Starting Out On YouTube?

The advice would be to start ten years ago when youtube was still small.

Today, I'd say you need to be well spoken, funny, good-looking and interesting in order to succeed on youtube. And your videos have to have engaging content and they have to be shot and edited pretty much professionally. If you want faster results you have to do shameless promotions everywhere as well as be friends with other youtubers. The latter indeed helps to get more eyeballs.

Another catch about the youtubers with the millions of subscribers is that they all have significant female audiences between the ages 12 and 17, some of them have even complained about it. This is a well known fact, young females love cute gay boys, they actually like cute boys in general, but if they're gay then the cuteness scale is over 9000. So, if you don't have anything to offer to your young female audience, your chances of getting millions of subscribers are close to zero. The best youtube channels starring lgbt-people have around 100 thousand subscribers. That's a lot, but not really a significant number to become youtube rich and famous.

p.s. I'm not sure if you wanted to hear this.

 

Making it big on Youtube is a rare thing. It's cold to say, but keep your expectations low of getting to the top of the success ladder. I've been on Youtube for nearly ten years now, and while I never broke 1k subscribers, maybe I can help.

1. If you have a specific type of content you plan on making; such as gaming, technology and science, news, crafting or what have you--consider sharing your content on websites relating to what you plan on doing. If you want to do movie reviews, share them in various Facebook groups, forums or other social media sites you might be on such as tumblr, twitter, and instagram. Are there people your friends with on social media that are interested in such things? If so, tell them about it and ask them if they can share it with their friends who would be intrigued by it. I say ask, because telling them to sounds forceful. Word of mouth will get you places.

The important thing is to not overstep your boundaries and plaster video links and embeds everywhere, which will likely turn people off from checking you out. Nobody likes a spammer.

2. Don't do what a lot of big name Youtubers do deceptive titles or thumbnails to gain viewers. I'm sure Youtube is starting to have a policty against that, and it's a general thing that a a good chunk of people have a big peeve with.

3. Don't go hard right away. By that, I mean don't invest in expensive editing software, cameras, and lighting devices. The bare necessities are all you really need, and many get far with just with them. A basic editing software like Windows Movie Maker and iMovie that are included with your computer are pretty great on their own. If you want to get something, test out something you might already have. Simple digital cameras often take great footage, or even cell phones.

4. Take an advantage of the tagging system. I'm not saying to spam it all willy-nilly, but don't brush it off. For example, if you plan on doing a channel relating to DIY crafting or rants, tag them accordingly so they're easier to find.

5. When you start building an audience, consider asking one of the Youtubers you look up to if they'd be up for a collaboration. If they would be, you could attract more subscribers from their fanbase. Remember the first rule and not spam them with messages or e-mails for the same reasons.

6. If you don't have anything set in stone and you're just looking to gain a following, consider looking at what's popular right now. The top three things I see now are (1) gaming, (2) diy crafting and (3) list videos, but you can always do your own looking around to see if you find anything else.

 

Work at it and you could have a thriving audience. It takes time to gain a following, and I know it took me like two or three years to get at least 400 something subscribers way back before that channel went under.