How to become a Youtuber? – part 2

In previous part “How to become a YouTuber? – part 1” I’ve discussed the beginnings of any YouTuber and mentioned the things that are absolutely necessary to begin recording your own videos. However, believe me when I say it, I’ve searched YouTube high and low in search of various gaming channels to see “how a gamer’s channel should look like to guarantee success.”

Truth be told, good editing skills, as well as good idea for a channel, doesn’t guarantee that you will pass even 100 subscribers. I’ve seen channels that were incredibly designed, with excellent intro cinematics, enticing thumbnails and pretty good content overall, yet they were unable to achieve more than 50 views per video. In the second part of my article, I will give reasons why some YouTubers can’t go past 100 subscribers, and give a few hints to overcome those problems.

1. Understanding the positioning in YouTube search

Youtube is not created to be equal for every content creator.

Similarly to Google, YouTube’s positioning algorithm takes into consideration content (or more generally) content creators that are already confirmed to be entertaining to the audience. Thus, the first videos to pop up in your target audience’s search results will be those of a famous Youtubers who already passed a certain amount of views (don’t confuse it with a number of subscribers, because the amount of subscribers does not have to mean that your channel is successful).

That will happen even if they don’t always cover the topic that you solely focus on.

Because of that, your content will end up so far away that it might never be seen. While I was searching for gaming Youtubers, I’ve noticed the vast popularity of Minecraft, a simple survival game released in 2011 and how it affects new Youtubers who want to record their own gameplay content with this game. It was right there that I’ve noticed that the more popular, a particular topic is, it’s always harder to get positioned on the first page of search results. It doesn’t matter how “pretty” the channel is. If nobody can see it, nobody can subscribe to your channel.

So how can you work around this?

Probably the most effective method is to reach outside Youtube. The Internet is full of dedicated forums where you can promote your channel, engage in discussions etc. Each person you entice into watching your video, might bring another fan of the topic you are covering, creating a chain reaction that will steadily increase your video’s views and at the same time improving your search position whenever someone is looking for a content like yours. Also, don’t forget about posting your recordings on dedicated sections on Reddit. Nowadays, Reddit is one of the best way to share pretty much any kind of information.

2. Content variety vs Singular content focus

If you decide to make a channel where you focus on two distinct subjects, it is very likely that it will never grow. If you make a video about fishing and next one about gardening, most likely none of them will get positioned properly. It is always better to focus on one topic alone in the beginnings, rather than creating a mixture of everything in one place.

Content variety becomes “a thing” once you get past a certain number of real viewers (once again don’t confuse with subscribers). It all depends on whether your audience would be interested in the different content. It’s something you pretty much must ask them directly and see the response. However, as I’ve already said, I’d strongly advise against it in the beginning.

3. Clickbait is “a big no no”

All kinds of media are full of click baits.

YouTube isn’t any different in this regard. People try to convince other people to watch their video by giving seemingly interesting topic (judging by the title). Very often, this idea backfires, resulting in dislikes that definitely do not help you in getting new subscribers, nor in the positioning of your other videos. When you want to make a video about the disaster that may or may not happen on our planet, don’t ever title your video “The World Is Ending Now! Should We Hide?!

Additionally, YouTube might punish your channel for publishing content that is not related to its title (Videos that suspiciously quickly gain views, are most likely reviewed by someone in YouTube to see if it wasn’t gaining attention due to clickbait, or other means that I do not have to mention here at this moment)

While nowadays many people can distinguish click baits like those, some really do look forward to breaking news which in reality are something completely different than they expected.

Those are the next 3 hints on promoting your Youtube channel. Keep in mind that growing your channel is a result of a process, rather than simple monotonous upload. You will make mistakes during this journey, but if you experiment with your content, you will most likely succeed in this field.
In our next blog about YouTube, you can expect some more information and reasons why so many Youtubers resign from creating content so quickly after they have started.