New YouTube creators find it difficult to figure out how to get their first 100 YouTube subscribers on their channel, and get even more subscribers after that. There’s a few reason why it’s so hard to grow on YouTube when you’re first starting out, but there’s also a lot of good tips, tricks, and strategies that can help you grow your YouTube channel past your goal of 100 subscribers. In this video I’ll share 7 tips for how to grow on YouTube and get more subscribers. You can do this!
2 Major Difficulties
I think there’s two things that make this difficult, especially for those first 100 subscribers.
1 – First Timers
I think it’s hard because it’s probably the first time that you’re doing this. Anything that you’re doing for the very first time is difficult.
Any athlete, any business entrepreneur knows this. It takes a lot of repeated practice over and over and over again. It takes a lot of failures. It takes a lot of learning what works and learning what doesn’t work, and then evaluating those failures and correcting them and moving forward. It takes a lot of pain, a lot of energy until you finally start growing and getting that success.
And in the case of an athlete, you start winning your races or your competitions or music is the same way, learning music like all these things, being a creator is the same thing. You don’t get Olympic gold overnight. But as any musician or actor or athlete or business entrepreneur, any of them will tell you though, the key is not to keep repeating your same mistakes over and over and over again that are holding you back.
Persistence is important, but continue to learn from channels like this one. Go through the YouTube Creator Academy course. It’s free. I’ll link to it down in the description below. Make sure you’re talking with other YouTube creators, learning from their experiences. You’re digging into YouTube Analytics and seeing what information Google can provide for you and a whole lot more.
2 – You need Skills
There are so many different skills that you need to learn and acquire to really successfully grow your channel. For example, there’s storytelling, there’s pacing, there’s YouTube thumbnail design. There is video editing. There’s body language and nonverbal communication to learn to use on camera. How to write really good, enticing titles and then once they click, you have to learn how to hook that viewer and keep them watching. And not to mention all the lighting and sound and camera angles and the equipment that just goes with video production in general.
And then there’s a whole business side of a YouTube channel and branding that goes into this. Guys there’s so much to learn. And no one becomes an expert at any of those things overnight or very quickly. Growing a channel does take time. The first 100 subs does seem to take longer, but then once you get it you’ve probably figured a few out. Then 1,000 will come a little bit quicker and then 10,000 and then 100,000 coming in. Once you kind of start learning these skills and applying them to your channel, you do start to grow faster.
7 Things to Think About and Things to Avoid
Let me give you guys seven different things to really consider and think about and the mistakes to avoid on your channel that could hopefully, help you get that 100 subscribers even faster.
1 – You Need a Clear Value Proposition.
Number one is you need to have a clear value proposition for a specific target audience. What does that mean?
Well, I work with hundreds of YouTube creators one-on-one and this is one of the most common mistakes that I see is that they aren’t pitching any sort of specific value to anyone in particular. In fact, if I asked them, hey, complete this question for me. You guys should subscribe to my channel because– and most of the time these creators don’t even know how to finish that. Because I’m funny. Because this is a cool channel. You got to be very specific.
What value do you propose to deliver to a very specific person? You need to craft and create all of your content. Your channel– and everything needs to revolve around delivering that value to that specific person. So that when that specific person finds your channel, they’re like oh, where has this channel been all my life? This is what I need. They subscribe. and they watch every single video you do.
That piece is so important, guys, that it’s actually how I start my e-book, 30 Days to a Better YouTube Channel. You can download the first few days completely for free. That really will help you dig into determining your value proposition for a target audience. Give you some exercises work through to help you out. So link to that in the description below and go download the free sample and get started with that today.
2 – Research Before You Shoot
Number two– I highly recommend that you research your videos before you shoot them. I work with a lot of creators and their process for coming up with ideas is just I think this would be a good idea. But I really think it’s a good idea to go to YouTube and maybe do some searches for your idea. How much competition is there? Are there a lot of search results for this? Is there very few? Are these videos that you see that are relevant to the type of topic that you want to make videos on– Are they getting a lot of views? Are they getting like a low number of views?
And just start kind of evaluating each of the video ideas that you have. And the idea is to make videos that you see ahead of time have the potential to get views. So when you do those searches ahead of time on YouTube, a few tips for you.
Number one is you want to look for videos that have a high view count on channels that have a relatively low subscriber count. Finding a video that has five million views on a channel that only has 10,000 subscribers is really good. But if that channel has 10 million subscribers, then you kind of know OK that’s why they have that many views.
You can also go to google.com/trends and see how some of your topic ideas are trending over time. Are they picking up steam and getting more and more momentum? Or are they kind of dying off? And using some of that data, you can then decide which topics that you really want to invest your time into making a video, and when you make it, you already know ahead of time that video has potential to do well.
3 – Spend More Time on Titles
Number three– another common mistake that I see a lot of small channels making is that I highly recommend that you spend more time crafting better titles and better thumbnails. And it’s not like an unknown secret, but a lot of people don’t consider that a lot of top YouTube creators actually spend almost as much time crafting their titles and thumbnails as they do the videos themselves.
And the reason for that is pretty obvious once you think about it is that it doesn’t matter how amazing your video is if your title and your thumbnail don’t entice them to click in the first place. I highly recommend you watch some videos here on YouTube that just kind of go on some basic design principles, as far as a graphic design is concerned, and then also make sure that those thumbnails are very clear, discernible even from a very small size for mobile devices.
4 – Ask Viewers to Subscribe
Number four– I think it’s really important that you simply ask your viewers to subscribe. Someone gets to the end of your video, hopefully they’ve enjoyed it. And you want to tell them what action do you want them to take as a result of watching your video. Well, encourage them to subscribe. Not everyone is familiar with YouTube as you or I might be. And might not naturally think oh, I could subscribe to this channel. So just asking them, giving them a little bit of a reminder is often a good idea, too.
5 – Focus on Audience Retention Graphs
Number five– pay close attention to your audience retention graphs in your YouTube Analytics. That graph can teach you so much. It will reveal patterns. If you study them over time across all your videos, you will start to notice patterns. OK, why are people abandoning my video at certain points? What are some of the common themes and trends I see about when people abandon my video– when their attention starts to drop off.
And the more you do that, the more you’ll be able to craft future videos going forward to hook those viewers better and to keep them watching longer and longer periods of time on your content. Which will give you more watch time, then session watch time, which will boost how your videos perform and search in suggested videos and how YouTube exposes you. And then your channel starts to get a lift and more exposure overall. If you’re not familiar with audience retension and graphs, I’ll put a link in the description and that will teach you more about that.
6 – Tap into Other Communities
Number six– I recommend finding ways to tap into existing communities to get exposure. It’s really hard to grow a new community from scratch. So consider making content that taps into other people’s communities. For example, maybe make some videos that tap into the Harry Potter community or maybe into a movie that’s coming out or is popular or celebrities or even tapping into other YouTube creator’s communities.
I actually did that here on the Video Creators channel. I made a video that reviews Casey Neistat’s blogging set up. So people who are familiar with Casey Neistat are more likely to watch that video and thus, get introduced to this channel. And get content that’s relevant to them as creators, which is my target audience here at Video Creators, as well as sharing a common interest in Casey Niestat– kind of pulls them in.
7 – Study Everything
And number seven– study everything you can. When you watch other people’s videos on YouTube, try to reverse engineer what’s working well for them, what’s not working well for them. Pay attention to what titles and thumbnails you feel like you’re most attracted to clicking on. And then ask yourself why this one and not that one? Pay attention to how different creators hook their viewers in the first 15 seconds of their videos to keep them watching more.
Learn design layout principles. Learn camera production and video production and editing, and work on your on-camera presence and personality and so much more. It just takes time and you can do this. Guys, I know it feels frustrating and I know maybe sometimes some of you guys are like, you know what? I don’t think it’s possible anymore to become a YouTube star and grow a YouTube channel, and that’s absolutely not true.
I work with channels that have gone from zero channel to 60 million views a month in only like three or four months. Others have gone to 20 million views in nine months. Guys, you can do this. It’s still possible. What those channels did to accelerate their learning curve is some of them were publishing three, four, five videos a day. That’s right, every day. I can’t do that. Not everyone can do that, but that’s what they’re doing.
They’re just accelerating their learning process as fast as possible. Each of them had done crazy amounts of research. They had Excel spreadsheets, all mapped out with ideas and I want to encourage you guys. Keep going and if you feel like you want to quit, I actually have a guide– a YouTube guide to not quitting on your YouTube dreams. Because I’ve been there and I made this video around that same time when I was feeling some of the pressure, too. So that link is in the description below to go to that video or a card will pop up here and you can click on that, too.
The Video Creators Community
One of the awesome things about the Video Creator’s community is that there are a lot of creators here who have passed a hundred subscribers. And so if that’s you, I would love for you to share some of your tips, some of your advice. What did you do that pushed you past that first 100 subscribers? And if you don’t yet have your first 100, read the other tips and advice other creators are leaving for you in the comments.
LINKS MENTIONED IN THIS VIDEO
- YouTube Creator Academy
- 30 Days to a Better YouTube Channel
- Google Trends
- Audience Retention Reports
- Casey Neistat’s Camera Setup for Vlogging
- A Guide to Not Quitting on YouTube Dreams
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