I am wrapping up my first year on YouTube and it’s been quite a journey. This journey has had lots of trial and error. My goals have been achieved. I’ve gotten some other bonuses that I didn’t even expect. After working with some of the top channels on YouTube and learning their secrets, my channel growth started to explode! I just wish I would’ve known these secrets sooner. So, in this blog, I’m going to explain my top five tips and how you can use them to grow your YouTube channel in 2020.
When I started out using YouTube a year ago, I couldn’t even imagine the amount of success YouTube would bring to my brand. I only wish I would’ve started my channel sooner, and, I wish I would have learned all these tips and tricks that I am going to share with you a lot sooner. Instead, trial and error won out for a long time and I learned them the slow, long, hard way. I am taking everything I have learned through trial and error and interviewing YouTube industry pros and sharing my knowledge with you here today.
HOW I GOT STARTED
First, let me tell you more about how I use YouTube in my business. Primarily, I use it to generate leads and sales. We are going to talk more about that in a moment. Now that my followership has exploded, I am able to start using YouTube for passive income, as well. That’s money that comes in on the side without having to do any work for it.
I started my channel about a year ago, but I resisted starting the channel for a long time before that. My business partner had a YouTube channel and he wanted me to come on his channel and do some videos with him. After I did a couple of videos on his channel and I saw the feedback, I got more interested and started figuring out a way to incorporate YouTube videos into my own business.
I eventually ended up a regular contributor on my partner’s channel and he encouraged me to stop doing videos on his channel and to start my own channel. I resisted at first, but it all kind of fell into place. It wasn’t something I was very interested in initially, but eventually it has become a pivotal part of my business strategy today.
STARTING OUT FROM ZERO
I started my own channel just over a year ago and I managed to grow it from zero to over 35,000 subscribers in a year. I want to explain this journey. You will know how I did it, how I achieved success, how much money we made, and the tips that you can do to grow the same way.
Now like anything new, it’s weird at first and progress is super, super slow. You could compare getting started to starting out in a sport. As for me? I surf. So, let’s say you’ve never surfed before. The first time that you tried to get on a surfboard and lay on it and paddle- everything will feel really, really awkward. The more that you do it, the easier it feels. YouTube is no different than that, at first. It starts really slow. At first it feels awkward.
In the beginning, I started doing videos just from my webcam. I did worry about what camera, lights, audio to use, but decided the best way to start was just to start. And, so I did. I used my webcam and that was it. I eventually switched to my cell phone for improved resolution. And just now, over the last couple of weeks I started doing them with a high-end camera that I upgraded to.
GROWING MY BUSINESS USING MY CHANNEL
Adding the first 100 subscribers really felt difficult. After 100 came 200. Pretty soon the channel had 1,000. Then, 5000 subscribers and so on. Now that the channel has a solid following, it added over 5,000 subscribers just in the last 28 days alone. So, you can see how it starts to really pick up steam.
In the last 28 days, I’ve made over $2,000, just in ad revenue alone. Those sound like pretty good numbers: 5,000 subscribers added a month, $2,000 in passive ad revenue. But, again, in the beginning it didn’t start that way. It started out really, really slowly. At the very beginning of my channel, I only used YouTube to generate leads for my business.
The way that I used YouTube initially to generate leads was to make a video about a certain topic and then offer another supplemental training for free. The training might be a report, a guide, a tool. In the description, I would offer it for free and then link the tool.
MY STRATEGY LED TO SUCCESS
Let’s talk a little more about how that strategy worked. My YouTube channel generated over 1.3 million views in the last year. More importantly, it generated over 30,000 leads for my mailing list. On my mailing list, I send out weekly news updates, offers, promotions, etc. It’s actually those offers and promotions from my mailing list that make me a lot of money, right? My goal is not to try to push anything on anybody. I am offering free information through YouTube and downloads. I provide value and that’s where the monetization comes- from people wanting to know more or have a more in-depth participation.
Passive income is my favorite way to earn income, of course. The offers that I send out in my email, the YouTube revenue- they’re both passive income streams. The YouTube channel is pivotal in generating the leads. The leads lead to income. This can be done for any type of business and any kind of product.
THIS STRATEGY CAN WORK FOR ANYONE
It doesn’t matter if it’s a supplement or a coaching business. You want to sell grandma’s cookies? You want to sell your pictures or your photography business? It doesn’t matter. Any type of business could benefit from this strategy. Your videos- specific videos- get them interested. You can then give them additional information to get on an email list, and then present them with additional offers.
Offers are the most important piece of this strategy. There is a rough formula you can use to determine success. You must properly manage your email list offers. If you do that, one email is worth about a dollar a month. So if you have 30,000 emails, it should be producing $30,000 a month for you. How’s that for passive income?
Now that we’ve discussed how I started and what strategy I used, let’s get back to what I promised you. Here’s five things that I learned, but I wish I would’ve learned a lot sooner.
1. START NOW
The first thing that I learned is that it’s never too late. Most people think that if I didn’t start YouTube years ago that it’s too late or it’s too saturated. But, it’s not. it’s not too late. There’s an old Chinese proverb that I love to quote with respect to investing, but it applies here too. The proverb says that the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time to plant a tree is now. Yes, it would’ve been better if you started YouTube five or ten years ago, but it’s never too late. So what you want to do is just get started, right? Get started today. Pick an audience. Pick a niche. And start.
It’s never too late to start because no one is you. No one’s you and no one is me. If I’m out there being authentic and I’m doing my best, no one’s like me. No one’s going to talk like me. No one’s going to have the same angle and approach on these same topics that I do. No one is me.
YOUTUBE IS STILL GROWING
Video is still growing. As a matter of fact, video is still growing rapidly. It’s still the fastest growing medium and as five G rolls out over the next year, we’re going to see video even growing even faster. On YouTube alone, there’s over 2 billion monthly active users- 2 billion people just ready to watch your content. There’s 30 million daily active users and 73% of US adults use YouTube. Basically, 3 out of 4 adults are on YouTube. 35+ and 55+ are the fastest growing segments, so you don’t have to do unboxing videos to get followers.
It doesn’t matter what age segment is your audience, they’re on YouTube too! The young people are still watching. In fact, 37% of 18 to 34 year olds are binge watching. YouTube is the second most visited site on the internet and 1/3 of all internet users visit it. Start now. The platform is in place with growth projections. Pick your audience and your niche and start!
2. BE AUTHENTIC
The second thing that I learned about YouTube that you have to be authentic. I said that a little before, but be yourself. Talk about stuff from your own angle. Don’t try to copy what other people are doing and really care about your audience. You might even want to start by just making videos for yourself.
Videos aren’t all that different from blogging. If you want to start a blog, you have to think about what you bring of value. What does a blog really do for your audience? Your audience doesn’t care what you had for breakfast or where are you going on vacation. Every time that I’m making a video, I’m thinking, how can I bring value to the people that are watching? On this video/blog entry, my thought process included how could I bring value to someone who may want to start a YouTube channel? The best way I know how to do that is to give you tips. In every video I make on YouTube and every blog, I bring value. I want you to be successful. I want to add value to your life.
Sometimes my videos are super detailed and sometimes they’re super simple. Often, I also provide free downloads. I care about my audience authentically and I think that it shows.
3. GET VIEWERS
The third thing is that you need to get views. Now, I know that sounds kind of stupid or simple, but obviously you need to get views, right? So how do you do that? Well, there’s a few things. First of all, you want to do this through search engine optimization or SEO. YouTube is a search engine like Google. It’s searchability makes it an amazing social media platform. If you post on Instagram or Twitter or Facebook, it disappears pretty quickly in the feed because of algorithms. Your information stays relevant on YouTube because it’s a search engine where people go to learn things or search for specific things.
OPTIMIZING YOUR TITLE
Your videos will be relevant for years to come if they’re properly optimized. You just need to find good titles that are search engine optimized and go from there. A specific tool I use is called TubeBuddy. There is a small cost associated, but you simply plug it into your browser. When you go into YouTube and just search for things, it will show you what things inside the niche that people are searching for. Once you know what people are looking for, you can name your video with a little mystery. You want to give the title a little bit of a curiosity. I hate to use the word clickbait, but it is just a little bit, right? You want to entice people to click on your video
. Once you have your title with good curiosity and good search optimization, you need to save the video file, the thumbnail, the description. All of the pieces associated with your video need to be saved with the the same name. Make sure you include that name in the video, as well.
THE IMPORTANCE OF YOUR THUMBNAIL
The next thing you need to do to attract viewers is to have a good thumbnail. The thumbnail you have for your video is what is going to grab your audience in the click through rate. The click through rate is everything. Some people are going to search for your video and that’s good. However, a majority (like 75- 80%) of the views come from YouTube suggesting the video. If you are going to attract viewers, your video must have a good title and a good thumbnail.
Videos with solid thumbnails and good titles get a good click through rate. You want your click through rate to be at least 4% or better. That means that when YouTube shows that people are going to click on it and watch it. If you’re getting a low click through rate, YouTube is not going to show your video to other people. A lot of my really good videos would get 5%- 8% click through rate. The way that I grab them is through my SEO optimized curiosity invoking title and through the thumbnail.
HOOK THEM WITH THE OPENER
When you get people to click on your video, you need to hook the person right off the bat. I always try to open every single video with what’s called the hot intro. That’s a hook, outcome, and testimonial. You have just a few seconds to hook them and tell them why they should watch. Viewers want to know that if they watch this video, this is where I’m going, what I’m going to get out of it, and the testimonial. You need to keep hooking throughout the video, as well.
You want to make videos that are at least 10 minutes long, so it’s important to keep viewers attention. YouTube rewards though the watch time. So if you had a three minute video, even if they watched a hundred percent, it’s only three minutes of view time. If I have a 10 minute video and they watch 50%, that’s five minutes of view time. Getting viewers- that’s the most important thing.
In sum, you want a click through rate of 4% or better. We know you do that through good titles and good thumbnails. Don’t be afraid to test what works for your market. Looking at other people that are really successful in your niche for ideas is always a good idea. Don’t forget your hot intro and keep hooking to the end. Lastly, you have to make videos that are 10 minutes long or longer to increase the amount of view time.
4. BE CONSISTENT
The next tip that I learned is consistency. You must be consistent. Not only does your audience need to know what to expect from you, but YouTube wants to know what to expect from you. When YouTube knows every Thursday at noon, a new video comes out, then they know to start prioritizing. When you’re consistent, YouTube can pre-prioritize your videos and they’ll get more promotion.
My suggestion is that you consistently make a video a minimum of one time per week. Not only do you need to make a video a minimum of one time per week, but you need to make sure that your videos roll out at the same time and same day every single week. If you could do two or three per week, that’s even better. It’s more chances for people to find your content.
Again, the more views on your channel, the more successful you are. Channel views make all your numbers go up. Find what works for you and be consistent with it. Three videos per week is hard to do and five is likely overkill. One to two videos is probably ideal. I have already experimented with all of those. I was doing one and then I went to three a week. I dropped down to two a week. Around September, I dropped down to one a week. Now going into the new year, I’m going to go back up to two videos a week. Your own trial and error will tell you what works, but just remain consistent. One to two videos a week is what worked really, really well for me.
5. INTERACT WITH YOUR VIEWERS
The next thing is that you want to do to make your YouTube channel a success is to reply to all the comments. YouTube is still very much social networking, right?
If you’re trying to build a successful social network, you need to reply to every single comment. If you leave me a comment, I’ll reply to it. I love to have conversations with every body on YouTube. It’s not just about building my readership. I get all kinds of ideas. The comments help me to understand things better. Additionally, the open commentary helps you to build that community and those people will keep coming back to watch more and more videos.
Reply to the comments and study your viewers statistics. You need to look at the analytics see what videos are getting the good click through rates. We need to analyze which videos are getting the most view time and where people are dropping off on the video. Analytics tell us which videos have the highest conversion of subscribers. Know your audience and what attracts them to you. It’s ok to make adjustments?
LONGTERM PERSPECTIVE
The next thing that I learned on YouTube and that you need to know for 2020 is that you need to have a long-term perspective. We talked about this earlier, starting a YouTube channel is awkward in the beginning. As with all good things in life, your channel will take time to grow. It might take you one or two years before you’re making money, but, then, all of the sudden, it starts happening. It’s crazy. Just one day your video can get sucked up by the YouTube algorithm and end up going viral. The next thing you know, your channel can blow up.
COMMIT TO TWO YEARS
So, you need to approach this with a long-term perspective. If you’re only going to try it for a month or two months, don’t even bother cause you’re probably wasting your time. I want you to really commit. You’d go to college for four years or five years without expecting to get a job. Why wouldn’t you put two years into YouTube without expecting to get paid like a job? But if you could commit to two years, I think you could make it and you’d see success in that timeframe. You need to just be prepared for that commitment.
If you do what I did, which is have a lead generation strategy, even when your channel is small, it still made me money. Even the first couple months when I didn’t have many subscribers, I still made a ton of money because I was generating leads and then selling stuff off of that. It’s not all about the YouTube ad revenue. You can still monetize your channel super fast by using your channel to generate leads. If you’re just going for views and ad revenue is going to take a lot longer.
TO YOUR SUCCESS
We don’t have a crystal ball and we don’t know what is coming, but we can be authentic and carefully craft your channel. I don’t want you to have to start from scratch. Instead, I want to give you tips I learned from really big names in YouTube when I won an award and met them.
Shortcut your success by learning from mistakes of others and successes of others. Leave me comments and let me know what other questions you have about creating a successful YouTube channel. I’d love to help every one of you achieve the exact same results that I’ve had because it’s been life changing. Even more than that, it’s been super, super fun. If you leave me a comment, you know I will write back because I take my own advice. I love making videos, blogs, and I love to interact with you.
To your success.