- There's a simple tactic
that'll get you your first 10,000
YouTube subscribers.
Hey, everyone.
I'm Neil Patel,
and today I'm going to break down
how long did it take me to get my first
10,000 subscribers and how you can too
with one winning tactic that got me there.
(upbeat instrumental music)
Now, out of curiosity,
how long do you think it took me
to get my first 10,000 subscribers?
Leave a comment.
Let me know.
You think it took me six weeks?
Eight months?
10 years?
Not 10 years.
My channel's not that old.
Maybe one year, two years.
Take a guess.
At this point, I'm over a million.
So maybe that'll give you a rough hit.
It took me roughly eight months
to get my first 10,000 subscribers,
and I had to test a few different tactics
to get there.
It definitely wasn't easy for me,
but for you it will be easy.
Here's a tactic that no one talks about
to get your kickstart.
See, you could be like,
"Neil, you already have audience.
You have all this email list.
You have these social followers.
It's easy for you."
Back then it wasn't.
And I tested out quite a few,
and I'm going to break them down,
and I'll tell you the easiest one.
Tactic number one,
paid YouTube ads.
At first, I thought that paid ads were great.
I was getting an average
of 323,000 views per month.
But the problem,
that level engagement that I was is getting
from those paid ads, it just wasn't ideal.
People were going,
they weren't engaging, dropping off.
My retention rates were too low.
The viewers were watching only on average
50% of my short videos, right?
They were watching only a few minutes worth
before they were dropping off.
On top of that,
only 0.2%, not even 1%.
0.2% of my viewers
were subscribing to my channel.
I was getting tons of views,
grossing 970,000 views,
and that was just from ads.
It took me eight months
to just get 1.2 million views
but I got all those views
just from ads really quickly.
But those ad views only got me 1,500 subscribers
during that time.
The worst part,
when I stopped my YouTube ads
my views tanked and I got almost zero traction
from all the money I spent on ads
in the aftermath.
The bottom line is,
that experiment helped me get a bulk of my views
in that short period of time
but it didn't create long term gains.
I just spent a ton of money,
and literally flushed it down the toilet.
And when I say I spent a lot of money,
I'm not talking about $1.000
I'm talking about tens and tens,
and tens of thousands of dollars.
That's how I got to tactic number two,
which was releasing one video per day.
I know what you're thinking,
"Neil, you're crazy.
One video per day,
that's hard to keep up with."
And you're right.
It wasn't easy to keep up
with that production pace
but the results of this second experiment
were great.
For the first time,
I was getting a lot of new subscribers every day.
Just so you have idea.
I was able to get 8,500 subscribers
into a four month timeframe.
Though, my view count wasn't as impressive.
I wanted to build up my channel subscriber base
so that way I can maintain higher view counts
in the future.
Not only that.
Pushing out new content every day,
allowing me to understand what my audience
really wanted to learn,
and what they didn't want,
which and then gave me the opportunity
to double-down on the winning ideas,
and get more traction.
So what I learned during that time is,
and you could model after this is,
produce videos each and every single day
when you're starting.
When you produce those videos,
make sure you put in the right keywords
in the title, in the description,
and use Ubersuggests to show you
what keywords are popular.
It even shows you them for YouTube as well.
It has all that data in there.
Now, within the first 30 seconds of your video,
you need to tell people to subscribe.
within the first 10 seconds of the video,
you need to hook people
so that they want keep watching
the rest of your videos.
And when you do this,
you'll get more subscribers.
You'll eventually rank and you'll do well.
The other strategy I have for you
is when you release those videos,
send out an email blast.
A push notification.
Promote the YouTube video
on other social channels,
and tell them to go to YouTube
even though the other social channels hate it.
It's a good start.
And what I mean by that is,
I'm not talking about a wall post.
I'm talking about messaging other people
on these social channels
that you already have fans and fans,
and that'll help you get more traction.
If you do this,
you'll figure out what works on YouTube.
And then after 30 day time window,
what you can do is start creating less videos.
I do three times a week,
and you create the videos
that create the most engagement
the most subscribers 'cuz you have data
from your first 30 days.
If you don't have enough data
from your first 30 days,
create 60 days worth of content.
Go hard for two months,
and then slow it down and then focus on quality.
That's how you get your first 10,000 subscribers
super fast.
If you need help with your YouTube marketing,
check out my ad agency, NP Digital.
If you enjoy this video, like it, share it.
Tell more people about it.
If you have questions, leave a comment.
I'm here to help you out.
Thank you for watching.