been consistently making videos
for that audience.
So now we're gonna talk about the steps it takes
to make it to this next leg, the next milestone,
100,000 subscribers, the Silver Play Button.
When you're finally getting things
established on your channel,
and you're making a consistent amount of videos,
and getting a consistent amount of views,
it's tempting to not upset the balance, if you will, right?
And as a result it becomes really easy
to get kind of stagnant,
not just in the growth of your channel
but in the types of videos you're making.
Let me explain real quick what this might look like.
Let's say you're at point your YouTube journey
where any video that you publish
gets about 3,000-6,000 views within the first 24 hours.
You consider this your minimum,
you will always get this amount of views,
this is your core audience.
But an average video, the views you expect to get
are more or consistently 10,000 views in the first 24 hours.
And then every so often you've a breakout video,
one that gets 100k-200k views plus
in the first couple days after it was published.
And those are the views you hope
to get every single time you upload,
but that's the part you're still trying to figure out.
You're still trying to get that secret sauce down.
Now these numbers aren't actually made up.
These are similar to the numbers that I see
on one of my personal channels
which at the time of recording
is at about 30,000 subscribers.
And although I am referencing this channel right now,
I'm not gonna share too much
because I do have a work life balance
to maintain, you understand.
Anyways with numbers like these,
I think creator would be very happy.
That's 1000s and 1000s of people
you're reaching every single month of your content.
And chances are, if you're getting
that many returning viewers,
YouTube is steadily putting your videos out there
to some new viewers, which is attributing
to some steady growth on your channel.
From here though, this is where you need
to be giving yourself
a little more trust as a content creator.
You understand your audience so well here
that hypothetically speak your videos
are getting 10,000 views pretty much every time you upload.
But on this journey to 100,000 subscribers,
it's time to break the mold at least once in a while.
Now, what do I mean by that?
Well, I want you to start looking just outside
of your YouTube niche when you're looking for new ideas,
new types of content you could make to reach a new audience.
This is Josh Strife Hayes,
he is a Twitch streamer and YouTuber
with right now over 400,000 subscribers.
And he actually has multiple very successful channels
on YouTube each with their own strategy and purpose.
The channel is focused specifically on MMORPGs.
You'll notice there's a very wide variety
of MMOs featured on the channel.
But then we get to a very recent breakout video for Josh,
What the hell are NFTs?
At the time of recording this video,
it's three weeks old and still getting 235 views per hour,
and it has in total over half a million views.
This is a video that is just outside the niche
of this channel, and it's very likely reaching
an entirely new audience for Josh.
Now you might be asking
"Why are NFTs even relevant to an MMO channel?"
Well Josh's community
has an inherent interest in this topic.
If you've been following this at all,
you know that NFTs are starting to make their way
into the conversation around gaming,
specifically play-to-earn gaming.
I'm only gonna go that deep in NFTs by the way,
we're not going any deeper than that.
And the thing about NFTs is that they're pretty complicated,
and you yourself might be asking
"Yeah, what even is that?"
Well because they're at the top of mind right now,
this is a topic that comes up during Josh's live streams.
And the more times people in his chat ask things
like what's in NFT?
The more reason Josh has to just give up,
throw his hands in the air and make a video about it.
Well, it seems to be paying off
because the views he's getting on his videos
since releasing that one, are up.
And now just a few days ago
he's decided to double down on this topic
by making a video title, What the hell is the Metaverse?
And it's getting 920 views an hour right now.
And for those who don't know the metaverse and NFTs
are just really closely related.
What was once a channel just about MMORPGs,
is now a channel that has the authority
to talk about things that are just outside of that topic,
things like NFTs and the metaverse.
Another example where we experimented here
on the vidIQ channel, was back in the day
when we followed the PewDiePie Vs T-Series trend.
And we brought in a lot of new viewers with this content.
This content was relevant to our audience.
It was about two channels competing
to get a certain number of subscribers.
But at the same time,
it attracted a totally different audience
to the vidIQ channel.
And while this content was relevant to our audience
and what we do here at vidIQ,
we don't feel like that content
brought in a lot of returning viewers for our channel.
Once that trend died down,
our views started to level back out.
And if that's the case, do we regret covering this topic?
Absolutely not.
We learned a ton and it didn't really hurt anything either.
In fact, it's very likely that some of you out there
watching this video, may have found us
because of that series we did all the way back then.
So in a "Worse case scenario,"
Even a breakout success that you can't capitalize on
doesn't necessarily mean doom and gloom for your channel.
The important thing is that we tried something new
and at the time it made sense for the niche that we are in.
So when I say that you should try some new things,
I'm expecting that you yourself
already have your version of this somewhere in your mind,
that you can think of a topic just outside of your niche
that would make for something fun
to explore for your audience.
If not though, it's time to do a little bit more research
on your ideal viewer and find out what kind of content
you could be making to run some new tests on your channel
for some fun, new types of content.
Now in experimenting with new types of content,
you kind of run into another problem, and that's time.
Where are you gonna find time to do that research
for your ideal viewer?
Will this mean extra videos for your channel?
And if so, when are you gonna find the time
to edit those new videos and create those new thumbnails?
Well, at this stage on YouTube,
and by this stage I mean at or above 10,000 subscribers,
this is about the time a lot of channels
start to consider selves legitimate businesses.
Turning your channel into a business
is a subject we can go really deep on.
I do wanna talk about hiring help,
but I'm not gonna go into subjects like LLCs,
taxes, liability, employment, taxes,
healthcare, things like that.
Let's keep it simple for now.
You can certainly wait on this step,
but when you are ready to hire some help
for your channel there are a few ways to go about it
to keep you out of trouble legal or otherwise.
First, you need to decide what part of the creative process
that's taking up a lot of your time,
but that you also don't enjoy doing.
For most creators I've spoken
to, that's either editing or thumbnails.
Depending on your niche though,
a lot of creators actually opt to hire a virtual assistant,
which is like a personal assistant who works remotely
and handles a lot of your administrative tasks.
Figure out your needs first and foremost.
Now, if you're gonna hire somebody,
I have three pieces of advice for you,
three mistakes that I don't want you to make.
And this is coming from someone who's made them.
Once you figure out what you need, do not hire your friends,
hire your family, or seek free help from members
of say your community like your Discord moderators.
There's a number of reasons
I refer to these as "Mistakes,"
And I'm sure you can draw your own conclusions
as to the litany of things that can go wrong.
But the biggest issue I had with hiring any of those people
was the job either not getting done a, on time,
or b, very well.
I also never really got an expert out of the deal either,
someone who specialized in what I needed.
Instead if you're gonna hire somebody,
I would start your search on websites
such as Fiverr or Upwork.
These sites are for all of freelancers
who have all kinds of specializations.
And the best part about sites like these,
is they handle all the money stuff.
That third party assistance
can keep you out of all kinds of trouble
when the alternative is paying for freelancers
straight out of your bank account.
So until you're in a position
where you can actually employ people,
I would lean on sites like these.
Now investing in hired help is one way
that you can start to expand your business
as your channel grows.
However, your education is another way that you can invest.
- One way I invested in myself
was to learn about affiliate marketing.
The simplest way to get started as a content creator
is to join something like the Amazon affiliate program.
You can do this well before you get monetized
by the YPP partner program.
I started off making 20 or 30 bucks here and there,
but fast forward five years,
and now I make 1000s of dollars per month
based on the foundation that I laid back in 2017.
Now mind you, this is only one method
of monetizing your content outside of YouTube AdSense.
There are many more avenues of revenue
to pursue once you decide to invest in yourself,
and in your own future.
- That was Jeff, and he is one of the coaches here at vidIQ.
We've a new product called Group Coaching,
and if you're interested the link is down below.
Attendees have access
to at least two one-hour calls every single month.
They also have access to a private community
with the other creators in the group.
Regular calls with our coaches include really deep dives
into YouTube strategy and tactics.
And the goal behind all of this,
is to turn obvious YouTubers into business owners.
So if that's something you're interested in, again,
the link is down below, and it's certainly a way
that you can invest in your YouTube future.
The next thing we have to talk about is branching out
because when you're at tens of thousands
of subscribers on YouTube,
this is about the time you could start thinking
about making content outside of the platform.
Now no matter how big your channel
is, I don't want you to get carried away here.
However by now, you should have taken
your chosen YouTube handle and at least reserved it
on some of the big social media platforms
like TikTok, Twitter, Instagram, et cetera.
And I probably don't need to tell you the importance
of reserving these handles
even if you never plan on using them.
Now these various channels and platforms
will differ for everybody, depending on the type of niche.
Certain creators might need to set up a Discord community,
while others who make Shorts,
might wanna think about putting those Shorts on TikTok,
and they need a TikTok account and then a TikTok strategy.
Now why tens of thousands of subscribers
before you do something like this?
Well, from personal experience,
every time I start a brand new YouTube channel,
that channel gets my undivided attention.
I don't post tweets with that handle,
I don't develop a TikTok strategy,
I don't post Instagram updates, you get the idea.
And don't do those things
because starting a brand new channel
takes an incredible amount of time and focus,
not to mention I still have my family and full-time job,
and other things in life that I need to balance.
But by the time I have 10,000 subscribers on this channel,
I'm probably pretty comfortable
with its core content strategy at this point.
And that's why I feel like this is a good time
to start building your presence on other social platforms.
And on personal channel that I mentioned earlier,
branching out to those other platforms,
had a huge unexpected benefit that I did not account for.
Before I knew it, I was becoming friends
with channels multiple times my size,
and then collaboration opportunities
were really, really easy to approach.
And listen, if you're hearing this as a channel
that's well under 10,000 subscribers,
and you're thinking to yourself,
"Heck, why don't I just do that now?'
Let me explain, my advice here is to wait
because if you're anything like me,
and the countless creators I've spoken
to, you probably haven't figured out
that core content strategy yet.
Having that made it super easy for me
to even identify the creators within my space
that I should be talking to and should be collaborating
with in the first place.
I also had the added benefit
of a pretty decently sized channel
by the time I did start to build these relationships.
Now, I didn't have to sell them
on the idea of doing a collaboration with me.
Obviously this is a huge milestone,
everybody's journey is gonna be different.
So hopefully now you have the perspective and the mindset
you need to get yourself to 100,000 subscribers.
But if you're looking to grow even faster,
then I have to recommend this video next,
`cause it's gonna help you do just that.