Over the few months I have been uploading on YouTube (Nearly 100 videos), I have come across many minor gaming channels that all tend to make similar errors. I see many channels on this forum promoting the hell out of their videos mere hours after they made their channel, only to all but disappear. One notable example, although I wont mention who it was, was a gaming channel I had met in December. They had joined both YouTube and YTtalk on December 11th, and 48 hours later they had a staggering 106 subscribers and a few thousand views (crazy, right?). They approached our channel to collab, and I of course accepted.
Then, it all began to fall apart. After his sprint of 6 uploads during that 48 hours, they proceeded to upload one more video and create no more threads in the next two months. Today, he still only has 106 subscribers, showing exactly how much effort he put in his channel after he lost interest. And thus bringing us to the major problem with new YouTubers; commitment.
This example by no means was meant to make fun of that channel, but it is an apt depiction of the horrid habit (or lack thereof) of so many of us. Here are a few helpful tips that will help you along your journey as a YouTuber!
1. MAKE A PROMISE
Perhaps the easiest step to make, it is also one of the most fundamentally important. At the beginning of your channel, before you start to make any rash decisions, set some ground rules and goals about where you would like your channel to go. This has two key factors; infatuation and boredom. Avoid both at all cost. Infatuation typically happens when you first make you channel; you are so excited that you had this great idea to make a channel that you want to make tons of videos immediately. DON'T DO THIS! This feeling will go away, and invariably you will encounter it, so you must be prepared to cope. Boredom is when that magical feeling of uploading videos begins to go away, and usually is when channels drop off the face of the planet. Although this is harder to escape, some preventative measures can be take.
If you set a goal, say, 5-7 videos a week (my goal when I started), then you must adhere at both ends. SET YOUR GOAL AND STICK TO IT! That means (obviously) that you should never upload less than the lower limit of your videos, but what few people consider is that you should rarely if ever upload more than your upper limit as well. If you have 12 videos ready to go for week one, upload 7 of your favorites that week then wait until the next week and see if you still like the remaining 5. If so, upload them (significantly less work than keeping your 12-video-a-week pace), and if not, then try to improve your next batch of videos! If you make more videos than you set for your goal, then keep them on your computer! It is important to keep a backlog for your videos so if you encounter a busy week, all you have to do is upload your videos to keep consistent.
2. GET IN A RHYTHM
Alright, now that you set your goal, never going above or below it, your all set! Well, no. That was the easy part. You can really say you can do anything, but doing it is a whole other ball game. For this step, you must have a specific mindset. I encourage you to check out this thread to understand the mindset better(After yttalk.com/threads/ paste
i-will-never-be-youtube-famous.29935/), but I will paraphrase as best I can.
Don't upload videos because you like views or subscribers; in all likelihood you will fall short of all your preconceived expectations for YouTube fame. Upload because you like to make videos, not for people to enjoy, for you to enjoy making. This is absolutely, without a hint of a doubt, THE most important thing to take away from this article. If you have this mindset, you are so much more likely to have a long and consistent YouTube career.
If you have a goal set, and if you stick with both the upper and lower bounds of that goal week in and week out, then you're almost there.
3. BE RESILIENT
There will be highs in the lifetime of your channel; I know I'm in one at the moment. But, where there are hills there are valleys, and you must be able to stay on the long road when faced with this adversity. Maybe you have work or school, maybe you have things going on in your life, maybe you were selected by the King of France to accept the global award of awesomness. These are excuses. There is no excuse for inconstancy. I would know, I have been in University for Engineering for the entire duration of my channel. Uploading is not a question of TIME, but rather a question of COMMITMENT. Be the resilient channel.
If you maintain these habits long enough, they get less and less difficult to sustain. At the moment, I am used to uploading a video every night before I go to bed, I am used to recording videos every weekend, and I am used to doing this every single week. The best part, after a few months of this, I have no inclination to stop any time soon.
Remember, set goals. Don't upload beyond your means. Be consistent through the highs and the lows. Build your recording, editing and uploading habits.
Most importantly (as I have mentioned before), sometimes the journey is the destination.
cheers, Volvo
