Is It Too Late To Start On YouTube?

[MarkRodriguez2012]

No. Youtube will keep going forward and changing here and there. You will then be saying "I started my channel before 'insert big Youtube change here'. Hell, I can say nowadays that I started my channel before Youtube Red and Youtube Live Streaming.

 

[EVO]

Its never too late.

 

[LaurenLSexton]

Thanks guys, these are really interesting replies. I guess the overall consensus is that it's never too late to start YouTube, which is always nice to hear!

I'm interested in seeing where YouTube goes in 2-3 years down the line, as in the last year or so with live streaming and YouTube Red it has already changed a lot.

 

[xingcat]

Every once in a while, you see a channel take off like crazy. Right now, I'm seeing that with a lot of drama channels and the unique ones like that 1,000 degree knife person. YouTube is a platform, not a business in itself (except to YouTube), so you make of it what you want.

I think the days of just plopping down in front of a camera and talking about whatever and suddenly becoming an overnight sensation may be over. That happens with early adopters of every platform. Some make it big just because they were so early. But otherwise, you can still create success using any platform, really.

 

[JesusGreen]

If anything now's one of the best times to get into it. People worry about over-saturation without really understanding how YouTube works. YouTube rewards videos for quality of SEO (search engine optimisation) combined with the quality of the views they get (i.e. do those views generate lots of watch time across the site). So it doesn't matter how saturated a particular search term is, even a YouTuber with zero subscribers can rank in the #1 spot on the first page if they know what they're doing. Besides, if something is over-saturated - the likelihood is that's because the size of the audience that particular niche draws is HUGE.

The recent changes to the YouTube algorithm that certain more popular YouTubers complained about are also actually the very things that smaller YouTubers have been asking for - the new algorithm makes it a lot easier to grow as a smaller channel, since your videos can be recommended on the home page and accumulate a ton more views than they would have through search alone. Like 50-70% of all the growth my channel has experienced was all thanks to the recent algorithm changes - if we'd been on the old algorithm still I'd maybe be at like 3000-4000 subscribers, rather than 10,500+

On top of that, YouTube is now the world's 2nd largest search engine. Only Google itself gets more traffic than YouTube. That means that almost as many people are asking questions and seeking out the things they want on YouTube as they are on Google. This means more people are using the site than ever before which means you can get a lot more traffic on your videos. This also means that even creators in the smallest most specific niches now have a sizeable audience and can grow and become successful.

Then of course you have the fact that since YouTube has had time to grow and there are plenty of people who've found success with it - there are now an abundance of creators who are willing to share their strategies and help you as a new YouTuber. This means you don't have to go into it blind, and can actually know what you're doing right from the beginning and grow a lot faster.

 

[LaurenLSexton]

The recent changes to the YouTube algorithm that certain more popular YouTubers complained about are also actually the very things that smaller YouTubers have been asking for - the new algorithm makes it a lot easier to grow as a smaller channel, since your videos can be recommended on the home page and accumulate a ton more views than they would have through search alone. Like 50-70% of all the growth my channel has experienced was all thanks to the recent algorithm changes - if we'd been on the old algorithm still I'd maybe be at like 3000-4000 subscribers, rather than 10,500+

Thank you JesusGreen! You're entire answer was very helpful. I did notice a lot of larger YouTubers were talking about the algorithm changes and how that is negatively affecting them. What are these changes? In what ways does it make it easier for a smaller channel to grow?

 

[JesusGreen]

Thank you JesusGreen! You're entire answer was very helpful. I did notice a lot of larger YouTubers were talking about the algorithm changes and how that is negatively affecting them. What are these changes? In what ways does it make it easier for a smaller channel to grow?

Well for one YouTube is pushing videos harder on the home page. If you look at someone's analytics from like 2015-early 2016 you'll see most of their views likely come from search and related videos. After the algorithm change, the highest number of views have started coming from "Browse Features" - specifically, the home page. When YouTube actively pushes a video on the home page it can get 10-20x as many views in an hour/day as it would get from being even #1 in search for a highly searched term.

For example, my most popular video, one of my lucid dreaming videos, typically gets 80-140 views an hour in total when it's not being recommended. All the times that it's popped up on peoples home pages though this amount of views shoots up ridiculously. Recently it's been as high as over 1000 views per hour. On the old algorithm that simply didn't happen. The only way you would likely see that much traffic was if you had a huge subscriber base, if the search term you ranked for was REALLY highly trafficked, or if you were advertising your video externally.

The other thing about this is these are typically high quality views with a high watch time, because YouTube only suggests your videos to people who seem to like similar content - which causes your entire channel to benefit and start ranking better in search/suggested - and can cause your other videos to start popping up on the home page too. It can really make your channel take off.

I'll show you a picture of my views chart since I started YouTube:

Ok so those other lines I drew on it.

The parts of the chart that I underlined in red = my videos aren't being recommended on the home page, and are just accumulating views from search, etc.
The sections I underlined in green = when my videos are being recommended on the home page.
The blue vertical line = roughly when the algorithm changed IIRC.

Also another reason the changes help smaller channels is because from what I've heard the algorithm cares a lot more about the views/watch time you're getting in relation to your subscriber base size. i.e. if you have a small subscriber base, you only need a small number of subscribers to watch your videos to rank well - vs someone with 10M subscribers, needs to be getting like 500k+ views on their videos in the first day or two or they'll rank poorly.

 

[OrbitGuy]

It's not too late but certain areas of YouTube, for example making Call of Duty videos are extremely saturated and if you can find your own area within the genre that you make videos on that's how you are going to stand out. You can still get seen but my success has still been finding things that other people weren't paying attention to or finding a type of informational video that people hadn't made on a specific topic yet. There are lots of areas of YouTube that have unmet demand and lots of new topics to make videos on that come up everyday and that's what makes it exciting to me.

 

[TheDutchTexan]

Oh man, it was saturated years ago. The majority of the YouTubers are looking for a quick buck, just slapping content on line to get the views because you can partner up with YouTube instantly. Don't get me wrong, I partnered up and monetized since day one. But I never "just" slapped content on-line. I always edited my stuff to the T, and will continue to do so. The problem is that YouTube rewards quantity over quality. I can't do the quantity thing anymore, I simply do not have the time. Even if I was a full time YouTuber I bet I could only muster a video or two a week. It takes a lot of time to edit a video right, at least the content I produce. Bigger YouTubers get away with worse editing due to their large following. A smaller YouTuber can't even get off the ground without good quality content.

 

[adams eats]

All I'll say is that all the time you're procrastinating over whether you should or shouldn't do it, someone is else IS doing it and will take your place. I've been at it 7 months, I didn't expect to have this many subscribers this early on. Yes I could get more but I don't know how yet lol.

If you make good videos and do what youtube wants (watch time) you'll grow. If you upload once a month film using a brick in vertical format and do nothing to promote your channel, guess what....you won't succeed. I get far more out of youtube in 7 months than I ever did in 6 years as a food blogger.