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-Hey guys.
My name is Tim Schmoyer, and it's
Thursday, which means it's time to do some YouTube
Q&A with you guys like we do every week here at Video
Creators.
VixyVI wrote and asked this.
"Thank you for helpful tips.
I always love to watch your videos because they always
relate so closely to what I experience with my channel.
I've been doing it for over a year now,
and am still not as established as I'd like to be.
Some of my friends who started at the same time
have a lot more subscribers than me.
After watching your videos, I think my focus is wrong.
But how can I find my niche, what I'm good at,
and that people will want me to do?
Some stuff works well for others but not for me,
and I know to be successful, I have to be myself.
But how do I go about finding what my YouTube
style/niche/thing is?
Thanks for your help."
That's a good question.
Now if you'll let me read between the lines
a little bit of what you're actually asking here,
it sounds like what you're saying
is that my YouTube channel isn't growing because I
picked the wrong niche or I have the wrong focus on my channel.
And that could be true.
What I found is that there's actually several common things
that keep a YouTube channel kind of stuck in that sub-1,000
subscriber bracket, and I want to give you three of them here
today.
The first one is that you really need to evaluate your channel's
branding, and by that, I don't just
mean your header image, your channel icon,
your branded intro, things like that.
This is a much bigger conversation
than I can probably have in just a short YouTube video.
It kind of boils down to being able to answer questions
both for yourself and for your viewers-- who, specifically,
is this channel for?
Why does this content matter?
What difference does this make in someone's life?
What value am I really delivering and giving to people
through this video?
Why should they care about my videos and my channel?
The easier you can answer those types of subconscious questions
for your viewer, the easier it'll
be for them to naturally gravitate to your content
and to subscribe and become an active viewer of your channel.
The second common thing that makes it difficult for channels
to grow is poor titles and poor thumbnails.
Guys, it doesn't matter how awesome your video is.
If the billboard for that video isn't enticing,
if it doesn't attract attention, if the title doesn't pitch
value, why should I click this?
Why should I watch this video?
Your title and your thumbnail really
need to work together to answer those questions for the viewer.
Now, that doesn't mean that you views titles and thumbnails
that are misleading just to generate clicks and try
to get views from it.
That will backfire on you every single time.
But instead, it's knowing what the true value of your video
actually is, a value that you are presenting to people
through your content, and then actually, accurately
teasing that information and that value
through your title and your thumbnail.
And number three, often, creators
who are stuck at under 1,000 subscribers
just have poor quality videos.
And I don't mean poor quality just as in production value.
I mean actual content value.
You've got to use some tools that are at your disposal
to really help you craft better value in your videos
and eliminate fluff if necessary to make a lot of those choices.
One great tool for that is using the Audience Retention graphs
in your YouTube Analytics.
It'll show you exactly when viewers are abandoning
your video, where the drop-offs are happening,
and to really start evaluating some of your videos
and studying them, seeing the common trends--
whenever I start talking about this
or if I ramble about that for too long,
or actually, I lose about 20% to 30%
of my audience in the first 10 to 15 seconds,
you probably want to drop that branded intro completely.
It's not adding any value to your viewers at all.
And then you start learning that you
need to start with better hooks at the beginning of your video
to really pitch the value so people
will keep watching it longer.
There's just a lot of different things
you can learn from your audience retention scores,
so definitely dig into those.
And of course, the more time you spend crafting your videos,
the better at it you'll get.
Just make sure you don't keep repeating the same mistakes
over and over and over again, so you make 100 videos
and then try to figure out, why have I just
invested all this time in doing this
and it's not going anywhere?
Now if that's you, and you feel like for the amount of energy
I'm putting into my channel, I should have more traction
than I have, I would highly recommend
you guys read my book.
It's called "30 Days to a Better YouTube Channel,"
and it is a very practical, step-by-step system
that when I run channels through it personally in my consulting
practice stuff, 100% of them see exponential improvement
after only 30 days.
The first three days are free, and even
if you don't buy the book, I highly
recommend you download just those first three
days because those are the days that start talking primarily
about the branding that I first started off--
why do your videos matter, why should I
subscribe to your channel, and what differences your videos
make.
Those types of questions, really wrestling through
that so you can really integrate those types of themes
into all your videos so that it's easy for people
to be attracted to your content because they now
know who you are, who your videos are for, why it's
valuable to them, and ways they should subscribe rather
than them trying to have to take the time
to dig into your channel and make those types of decisions
on their own.
I'll link to that book.
It's in the description of this video.
If you want to go click it, go check it out,
find out more about it, see if it's right for you.
I would love to hear from you in the comments below.
What other common things do you see really
contribute to a channel being stuck
at that under 1,000 subscriber mark
or just kind of stuck overall?
And if that's you and you feel stuck,
definitely read some of the comments
that people are leaving down there.
I know you'll find some really helpful advice beyond what I've
shared here from all the other creators down there.
And if this is your first time here,
I'd love to have you subscribe.
Every Thursday we do some Q&A just like this.
On Tuesday, I give you guys some YouTube updates and news
and things that are happening that are changing
this platform we're working on.
On Wednesdays, we give you guys some YouTube tips.
And guys, I do all this because I really
believe that a lot of you guys have messages that
need to spread, the world needs to be hear,
and I want to do everything I can
to help you guys grow your audiences
and spread your message so that they reach
the people, that they what you have to say,
and hopefully their lives are changed as a result.
So thank you for letting me be a part of that.
Subscribe, and I'll see you guys again next week.
Bye.