COMPLETE GUIDE To Starting A Successful YouTube Channel

you're looking to start a youtube channel today is a mega master class telling you how to start a youtube channel right now how to beat the algorithm once you've got started and how to make money from this platform from day one you're starting a youtube channel in 2022 or any time for that matter let's dive into it obvious things to get you started you'll need something to record your videos on you can record it on a simple as a smartphone you'll be amazed the audio quality the video quality that you get from most smartphones these days even phones that happen to be four five six years old are still very good i started my youtube career on a crappy little webcam right and a compact camera at the end of the day what you need is a way to record your videos and in your first few videos that you're getting started with this is how you'd learn how it feels and where to record and where to prop it so have a look at either your smartphone something that you may even be watching this video with a webcam i've got a dslr camera which cost me around about 400 pounds these are the things that will catch the video and the audio and then you need to have a look at editing software now i use adobe premiere pro there's a link in the description down below and that cost me around about 30-40 pounds per month but there are free software's out there as well you're having a look at davinci and other blackmagic softwares or you can simply google free video editing software some have it on their iphone imovie i started with video movie maker many many years ago so there are video editing suites out there that are free learn those editing tools plow your knowledge into it go out and watch videos on filmora and stuff like that and you can get better at editing but first of all all you need to do is make find a way to make the videos in the first place because you may have all of the equipment in the world and you may be going oh i can't do it until i bite no no no the sooner you start recording the sooner you can start learning and the sooner you can upgrade later it doesn't matter if you don't have a 4 000 million dollar camera right now because that's useless for you right now if you don't know how to use it start with a smartphone upgrade start with a compact camera that you may have and upgrade from there later when you're better at what you can do now you've got all your basic equipment it's time to start testing yourself you're already excited you've got the idea of a channel in your brain but this is the time for you to start airing that out you have the advantage right now that nobody knows who your channel is and nobody knows how you interact with the channel and you have the advantage here that you don't know how you interact with your channel or your camera and you don't know what videos you want to make necessarily so this is your chance to make five ten videos to shake out those ideas to understand the involvement that it needs to be because you might commit yourself to the idea of yes i'm starting a youtube channel and then you realize two to three videos in that it's really hard work it's not as easy as you think it is to edit or to change or to get the lighting or the audio off the first five to ten videos is you shaking out those cobwebs you learning the bare minimum basics of understanding how this works make your videos see how it goes see how it flows learn that lesson publish them thumbnail them title them add your description have a look at tags these are the things that you need to get into your muscle memory to learn because you'll be doing this a lot over the time i've easily done three four five thousand videos on the internet over the course of my eight nine year existence and i'll be honest i've got much better at the thumbnails now than i ever was two three five six years ago first of all this is the best time for you to experiment maybe you thought you'd like gaming but you changed your mind and you want to vlog and then you actually want to do how to's now you want to do head down stuff so you can have a look at the table with your hands these are the videos that helps you understand what you truly want to do because if you decide in your head to commit i'm always going to do diy it's only ever going to be downward facing i'm only ever going to show my hands and never my face and then you do seven videos and then you launch into the channel and then three months later you are fed up of the faffing around that's time that could have been dedicated to your project better so have a look at this open-mindedly jump in make 10 ish videos see how you feel experiment is is it best that you're doing voice over work is it best that you're doing vlogging work i use a studio some people vlog outside some like to use whiteboards some people don't show their face at all these are the things that you can experiment with at these stages and learn how you feel comfortable with it okay so you've tested yourself you've made those videos you generally understand where to put a camera and what to now is the time for you to theme your content what in your heart is the thing that you could talk about for hours and hours and hours days weeks months the thing that your friends just wish you would shut up about that could be a great entry into what your youtube videos could be about just because your friends want you to shut up doesn't mean that other people that are into wrestling or knitting or cooking or pokemon or blockchain people are out there that have the same passion as you and they're just waiting for someone to be passionate about it on camera that's all youtubers are people that were passionate enough to turn on a camera now that you've knocked out 10 videos you know how to turn on a camera and how to talk to it that's brilliant now you need to be slightly more specific you can't just be i love all the games in the world because yes you're going to be competing with every gamer in the world there's a channel out there that is solely dedicated to zelda it's called 100 zelda and it talks about only zelda the law of zelda the games of zelda the gameplays of zelda everybody knows that they are the expert of that field hopefully when you're looking for a youtube tip and trick you come to me or other people within the youtube tricks and tip space you know that that's what their channel is dedicated to so if you drill down two or three levels in right not just gaming but a specific game not just gaming but a specific style then you can learn do you want to be educational are you teaching people or do you want to be entertaining do you want to make them laugh with you as you fail at playing fortnite or do you want to put them together have them laugh while they learn about the best guns or the best weapons or the best play style or how to find x y and z and zelda and fortnite and destiny that's the edutainment model the entertaining educator or maybe there isn't something burning but you do have a life skill maybe you are a doctor and you want to teach people medical terminology maybe you are a youtube certified expert and you want to teach people how to grow a platform or educate them on affiliate marketing or anything like that maybe you're a taxi driver and you need to teach people what's the best car and what's the best mileage and how to get a license maybe you're a paramedic maybe you're a dentist maybe you're the best sandwich maker in the world maybe you've got a huge list of recipes that your mum left you whatever it needs to be whatever your skill is that could be an entry into your new platform your new videos the passion that could fuel you okay so you've got it locked in your head you know what you're going to do you understand what it needs to look like you've researched your thumbnails you've had a look at your channel banner you've looked at your opposition to see what they're doing in that space you've realized if you're doing education or entertainment and maybe you want to distill that into a life skill that you have that you can teach people or that you can lean upon now it's time to figure out the schedule that you are able to do a ball to do that's the most important thing here you might want to pump out daily content you might think that you could put two to three videos out a day and when you first start and you're full of beans and piss and vinegar you might have that energy but are you gonna have that energy in three months time six months time twelve months time nine years on a platform you really need to see how this fits into your life you may be able to record a load of videos over your six weeks holiday or taking some time off of work and you want to put out one two a week but say you recorded five videos and you want about three a week and then that's two in a bit weeks worth of content and you struggle on the second week to get another five videos recorded now you're struggling but if you recorded five videos and put out one a week you've got five weeks to record more content so think of the schedule it's always possible to upscale at any point and it looks a little bit awkward if you down scale if you've recorded five videos and thrown them all up and then you disappear for a month that's a bit awkward on your audience so consider a schedule that you can consistently deliver that you can honestly promote with your audience and give it to them on a regular basis now you just crank out that content you get used to the recording process whether you batch record them whether you record them on a monday and edit them on a tuesday and upload them on a wednesday whatever process you feel fits into your life because some of you may be at school and may have that additional leeway some of you may be at university and not even be bothering to do the course some people may have a part-time job and therefore they can record the rest of the time whatever fits around your life or your kids and your family or your ailments or whatever it needs to be figure out the schedule figure out a way to crank this out and do this now for the next three months or so now is the time to hone your skill when everybody starts on youtube their videos are frankly turds steaming maybe gold encrusted in some cases but steaming piles of turd now this is when you hone that skill and you polish that turd but over time you get better look back over your last 20 30 videos more if you've got them and see what worked see what did really well the thumbnails work well did the topic work well with the lighting better this is your chance to have a look and honestly criticize what you can do and then tweak it did it need more lighting did you angle it wrong is the sound quality bad and you might know a new microphone or this is your chance to go back at what worked and make it better and have a look at the things that didn't work and get rid of them or improve them if you really want to bring them forward have a look at what worked was there a theme is there something that you can clearly see that when i do how to's that works but when i do skydiving it doesn't or when i do stuff outside it works better than when i'm sat in doors doing nothing whatever it needs to be find patterns and see if you can replicate those find something that works and see if you can continue to reproduce that and push yourself higher because if you find you out your 30 videos three of them really do work really well and then you replicate that formula there's a chance that those will carry you forward get you more views get you more subscribers gross your channel a little bit more and then you can go back and once again reevaluate those you can polish that turd until it's a shiny diamond so you've polished the content it's getting better and better by every video every time you look back and you see what's working and you see is that lighting okay is that sound okay did they prefer specific video styles once you start to stop polishing your work now is the time to go out into the world and find the additional audience this is the start of the jet fuel into the rocket if you like it there will be other people that like the content that you are creating if you are a football fan if you like knitting if you're a ballerina whatever it needs to be whatever your channel is focused on there will be a group out there that loves the stuff that you do it's as simple as going to facebook have a look at facebook groups there are literally tens of hundreds if not millions of them out there right go out there have a look at them see if you can interact don't spam because if you show up join the group and immediately start posting your videos they know that you're just there to advertise you're probably even in groups that you're like enjoying anyway because that's your hobby that's the thing that you liked you loved that you're learning about or teaching about or whatever it needs to be go join those groups interact with those groups go and make some friends right i recently joined some of amazon affiliate groups that now start teaching me how i can use affiliate marketing to start making money by the way i'll make a video on that at some point check out the video description down below if it's there if it's not just wait and subscribe but those groups are a good way for you to not only get questions but ideas for videos and content you can see the trends that happen to be happening within that genre and itself and you can maybe exploit those trends jump on those trends and make content that is relevant to your exact audience go out and hunt forums yes i'm i'm old but forums do exactly the same they're the reddit pages and they're subreddits and they're websites that have groups of discussions where people and fans all gather around the idea of the thing that they love once again make friends post share harvest ideas communicate maybe even interact and collaborate with the people that happen to be around you in that space the obvious things here are making sure that you have some kind of social presence if you've got a load of people that know who you are or in your space and you're building up make sure that you've got your social accounts to amplify the content that you're now so proud of that you've researched that you tested that you've honed to make look better this is your chance to push him out there on twitter and instagram tumblr and whatever tick tock these social media accounts i advise that you try and theme around the the brand of your channel because it's so annoying when later if you've got 20 30 000 subscribers you want to go back and get obvious names for your account maybe someone's already got those you have to kind of have an amalgamation of them but these social media accounts can be places where other people outside of your youtube videos can interact with you you've got to understand that not everyone wants to consume your videos on youtube they might want to consume your video in a podcast as you've ripped out the audio or they might want to consume your videos on twitter in 20 30 second clips or on tick tock where you've made it into a vertical format make the content to bring people into you cater to them you need to cater to multiple audiences okay because if you're lazy and only put your youtube videos on facebook it feels a bit awkward or if you kind of crop it out and put your youtube video on tick tock it looks weird it feels disconnected so build your social media out to bring people into you is your content gaming is your content streamable right there's people online that sit on twitch just eating food there's people on twitch playing dungeons and dragons or just sat there chatting to you right they're going through every fine detail of their fashion twitch is another platform with a very wide audience that can bring people in and if you're able to talk and connect and if you're an extrovert that communicates very well that could be another place to promote you that way you can say well you can watch my live stream on twitch and then you can come over to youtube and see my pre-recorded stuff my favorite tool however when it comes to promotion this gets me a lot of external traffic it's my own personal blog if you go to alanspicer.com forward slash blog i have a blog that has hundreds of articles teaching you every fine detail about youtube and over time social media it teaches you how to make money with affiliate marketing frequently asked questions that drive traffic back to my youtube channel it builds authority over here to push people towards my content and it expands the spider web that is my social media brand pushing people further into youtube gaining me more subscribers and more followers okay so you've got your social media you're putting yourself out here this is now when you start to push your authority gets people to recognize who you are and understand what you do these are your collaborations you go and talk to people that are in your space this doesn't necessarily have to be you asking pewdiepie for a shout out if you've got a thousand subscribers go and talk to someone with 20 with 50 with 100 bring those up because those are 20 30 50 people that might want to watch similar content to you you can help them you've then got someone to share your youtube thoughts with because in all honesty that's one of the things that i struggled with when starting a youtube channel i now have a few people that i can pick the brains with chat about youtube with get excited about if you're isolated in the youtube bubble and it's just you only creating your content not only will you grow slower but you you won't be able to interact with other people and understand it and you might get disillusioned that there's nobody that understands you and your hobby so reach out to creators see what they can do see what collaborations you can do maybe try going on some podcasts now podcast is a great double-edged sword for everybody as a podcast creator you want content to pump out there right because that's what a podcast is people listening to whatever you've recorded and on the other side you might need a guest and if i'm a guest and i just want to get my name out in front of a fresh new audience that might not know me i can go on a podcast that way people get to hear what i do as a youtube certified expert as a creator as an affiliate marketer as a youtuber and the podcaster gets a guest it's a match made in heaven and this is how you can start pushing your authority out there more and more people hear from you on other platforms other podcasts other channels pushing them to you growing your channel building your authority so next time they think oh i need a youtube education tip they come to you me in this case your brand is key that brand that reach that continued growing of your network is what can push people to you for you to make a sustainable income i've done many jobs in my lifetime i've been a security guard i've worked in banking institutions i've been in customer care i stack shelves in a tesco which i believe that's the equivalent of like walmart in america or best buy or target it's one of those but as you're growing your brand if you consider the income opportunities and have a look at affiliate marketing you can sustain your business as it continues to grow i work on this for a living this is what i do for a living i work on the internet for a living i make money via youtube and amazon and affiliate marketing and social media content and editing for clients and consulting everything if you consider the base income over time and you start it as you go through it will grow with you and your authority continues to amplify that as you put more external traffic in going forward i use affiliate marketing a lot and that happens to be if you have a look in the description down below you'll see links to products like vidiq that can help you with your seo and help rank your videos better using proper tags links to people like rev.com that can help you with the transcriptions and the subtitles on here links to companies that do all the banner artwork and stuff like that all the lights that are behind me affiliate marketing is a really good passive way of you pushing traffic to your audience as i mentioned previously in my videos you'll be amazed how many people read the description of your content to try and find out what camera i'm using what lights i'm using that kind of thing and it's those services and your traffic that push people that direction and for every sale i get five ten twenty percent or a small amount of money along with the youtube videos along with twitch along with whatever it needs to be that income can then be reinvested back into your business back into your youtube videos have a look at mr beast every single dollar he's made he's put back in the videos and initially he saved up and he got a webcam and then a better microphone and then an iphone and then he started giving out ten thousand dollars to homeless people and then he started giving away a hundred thousand dollars for people hands on a car and then blah blah blah although up to squid game where it was half a million pound for playing a load of school games affiliate marketing really does work there'll be a link in the description down below of a affiliate marketing guide for beginners right go check that out at the end of the video digital products could be the next best thing as well you can sign up for places like spreadshirt and teespring where they'll create your own merchandise you design your own thing they print it onto your t-shirts and your mugs and your leggings and your iphone cases and you can sell from there but digital products are things that you make digitally once and then you can sell over and over and over again let's say i was to write a 20 page kind of ebook telling you every fine detail of how i set up my camera and 20 places that you can go get affiliate deals from and if that sounds really really interesting to you you'd go down and you click and you'd buy it and i would charge say five dollars and if there was a thousand people that bought that ebook for five dollars i've made five thousand dollars now your audience may have something like that are you knitting teach them a pattern are you a gamer consider some kind of gaming t-shirt or a product or service or an e-book on how to shoot better in fortnite or whatever it needs to be some kind of strategy guide there will be something that you personally would have been willing to buy in your shoes when you first started maybe make that digital thing once it's made once and you put it on a website you never have to make it again and it just continues to sell itself or alternatively i sell my own skills i have been on this platform for eight nine ten years i have two youtube channels this one which at the moment has around about 40 000 subscribers and my crypto channel which i started at the start of this year and it's barreling towards 10 000 subscribers in itself proof that you can start a youtube channel understand a trend and get 10 000 subscribers in my case in around about five months i sell my skills on my own website generating reports for people i can tell you exactly what's wrong with your channel you can flick through it i can either do it in written form i can do it in video format or some people hire me on a retainer and i coach them month to month that's my skill that i sell what skill do you have can you teach people how to best perform in fortnite can you do destiny carries can you design something for someone can you knit someone a personalized jumper can you give them 10 minutes of your time to talk about history or makeup anything that you wish sell your skills and you can then funnel that into wherever you want these are fantastic side hustles that can make you a lot of money okay so you've started the channel and now you want to go and get some views this is how you can beat the youtube algorithm you are a small youtuber you are looking to smash through that youtube algorithm and get it to work on your behalf make it your ally make it push your videos into the face of other people and grow your channel here is what you need to know on how to beat the youtube algorithm as a smaller youtuber first of all what is the youtube algorithm now it's this mythical beast that everybody seems to think rules the world and is against you and specifically trying to put your channel out of business specifically hiding you away from the rest of the world even though you've got the best videos ever but what it actually is is a very advanced collection of mathematical formulas i say collection because there isn't one specific algorithm it is a collection of many that interact with each other whether it is external sources coming to your channel whether you are trying to rank in search whether it's you're trying to push yourself into suggested and get onto the browse on the home page whether you are being suggested for specific terms whether you are being related to other channels the common misconception about this is that it's a giant checklist of about 20 things that if you used to figure out every single point on that checklist and do 20 out of 20 you'd immediately become pewdiepie poof you've got a brand new channel and millions of pounds in the bank that's not how the algorithm works jimmy if you're able to understand how the algorithm could work this is when you get to see your videos be risen and shown on your home page the trending tabs in your search pages on the suggested section on the right hand side of your videos so now we've dispelled the myth of the algorithm what is in general what is the goal of the youtube algorithm the core focus of the youtube algorithm is customer satisfaction viewer satisfaction and length of time on the platform after all the longer that they are on the platform the more videos they can watch the more people they can discover and yes the more adverts can be played against those people or services that are sold to those play pool whether it happens to be a youtube red premium upgrade whether it happens to be adverts that are being bombarded to them because it is connected to their behavior whether it's a membership whether it's a super chat whether it's a t-shirt all of these things happen to be things that youtube will take a cut of overall youtube needs you to stay on the platform for as long as possible so what it's trying to do is put in front of you things that will extend the length of time that you're on the platform and they do this by matching you to content that they believe you would be interested in intrigued by based on your previous watch time history your subscriptions your likes your dislikes anything that is trending that vaguely touches upon those so obviously if you understand what they are trying to do and you're able to lean in to help the algorithm do those things then it's more likely to put you in suggested and search and recommend it it's going to continue to feed you in front of people because they know that you are tried and tested method of getting search or external traffic or extending the session watch time or engaging in some kind of interaction with the platform that's the behavior that youtube wants to see and they're more likely to promote the things that do that for them compared to the ones that don't so what are these things we need to do how do they pick your video why do they recommend you over anybody else so there's a little bit of storytelling here back in the day in the good old days when charlie bit my finger and leave brittany alone and other things like that youtube heavily lent upon views in fact you could buy a load of buttered views and then because you've gone up through the rankings because your video has 10 000 views compared to somewhere with 2 000 views your video would rank higher because it had more views it's not how the algorithm works now though in 2016 youtube shifted its algorithm to lean towards better metrics much more customer client viewer focused this means that they started leaning towards average view duration session watch time was key this is when you started to see people leaning away from the viral candy of a two-minute video and started swinging towards vlogging for ten minutes or ten minutes and one second these longer videos garnered longer watch time this is why gamers were doing well this is why vloggers were doing better because those videos happen to lean into that longer format you can't stretch a how-to video on how to fix a spark plug from the three four minutes it's supposed to be into a 15-minute long epic it just doesn't work now youtube swore blind that the 10 minute videos didn't really make a difference but it did by metrics alone the idea that if it's a 10 minute long video and you can engage them for longer if they watch 50 of a one minute video that's 30 seconds if you watch 50 of a 10 minute video that's five minutes that's five minutes of watch time and watch time was favored more heavily within that environment so therefore it would rank a bit better it would get more engagement it would get pushed and that is the core bedrock of currently what we are leaning on today that is why right now if you used to have a look at search it's not ordered by the amount of views you don't get to search and have the five million views one at the top and then trickling down to the bottom you can see small channels with next to no subscribers and a few thousand views ranking above the video that's a little bit older that has millions of views now along with obsession watch time nowadays we are now leaning into quality watch time this means that they need to be engaged with your video they need to be interacting liking commenting sharing but also watching as much as they can whilst doing so this is a surefire way of youtube knowing that not only are they watching it but they are truly engaged in that content it is truly a good video you're not just sat there waiting for 10 minutes because the big youtuber told you that ray do me a favor this video is going to be 15 minutes in length what i'm going to do is talk for the first two minutes and then disappear for 10 minutes and then right at the end i'm going to give away something but there's going to be a little code somewhere in that 10 minutes if you're just watching blank screen see it stops people gaming the system if it's quality watch time rather than just non-quality watch type now this quality watch time gives you the chance as a small youtuber to manipulate the system to hack and beat the algorithm for your benefit because your audience would be more engaged with you it may be smaller but they may be more willing to watch and share and feel more connected with you so once you've lent into all of that how does youtube specifically pick you and make you go viral make you blow up your channel youtube focuses very muchly on the amount of engagement that a video gets within the first 48 hours this is why it's got its own little card area on your dashboard you know the thing that says this is how many views you got within the first three hours this is how many views you got within the first 12 hours after 24 hours it compares you to other videos within your back catalog within your last 10 videos this way it shows you the velocity you have on launch and the more engagement you tend to get within the first 48 hours the more it resets or teaches youtube the potential of that video now i'm not saying that if you get a poor showing in the first 48 hours you should just give up many videos will continue to grow over time and continue to grow going forward i've got many videos on my channel that did piss poor to start with and are now possibly even the biggest videos on my channel it's all about metrics it's all about behavior the first 48 hours is crucial for the initial ranking the initial trust of that video from the youtube algorithm it monitors you very carefully in that first 48 hours so if you can drive as much traffic as you can within those first 48 hours those first two days engagements comments likes replies shares tweets anything you can then it lifts the possibility that it will get much higher views over time because you're driving more behavioral metric within the first 48 hours for youtube to trust you assuming that you perform really well within that first 48 hours this is where the magic happens the youtube algorithm looks at what it can push to next now in the good old days the youtube subscriber box used to push out all of your videos to all of your subscribers doesn't do that anymore what it does is it fires you out to your notifications a selection thereof of your notifications and then over time over the coming hours and the coming days it will slowly drip feed you out to more and more of your notifications more and more to your subscriber box and then into browse onto home page into recommendations at this point it's trying to learn from you what kind of engagement and click-through rate you can get because it needs to know from you that if it's going to show you to a thousand people that you are going to outperform the nearest rival to help you rank higher if there's two identical videos uploaded at exactly the same time with the exact same thumbnails both get 1 000 impressions but this one gets a 15 click-through rate and this one gets a 2 click-through rate the 15 click-through rate is more likely to be pushed in an identical case study also if once again going back to two identical videos once again if these two videos are exactly the same but this one gets 60 audience retention and this one gets 10 audience retention there's a chance that the 60 audience retention will be pushed higher it's more engaging there's something in there that people love now i know these are extreme examples there's no way that you're gonna upload two identical videos at the same time with the same title on the same channel it's just not going to happen but the youtube algorithm is based on these metrics they're looking for the engagement the click-through rates the average watch time the comments the likes the shares and if you don't perform the way that youtube needs that video to perform they'll just switch you out for another video this is where you and somebody else that have similar topics battle for that engagement let's say i upload a video and vid iq uploads a video on exactly the same thing around about the same time and their thumbnail is a bit better and their engagement's a bit better they will rank better than me or maybe i look at a video that they do and then i tweak it i make it a little bit better than them maybe my videos a little bit younger than theirs a little bit more engaging than theirs then i will outrank them so you've heard me say audience retention a lot what's a good audience retention rate now this is the thing that everybody bangs on about now when i first started i was terrible at this i'd have my video trailer right at the start and i'd get like 100 it dropped down to like 40 and then it would trail off and everyone get bored and by the time you go to the end of the video i'd have 15 audience retention that means 85 of everybody that ever came to your video is now gone poof they got bored before you got to the end this means there's only 15 of the people that you can pitch to to click into your next video to prove to google and prove to youtube that you've got some kind of engagement now it does depend on the length of the video it does depend on the style of the video it does depend on the content within that video there's a lot of ifs and buts and when's i tend to aim for anything above 50 audience retention if i can over the entire length of the video for me this might mean that my youtube tutorials run about two two and a half minutes do much better and i get in i deliver my promise and i get out as soon as possible let's be honest if you're typing in how to get an end screen once you've found out that you've how to add that in the screen you got but if you're a vlogger showing 12 13 15 minutes of your day you want to keep them engaged you want to keep them trundling along as much as possible this can all be affected by the way you edit your videos the pace the graphics anything that overlays like b-roll the average rule of thumb for longer videos is 25 to 40 and these are videos over around about 10 15 20 minutes in length but once again this isn't gospel these are just the figures that i'm aware from my client coaching base and the sweet spot for shorter videos of anything around about five minutes or less would be as close to 70 percent retention as possible now i know these numbers sound amazingly out of reach but what you do is is you go back you look at your videos and have a look at where you're losing people is your intro right at the start of the video killing off 20 of your retention get rid of it are you slow are you erring are you umming is your music too loud is there a point where you cut to b row and it dips have a look at your audience retention graph and see where you are losing people and in their next videos don't do that again over time over 100 videos you'll be able to make a much better video on video 100 for audience retention than you were in video one because you're learning all these little nips and tucks the things that you can and can't do the speed that you are doing the energy that you put behind your videos now over time on my channel i've had a wide range of audience retention so your old videos don't affect your new videos don't worry each and every time you put up a video it's a new swing at the algorithm all you need to do is try and engage the people that are there and depending on the niche that you are in you know how you can engage them whether you're asking them questions whether you are throwing funny things up from the game that you are playing whether you're zooming in on those very technical standpoint things when you're you're knitting or you're doing like diy have a look at those analytics have a look at how your your audience engages because every audience is unique and as long as you compare to your audience they will stick around for longer engage for longer and help you get picked within that algorithm search now this is something that i'm a monster of i deliberately went out of my way when i first started this youtube channel to optimize my videos as mini blogs i'd been in the web development world for 11 years before i touched youtube so my brain had been wired to understand that the title the descriptions and the tags only to sing the same song all need to bring people in to that video or need to be found within a search engine a very large amount of the traffic on my channel around about 60 to 70 comes from search alone why because i'm a utility channel you type in how to blur and i give you an answer and you disappear however if you happen to be people like mr beast jake paul philip defranco maybe all of those may be related on trends or suggested traffic because they are relevant to topics that happen to be happening right now why is search important well if just like me you struggle with your first 48 hours to get that huge velocity of tens of thousands of views because in my case i'm teaching that one lesson that's very important and influential for you and somebody else in three and ten years time i don't get that velocity straight out of the gate but what i do with searches i teach youtube that that video is worth trusting by behavioral metrics over time my videos don't blow up on day one my videos blow up at day 30 or day 60 or day 100 and this gives me a backbone to my channel so search is still very important and what do you need to focus in on search you need to make sure that the keyword that you are aiming for that you want someone to search for in the search bar is in the title the first two lines of your description and then in the tags there are relevant twisted versions of that how you would specifically think to search for that how to change a spark plug how to change a spark plug in a nissan micra changing spark plug spark plug repair all of these are very similar to the keyword that i want in the title but you focus on one specific keyword to echo through all the tags and then you write the description around similar tags whether you use the timeline chapters to spin in other keywords or they happen to write a blog post underneath the video perfectly fine but the search term is the thing that people would be searching to find that video today and in the future that's why search is powerful because if you rank for search there's a chance that you'll continue to drag in those views all the way into the future but if you're only focusing on say the baby shark today in three years time maybe nobody cares about the baby shark we hope now it's no surprise that one of the core tools that i'm going to suggest about optimizing your titles your descriptions and your tags is vidiq there's a link down below it's a browser-based plugin that is free i'm not here to sell it to you but basically it's there to to help give those inspiration that suggested tags those juicy bits of details that you might want to weave into your description that you might want to add to your tags to boost it to build out that audience to make your spider web a little bit bigger to catch more flies to get more eyes on that video now the start of 2020 had 9 000 subscribers as of right now the start of september and 2020 i had 22 000 subscribers over doubling the size of my channel and it's all because if as long as you get this in your head and you understand what the algorithm is looking for and you feed that wonderful beast then it will help you grow so understand what the algorithm happens to be it's a collection of many computers working on your behalf understand what it's trying to do which is extend the amount of watch time the amount of engagement on this platform to keep people on here for as long as possible push people further into youtube whether it's your own videos or other people's videos in themselves try and get them to engage and like and share your content and youtube platform content don't push them away from the platform make sure you are creating content that is engaging that keeps people watching you for longer remove all the fluff remove all the things that kills audience retention make sure you're asking questions that people can answer optimize your videos for search your keyword in the title the descriptions and the tags maybe even use something like vid iq2 to really compound that that way you're in front of their noses not only now but in future the only reason i've grown so much this year is because i had three years of back catalog content that was still optimized and was still being found in search if you can juggle all of these you can beat the youtube algorithm you can get more subscribers so you've got started you're getting views now you want to make some money do this make money on youtube without being monetized review products and link them to amazon anyone can have an amazon account and if you have a large social media or youtube presence you can even join the amazon influencer program if you're small not a problem anyone can join you talk about the product that you're using for example this is a canon dslr 200d i believe it's the slr 2 in america and i use it for all of my videos and it's great and i've never had a problem i've recorded 7 800 videos on this youtube channel blah blah blah blah blah please buy it from the link down below see that there that's an affiliate sale you go and buy it i get a small percentage of that sale you get a product that you trust from me because i already use this camera when you see how it works then you buy it because you like me it's a great way to get started now you've got to bear in mind that if you're pushing it through then it's based on your traffic if you're large enough for the amazon influencer program you actually make a video and upload it to amazon and then they can serve traffic against it i'll make a video about that in future hit subscribe and comment in the comment section down below if you'd like more info on the amazon influencer program just type in amazon influencer review services now i've been on this platform for about 10 years and over those years i've used so many things things like vidiq tubebuddy rev stock websites where it comes to any of the b-roll that i use here skillshare for learning everything and anything that you imagine i've got a load of things that i could suggest to you that would help you but you've probably got a list of things that could help other people as well these services are things that people sign up for maybe pay a small fee and in return because they signed up through your link you would get some money back as a kind of thank you as an engagement now i'm lucky that in my kind of industry there's things called sas products which is software as a service which means that you need your editing suite and you need your optimization tools such as tubebuddy or a vid iq on a regular basis so if i help you sign up for that and i get like a small fee for every month that you continue to use it then i get a recursive income and it builds up an in-going passive income towards me that helps support this channel and helps me make videos for free because they're not free nothing on the internet is free it's all about me helping you and in the long run hopefully that washes back on me but i'm not here to hard sell and nor should you i tend to find that affiliate schemes that are truly helpful say for example you rent equipment or you're using a specific tool or a specific software program say for example you're a designer and you use adobe premiere to do your t-shirts where it happens to be these are the softwares that are truly ingrained into your industry your hobby your life goal and these are the things that you truly need so i'm sure anyone that's watching you will need those too when building a similar fate a similar business so why not refer to them and help everybody out you've given them the information they believe in your trust and away you go go live you'll be amazed how many people from your audience are engaged enough that they'd like to see you live can you talk can you mumble your way through a live stream and say hello this is your chance to kind of interact and engage you can either pre-record a video and premiere it in which it's live and you can comment in the section next to it or are you willing to talk to a camera for 20 30 minutes an hour two hours three hours interacting engaging with your audience this is a chance for you to get donations and subscriptions from people youtube has slowly turned itself into twitch from three four five years ago you can now click join and you become members of a channel you can send stickers which are effectively bits and you can send super chats where you can get a message pinned at the top of us a super chat thingy so your chat stands out and the creator can see it more all of these are good ways for your community to engage with you and just imagine i sit here for an hour and talk about all of your troubles and i engage and i tell you tweak this and change that here jimmy this is how your channel grows you might send you know the odd pound or two to me to say thank you for helping you and off you go live streams is open to anyone with over 50 subscribers so why not and the end of the day even if you just sit there and engage with your audience those are your die hard audience members and it's always good to get to know those people that are willing to sit there and just see you talk for hours online patreon hey i'm blue do you like it give me money i've never truly joined patreon over the years i've dabbled and i've researched because that's what i do i'm a youtube educator that needs to understand what's on the outer ring of what i do so i can start teaching it to clients and understand how it works but patreon on crowdfunding sites literally do that if you've got other things that you could do say for example you wanted a a live stream from me each and every month where i only answer questions from people that are members i can either use the membership here on youtube or i could use a website like patreon where you sign up and you pay me or donate to me a a small fee one five ten twenty dollars whatever i agree is the package and then you would get a service from me that say you wanted to see me travel when i come to conferences maybe you want me to take notes at conferences and give you cliff notes of talkers whatever it needs to be right these are the things that you can give away on patreon they are crowdfunded community-based income sources in return you can give them something unique something that they don't get on your channel whether it's one-on-one interaction from you or kind of exclusive content emma blackery for example has put out all of her music and over time she put out her vlogs and then she releases her albums early and you get discounts early and that kind of thing these are widely widely used and there are others if you truly have a more adult mindset you might not use patreon you might want to use only fans or whatever it needs to be crowdfunding is a way that you can make money off of this platform without it actually coming from this platform and if you've got an engaged community it could be something for you to consider merch t-shirts teddy bears phone cases all of these things can be very easily created and you don't have to print them yourself in fact what i'm going to do is a video very soon explaining how i started my own merch store please hit subscribe if you like the idea of watching that video soon but you can sell your products on etsy or teespring and things like that merch really does pull people in it shows you brand affinity with you and if you can make something that is useful for them that they like the look of then even better business leads don't get it twisted you'll be amazed how many people that watch your videos no matter how many views you get 10 20 30 50 views all the way up to thousands there will be people out there that see you as someone that they want to learn from or engage with i have this youtube channel as a business platform i teach you how to use youtube in the long run if you don't want to learn it yourself and you want more direct advice from someone that's been on the platform for 10 years that's worked with both vidiq tubebuddy consulted with large companies those kind of things then you'd get in touch with me and maybe i can one-on-one consult with you just like you would if you wanted to go to the gym and you wanted to get fit you might get a personal trainer right that's what this platform is for me it's a business lead machine i like making videos i like educating and helping you you might walk away with a free education at the end of this video and that's fine because you know i exist some of you might want to engage with me more personally and scroll down to the bottom of the youtube video description click on the allen contact and communicate with me directly and you can do the same too with your audience and your speciality maybe you really like geocaching and someone wants to go geocaching with you maybe you really like digging for gold and someone wants to learn how it works maybe you're very good at i don't know repairing motorcycles and someone wants to learn how to repair motorcycles flip motorcycles sell motorcycles or just go on a ride with you these are the things that you can sell for your time whether it's live streaming whether it happens to be a video call or whether it's a physical interaction with the real world you know the thing that's outside that window that we haven't been outside of for the last couple of years due to the right but these are the things that you can also consider as a lead provider whether you harvest them and push them to other people or whether you interact with them yourself because you have a service to sell if you want to know how to make a business out of this and make more money on youtube really pushing your brand out here continue on to this video here and i'll see you soon