Getting Ready
This guide contains step by step instructions to start a successful YouTube channel and make money out of it.
So, let’s get started.
Before you can venture out and create your first YouTube channel, you must do initial research create a detailed plan to execute. Take the following steps to ensure that you are taking the right steps and your YouTube channel will be a success in the long run.
Step 1: Select your topic or an area of interest
Believe me or not but this is the most important step. First, you need to find a topic for your YouTube channel.
The best way to come up with topics is to look at the things that interest you the most or the things that you are passionate about, make a list of such things and see if you can make a channel based on them.
The best way to come up with topics is to look at the things that interest you the most or the things that you are passionate about, make a list of such things and see if you can make a channel based on them.
Usually, a channel created on specific topics work better on YouTube, but I’ll suggest you select a general topic (gaming, fitness, cooking, etc.) then focus on a specific subsection in the beginning and cover other subsections as you grow.
For example, if you are a gym trainer and you decide to create a channel where you plan to publish videos on various body exercises.
Start by creating videos focusing on a specific subsection such as exercises to lose belly fat, as your channel grows, publish videos on exercises to lose whole body weight and so on.
Following this strategy helps you to build a loyal following and also builds an interactive community where your audience can interact with each other.
Before you move on to the next step, I suggest you shortlist at least five topics for your channel.
Below, I am suggesting few broad niches along with few examples which work best on YouTube. Use them to start your thinking process.
1. Tutorials
Example ideas -
- Powerpoint tutorials
- Photoshop tutorials
- Makeup tutorials
- Haircut tutorials
2. Technology
Example ideas -
3. Gaming
Example ideas -
- Gameplay coverage
- Game reviews
- Gaming tips and tricks
4. How To Guides
Example ideas -
- How to create a website
- How to create a mobile app
- How to play chess
- How to play guitar
5. Health and Fitness
Example ideas -
- Body exercises
- Meal and supplements
- Diet Tips
6. Recipes
Example ideas -
- Vegan recipes
- Paleo recipes
- Cupcakes and cookies
- Juices
7. Entertainment
Example ideas -
- Funny videos
- Cute animal videos
- Slow motion videos
- Strange videos
Step 2: Verifying the profitability of your niche
Once you’ve completed Step 1 and have shortlisted few topics, it’s the time to verify whether these topics are profitable or not.
Just being knowledgeable or passionate about any topic is not enough to build a profitable YouTube channel, you need to make sure that your topic has enough audience size and profit potential to meet your income goals.
To verify if your niche is profitable or not take the following steps:
1. Dig out right keywords with good search volume - Go to Google’s Keyword Planner and type in the topics you’ve shortlisted, and check whether there is enough search volume for the main and related keywords.
Select only the keywords which have at least 1000 searches per month; this will ensure that your keyword will also get a good amount of searches on YouTube.
2. Find video keywords - Video keywords are the ones who return YouTube video results on the first page when searched in Google.
When you are just starting out you must find out video keywords in your niche and then create videos related to them.
It will help you to get your videos ranked and displayed in Google search results which will get you traffic from Google as well instead of from just YouTube.
To verify whether a keyword is video keyword or not, just paste the keyword into Google search bar and see if any video ranks on the first page of the search results.
Step 3 - Define your target audience
If you want to be successful on YouTube you need to create videos for a target audience, to do this, you must conduct some initial research to define your target audience.
Finding answers to the following questions will help you to define your target audience.
1. Which kind of an audience is my target?
You need to create a persona of the ideal audience who will get attracted towards your video. Narrow down your ideal audience by finding the answers to the following questions:
- What is the gender of your target audience (Male, Female or Both)?
- What is their age group?
- Do they belong to certain country or location?
- Are they beginner, intermediate or expert?
- What is the size of your audience?
For example, if you are a gym trainer and you decide to create videos on belly fat reducing exercises then your target audience will be worldwide male or female population in the age group of 30 to 60.
The best way to find the answers to all the questions mentioned above is to look at channels of other people who created videos around the same topic as yours.
Observe, how many views their videos are getting? How many subscribers does their channel have? How likes, dislikes and interactive comments their videos have?
Observing all these things will help you to get an idea about your audience size, the kind of videos they like, their expectations and so on.
Large number views and subscribers is a good sign which indicates that your topic’s audience is large and has the potential to generate thousands of views for your videos.
2. What does your audience want to achieve?
Now this is the important aspect you need to determine. You need to find out what are your audiences’ goals are and how your videos can help them to achieve them.
Are they looking to lose their weight? Learn to play guitar? Make arts and crafts? Or Just want to get entertained.
The goal could be anything, but your videos should help your audience to achieve their goals.
For example, if you are a makeup artist and you decide to create a channel on makeup tutorials then the goals of your audience will be to look better when they go out for a party, a date, a trip, a business presentation and so on.
3. How can you share the knowledge using video format?
Only determining the goals isn’t enough, you’ll also need to determine whether it’s suitable to share the knowledge with your audience in video format.
Although video will suit in most of the cases, it won’t just fit in few.
For example, it might be suitable to record belly fat reducing exercises and make a video of it. But video won’t suit when you want to provide detailed instructions, writing a document might be more suitable for it
Based your research till now, in this stage, you’ll have to narrow down your audience, their goals and determine what knowledge shared in video format will them to achieve their goals.
Secondly, you’ll also have to think about what your audience expects in a video.
Do they want whiteboard videos? Hands-on session? Step by step tutorial? And so on.
For example, if you’re uploading a video of a makeup tutorial, in this case, it might be more suitable to record a hands-on session in which you are actually doing someone’s makeup rather than just giving instructions and talking in front of a camera.
Getting Started
Once you’re ready with all the data collected in the “Getting Ready” phase can move on to YouTube and create your first channel.
Step 1 - Create your first channel
Before you can create a YouTube channel, you’ll need a Google account which will be required for signing into YouTube.
Sign in into YouTube, visit the following link and click on create a new channel.
https://www.youtube.com/channel_switcher
After that you’ll be asked to enter the name of your channel, enter a name and click on create button.
At this point, your channel will be created, and you can add a profile picture, channel art and write channel description.
Make sure that all these three elements look relevant and attractive to your target audience. You can take some inspiration and channel art design cues from other existing channels within your niche.
Step 2 - Uploading your first video
When you are ready to upload your first video, go to your channel’s homepage and click on the “Upload” button in the top right section.
At this point, YouTube will ask you to upload your video and select the privacy level. Choose privacy level as “Public” as you want your video to be available for everyone.
You can choose “Unlisted” if you don’t want any other YouTube users to find your videos and you can choose “Private” if you want only specific people to watch your video.
Before you can upload a video file you need to optimize it for SEO (Search Engine Optimization) point of view, so make sure your video filename has right keyword included in them.
For example, if you want your belly fat reducing exercise video rank for the keyword “belly fat loss exercise” then you should name your video file as “belly_fat_loss_exercise_video.
Once you select the file for uploading YouTube will process the video and provide you a URL where you can access your video.
At this point, you’ll need to enter your video’s title, description, and relevant tags. In the next section, we’ll see how to optimize them from SEO point of view.
Step 3 - Optimizing Title, Description, and Tags
Title -
Based on the keyword research you’ve done in the previous phase formulate a title which contains your target keywords but also looks natural and relevant to your audience. Don’t try to stuff in multiple keywords and make the title look unnatural.
Also, make sure your title has at least 5 words in it and try to place your main keyword in the beginning.
For example, if you were trying to rank for the keyword “Party Makeup Tutorial” your title should look like: “Party Makeup Tutorial In Five Easy Steps.”
Description -
Your video’s description is the most important factor if you are aiming to rank high for you target keywords.
Google and YouTube algorithms rely heavily on the description to know what your video is about so that they can show it in search results for relevant search queries.
Try to include all the related terms and necessary information they will help the algorithms to understand the topic of your video in a much better way.
Secondly, include your keyword at least twice or thrice in the description, especially once in the beginning sentences and once in the ending sentences.
Tags -
Tags -
Tags aren’t of much importance, but they help algorithms to understand more about your video’s topic.
Just include all the main and secondary keywords in the tags section.
Step 4 - Knowing your Creator Studio
Your channel’s Creator Studio is a place where you can make changes to your videos, description, define settings, get analytics data and much more.
To access your Creator Studio, click on channel’s profile picture in the top-right corner and select “Creator Studio."
Creator Studio has many sections, but we’ll discuss only a few important ones.
1. Video Manager - In this section, you’ll find a list of all the videos you’ve ever uploaded, you can also edit the title, description, tags, and settings of any particular video.
2. Community - It’s a place where you can see all the comments received on your videos, messages and a total number of subscribers.
3. Channel - You need to pay more attention to this section if you desire to make money on YouTube. In this section you’ll find Monetization Option, click on the “Enable” button.
After that, you’ll need to join the YouTube Partner program, set up an Adsense account and choose the videos that you want to monetize.
Once you’ve completed all the above steps, YouTube will start showing ads on your videos, and you’ll start earning money.
4. Create - This section consists YouTube’s inbuilt video editor which will help you to create and edit videos. It also has a huge collection of free music and sound effects that you can use inside your videos without worrying about copyright violations.
The only thing you need to look at here is the license, if you use a music track or sound effects that need attribution, you’ll need to give credits to the original creator in your description.
If a music track or sound effect doesn’t need any attribution then don’t worry about anything, just use it in your video.
Best Practices
Once you’re done with all the above steps, it’s the time to follow the best practices to grow your channel.
1. Be consistent at posting videos - Consistency at posting videos is a necessary factor for achieving success on YouTube.
Although it won’t help in ranking your videos, but it helps to build loyal subscribers who will watch all your current and future videos.
Consistency is the reason why people subscribe to any channel; they like current videos published by a channel and expect more from it.
It’s same as if you’ve watched the first episode of Game Of Thrones and you liked it so much that you’re eagerly waiting for the next episodes.
To remain consistent, it’s better to create a video posting schedule and display on your channel art. It will motivate you to publish new videos on a regular basis and let your subscribers know when they can expect a new video on your channel.
You can define your video posting schedule as per your convenience but make sure stick to it.
You can define your video posting schedule as per your convenience but make sure stick to it.
For example, you can publish one new video every Saturday at 4 pm.
2. Use consistent theme while creating videos - In this case, consistent theme means using consistent colors, fonts, background and video pattern.
For example, if you were creating videos on weight loss exercises, you can wear a white t-shirt and black shorts while performing exercises for every video you create.
Using consistent theme creates a positive image about your channel into the minds of your subscribers which helps people to recognize your new videos when they appear in the YouTube sidebar or at the end of other videos.
3. Build curiosity - This is an important tip about being successful on YouTube. Build curiosity!
When a create a video at the end of it tell your audience what’s coming in the next video but in such a way that they should get curious about it.
This strategy always works, when you give your subscribers something at the end, they start wondering what the next thing could be. This curiosity literally forces them to watch your new videos gradually helping you to fetch more views and engagement for your videos.
For example, at the end of a weight loss exercise video, I would tell my audience, “Next video covers unique and simple 3 step exercise that will help you reduce 5 kilos in a month.”
4. Ask for feedback - Ask relevant and response generating questions inside your videos and encourage your audience to provide answers by replying in the comments.
Make sure you ask questions which they emotionally relate you or something related to their goals.
For example, for a weight loss channel audience, I would ask, “How much weight would you like to lose in next two months.”
5. Interact with your viewers and subscribers -Interacting with your viewers is necessary for engaging them with your videos. Just go, like their comments, reply to their questions and try to an interactive community.
6. Collaborate with other YouTubers - If you want to grow your channel fast, you need to team up with other YouTubers who are working the same niche as yours.
Before you can collaborate, you need to build a healthy relationship with them. Go and subscribe to their channel.
Leave valuable comments below their videos, give some meaningful suggestions, ask questions and like their videos.
When you do this consistently, I am sure they’ll notice you. Later can you can directly contact them and inform them about your channel.
It might be possible that they’ll feature you channel in their videos or even link to them, gradually helping to grow your channel.
Making Money
Following are the are the 3 major ways by which you can make money on YouTube:
1. Displaying Adsense Ads - In Part 3, Step 4, I have specifically mentioned the steps to enable Adsense ads on your videos. So check them out if you have skipped them.
Once you’ve completed all the steps, Google will start serving ads on your videos and you’ll earn money from them.
You can visit your Adsense account to check your earnings.
2. Affiliate Marketing - Recommend products related to your niche inside videos or even create a special review video for them.
After that, you’ll need to place your affiliate links in the top of your video description.
People will watch your videos and click on your affiliate links. When someone buys your recommended products, you’ll earn a commission.
3. Promotions - Once your channel will get a good amount of subscribers let’s say more than 50 thousand people, there are chances that companies, other YouTube channel owners who are related to your niche will approach you to feature their products, services or channel videos. You can earn handsome money by promoting them.
The End...
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