If you’ve been putting off creating your own YouTube channel because you’re overwhelmed with the decisions you have to make or you’re scared because you feel like you don’t have the right skills to succeed, worry no more and welcome to the only resource you’ll ever need to stay compliant. your video creator dreams custom youtube comments.
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How to start your YouTube channel: 10 essential tips
We promised 20 tips to get your YouTube channel up and running, so let’s start delivering on that promise with 10 tips in this post and 10 tips in the next. All the tips are covered in this video too:
Tip #1 – START NOW:
So surprisingly, there are still some people out there who are thinking about starting a YouTube channel and have been doing it for months, possibly even years. My advice to you is, whether you are ready or not, start now. And I’m not telling you this as a New Year’s resolution. Every moment you hesitate or put it off, there are thousands of video creators starting their YouTube channel today, and grabbing your entire potential audience. You do not want that.
Feel the fear, do it anyway. Start, press record. Record whatever you want today. It doesn’t matter if it doesn’t end up on YouTube. You need to gain experience in getting in front of the camera, behind the camera, using your editing program. You have to start creating content to know whether or not you like making videos before you know if you would like to be a YouTuber.
Tip #2 Learn how YouTube works, for real:
Chances are, the first video you make will be a disaster. Fantastic, you made a video. You’ve taken the first step, and six months from now, you’ll watch the first video and think, yeah, that was really bad, but you have to start the journey somehow. And with that, you have to start your YouTube channel somehow too, even if you’re not ready. Create a YouTube account, upload a video to YouTube. You don’t have to publish it, that’s the important thing.
You need to gain experience in the video upload workflow. The last thing you want is to have a brilliant video ready to upload, but you don’t know how the YouTube system works. Well, experience is going to trump any advice any of us can give you, so record a video, upload it to YouTube. You don’t have to publish it.
Tip #3 Develop a strategy that you will actually follow:
While it’s true that getting some hands-on experience is obviously a good thing, you also need some kind of strategy. So, answer these questions:
What do you want your channel to achieve on YouTube? and when you answer this, try to answer from the viewer’s perspective, not from your perspective. So I don’t want to hear about reaching 10,000 subscribers, a million views, or whatever. If your viewers know that you are in this for your own benefit, they will notice and tune out immediately. Viewers want to know what they can earn from the content, and you want to sell as much of that as possible in your videos.
Who is your target audience? Again, try to be as specific as possible. What age range? What genre, if any particular genre? What kind of demographic? What are they interested in? You need to know who is going to see your content.
And, more importantly, why should they see your content? There are millions of gaming channels out there, hundreds of thousands of Fortnite channels out there. How are you going to distinguish your content from everyone else already on YouTube making content? You need to break the status quo, not join it, because you will never be seen.
And finally, how are you going to offer this content? Is it going to be every day, once a week, at a certain time of day? Think about when your audience is most likely to watch YouTube, and how much they might watch per week, and then tailor your content to those viewing habits, and think about if you’re going to do video on demand, live streams, what will be best? for you and your audience?
Tip #4: Find your niche and enjoy it to the fullest:
If you’re a regular on our YouTube channel and live streams, you’ll know this by heart. Blocked niche. Let me give you a quick example. What is your channel about? If you’re giving an answer like, “My channel is about beauty, and it’s about travel,” and it’s also about vlogging,” then it’s about too many things.
Get rid of all the “ands”. When starting your channel, it should be about a specific topic, because you need to attract a very specific audience.
Once you’ve grown your channel, and have millions of subscribers who love you, you can take them on the road wherever you want, but to begin with, the audience is only interested in the content. They have no investment in you. Try to remember that. It’s a cruel lesson to understand, but it will help you when you start on YouTube.
Tip #5 Confirm your value proposition:
Once you’ve thought about and answered all of these questions, I want you to wrap it all up in a nice gift, called your value proposition. This is your sales pitch. Try to tell your audience who you are, and why they should watch you, in about six words.
For example, our value proposition is “Educating your YouTube journey” . It tells you who, YouTubers, video creators, and the reason why they should watch, is because they will learn how to grow their channels. But we have managed to do it in five words. Now it’s your turn.
Tip #6 Invest in the right audio equipment:
If you’re just getting started on YouTube, and you’re wondering what your first tech upgrade should be, it’s 100% audio, and here we are right. Bad audio is much more distracting than bad video, and everyone hates built-in microphones. So if you can, get yourself a dedicated microphone for your camera, and if you’re recording from a computer, you can’t go far wrong with a Blue Yeti.
Tip #7 Create a formula with a video template:
Videos need a structure, so when you make your next video, try to think about how you will develop a presentation formula, which you can use as a template for your future videos. Remember at the beginning of this video, I literally gave you a hook? An introduction, a preview of what is going to happen in the rest of the video. Then we have the personalized intro, followed by an introduction of who we are for new viewers, a call to action to subscribe to our channel, and then we jump into the heart of the content which is where we are right now, and at the end of this video, You’ll see how we round all this up.
Your presentation formula will take time to structure, and will evolve throughout your YouTube journey. Try to keep an eye out for this when watching your favorite YouTubers. No matter how rough and random they may seem, there is always a structure and a story behind each video, and that is why you watch them.
Tip #8: Learn to LOVE analysis:
Some people love analysis, some hate it, but there are a couple that are crucial to keep in mind whether you want to look at that analysis or not. The first is click-through rate .
This represents how attractive your titles are, and how accessible your thumbnails are. Check the click-through rate for your channel as a whole, and on individual videos as you test. I’m not going to give everyone the same goal to achieve. Check what your current click-through rate is and whether it is two, four, six or eight percent. I want you to try to improve that by two or three percent this year. This will bring you many more views.
The other metric, as it always has been, is View Time . Generally speaking, the more watch time you have, the more YouTube will promote your content. But if you make short videos, that doesn’t necessarily mean you should make longer videos, because your audience might not react very well to those longer videos.
What I will tell you is to maximize the value of your viewing time on the videos you have. This is achieved by looking at relative audience retention. How does your video compare to similar ones? in terms of whether people continue to watch it or not, and trying to improve relative audience retention. That said, if your average view length is 60, 70, 80%, you’re doing great, and it gives you a license to try longer videos.
Tip #9 Check your YouTube channel RIGHT NOW:
Verify your YouTube account. That will give you access to YouTube’s most important tool, which is custom thumbnails. We have a video here on how to do it.
Tip #10 Create an attractive and interesting Banner for your channel:
If I see another generic cityscape, or rolling hills on the channel banner when we do channel audits, I’ll tear my hair out.