How to Start a YouTube Channel in 8 Steps From Scratch

Gone are the days when uploading a random and generic video on YouTube was enough to get some views and engagement. As consumers’ appetite for video content has been increasing in the past decade, the amount of new video content uploaded every minute grew almost twice between 2014 and 2020. As of February 2020, more than 500 hours of video were uploaded to YouTube every minute.

As Youtube is full of content for almost any topic you can imagine, uploading random inconsistent videos will fail to bring any results. If you want to become a successful Youtuber, not only you need to be fully committed, but you must also be strategic about your niche, your target audience, and each specific piece of content you’re producing

We have prepared 10 core principles, which helped millions of YouTubers get noticed and get millions of subscribers. Start your YouTube channel with these principles in mind and join them in this exciting journey.

1. Research Your Potential Market

Many YouTube novices have this dream of simply creating the videos they want to do and being successful and accepted for who they are.

Unfortunately, this is not how YouTube works today for new YouTube channels. Most newcomers give up after some time as realizing that you’ve invested months or years in creating content that has from 3 to 29 views is way too frustrating.

Being strategic from the very beginning of your endeavor and an early commitment to market research can potentially save you from years of wasted effort. What’s more, good research will put you ahead of the competition just because most people just skip this step.

So why do people mostly skip this step? One of the reasons is that seeing successful competitors mostly discourages us from taking action. When you see a person who is already doing something you’d really like to do, it seems that this niche is taken. This kind of research can be emotionally draining.

I can help you to do market research and suggest a few ideas for your YouTube channel. Order a consultation here.

The goal of your market research should be to find what niches are available in your industry. How many bloggers are there overall? How strong is the competition? Where do you stand the best chance of an aggressive start?

2. Find The Right Niche

Most YouTube creators make this mistake: they create generic content.

The thing is, thousands of your competitors have started their YouTube journey far back in time. They have been producing these generic videos for years. Their channels have thousands and millions of subscribers, and their videos have all kinds of social proof that we all need.

If you create generic content and try to appeal to everyone, most likely you’ll end up appealing to no one, especially when you go head-on against long-time content creators.

That doesn’t mean that you can’t make it. That only means that you need a witty approach to finding ta way to outperform these stars. That especially holds true in the beginning.

And here comes this witty approach without any fluff.

Truth is, if you want to build a successful YouTube channel, you’ll need to narrow it down to a specific niche.

Finding your niche ain’t easy. While it may seem obvious, I urge you to put some thought into the process.

Let’s say you’re a yoga trainer and you start a YouTube channel. You upload videos that are generic sequences. But there are already plenty of generic yoga videos. How do you get your video to be watched?

Now the magic trick is to think about a specific group of users that you’d like to target.

Here are some examples that might work

• Teenagers (yoga for posture correction)
• Mothers (how to get fit after pregnancy)
• Elder people (safe yoga)

Instead of appealing to a broad audience, tailor your videos to the needs of a specific group of people. A niche approach to YouTube strategy can be your secret ingredient to successful vlogging as you can become more appealing to your target audience than miscellaneous well-established bloggers with millions of subscribers. The more specific you are, the higher the conversion rate from viewers to subscribers.

The more your YouTube channel grows, the more generic videos you can make. When is the right time to revise your strategy and get down to generic videos? That surely depends on the niche. Probably, not earlier than when you gain some significant traction, e.g. hit at least 100,000 subscribers.

3. Produce/Upload Videos Consistently

As you probably know, YouTube algorithms value consistency. If you upload videos regularly at least once a week, the platform sees you as a committed blogger and works its magic to recommend your videos more.

On the other hand, as you become consistent and upload your videos on a certain day, you create expectations from your audience. If your content is engaging, they will appreciate regular content and will be more likely to get back to your channel. Furthermore, it gives your subscribers something to look forward to, compared with irregular uploads.

Uploading videos consistently will build trust and loyalty with your audience. The best way to preserve this consistency is to create a few videos and schedule them for the week/several weeks. In such a way even if you can’t find content ideas for a few weeks or you’re working on something big, you’ll still have scheduled content for your audience.

4. Promote Your YouTube Channel And Content

You’ve done market research, found your niche and you’ve been uploading videos consistently since then. Yay! Chances are it didn’t make you a star vlogger though.

Unfortunately, these steps are just the bare minimum.

As soon as you upload a new video, you’ll have to think about promoting it.

A good idea might be to share it with your friends and colleagues on social networks such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Your friends are very likely to become your first subscribers, and you’ll be able to connect with them more as you grow your channel.

Apart from that, I strongly advise allocating at least a minimal marketing budget. While it’s almost impossible to get a decent number of organic views for the first channel video, paid advertising will fast-track your growth.

Here’s another reason why if you don’t truly know your target audience, it’s better to take a few steps back and think it over. As soon as you are fully aware of who is your ideal customer, you’ll find it extremely easy to configure paid advertising. While your competitor’s ads are emptying their pockets, you’ll be excited to see how fast your channel grows.

Bottomline. If you don’t have a budget for paid advertising, think about allocating at least something.

5. Learn From Analytics

Not only will you have to constantly produce content and probably run ads, but you’ll have to monitor how well this content performs.

YouTube Creator Studio, an analytics dashboard, contains multiple reports that will help you track and grow your YouTube channel: views, watch time, average duration, engagement, retention, demographics, and traffic sources.

Learning from that analytics will help you to connect with the real demands of your customers. Do they watch your videos until the end and if not, why? Do they find your new video engaging or boring? You’ll gain a lot of insights from studying analytics.

While seeing how people actually react to your content may be a bit painful, it gives you an opportunity to learn and do better next time, improving your content step-by-step. Don’t miss that chance!

6. Be Patient

YouTube is not a place where you get immediate results.

You’ll have to keep faith in yourself and continue investing your efforts in this endeavor.

Growing from 0 to 1,000 subscribers can be challenging. Even if it takes a couple of months, don’t get discouraged. Growing from 1,000 to 10,000 will be faster and once you pass the bar of 10,000 things will start to pick up even easier.

7. Set a Long-Term Goal

At first, creating your own YouTube channel sounds like an exciting venture. It’s after several months that your initial enthusiasm starts wearing off.

If you are about to start a long and time-consuming journey, you’ll need something to undergird yourself on the way to your goal. The more reasons you have, the better. Some of them will serve you well in the beginning while others will support your morals long after your first video.

At some point, you can get discouraged by that person who wrote a nasty comment or just from not seeing the results you expected.

Being on YouTube also means being public to a certain extent. Think about all the good things you can use this publicity for afterward.

Think about amazing people you’ll meet on the way.

Think about how interesting it will be just to create useful content that people enjoy.

Think about how YouTube can change your life dramatically.

Set your long-term goals and choose to believe in your dream and what’s next for you. In the long run it’s much easier when you have a solid goal and side benefits along the way. Make it a journey to enjoy.

8. Make it Your Daily Routine

While managing your YouTube channel may seem like a dream job, it’ll take you commitment, consistency, and belief to gain some traction. If you are up for it, fit working on YouTube videos into your daily schedule.

There are 5 types of tasks you’ll need to do with a YouTube channel:

1. Brainstorm ideas for new videos
2. Create video scenarios
3. Film videos
4. Edit your content
5. Upload the content to YouTube

While you don’t have to do everything by yourself, it’s better to understand from the very beginning what you’ll need to delegate so that you could take the time and find the right person. To ease into it, it’ll also help also need to fit these tasks into your busy schedule.

Summary

You are a creative soul who has much to share with this world. YouTube is a beautiful way to use your skills and talents to the benefit of people in the world.

YouTube channel is a long-term endeavor so be prepared to invest your time and effort into it. If you show consistency, you’ll achieve results you’ve never imagined.

Keep on!