So how do the big youtubers get so big?

Zentraxius

Zentraxius

Member
For example I had this kind of.. silly thought, that if you consistently put out decent videos and were worth watching for long enough, you would simply gather viewers and subscribers and a fan base through time, the fact most of the big youtubers seem to be up for 4-5+ years seems to attest to that KIND of, but it still doesn't explain their insane growth rates. Markiplier for instance in his first 8 MONTHS had 50,000 subscribers, something that, at my current rate, will take 4-5 years. He mentioned it was due to advice from one person but I can't seem to find that advice anywhere. He also mentioned he spent 12 hours a day doing youtube and I'm not sure how. After about 20 mins of recording(usually re-shooting to get better footage) and maybe 30-40 mins of editing, then the 20-30 mins of posting around trying to advertise the channel(Reddit/Twitter/FB/etc) and then trying to comment/review other peoples activity, I'm maybe 2 hours in and I don't know what's left to do!

Big youtubers got big through time, but it was more than that, somehow they got tons of traffic so much faster than other channels when starting up and I just feel like I'm doing it wrong. If I can spend another 6-8 hours working my a** off daily to get my channel to improve and grow faster then I'll do it in a heartbeat, I just don't know what to do or how to do it! I could put out more than 2 videos a day but I feel like that would be counterproductive, I could try spending a bit more time editing in maybe sound effects or something but I don't know if it would be that decent. I'm working on custom avatars/channel banners for my channel but there's still something missing, I feel like it's obvious and I'm just not getting it.

Does anyone have any ideas? I know that in the end time is going to be my best bet, but I don't want to feel like I'm not using my time properly, I don't want to just upload the video and call it a day, I want to interact, I want to promote, grow, and improve, I just don't know how or where to start. I know I won't be some 50k in 8 months legend, but to be frank 10k in a year was kind of my goal, that I'm now realizing is very unrealistic but I figure shoot for the stars you know?

I keep thinking, maybe it's collabs, advertisement, shout outs, or something, but there's.. like.. a missing link or something. Anyways if anyone has any ideas as to what I can spend excessive amounts of time on daily to improve I'd appreciate it, meanwhile I'm going to keep researching and see if I can find something that I'm missing.
 
YouTube gives smaller channels a disadvantage. I feel like Mark probably started when there wasn't much famous gamera around. You know? So he could grow faster. Now, there's millions of gaming channels. You have to try and stand out on your own, and be different. Everything's been done already, that's the draw back. I hate it honestly, it makes me so disappointed and sometimes I do just want to give up, but I know I can't. You have to advertise honestly, that's the only way I know how.
 
I'm just not sure how or where to advertise, it feels like you either get lucky and go viral/get a shoutout/pay for some form of advertisement, or you are completely SoL, and yeah I do notice that, back when mark/pewdiepie/jack started there wasn't nearly as much competition, but in their wake hundreds of thousands have sprung up and at this point I don't honestly see a way out. A friend of mine had been doing this for 2 years and he's approaching 50k subs now, and he's got a unique idea, is infinitely more attractive than me, has a much better camera/voice and is funny and he does content that's far more interesting than Overwatch gameplay episode 9001.

It really feels like, as a gaming channel, unless you get some sort of lucky spark or fork over hand fulls of cash to get an ad/spotlight, it doesn't matter how much work you do or how long you do it, you simply won't get anywhere because people won't notice you. I genuinely don't know what else I can do other than start spamming my channel everywhere which would have negative results at best. I know I can clean up my editing a bit but that's not much. Even if I could find people to collab with, at 7 subs they'd probably have few as well and frankly I don't see 2 people with less than 10 subs collabing together actually achieving anything.

I have an idea for a video, idk if I'd call it viral, but I can't find one like it on youtube, if that doesn't work out then I may just be SoL, the days of being able to grow youtube into a career feels like they're gone though. I'm going to keep trying my 2 uploads a day, and hopefully polish up my editing a bit and try getting some custom art and a channel trailer and go from there. I'll try to at least go 3 months and see where I'm at there. Still hurts to spend 2 hours on a video to see that under 5 people have watched it, and the watch retention was like 7%
 
You are in a pond with many fish that look alike. You are going to have to accept the fact that YouTube is a tough place to be if you are overly concerned with views / subscribers (lets keep money out of this one, although many start ups want to make oodles of money if they are overly concerned with the previous two as well). You can post on reddit and other places all you want, rest assured that the rest of YouTube hopefuls are sharing their content there as well so you won't stand out.

It is my opinion that there are two ways to grow big and one reality check in 3rd place.

1. You have an infectious personality. People can't get enough of your videos because of the way you are. This is something you either have or don't have. You can't fake it. These type of YouTubers start out in their first year, gain a few hundred or even thousand subscribers in the first weeks and then take off after a big YouTuber takes notice and gives them a shout-out. This is not something you can ask for, it is something earned. You will know if this is you early on your YouTube journey. If you don't hit it big within the first 6 months? You are not it.

2. You are consistently putting out A+ list quality content and grow slowly over time, and then all of a sudden you start taking off. Either because of a shout-out by a big YouTuber or sharing on a well known site. The main thing is your content has to be likable... if people browse your content and start to find stuff they don't like (aka, the video shared was a one trick pony) they will not subscribe. Enjoy the boost of views though!

And then there is where most YouTubers, including myself land.

3. You have been at it for a year, or longer. You have amassed a few hundred or a few thousand subscribers. The previous #2 mentioned is always a possibility, but the longer you are at it the more likely it is that you will never become big. You do not have the personality people are looking for, and as such you will not hit 100K or even 10K. As mentioned, I am in that group. Been doing it for close to 3 years, and am at 2.9K subscribers. 100K? Very much impossible. 10K? realm of possibilities, probably 2-3 years from now. I am not a pessimist mind you, I am a realist.

The fact that I have been doing it for 3 years should probably already make you notice that I am indeed doing it for other reasons than subscribers / views and YouTube cash. I do it for fun. The creative process is awesome, and what views and comments I do get on my videos I appreciate a lot. So OK, views do matter to a point as they generate comments. They matter to the point that I can continue the status quo with the viewership I have, and possibly expand on that in times to come. I do gain subscribers, to the tone of about 100 a month. Views I gain about 20-40K in a month. Sometimes I do way better, and sometimes it goes down the drain. It is that YouTube life. All I know is that I am getting a steady stream of comments and interactions, and that is all I care about. Could #2 happen? Sure, but I am not chasing that goal. The longer you chase a seemingly impossible goal the more disgruntled you get. And that negativity spills into your content. Just let it happen, and if it doesn't? No skin of your teeth because you are having a ball!
 
Google Markipliers tips for Youtube. He goes in to the fact that to become big on Youtube you have to treat it like a business. It is not 12 hours a day of just doing videos, it is research, self promotion, learning how to make your business succeed etc. not just he records for 12 hours. Youtube can be a business, but with that you have to realise most businesses fail within the first year, some do not make money for years. If you treat it as something to have fun with like the Dutch Texan says, then you can never fail as long as you are having fun. Yours is the path to choose.
 
Well I don't consider my personality to be even remotely.. pleasant, and considering my extreme lack of talent with editing and my short attention span I think my videos quality will be capped at B-B+ unless I get my own video editor, which, would only be possible if I made enough off youtube to pay for one.

As far as the hours of business/self promotion, I know jack about business and have zero talent in it or experience or education, I don't even know where to look. I have no idea what to do next or where I'm supposed to go towards here. I feel like I'm standing in a field, and I need to go somewhere, but I have no idea which direction to go, or how far to go. Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be any detailed direction out there, other than tips/advice/etc. Proper tagging in your videos may have been what helped Markiplier get 50k subs in 8 months, but there's tens of thousands as many gamer channels now as there was when he started. So even if I tag perfectly, my little 20-50 view Overwatch video is just not going to show up in the search results, doesn't show up, doesn't get recognized, doesn't go anywhere.

Until something can just stick out to attract notice/attention to my channel, I honestly don't expect to get anywhere. Doesn't matter how much fuel/tinder you have if there's nothing to start a spark with. All I can do now is continue to record until I get more comfortable/casual on camera so I can be myself, and work on getting the bare basics. I really need to put more editing into my videos, right now I have them setup to need basically

(Record vis XSplit -> Load into Lightworks -> Make bare minimum edits(cut out extra long silence/repeated failures, and of course any language/comments/scenes that are NOT appropriate for my viewers -> Render(to take size from 900mb to 350-400mb) -> Upload to Youtube) which while sounding fancy is usually half an hour of editing or less per video, I really should try and bump that up to an hour or even 2, add in sound effects, images, etc. I just don't know how and have been putting off learning it. But I figure with a solid channel art and an avatar design, and at least solid B+ video quality, consistently for a few months, then I can rightfully complain. But as long as I'm half assing things and still on my first week in youtube, I guess I can't complain too much.

A thought I had, was, once my channel was fully setup(channel art/with a good 30-45s or so channel trailer, got a theme in mind, and a few months of videos to sit on) was to try and check in with AdWords and see how much attention I can get with 300$ or so. If, after a few months after that I'm still nowhere then I'll probably give up. Can't know until you try, and I mean 110% try, big youtubers may have gotten lucky, but I can't deny Markiplier and JackSepticEye have far better video editing quality than I do. Then again having a professional editor on hire will do that, but it is still the bar/standard I need to at least try and meet.

Frankly I don't think new gaming channels will get anywhere, and the chances of new people actually being able to make careers out of youtube are fairly small(at least gaming channels). My chances, as well, are most likely nonexistent, but I won't be satisfied until I've tried and failed. I don't want any what-ifs lying around.
 
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Focus on your content, refine refine refine. My goal with my channel is to put out the best content I can so people looking at my channel will think I have a million subs just to realize I don't. This gives the channel even more value. The reason some people don't sub to small channels like ours is because of the production quality is not the same. Some people don't want to be there for the growing pains, they want to log into Youtube and be amazed.

Make a checklist for different parts of your channel at which you want to improve and stick to it. My goal for the last two months is how to make better thumbnails so I started doing research and improved. Youtube channels are like compounding interest the more subs you have and the longer you're at it the larger you will grow. I went from getting subs every other day to every day to 10 a day.

Main point is keep at it and refine refine refine. Good luck
 
Some very good points by @TheDutchTexan, there's an element of being realistic, the longer you go without enough growth the smaller your odds of success become (though not impossible). Some of the bigger YouTubes got big because the nature of YouTube was different a few years ago, this is a huge factor. Some got big through manipulating algorithms, some got big though association with bigger youtubers. If you make good content and you market well, this will increase your odds massively. But nothing is guaranteed.We're fortunate that the type of content we makes is quite different and hasn't been saturated and we spend a lot of time on each episode, but i'm under no illusion that we'll blow up, I'll just do everything in my power to increase my chances, and call it a day if I feel the time is right :)
 
Whenever people compare their success to Markiplier, they're almost always left with disappointment. There is something that Markiplier has that many people cannot compare to, and that is CHARISMA. Unfortunately, charisma is often innate and intangible and not something you can just learn or refine. Lots of people call it the "it" factor. Not having it (or not as strong of a charisma as Mark), however, does not mean that your channel is doomed and will never become successful. You just have to put in more work on improving all the other tangible factors as well as finding a niche that works for you. Like many other have said, gaming channels are extremely common and to be successful, you will need to treat it as a business. Put the work in to improve and do all you can to find something that you can provide value greater than anyone else within the genre. Sure, it might be hard to find, but your goal and road to success is to find it and run with it.

Another good point is to take your mind off of the numbers for a while, especially in the beginning. The more you concern yourself over the rate of growth of your channel, the more you lend yourself to stress over something out of your control. Place your happiness and interest in something that YOU can control, and that is creating your content. Be happy with what you create and be happy that you can share it with people.
 
I feel like gateway videos can be very important for getting some traction, although it's not exactly easy to figure out what videos will kickstart a channel. Sometimes by looking at a person's channel and sorting the videos by their most popular, you can see what content helped them to stand out.
Obviously there's a lot more to it than that but having a popular video that keeps popping up in people's suggestions certainly helps to be discovered.
 
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