MetaGameRus
Well-Known Member
Hey everyone! A couple of days ago I had a really nice milestone. My channel reached the size of 100.000 subs. It took me less than a year of hard work and about 50 videos to get to this point. Some people say that its a really fast rate of growth but for me it didnt seem so. I've graduated International Institute of Advertisment and I think that hepled me to find the right way of promoting and handling my channel. And now I want to talk about some tips and ideas that can be useful for developing your channel.
Repetition vs Unique content
You shouldn't strat your channel thinking: "Wow! That guy makes minecraft letsplays(for example) and has 999999 subs! Thats the key to sucess! I'll do the same!" The main thing you should think about is: why did he get such a big audience? There are two possible reasons for that.
1. This guy was among the first people who strated making videos on this topic. Today it may seem that he doesnt make anything special but some time ago he didnt have a lot of competitors and he easily occupied empty niche. Thats why he may have so many subs today without super high quality videos
2. That channel has really unique, interesting and fun content with high quality videos that are highly attractive for viewers.
So there is no sense making the same type of videos like you've seen on a big channel because this niche is already occpupied and can be oversaturated with similar content. Your main goal is finding the niche with lowest possible competition or make your content look more profitable than your competitor's content.
Most viewed and shareable content
The most popular videos on youtube are fun or music videos. When pepople find something that makes them laugh they usually share it with friends then they share with their friends and some day this video hits hundreds of thousands or even millions of views. Music videos are highly shareable too and may get even more views because you can enjoy your favourite song 10 times a day. But if you make some serious or educational videos its much harder to get a lot of views even if its are really good. Thats because everyone loves to have fun but much less people want to learn something and improve themselves. Serious videos do not emotionally involve people thats why this kind of content is not highly shareable. So if you want to get more subscribers do not rely too much on serious content and always try to make fun videos from time to time.
Building your audince
Its always very difficult to get new subscribers for a channel without significant subscribers base. For me it took 6 month to get 300 subs and 5 more month to reach 100.000 subs. Thats why trying to build an audience by yourself is not such a good idea and you'll need some assistace. If you have quality content its much better to find places that already have a big audience and are close to your topic. For example you are making Call of duty videos and there is a big forum where everyone posts different fun/interesting videos that they found on youtube or it can be a social media community. Thats the best places to promote your channel until you rich some significant size. I have a gaming channel with DOTA realated content and from my experience I've got 500-1500 views in 24 hours each time posting my new videos on a big DOTA forum and that helped me a lot at the start.
But promoting through big youtube channels is something different. There are 2 ways of doing it properly.
1. Paid promotion. Thats the easiest and the fastest way to build a big audience. A lot of russian youtube channels with 50.000+ subs offer to advetise something for money. For example like+comment from a channel with 80.000 subs will cost you about 20$. It is effective because all channel's actions are showed to their subscribers. Making a shoutout about your channel from a channel with 400.000 subs can cost you about 300-500$ but the link in description+annotation from the same channel will cost you about 100$. You may ask: does it really worth it? My answer is yes, absolutely and I have an example for you. There was a guy making prank videos and he had about 3k subs. He bought 2 advertisments on a 1.000.000 subs channel and it cost him 1000$. In a month he has 30k subs but for me it took 8 month without any paid promotion to reach 30k subs. So may be you'll like the idea to spend 1000$ to save you 7 month of hard work. The same thing works with social media communities. Its common for big communities to advertise something for money. For example a post about your channel form a facebook group with 100-200k followers will cost you about 30-40$.
2. The second way of gaining access to a bigger audience is making collaborations. If you want to colaborate with another channel of the same size you can easily offer them to make videos together and make mutual shoutouts. That will bring some new traffic to your channel but collaborating with bigger youtubers needs different approach. If you are able to produce quality content you can offer to make videos for bigger channels. You should explore competitors content to find out what can be done better and add something new and then offer a simple deal: you make a video for a big channel and they advertise your channel. Using this kind of approach i've managed to make a series of 10 videos with a 400k subs channel. By the time we started working together I had only 13k subs and it was a great deal for me.
Satisfying needs
Every time you want to make a new video you should think about current trends. For example if Half life 3 has just been released its the best time to make a video about it and you'll get a lot of views for sure. But if you want to make Wolfenstein 3D letsplay be prepared that you wont get much attention beacuse the demand on this kind of videos is really low. So if you want to get a lot of views and subs you should stick to relevant and popular topics. Your main goal is to make videos that could be useful and interesting for as many people as possbile. For example you're going to make a review of a Big mac. But the amount of attention to this topic is rather limited. So if you want to attract more attention you should make a review named "The Best burgers in McDonalds menu" because it will be useful for wider audience. And now we came to proper video naming. Proper video name should consist of some clear profit that a viewer will get from this video. Its even better when it sounds promising. For example if you are making a video with poker advices you shouldnt name it "Useful poker Tips" but instead it should be "How to win at poker?". The same goes to video previews. It should look clear and attractive even if its small. For example if you want to make preview to a video named "How to take care of your health" you can use a face of Doctor House in your preview to make sure that people will click on your video.
Quality content
There are several things that make your video seem professional adn quality. I wont be talking much about good camera and microphone becuase its a must. Plain video without any editing doesnt look very attractive. But if you add some simple graphics it will start looking much better. If you talk about something make visual help to your words. It can be a picture or text pointing something important or pop up tips that make something clear. Even some simple text animations will make your video look more impressive. You should make your own graphic interface for any kind of text and visual information appearing on the screen. Tv channels and big youtube channels always have their special visual decoration. If its possible try to prepare a text and a scenario for every video and record your voice seprately. Dont try to read everything in one long attempt but record it sentence by sentence until it will sound like you are a tv presenter. It may take a lot of time but thats the way to excel your competitors and have a good reputation. I can spend 20-30 hours working on a video that lasts 5-10 minutes because i belive that quality DOES matter. Thats why i was uploading only 4-5 videos per month on average and as you see it is enough to maintain channel's growth. You can grow faster uploading more often but do it only if you are sure that it doesnt hurt contents quality.
Now i told you about some strategies and techniques that I've used during my way to 100.000 subs and I think it would be useful for growing your channels too! Feel free to ask any questions you want and thank you for you attention!
Repetition vs Unique content
You shouldn't strat your channel thinking: "Wow! That guy makes minecraft letsplays(for example) and has 999999 subs! Thats the key to sucess! I'll do the same!" The main thing you should think about is: why did he get such a big audience? There are two possible reasons for that.
1. This guy was among the first people who strated making videos on this topic. Today it may seem that he doesnt make anything special but some time ago he didnt have a lot of competitors and he easily occupied empty niche. Thats why he may have so many subs today without super high quality videos
2. That channel has really unique, interesting and fun content with high quality videos that are highly attractive for viewers.
So there is no sense making the same type of videos like you've seen on a big channel because this niche is already occpupied and can be oversaturated with similar content. Your main goal is finding the niche with lowest possible competition or make your content look more profitable than your competitor's content.
Most viewed and shareable content
The most popular videos on youtube are fun or music videos. When pepople find something that makes them laugh they usually share it with friends then they share with their friends and some day this video hits hundreds of thousands or even millions of views. Music videos are highly shareable too and may get even more views because you can enjoy your favourite song 10 times a day. But if you make some serious or educational videos its much harder to get a lot of views even if its are really good. Thats because everyone loves to have fun but much less people want to learn something and improve themselves. Serious videos do not emotionally involve people thats why this kind of content is not highly shareable. So if you want to get more subscribers do not rely too much on serious content and always try to make fun videos from time to time.
Building your audince
Its always very difficult to get new subscribers for a channel without significant subscribers base. For me it took 6 month to get 300 subs and 5 more month to reach 100.000 subs. Thats why trying to build an audience by yourself is not such a good idea and you'll need some assistace. If you have quality content its much better to find places that already have a big audience and are close to your topic. For example you are making Call of duty videos and there is a big forum where everyone posts different fun/interesting videos that they found on youtube or it can be a social media community. Thats the best places to promote your channel until you rich some significant size. I have a gaming channel with DOTA realated content and from my experience I've got 500-1500 views in 24 hours each time posting my new videos on a big DOTA forum and that helped me a lot at the start.
But promoting through big youtube channels is something different. There are 2 ways of doing it properly.
1. Paid promotion. Thats the easiest and the fastest way to build a big audience. A lot of russian youtube channels with 50.000+ subs offer to advetise something for money. For example like+comment from a channel with 80.000 subs will cost you about 20$. It is effective because all channel's actions are showed to their subscribers. Making a shoutout about your channel from a channel with 400.000 subs can cost you about 300-500$ but the link in description+annotation from the same channel will cost you about 100$. You may ask: does it really worth it? My answer is yes, absolutely and I have an example for you. There was a guy making prank videos and he had about 3k subs. He bought 2 advertisments on a 1.000.000 subs channel and it cost him 1000$. In a month he has 30k subs but for me it took 8 month without any paid promotion to reach 30k subs. So may be you'll like the idea to spend 1000$ to save you 7 month of hard work. The same thing works with social media communities. Its common for big communities to advertise something for money. For example a post about your channel form a facebook group with 100-200k followers will cost you about 30-40$.
2. The second way of gaining access to a bigger audience is making collaborations. If you want to colaborate with another channel of the same size you can easily offer them to make videos together and make mutual shoutouts. That will bring some new traffic to your channel but collaborating with bigger youtubers needs different approach. If you are able to produce quality content you can offer to make videos for bigger channels. You should explore competitors content to find out what can be done better and add something new and then offer a simple deal: you make a video for a big channel and they advertise your channel. Using this kind of approach i've managed to make a series of 10 videos with a 400k subs channel. By the time we started working together I had only 13k subs and it was a great deal for me.
Satisfying needs
Every time you want to make a new video you should think about current trends. For example if Half life 3 has just been released its the best time to make a video about it and you'll get a lot of views for sure. But if you want to make Wolfenstein 3D letsplay be prepared that you wont get much attention beacuse the demand on this kind of videos is really low. So if you want to get a lot of views and subs you should stick to relevant and popular topics. Your main goal is to make videos that could be useful and interesting for as many people as possbile. For example you're going to make a review of a Big mac. But the amount of attention to this topic is rather limited. So if you want to attract more attention you should make a review named "The Best burgers in McDonalds menu" because it will be useful for wider audience. And now we came to proper video naming. Proper video name should consist of some clear profit that a viewer will get from this video. Its even better when it sounds promising. For example if you are making a video with poker advices you shouldnt name it "Useful poker Tips" but instead it should be "How to win at poker?". The same goes to video previews. It should look clear and attractive even if its small. For example if you want to make preview to a video named "How to take care of your health" you can use a face of Doctor House in your preview to make sure that people will click on your video.
Quality content
There are several things that make your video seem professional adn quality. I wont be talking much about good camera and microphone becuase its a must. Plain video without any editing doesnt look very attractive. But if you add some simple graphics it will start looking much better. If you talk about something make visual help to your words. It can be a picture or text pointing something important or pop up tips that make something clear. Even some simple text animations will make your video look more impressive. You should make your own graphic interface for any kind of text and visual information appearing on the screen. Tv channels and big youtube channels always have their special visual decoration. If its possible try to prepare a text and a scenario for every video and record your voice seprately. Dont try to read everything in one long attempt but record it sentence by sentence until it will sound like you are a tv presenter. It may take a lot of time but thats the way to excel your competitors and have a good reputation. I can spend 20-30 hours working on a video that lasts 5-10 minutes because i belive that quality DOES matter. Thats why i was uploading only 4-5 videos per month on average and as you see it is enough to maintain channel's growth. You can grow faster uploading more often but do it only if you are sure that it doesnt hurt contents quality.
Now i told you about some strategies and techniques that I've used during my way to 100.000 subs and I think it would be useful for growing your channels too! Feel free to ask any questions you want and thank you for you attention!
