We just hit 1000 subscribers! Here's what we've learned.

Eric Bieller

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We started our YouTube channel around 8 months ago and I'm happy to say we've just reached 1000 subscribers!

We know that in the grand scheme of YouTube, this is peanuts, but to a lot of us just starting out, 1000 is that first huge milestone we're all working towards. So I wanted to share what I've learned while gaining these subscribers and, hopefully, give you some tips to grow your channel!

I'm going to try and focus on the most actionable stuff that goes beyond "have a great title" and "post your videos everywhere". Stuff that you can start doing right now to increase your YouTube subs.

So here's what we've learned!

SEO is Everything

The first thing you have to realize is that SEO is cumulative. You won't see overnight results here. You've got to keep pounding away and looking at what works. Eventually, videos will start to be suggested to viewers by YouTube. That's when the snowball starts. The more it's suggested, the more views it gets, the more it shows up in search results, and the more subs you gain.

Here are some tips that can help with SEO:

- Nail the title. Before you decide on a title, use the YouTube search bar as inspiration:


- Nail the thumbnail. An interesting thumbnail along with a solid title is the key. It should convey what the video is about without being hard to see what's happening in it or to read the text on it. It should also compliment the title, basically it's there to amplify it and give a little peek into the video.

- Nail the keywords. Whatever keywords you use in your title, these should be present in the first couple lines of your description as well. They should also be present in your tags section. This is too easy to get right so don't mess this part up!

Make sure you're regularly checking your analytics. Check on Traffic Sources so see which videos are getting views from youtube search and suggested videos. This is how you know what's working.



Always be improving!

I think it's easy for new YouTube creators to fall into the trap of creating the same type of content over and over. If you post a video and it hasn't gotten any interest, don't be afraid to try something else! The more things you try, the more likely you are to find something that's working. And always be looking at analytics to see what's performing well.

When we started, we were just making daily vlogs of our travels. Since then we've tried a bunch of stuff. We've made a food videos, we've incorporated our drone, we've experimented with video length, we've upgraded our equipment, we've tried new editing techniques and camera angles.

Overall our content has become a lot more solid because of all this experimentation!

And if you see another YouTuber doing something interesting in their videos, don't be afraid to try it yourself! We started by just doing a lot of the things we saw benbrown and funforlouis doing. But before long, our own style emerged. Now I don't think you'd look at our vlog and think to compare it to either of them!

Use other networks to grow your subscribers

When you're first tarting out, you might not have much of a network to draw from. But that's okay! Like your YouTube audience, you have to grow those audiences too.

We've been active on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook from the beginning. We've been able to drive hundreds of views to our channel, and also hundreds of followers to those other networks from our channel.

You can see how it's a bit of a self-fulfilling thing. The more you have on network A, the more you can drive to network B, and vice-versa and so on.

Start a blog

We've been blogging from the beginning and it's been a constant source of YouTube views! Whether your content is centered around makeup, gaming, toys, travel, or anything else, you should be writing about it.

You can use Medium, Wordpress, Tumblr, Squarespace, Ghost, etc. and be up and running with a new blog in minutes. There's seriously no excuse not to have one!

SEO is actually pretty easy on a blog. Just make sure you're including the most relevant keywords and content that's actually useful. Then you've just got to stick with it and you'll gain a constant stream of views from search traffic alone.

Since embeds are also important to YouTube, we embed every vlog on our website and aggregate it to a separate page on our website. This gives us constant keyword juice. In fact, we're almost to page 2 in google for the search "travel vlog"!

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It's been a crazy ride so far, but we're just getting started! I'm still learning myself (and always will be), but I do hope these tips help. Let me know if you have any questions on these or if you have any tips of your own that you think are worth including.

Thanks for reading and happy youtubing!
 

PositivelyBrainwashed

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Congratz. I think it's finally time to start blogging. I think it's the next logical step for me and this post gave me that extra motivation.
 
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Tabbes

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Congrats, I hope you'll keep going strong! This was also super helpful, thanks for sharing.
 

HereBeBarr

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Nice to see other travel vloggers on here. I've already subbed to your channel on an older video I saw!
 

Eric Bieller

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Congratz. I think it's finally time to start blogging. I think it's the next logical step for me and this post gave me that extra motivation.
Absolutely! It's tough to start, but before you know it you'll have a ton of articles and be in the swing of things!
 

HereBeBarr

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Eric,

Have you guys seen this channel : youtube.com/c/thewayaway. You guys are so similar! They're my friends from one of my facebook groups. I told them you guys are dopplegangers!
 
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Eric Bieller

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Eric,

Have you guys seen this channel : youtube.com/c/thewayaway. You guys are so similar! They're my friends from one of my facebook groups. I told them you guys are dopplegangers!
Yeah, we've been internet friends with them since they beginning :D Definitely see the parallels hah!