Hello everyone, short introduction, I'm UberDucky, I've written a few guides on this forum, you should check them out, they're a great read for any Youtube enthusiast.
- The small stay small, the big get bigger. A comprehensive guide to growth stages on Youtube.
- The Ultimate Reddit guide. Everything you need to know about how Reddit works and operates.
- How to grow a large gaming channel. A guide mainly focused around key points of growing a large gaming channel on Youtube.
- The smart dingus guide to Reddit. A guide focused specifically on achieving success with posts on Reddit.
But I digress, today I'm here to talk about how to grow a very new Youtube channel, if you've read my guide "The small stay small, the big get bigger." I'm currently referring to the growth stage called "the very beginning"
You can break this guide up into 3 segments, 0-100 subscribers, 100-1000, and 1000-selfsustainable stage
One thing that should be noted, is that luck IS a factor on Youtube, no matter what anyone says. For fast growth you need good original content which is widely appealing, however for the fastest growth you also need luck.
0-100 subscribers.
Now this is truthfully one of the hardest barriers to pass as a Youtuber, don't be fooled. My first 100 subscribers took more time than the next 1000. It's very hard to generate traffic to your channel. At this stage you can't even use Reddit to promote your videos, Reddit folk generally tend to upvote less when they see it's a video with no likes/comments/views. Also it's nice to have subscribers upvoting for you, regardless of how big the subreddit is.
Some people say you should share it on your personal facebook and so on, however to make this guide user-friendly towards everyone, let's go from the assumption that you don't wanna share your Youtube channel with your personal friends and so on. Where do you get traffic?
First off we have social media, and by that I don't mean your personal Facebook, but more so Facebook pages and Twitter users. Try to find a demographic, specifically for the type of content you make. For us gamers especially it's very easy, there's always theese very niche Fb/Twitter pages for just the type of content you make. You can Tweet at people/pages, and that's a very solid way of achieving traffic to your channel. I know for a fact that many Facebook pages also accept submissions.
Now why do I only mention Facebook/Twitter, well when it comes to social media there's no denying that they're the biggest, and the best. Networking extends far beyond this, and joining a Youtube community like yttalk is a great way to meet people and grow your channel. But I'm just mentioning theese as examples.
What else can factor into the super early growth? Well I HATE to say this, however how fast you grow also depends a lot on luck. Take 2 channels who both have great similar content, one of them may just have a video that ends up in many suggested video boxes, and in tern gives them more traffic. You can't always know which tags will be best for your video, however if you keep at it you should get there eventually.
I don't suggest promoting yourself in Youtube comment section, it drives more trolls and haters to your channel than actual followers.
100-1000 subscribers
Alright, if you're reading this it means you've made it past 100, good job buddy! you've effectively scaled past 87% of all Youtube channels. Let's forget about the fact that a lot of them are inactive or without videos, and celebrate. And I mean that in the most literal fashion, you need to make a video thanking everyone for 100 subscribers. Why? Because this will show your core subscribers how much you appreciate them, this actually also drives surprisingly many people to your channel, I don't know what it is about "thanks for ___ subscribers", but people just tend to watch them.
Now it's time to start your growth-train, and to start you off you need something big, something better, you NEED gateway video(s). Now what is a gateway video? I've mentioned them several times before, basically they are widely appealing, short, entertaining videos, that give people an insentive to subscribe. I'll use myself as an example, my "full ad/ap" series, is a SERIES of videos, which guarantee subscribers more content of the same style.
Now is the time when the smug commenter thinks to himself "well if we knew how to just make gateway videos, we would all be rolling in the dough sniffing crack off hookers in some foreign exotic country", however it's actually fairly simple. A gateway video, can be ANYTHING you make, as long as you make sure it fullfills theese 3 requirements:
1: Your video
MUST be entertaining, there's no other way to put it. If people watch a video and they don't like it, well then they're just moving on. I can't give any more advice to this step, since entertainment has so many forms, and how you want to embody that in your videos is your choice.
2: Your video must give people an insentive to subscribe, but fret not, this DOESN'T mean you have to make a series of videos that are super similar. If you can manage to give people a reason to subscribe, other than asking them to do so, then you are on your way to gateway growth.
3: keep it short, now this isn't a requirement as much as it is a guideline. There are plenty of longer gateway videos out there, however being straight to the point and not dragging things out, will generally please a larger audience.
Now this is the segment where I ask you to read my ultimate reddit guide before moving on, sorry I pulled one on you, however it is a necessity if you want to get growth on Reddit. Yes the easiest way to reach 1000 subscribers is naturally to generate more traffic, and from personal experience Reddit is one of the best places to do this. Read my guide, if you have any other questions to Reddit, feel free to post below.
When you think your gateway video(s) are ready, you throw thoose ******* on Reddit, and then make sure to link your subscribers to the Reddit thread. Most subreddits are ok with this, as long as you don't ask them to upvote. I usually type it in a comment, and make sure to mention that "for people who don't have g+, you can comment on Reddit, I'll be replying to comments both here and there". Eventually your subscribers will know that this sentence actually means "upvote this I love you all".
With your clever and unique videos, your superior knowledge on gateway videos, and your absolute fantastic Reddit skillz, you should be on your way to 1000!.
1000-selfsustainable stage
now most of thoose who read "the small stay small, the big get bigger" are carving their eyes out and asking "why did we skip the medium stage", but fret not, cause we won't. Your goal from 1000 subscribers, is basically to reach a point where your channel will grow on it's own without you promoting it. And by grow, I mean visible growth in between each video.
In my other guide I wrote about the medium stage, however from this point on there's really only so much advice I can give you. Make sure you brand your channel so it looks sweet and unique, make sure to do your best when making videos. Don't change your content too much too quickly, this can cause people to lose interest.
And the most powerful sentence, that has helped me, and I'm sure it will help any Youtuber out there:
"Make everything better than the previous". It's honestly the best advice I think one can give, and even if you try and fail, that doesn't matter. Everyone has their high's and their lows, and even though I'd like to think that I've followed this, I have plenty of old videos which are better than my latest videos. But if you constantly use this sentence to see what you can improve, you WILL improve, and that will help your growth.
The smug Youtuber will look at a channel that's bigger than his/hers, and say "My content is better, this guy/gal is so lucky that he/she is so big".
The smart Youtuber will look at a channel that's bigger than his/hers, and say "Wow this channel sure has a lot of followers, instead of looking at what I do better than them, let me look at what they do better than me, and learn from that"
That concludes my guide on early growth on Youtube, if you have any questions or comments I'd love to hear them.
Really great read man! Ps... Great channel!
