Introduction:
Hello everyone I'm UberDanger, I've done a few guides and AMA's on this forum, but enough about that. Today I'm gonna talk from personal experience, on how to grow a big gaming channel. SOME of theese tips can be applied to other kinds of videos, but this guide is mainly made for gaming channels. If you think I'm just bullshitting that's fine by me, but theese are some of the things that has worked for me, and I hope they can help you as well.
Focus points:
Now there are 3 main focus points when it comes to growing a gaming channel
Content, Distribution, and closing the deal.
Content:
Content is paramont, is a phrase I like to throw around a lot, basically what it means it, if your content isn't widely appealing, you will have a hard time growing your channel. That works both ways. There are plenty of sites like Reddit or Twitter where you can get HUGE traffic to your videos, but that won't be possible if you don't have the content needed.
People often talk about improving their tags, or sharing their videos more, or trying to get shoutouts from big Youruber's, however if there's one thing that 9/10 of theese people don't have it's good content.
Gateway videos are probably my biggest topic when it comes to content, basically what a gateway video is, is a widely appealing, relatively short video, which will make people subscribe. I don't want to use myself as an example, so I have decided to use @
Wreckless Eating instead, all their videos are of the same type, so if someone sees one of them, they will know that there are more content of the same type. They also know that there will be RELEASED more content, and possibly better content.
Gateway videos lead to exponential growth, and my easiest way of explaining that, is that growth leads to more growth, if a video has 10,000 views, and you make more of the same style, suddenly the first will hit 100,000. I was flabbergasted when I looked at my videos tab, and saw some of my videos lying at 400,000 views, when just a few months ago I got my first ever 100k views on a video.
Gateway videos aren't super specific, but you need to if you want fast growth, and you want fast growth.
Distribution:
Basically however you get your content to the eyes of the viewers, will you chose to share it with your small friends on Facebook? Or will you hit that frontpage on r/gaming and get 2 million views in less than a day. Will you make gateway videos with a high view to sub ratio, or will you upload a let's play which gets you a low amount of subscribers. Let's face it, let's plays are VERY bad for growing gaming channels, and frankly it's not even remotely original to do let's plays anymore.
As a viewer, why should I watch your content, when I have a guaranteed stream of content from [insert 3 million subscriber Youtuber here]. My best tip is to use Reddit/Facebook/Twitter, and I mean not to just post it on your own social media account with no followers, I mean that you should get other big pages to post it. On Reddit try to get featured on a large subreddit, I happen to be so lucky that r/leagueoflegends happens to be the 36th largest subreddit out of them all. I know that r/gaming loves GTA at the moment, and also videos about the new consoles/steam box.
I KNOW that there's a facebook/twitter page for the games that you play, try to submit/tweet it to them, it can't hurt to try. When it comes to distribution I also mean how you decide to release your content, if you release it across 4 different channels it won't get you a consistent following, or if your content changes all the time it won't either. Try to be professional, and find your own style to share with your subscribers.
Closing the deal:
Theese are all the smaller tips you can use to improve your already great gaming channel, first of all I need to mention branding, and I don't just mean thumbnails and such, I mean branding you as an internet persona. Look at my channel for example, my duck is my branding, it's a kind of character I also use when I respond to comments, and such. My subscribers are called "the duck army" and it's just another layer to a great relationship to have with your subscribers.
Another thing to consider is audio/video quality, and naturally collaborating with other people in the same area as you.
Ending words:
I didn't have a lot of time to write this guide, but a lot of people have requested it, so I tried to get it done. If you have any questions feel free to ask them below.
