Is it hard to gain subscribers?

[ItsJaime]

How long does it take when you start with zero subscribers to build your channel? How frequent do you need to post?

 

[Vedstedsen]

There is wayyy too many variables to estimate how long it takes to grow.
Quality, upload schedule, frequence of uploads, market saturation and so forth.

Growth will come should you always strive to get better and if you are patient enough.

tldr; no one knows.

 

[Illuminated Nerd]

Short Answer: Yes.

Longer Answer: Depending on the competition of your niche, your post frequency, your SEO/tag Kung Fu, your titles, and your X-factor, the reality is that it's different for everyone. All of those translate into views, views translate into subscribers.

Here are my numbers if it helps:
First video: Nov 14th
Post frequency: once a week, sometimes an extra.
Total videos now: 16
Total Channel Views: 102k
Subscribers: 440

I know some at 150 subs that have been at it a year, and I know a rare few that got 10k, even 100k in their first year. That's rare though.

I can say with some certainty that the first 100 subs are the hardest, then it gets a little easier with each milestone if you put the hard work.

 

[Crown]

Moved to the strategy / technique forum.

This is a very general question and there are no hard and fast rules about rate of growth. For the upload frequency, yes I'd say it's very important to try to keep to a schedule. At least once a week is a good target IMHO.

 

[CrazFrank]

100 subs literally took me 1 full year. It all depends... now i get 200 per month.

 

[GeekOvision]

100 subs literally took me 1 full year. It all depends... now i get 200 per month.

And I haven't gotten half way to 100 in a whole 10 months. Just goes to show how it is REALLY damn hard to put your finger on the growth of a channel and how easy/hard it is for you to gain subs/views.

 

[chubbybots]

I would say consistency is the one key thing that got me pass that 100 sub mark. I wasn't that consistent into youtube a couple of months back but when i made it a point to post at least 3 times a week, the subs just kept coming If ppl know you are consistently posting most likely they will sub to keep coming back for more.

 

[Darren Taylor]

I have been on YouTube for little over 5 months and have 316 subs right now. My first 100 were incredibly painful. I know many people ask their friends, family and neighbours dog to subscribe to get their firs 100, but I wanted to void that, as I have a very specific target audience.

I upload twice a week at minimum but I realise that if I am more frequent at uploading I get more subs, but time wise, I struggle, so I need to optimise my workflow and get better (less outtakes).

Your growth will depend on a ton of factors but the most important lesson is to keep showing up and getting a little better every time you do

 

[WonderWeirdo]

Before I started my current channel, I was running one with german videos. And even though the international market is way bigger, the german channel grew so much faster. This can have so many reasons, it's impossible to clearly say if it's hard or not.

 

[Brandt Prescott]

It's a learning curve. There are a ton of factors that go into it. In the beginning, you have to find as many outlets as you can to share it in to start getting views to rank in the youtube algorithm. There are a lot of unknowns and seeing what works for you. The SEO score is a huge deal. Type as many tags as you can that relate to the video. That's the only way people will find your video. Making them specific is a good thing too. The broad tags like "funny" won't help because bigger youtubers have a stake on those. Youtube ranks these videos based on views. So the goal would be to find something more specific. It may mean that less people search that term, but ultimately more of those views would lead to your video since not as many people would use that tag.