I recently hit 100,000 subscribers on my channel and it looks like YouTube have audited and confirmed the achievement. - I have just noticed this message in my dashboard:
So I filled in all the details and I'll be getting the silver play button in 6-12 weeks.
It took me 2 years to reach this milestone. Here's the rough timeline for milestones on the way. Hopefully, this will inspire a few of you that it is definitely possible to grow a YouTube channel:
0-1000 subs: 4 months
1000 - 10,000 subs: +6 months
10,000 - 25,000 subs: +3 months
25,000 - 50,000 subs: +3 months
50,000 - 100,000 subs: +8 months
I have also built up a Twitter following of 21,000 followers (no follow4follow - I only follow 7 people)
My channel is private - I don't promote, so I'm not going to link to my channel but here is some random advice:
-Patience is key. You need a long-term plan. It's a marathon, not a sprint. If you're looking for quick success, then forget YouTube but your channels should be constantly growing.
-Don't overpromote. In fact, apart from the first 2 months, I have done ZERO promotion (apart from to my own twitter followers - see below)
- Content is king. You need to be able to objectively look at your own content and compare it objectively to the big channels in your niche. Most people overestimate the quality of their own content and most reviews from others aren't particularly helpful.
-Regular uploads are important.
-Intros are bad.
-Outros are good.
-Twitter is good, but make sure you
add value. If all you are doing on twitter is promoting your YT channel, then you aren't giving people a reason to follow you on Twitter. I like to call this the 90/10 rule. 90% non-promotional tweets for 10% promotional. It's slow, very slow at first, but if you offer awesome value, it picks up. In the beginning, I was getting 3 followers per week with this strategy. Now 2 years later, I get 50 new followers per day and all my tweets get loads of retweets and favourites which gets them pinned to the top of the hashtag pages. (See rule number one about patience - Forget twitter bots and follow4follow)
-Try to reply to all comments.
- Your channel should have some sort of a USP (unique selling point) something that makes it different from all the others in your niche. Otherwise, why would anyone sub to you over a bigger channel who has the exact same content?! An analogy: If your town has 10 pizza restaurants and 3 of them are always busy (the pioneers) but the other 7 are always half-empty, then should you open a pizza restaurant or a sushi restaurant?! Think about it. Even if less people like sushi compared to pizza, the pizza market is clearly saturated whereas your sushi restaurant would have no competition. It doesn't matter if you make fantastic pizzas - You're not going to succeed. But if you really really wanted to open a pizza restaurant, you should open a "vegetarian-only" pizza restaurant and make that your USP.... And if someone walks through the door and asks for a meat pizza, you politely refuse and say you only do vegetarian pizzas. (You have to define your niche and stick to it.)
Good luck everyone!