A Help Guide for New YouTube Creators - Written by a New YouTube Creator

FunWithTheBugs

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Mission Statement:
Hello Everyone! I thought I would create a post based on my experiences as a new YouTuber starting out that might be helpful for other new YouTubers, but might also benefit those with some more experience. A lot of posts that address these topics usually come from larger YouTubers so I thought it might be cool to give my point of view as a fairly new creator on the YouTube platform and how we got to where we are today.

Our Story:
We started a little over 4 months ago and recently achieved a little over 500 subs. While a milestone number and a great feeling, it's not as important as one might think in the larger scheme of things. The reason for starting our channel was my son loved watching YouTube videos and I thought it would be fun for the 2 of us to do something on our own. My experience with video editing was none. Only owned a phone to record video and have never edited a video in my life. Never designed any type of graphics before either. So basically if you have no idea what you are doing, that should not stop you from starting! My initial intention was to have fun and now has become an addiction and much more real than I ever imagined it would.

In the beginning we just did toy reviews and my son was the only one on camera. As we went on I wanted our channel to have more of a variety where we can reach a wider audience but still keeping everything kid and family friendly. So now we do lots of family vlogs, toy reviews and just have lots of family friendly fun where anyone can really enjoy watching. I also recently did some How-To videos which I will touch upon later. The thing is our channel has an overall theme but we can attract many different people to our channel even if every video doesn’t relate to them and that is fine.

Now that is the back story and here are things we experienced and still experience and what we have been doing.

Networking - Sub4Sub – Creating Frienships:
So first, decide who your audience is. What community are you going to try and network in that can help you grow. That is the first step you are going to want to decide because YouTube is pretty much a social network which is also going to tie you into many other social networks because of it. If you want to do YouTube seriously and grow you are going to need to be social. You are going to need to spend hours a day networking. You are basically taking on a second part time job without a salary if you really want to grow your channel. If you just want to have fun and not care about growing or people seeing your content, then that is a different story.

Networking yourself is going to be the most important thing in the beginning I think. Also, you need to understand what Sub4Sub is before it ruins you and your channel. It was nothing I heard of before until people found my videos and we're commenting "they just subbed us, sub them back". I, like many others were like sure, this is easy. We can just go around and ask everyone to sub us back. Luckily I started to research this whole idea and understand what was really going on. I am going to straight out say it and go into more detail about why Sub4Sub is so terrible for your channel.

You need to realize why you create videos and started on YouTube. It is probably because you want to create content that you want other people to watch. You don’t start out worrying about subs, but then as you get them you think you need to start getting all these subs and then it can really suck you in. Well, here is the truth. Most of those people are probably not watching your content. Even if they comment on your video, they probably just killed your retention rating because they only stayed on your channel long enough to say nice video. Audience retention is how long people are watching your video. If you have a 15-minute video and a bunch of people are only watching for 30 seconds your video is not going to rank well at all and probably never see the good light.

Many of them have the same comment for every video and use that same comment for every single channel they comment on. They will never directly address anything in your video. We have so many people like this on our channel and it only brings our rating down because of it. Here is a funny story. We started a second channel that we don’t do any promotion for and only set it up if we wanted to do a Parent type of topic that is not really for kids to hear and we didn’t want that on our main channel. One of the topics was “Homes with Children and Guns”. It discusses how kids are getting killed by accident and stuff like that. My thumbnail is a baby’s head with a gun next to it and blood on the other side. It’s a pretty dark thumbnail. This channels comment on this video started out with “So Cute”. REALLY!!!!!!!! I just talked about kids getting killed by guns in their homes and you tell me “So Cute”. It is the same exact comment they put on our kid’s videos. It’s a cut and paste. They didn’t even spend the time to even look at the thumbnail! I have also watched other people’s videos where they sound cuts out after 30 seconds and the rest of the 10 minute video is silent. I look through the comments and everyone is saying what a great video, thumbs up, nice job, great review. My comment says “Hey. Not sure if you are aware but your video has no sound after 30 seconds”. A couple minutes later they re-up a new version. I almost was going to make a video of just a sheet of paper for 5 minutes and see how many people tell me what a great video it was.

So how do you grow without doing Sub4Sub in the beginning? Also, understand no matter what you do you are going to get these people on your channel and there is really nothing you can do about it except you hope they will go away. You grow by making friends. You grow by becoming friendly with channels that you really do like and don’t need to just tell them nice job so they come to your channel. You watch their videos. You comment about what was in their videos. You create conversation. You ask questions. You can tell them you subbed their channel but don’t say I subbed your channel come sub me back. Let them sub you back because they are interested in you. Those are the people that will visit and feel the same obligation to watch your videos and start a discussion about your videos. Another important thing to remember, a lot of these people are not your target audience. What you are doing is creating relationships that will one day help you grow to that next level where you want to get to but you want a create a base of good people and not just subscriber numbers.

Subscriber numbers don’t get you anything on YouTube. It doesn’t rank your videos higher and it doesn’t make you a penny. What does that are views that lead to audience retention and time watched. How much time are people watching your videos? Are your videos getting shared, are people coming from somewhere else other than YouTube and starting at your channel? A channel with 10,000 subscribers but their videos are only getting 100 views or so is not better than a channel with 100 subscribers getting 100 views. As a matter of fact, the channel with the 100 subs would be in a better position. I met someone complaining about their sub count so I looked at their channel and they had 100 subs or so but their videos had 200-500 views and even one with 30k views. I said I would rather have all those views with a low sub count then 1,000 subs and 50-100 viewed videos. The hardest part of YouTube is getting people to actually find your videos, then having them click on it. If you get that far you are winning. Now just produce good videos and people will begin to sub. The thing you are most in control of is your content so if everything else in YouTube is favoring you are in good shape. Evaluate your page to try and understand why people are not subscribing at that point.

Also realize the more people you begin to sub the harder it is going to be to watch all their videos. People create content daily and if you subbed 200-300 channels you are not possibly going to watch everyone’s videos every day and neither is that person who subbed you and 1,000 other channels that week. So make your friends and prioritize them over all the other channels you pick up on the way. Even if you do not watch all their videos, it is better to miss some and watch the ones you do in full then just click on one when you don’t have time and watch 30 seconds of it. Or watch at least 50% of it. That retention number is very important for videos.

I also try and respond back to most comments on my videos and if someone leaves a good comment I usually will go look at their channel, watch their videos and sub them. If a person comments nice video, we subbed. Sub us back. I do not sub these people back. If they didn’t even care to watch my video trying to get me to visit them they surely aren’t going to watch it after I sub them back. They were only interested in their sub number. Also, I immediately delete any comment saying something along the lines of “Come visit us and sub our channel, then let us know because we sub back.” That is one of the rudest comments I think. You come to my channel only to comment that I should come to your channel and sub you first and then you will be so kind and sub us back. If someone continually does that I just ban them from my channel.

I am going to give you an example of what can happen when creating friendships. There is a channel that watches our videos and they have over 100,000 subs. They obviously don’t come to my channel to self-promote. They always leave nice comments and I always make sure to watch their videos and comment on them as well. Just recently I was watching one of their videos and they were discussing how they were going to be un-subscribing from a bunch of channels because their subscription watch list has become too large and so many channels don’t ever visit them or even respond to their comments. They then followed up with a shout-out for our channel on how we are always interacting with them and leaving them wonderful comments and linked us in their description for that video. That is the friendships you want to create. Also remember, the more you make yourself present the more other people will know about you and maybe check you out as well.

Don’t always fall for someone saying they subbed you. I probably get around 5 people a day who say they subbed us and they really didn’t. An easy way to check is download an app for your phone that shows real time subscriptions and check if your number went up. When you are a small channel it is very easy to keep track of as your sub number isn’t going up like a 100 subs a day. I use an app called Live YouTube Subscriber Count.


Your Videos:
While you might not have 1 million subscribers you want to create videos like you do. When creating your videos say to yourself if I had 1 million subscribers and not 20 would I be creating the same quality work. If you say yes then your good, if not then you should be. Why is a person who is subscribed to that large YouTubers channel going to want to watch you as well. They are used to watching high quality content so you need to be up to par with what they are already watching. You need to come across just as good as the best out there. Also, you never know if maybe one day you get a video that does well and gets a lot of hits you want to be ready for it and you want all your work to be up to that level where if you do get a lot of traffic you want to look like a professional.


Make sure you are using searchable and descriptive titles. Also make sure you have text of what your video is about in the description box and usually repeat your title within the first 2 lines which is how YouTube evaluates what your video is about. Also use good tags and not just one-word tags but phrases and sentences. Things that people would put in the search box that represents your video. Check out TubeBuddy to help with tags.

Make sure your thumbnail really pops and grabs the eye of a person who is looking at 20 thumbnails on the same page. Make sure it will draw them in.

Can you do a video that might not necessarily fit in with the rest of your channel? Absolutely. Anything that might draw people to your page is a good thing. An example of what I did. I was getting a lot of comments about our fish tank that is seen in a lot of our videos. What I ended up doing was a How-To video on setting up an easy saltwater tank in your own home. How-To videos are very popular and I just happened to have the knowledge of this topic. Funny thing, this video has gotten the largest amount of views in the shortest amount of time than any one of our other videos. It is not our most watched video yes but those were out much longer and took much longer to get to the number where the fish tank video is already at. So drawing people to your channel through ways like this is great. Even if you only get one sub out of it, that is one more sub that might have never found your channel if you didn’t do a video like this.

Also, know where your audience is and where to promote your video. I did a video on saltwater tanks so of course I created a thread for my video on some fish forums with the link to my video. I recently did another how-to video on coffee making. Didn’t take off like the fish one but it might take off at a later time or I might have already gained some subs from it even though the video itself didn’t get viewed like my other videos. Also, be aware that if a video doesn’t immediately take off, that doesn’t mean it is done with. My highest watched videos which one has over 1k views and another over 2k views didn’t get traction until about 2 months after I uploaded them.

Your Channel:
Make sure when someone visits your channel the information you want them to see is there. So many times I see peoples main page say they have no content listed. You need to turn that on so your videos show on that first page. Otherwise there is nothing there and people need to click the videos tab to know you have content.

Your banner should be eye catchy and show what your channel is all about. Make sure your channel icon is a good representation of your channel and interesting as that is what others will see when you comment on videos around YouTube. Just this week I redid our banner and channel icon to represent our channel better of what we do today than when we first started. Don’t be afraid to change your artwork at any time. This goes for video thumbnails as well. I have changed thumbnails weeks after uploading a video to try and get more traction on them.

The Quitting Game:

There are going to be plenty of days you are going to want to quit. Your videos won’t get many views, some weeks you won’t get any subs and you are just going to doubt yourself and want to quit. You are going to see other channels growing at a fast pace and your channel doing nothing. It can get very discouraging. I would be lying if I said I didn’t feel like quitting many times already. But you need to be strong, keep your head up and think about all those people who did make it, who might have felt the same way you did when they started. If they would have stopped, they would not be where they are today. Don’t expect it to be easy, because it won’t be but that days your videos do well or you get a bunch of subs it feels so rewarding for the work and effort you put into this.

Outro:
Hopefully some will find this helpful for their new journey on YouTube coming from someone who just got over these basic intro humps of learning the ropes. There is still a lot to learn I am sure but that will be the next chapter when I get there. If others have some tips they want to add that would be great or if you have any questions for me, please feel free to ask! Sorry for such a long post. I actually had so much more I probably could have added but thought it was long enough. Also remember, there is no 100% guaranteed formula that will work so consider this maybe as a best practices guide which of course leads you open to try plenty of other ways that might work for you instead.

Recommended Software for YouTube Navigation:

- YouTube Creator Studio – on Android (Don’t know about iPhone version) – This is a must have app. It allows you to see and respond to all comments. Shows you real time views of your videos and also shows you a bunch of analytical information. Every YouTube creator should have this app downloaded

- Live YouTube Subscriber Count for Android (Not sure which apps are available for iPhone). There are also other apps that do the same thing. YouTube is delayed with reporting your subscribers. This app shows it in real time

- TubeBuddy for PC (and maybe MAC) – Helps with tags which will help you rank your video. It also offers a ton of other features. There is a free version that works well and then paid versions that offer more features.
 

KatyAdelson

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Wow! Thank you for such a long and detailed post! =) When I first saw the sub4sub title, I was like, "noooooo!!!! :eek:" but then you said all the right things about how terrible it is! ^^

I've moved this to the YouTube tips, tutorials, and articles forum. =)
 
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FunWithTheBugs

I've Got It
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Wow! Thank you for such a long and detailed post! =) When I first saw the sub4sub title, I was like, "noooooo!!!! :eek:" but then you said all the right things about how terrible it is! ^^

I've moved this to the YouTube tips, tutorials, and articles forum. =)
Thank you so much!
 
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