How I sent my channel on the right track and now I'm able to see it's potential.

Hello,

First, I want so say sorry if I make some grammatical errors. English is not my native language. I am a lurker here, read a lot of threads and this is my first time posting.

With this post I want to help anyone who can't get their channel on a progressive growth. I am doing this because I have seen so many posts made by people who are happy to reach 10 subscribers or have their first 100 views in months of being content creators. I am always really happy for your reached milestones whenever I read them even if I don't comment but for most people, the big milestone is -1000 subscribers, 4000 watched hours- and you won't get there if this is how you grow. Mainly because you need those subs and watched hours in the last 12 months!

The tips I will share with you were said before, I am not an expert. I also learned them one by one, researched, eliminated those that did not work for me, trying to understand why it did not work, then trying to see if I can adapt them to work or do something similar.

Also, I am not a big or Youtuber. I think I am newer here than most of you. But I just want to share with you what I did to put my channel on the right track and help me NOT REACH IT'S POTENTIAL YET but SEE IT'S POTENTIAL.

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How I started and my niche I started my Youtube channel on 15th January this year, made the art for the logo and for the banner. Thought a lot about the name, eventually I chose a clever combination of words: The abbreviation of the name of my country and something in english related to my niche. Both formed in one word, made sure it's easy to read for the people in my country.

As you probably guessed, I am creating non english content in my native lang. My niche is theories/conspiracions, educative interesting facts or ideas about everything that I think might make the regular viewer interested. I am narrating them, editing them with copyright free images, sometimes do little animations.

For example, two of my videos might be something like this:

Video 1: >What would happen if water on earth was lava instead?

Video 2: >Does USA keep aliens inside Pentagon?

Again, just examples.

The way I do videos is: Research a lot, write script, record (modify script while recording if something does not sound right), edit audio and video inside Premiere Pro.

I publiced my first video on 18th January. This video was a real struggle as I did not have a good microphone. I had an old webcam with built-in mic that sounds terrible. Every sound inside my room, even my breath was being recorded by the mic. So I put the webcam inside some socks to act like a filter and the sound became better but still not good enough. I said F it and still recorded the whole script. Then edited it, added the images, exported (rendered) it. I am not kidding, after exporting and watching the whole video made only by my hands, I think that was the happiest moment this year for me.

As I learned, keywords are very important for the video. So I spent the next 3 hours searching for tags keywords inside vidIQ and other online tools. I added the tags, I wrote the description to also include some keywords but not force it too much. Then for the thumbnail I searched for a picture of a big building that represent my country really well. Edited it in Photoshop to add things related to my video, wrote a big red clickbait text on it and then I publiced the video. Joined some Facebook groups related to the subject discussed in the video and shared it there.

This above is how I done my first video and I only wrote it because maybe some of you might relate to it, and I wanted to show you that I didn't even have a good microphone and the video had success.

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What does succes mean for me? I was planning to post at least once a week. It's a bit hard for me since I work a full time job. But today I posted my 7th video.

In these 30-40 days since I made my first video I have:

-210 subscribers that are growing exponentially. For example. Yesterday I had 184 subscribers and 6 days ago I had 100.

-430 hours of watch time (last time updated 2 days ago), also growing exponentially. I had 210 hours watched 6 days ago.

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What I did after the first video?

So after publicing the first video and sharing it on facebook I watched it grow for a few days. It had around 300 views. I was obsessed with the tags, checking them in vidIQ and incognito to see how I rank.

I had good feedback, around 12 people subbed, had 3 positive comments, also some likes.

I ordered a budget microphone (around 15 euros). Not much but it's at least something as I can't afford a better one. This one also wears some socks because it's not that good.

Then I had my 2nd video. Thumbnail was not as great as the first one, keyword research for tags also took around 3 hours.

Then I had my 3rd video. Same thing, thumbnail was not the best, keyword research for tags took a lot.

Here is the thing. I thought my niche would be quite unique in my country but while searching for keywords, I discovered channels that are even 5+ years old and have 500k+ subscribers. This is when I discovered my competitors and I had no chance against them. They are massive in comparation to me. This made me lose almost all my motivation, they had better voiceovers, better videos, a fan base already established. But I thought it's weird that they are not doing any SEO for their videos but still rank like that. They don't have tags, their descriptions are short and mostly only include their social media accounts.

I decided I would watch them closely, learn from them and also add my own things to make my channel even better.

So I continued, made and publiced the 4th video.

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What I learned?(not from my competitors)

WATCHTIME

The first video was 8:20 minutes and had an average watch time of 51%, also the click through rate was 26%. So Youtube thought people are interested in it because most people that see it, click on it and watch a big part of the video or all of it before leaving. So the recommandations begin. I watched it again and only now noticed how captivating it is in comparation to videos of my competitors. Without knowing back then, I gave the users a reason to stay and watch until most of the video is over, kept them engaged to the story I told.

This video is growing really fast. In weekends goes wild, then in the workdays it's worse than in the weekends but better than the previous week's workdays (I hope this is not confusing). I just checked and it had it's 300th like while I am writing this!

Keep the users engaged. Do a cold open in the start of the video, show them what they might miss if they leave for another video. I always start my videos without any intro. Without even greeting the viewer sometimes. Straight to the thing they clicked for. I always don't use any outro, only a 5 second black screen where I ask them to subscribe and add my end screens.

THUMBNAIL AND TITLE

Don't be afraid to do a good clickbait. People will appreciate it if you a actually talk about it in the video. If they get what they clicked for, they will be happy. The thumbnail of my first video was pretty good because I added the building that made the people see it better than other thumbnails in the recommended section and I also added the big red clickbait text.

FUCK TAGS

Not really. They are important but you have to be really lucky or popular to rank on most keywords. It was impossible for me to find a keyword that has low competition (not a lot of videos made about it) and high search volume (monthly searches on youtube). You might be lucky to rank on a keyword that goes popular overnight though. For example: Almost no one knows about Pizza. But you like it and make a video about how to make pizza at home. You use keywords like: how to make pizza at home, pizza tutorial, best pizza.. etc. Then next month, Pizza becomes extremly popular. First thing people will do is to search on Youtube for it, then they will find your video since no one knew about it and there are close to 0 videos about pizza

ENGAGEMENT

One of the videos I uploaded started with 5 likes and 1 dislike and I was kind of disappointed that out of 6 people that engaged with the video, one of them disliked it. Eventually, that was the only dislike the video had and the likes went up a lot. But now, I love dislikes, and I am not kidding! Almost as much as I love likes and comments. Because dislikes are also engagement to the video. When I see a dislike, I only look at it with a grin on my face. This engagement makes Youtube recommend your videos even more.

TAKE GOOD CARE OF YOUR VIDEOS

I recevied an e-mail from Google with a voucher for Adsense. I thought it's great and used it on 4 of my videos. I tried to promote them to an audience that might be interested using the keywords tool in Adsense. I also tried to promote them on my competitors channels (you can set this in Adsense), in the up next section. But this KILLED my 4 videos before they had a chance to get recommended automatically. Adsense tried to get views as much as possible and the CTR for the videos dropped to around 2% for them. Also the average watch time dropped to 5-20%. Never again Adsense!

Take good care where you share them. If you share them in the wrong place, they will fail because people might click on them and stop watching after a few seconds. You need to take care of that average watch time. You worked so hard for that one video, only for it to fail because you shared it to people not interested in your content. It's a shame. This is why I don't understand the "Critique others" threads.

DON'T BE AFRAID OF THE COMPETITION

Speaking of "Critique others" threads, the biggest critique for your content should be you. Watch your competition, watch yourself. See the difference. Can you bring something similar to the table? Or just pick the things you like about them and also bring something of your own. For example, for me, I like doing some animations in the video even if it take a lot more time to edit. Do my competitors do that? No! I also love syncronizing the music to the things I want my viewer to feel while watching different parts of my video. Do my competitors do that? No! Do I like the way they narrate their videos? Hell yeah, they are better than me at that and I am trying so hard to improve!

Don't be afraid of your competition. Take advantage of them, study them. When they started their channel they did not have someone to compare to and see if they are doing ok. Ironically, I got 30% of the views for the first video because it was recommended in the up-next section of a competitor's video. I really don't know why Youtube focused so much on that video and tried to get his viewers to my channel.

BOOST YOUR VIDEO UP

This is how Youtube starts to recommend videos. You need a little boost in the beggining. In my case, it was Facebook shares. If you have close to 0 subscribers and upload a video, they won't recommend it because they don't have a 'sample' for your video. If you share it, it will get views, average watchtime, ctr. If the system detects the percentage for the watchtime and ctr is high enough, it will give it a chance and recommend it to a group of viewers. If it performs well, to the next group (which may be bigger) and so on. Then, if you build a considerable size of subscribers, you won't even need the shares. The subscribers, when they watch your video after upload, will give Youtube the 'samples' they need to consider if your video deserves recognition. I CAN'T WAIT TO GET THERE! This is why:

IT'S GOOD WHEN PEOPLE UNSUBSCRIBE

Care! Your subscribers need to be active and still interested in your content later on. After you upload, the video will appear on their Youtube page when they are browsing. That counts as an impression. If they ignore your video, thats really bad. CTR goes down! So, if subscribers are not interested in your content anymore, they better unsubscribe. Don't be sad when they do!

CREATE A WEB

I have never seen this advice being shared before. I thought about this when I had the Adsense experience. Some of my videos were not performing at all. So I had to do something. I created a ”web” for the viewers to fall into, trying to revive the videos. What I did was to create two end-screens on the end of each video. So people who usually click on those, are caught in a "web". For example: I have 3 videos in the same playlist.

Video 1 has end-screens: watch Video 2 & watch Video 3

Video 2 has end-screens: watch Video 1 & watch Video 3

Video 3 has end-screens: watch Video 1 & watch Video 2

This but on a higher scale, can be done with one end-screen too. Keeps the viewers in your videos and they might have a higher chance of subscribing. It kind of worked for me.

WORK HARD

When I am at work, I watch mostly Premiere Pro tutorials on Youtube.When I am having a good idea for a video effect, I search for it on Youtube. When I get home, I try to practice it. Keep working hard. If I spent 5 hours writing these informations for you, you can spend more than that for your Youtube channel.

That's it

I really hope this helped and motivated you. Just don't give up! WE will get there! Again, sorry if I made some grammatical errors. Cheers guys