If you think it’s too late to start a YouTube channel right now, then you’re completely wrong. If you haven’t done your research, you’ll know that YouTube has over 2 billion subscribers and 1 billion hours of watch time daily. Yes, DAILY! If you’re ready to start your channel now, here are some tips on how to start a YouTube channel.
How to start a YouTube channel
01 Do you have a niche?
The first thing you want to think about when starting a YouTube channel is having a niche. If you don’t have a niche I would suggest that you do more research and try to find a niche for your business.
The reason why you want to have a niche is so that you can create videos on a specific topic for example, like a movie or television shows. They don’t go where the general public or a general audience. Let’s use Power Rangers as an example. Power Rangers the original one when I was growing up.
I think you have to be seven and up to watch it. You already eliminated all the kids under 7 years old because of violence. Then because it’s a violent show there are parents who aren’t going to let their kids watch it at all. You’ve eliminated those parents or those kids.
Then there are kids who think they’re too old for Power Rangers. So let’s say 13 and up. So basically if you’re watching Power Rangers, it’s probably geared towards kids who like superhero stuff or superhero type genres and are between the ages of 7 and 13. Power Rangers already has its niche. Because it has a niche, now they know who to market their show, toys, and other products too.
That’s why when you’re thinking about YouTube and going after everyone it’s probably going to be harder for you because you’re messaging will be too broad and it’ll probably attract no one.
Whenever you’re niching down, you’re attracting a specific type of audience, who knows that you’re trying to help them. So if you’re here for instant fame or to become an overnight success then this isn’t for you. But, if you’re here to make money and you already know who your target audience is who will buy your services or products then this will be helpful for you.
But nobody sticks Baby in a corner, Paigon!
Like I explained before, niching down has its benefits because you’re specifically targeting an audience and because you know who you’re targeting, you know what videos to make for them or what problems that audience has and you’re creating videos solving those problems.
If you’re in a more saturated community like fitness, lifestyle. or beauty then niching down will actually help you. The way you can niche down is by culture, by age, by gender, career, and education. There are so many ways to niche down.
Honestly, people come to YouTube for a reason. Most people don’t just randomly go to YouTube to watch… I guess some people do… but a lot of people go to YouTube to solve problems.
Five years ago, I started learning Korean and I was searching for videos like ‘speaking Korean for beginners’ or something like that. That’s how I found Megan Bowen.
She was creating videos on her life in Korea as an English language teacher. During that time, there weren’t really a lot of videos being made on living in South Korea as an English language teacher or learning to speak Korean or just living in South Korea as a foreigner. So she didn’t have a lot of competition, so it was really easy to find her. She was one of the top search results whenever I was searching, but now it’s a saturated topic.
Bonus tip!
Later, when you grow your channel, you can branch out of your niche or expand your niche like Megan did. She started off doing videos on her life in South Korea, but it started expanding into other opportunities. Megan started expanding into interviewing K-pop stars, fashion, dating, and more.
Now, she does videos on fitness because she won a bodybuilding competition in South Korea and now she’s married so she incorporates her married life in South Korea also.
I mean, it’s still niche because everything is still about her life in Korea, but it expanded a lot and gave her a lot of opportunities business-wise.
02 Do some research
The second thing you need to do before you start your YouTube channel is do some research. What does your audience need help with? If you have a business, this is really easy. You only have to answer two questions. Number one, what do your clients always complain about? You can create videos solving those issues. The second thing is, what are your clients always asking questions about or what do they need help with? Then you can create videos answering those questions.
If you don’t have a brand or business, you’ll have to do more research because I’m sure you don’t know what to talk about because you probably don’t have clients or an audience at all.
Since you’re starting from scratch, your research will be a little bit different. If you know what type of business you want to create and who your target audience is then I suggest you scope out your competition first. I would go to their YouTube videos or their blog posts and try to see which video is the most popular and you can do that by going to their YouTube channel going to their videos and then ranking them from popularity.
When you look at the most popular videos, you know that those are the videos that people are most interested in so you might want to check those out first. When you’re researching their content, you’re NOT copying them. I want you to create something better than their content.
So I want you to think about what could they have done better? What was missing from their video or blog post? How could you explain it more or better? You might be thinking, ‘Ugh, I don’t want to do the same thing as everybody else’ or ‘I want to be innovative and create my own thing’. But you don’t even have an audience yet.
You already know that your target audience wants to know about this topic. So you should be creating videos on this topic to attract them. And then later, you can ask them questions, do surveys, or whatever and create something different.
But even if you’re creating the same videos on the same topics because everybody has a different learning style, they may learn better from you than your competitors because the way you teach is different from the way whoever your competitor is teaches. Maybe somebody who’s watching that video really didn’t get the answers to their questions and after they watch your video, maybe they have more insight into that topic.
There are so many people in this world, not everybody learns the same way because we have different cultures, different educational backgrounds, and different experiences. We all have a different style in the way that we learn and teach.
Whenever you’re searching for your competitors and the most popular videos on your topics, I also want you to think about the competition (like is the topic too popular). Is there too much competition or are there too many videos on that topic?
If there’s a lot of competition, is there a way to niche down even more? For example, video editing. Since I’m a video editor, of course, I want to target the keywords ‘video editing’ but there’s like 50 million videos on video editing. So I have to niche down more. I can niche down and create topics on YouTube video editing, video editing for IGTV, video editing for webinars.
So just think about niching down if you’re in a very competitive field. If your topic is super niche-specific and it’s not really a thing on YouTube, you should probably create videos on why your topic is so important. Highlight the problems and the solutions and do a before-and-after so people can understand your topic more.
From your research, you should be able to write down a list of content ideas that you can use to create videos later. If you need more video ideas, then I have a video on brainstorming video content ideas here.
I’m also going to create a video on brainstorming video content ideas for beginners. If you don’t have an audience and you’re trying to build from scratch. Subscribe to my channel here so you can get notified when that video is uploaded.
03 Get organized
Before you start your YouTube channel, you need to get organized. If you’re not organized, you’re not going to stay consistent creating YouTube videos.
You want to think about how often you want to upload new YouTube videos. You also want to create a video creation workflow so you always know what part of the video creation process you’re on and when things are due. Having concrete due dates will actually keep you accountable.
When it comes to scriptwriting, filming, and editing, you’ll always know what to do to create videos.
Once you have a video creation workflow, you have to think about how can you make this easier for yourself? How will you stay consistent? Or how can you stay consistent creating videos to make sure you meet that upload deadline every time.
The first thing you need to think about is creating batch days. You can have a batch day for writing your script, a batch day for filming multiple videos., and a batch day for researching topics. Think about creating batch days to make it easier to create a lot of videos at once.
If you have the funds, you can outsource tasks. There are a lot of things that you can outsource. You can outsource researching and brainstorming video topics to a VA. If video editing takes too much of your time, you can outsource video editing to a video editor. You can also outsource uploading your YouTube videos. Whatever tasks that are time-consuming, you can find a way to outsource it so you can be more productive and consistent.
04 Optimize your videos and channel
The fourth thing you want to think about when starting your YouTube channel is optimizing your videos and your channel. Make sure you’re creating searchable content. You want to make content that your viewers want to watch and you want to make content that can be found in the search results.
Remember, YouTube is the second largest search engine and its own by the first largest Google. If your content is searchable, then you’ll be able to be found on the Google search results and the YouTube search results. To be found in those search results, keywords are important.
If you don’t know what keywords to use then try to write down all the things that are important for your business. Like for me, it’ll be video editing, YouTube video editing, and brainstorming content. Things that pertain to creating videos and branding your business.
So think about your business and the things relevant to your business. You want to be found for those keywords so that if people are searching for those words, they’ll find you.
The second thing you want to think about is what do you want to be known for? What do you want your business to be known for or what are your clients searching for?
One thing my clients could be searching for is a YouTube script template. So I want that as one of my keywords. For you, that could be sales copy for beginners, sales copy for landing pages, or sales copy for product pages. Think about the things that you want to be known for.
Once you have those keywords, you also want to research them in a keyword search tool because you can find other keywords or narrow down that keyword if it’s too broad. You can use Tubebuddy, VidIQ, or Tubics. You can even use Google, Pinterest, and the YouTube search bar.
Type your keyword in any of those research tools and see what comes up because then you can expand your keywords. If I typed in video editing, maybe I would find something like ‘Video editing for YouTube’ or ‘YouTube video editing for beginners’. It’ll help you create titles for your videos.
Next week, I’m actually going to talk more about YouTube SEO and optimizing your videos. That video is going to be called YouTube SEO (the lazy way to get more views on YouTube 2020). So if you’re interested hit the notification bell so you can be notified when that video is uploaded.
If you want more tips on optimizing your videos you can watch ‘Everything you need to optimize your video’ here.
05 Thumbnails are important.
The fifth thing you need to know is thumbnails are important. I’m not really going to talk about thumbnails that much because I made so many videos on thumbnails already. If you want to know more about thumbnails and branding your channel, sign up for the FREE course Brand Your YouTube channel.
I just want you to know thumbnails are important because it’s the first thing you see whenever the search results pop up. Make sure that the most important text is on the thumbnail, You don’t have to make it too long and make sure that you can actually read it. The bigger the better.
I would actually say think like a magazine. Whenever you’re at the store and browsing the magazines, you notice text like flat abs in 5 minutes because yeah, I want flat abs in 5 minutes. Text that makes an impact makes you want to skim through the article or actually buy the magazine. Think about that whenever you’re creating the titles for your thumbnails.
If you want to learn everything you need to know to create videos in 30 days, then join ‘Create Your YouTube videos in 30 days’. I’m going to go over everything from brainstorming video content to uploading YouTube videos.
I don’t have time for this, just tell me how to start my YouTube channel…
So if you want to start a YouTube channel now, first you have to find a niche, do some research, get organized so you can stay consistent, optimize your videos, and then finally you have to think about your YouTube thumbnail because that’s what’s going to get people to click on your video.
Honestly, even if you don’t follow any of the tips that I gave you, just get started. Getting started is most of the battle anyways when it comes to creating a channel or creating videos. The first video is going to be the worst. The biggest regret that I have when it comes to creating my channel is that I wish I created it earlier. Because no matter what, the first video sucks. It’s going to be your worst video because it’s a new experience. Every time you create a video, you’re learning something new, you’re gaining more experience so the next video will get better and better.
What’s holding you back from starting a YouTube channel? Let me know in the comments below.
