How to Grow Your YouTube Channel: Secrets From The Best And Brightest

If you’re wondering how to grow your YouTube channel, take a look at the awesome insights shared by some of the prominent industry representatives!

YouTube is an extremely popular media platform where people of all ages, races, nationalities and beliefs demonstrate their talents and share their experiences with the whole world. Just imagine, every day more than 1.9 billion logged-in users visit this platform!

From a small website full of amateur videos, YouTube has grown into the greatest platform for earning money online. Many successful YouTubers started from making videos just for fun, later got millions of subscribers and turned their hobbies into fame and fortune. In terms of dropshipping, you can create a YouTube channel and start promoting your business there.

To give you some inspiration, we have interviewed some of our affiliate program participants who are running well-off YouTube channels. We have asked them to share their secrets to success and give you some handy tips on how to grow your YouTube channel and get more subscribers in 2018 and beyond.

Let’s start with Hogan – he kindly wrote a huge essay about his YouTube journey!

How to grow your YouTube channel: Hogan Chua

Photo credit: Hogan Chua,  https://hoganchua.com/affiliate-marketing-story/   

“Hi guys, my name is Hogan Chua and I’m 27 from Melbourne, Australia. I run a small Youtube channel where I make website/blog/ecommerce tutorials though want to venture out more and show my personality yet providing value.

Over the years it has grown into a 6-figure/year business and hopefully I can inspire some of you to start because I personally think it’s an amazing opportunity.

So, it all started in 2015, when I was looking for a solution to build a local website using a drag & drop builder (with WordPress) not many great solutions existed back then. So I found a drag n drop theme called Themify and used their free version and I loved it.

Realised the solutions on Youtube weren’t very good. They used bad themes which weren’t good for the user long term. So I decided to create my first tutorial showing people how to make a website using the WordPress theme that I used for my own site.

My first tutorial video took me over 1 month to create but received over half a million views to date. I think that is probably rare for a first video, but I think my experience from previous online ventures helped a lot as a lot of those skills/knowledge were transferrable.

If you want to read a little more about my journey, I’ve written my full story here, but below is my list of 7 Tips for Success on YouTube.

#1 Reverse engineer success

I think as a beginner, the best way to find success early and quick is to simply look at who the top people are in your niche and see what content has done well for them and to study their style of content and monetization methods carefully.

Then you can create something similar but ensure that it’s better or at least aim to do it better – in every single aspect – for example, use a better thumbnail, better titles, better audio quality, more in-depth, different concept etc.

To do this, you can simply go to their channel and then to their videos and filter by most popular videos.

As you grow, you will start to develop your own style and know what types of contents work and don’t. But when you begin, reverse engineering is the best option.

Also you have to understand your first few videos probably aren’t going to be the best, but keep on leveling up your skills and eventually it will be good with practise.

#2 Create evergreen content

Evergreen content is content that is always relevant. Or content that will last a while. For example. News, pranks, vlogs etc might get a huge spike of traffic and then it dies down.

With evergreen content such as “how to’s” they get consistent views. This gives you consistent traffic and if you pair it up with a affiliate product – it is very consistent passive income however important to note, not permanent.

After a year or so, normally views will gradually decrease because naturally people will want to watch newer and fresher content.

I would also pair video content with a blog, with a blog – you can easily edit some words and update the content yet maintaining ranking. With video you need to re upload the whole thing and you lose ranking.

Use keywords everywhere and also uber suggest to check search volume.

#3 Look beyond your niche!

Have you seen some videos with a million views but the quality of video and audio is bad?

Creating an awesome video which gets a ton of views isn’t just about the video and audio quality. But the overall concept. People want to watch new things, which increase your watch time, increasing your visibility and views.

Try to look at different types of videos outside your niche for inspiration and ideas of your next video concept.

This is something I’m looking to try more now and it’s also makes it more fun to be a little more creative 🙂

#4 Don’t stop the record button

When I was first recording my tutorial, I would literally record the intro 100 times. If I messed up 1 word, I would stop and start over. NOT Recommended!

When you first start recording you are going to make mistakes, but the cool thing is that it’s not live and you can cut it out.

So just keep the record button on and take a deep breath and just record the words you stuffed up. And just cut out the part later, it might skip a little bit but it’s all good!

Or you can just simply just tell the audience, “oops I meant” make it a joke or apologize and carry on.

Another way is that you can add text annotations on top of your video to fix the mistakes. So don’t worry too much about mistakes.

You’ll be less frustrated, saves time and much easier.

#5 Focus 80/20

Promotion is important but that should only be 20% or even less of your activities.

80% of your time should be spent on creating a great video for whatever niche your are in.

Most people worry most about optimization, little tactics and the tools they use – This is the easy part. Creating a great video is harder.

To give you a better perspective, think of your video as the food for a restaurant. If the food isn’t amazing, no matter how many coupons you give – it’s not going to work. It’s super super important!

For different genres of video it’s a bit different. For example, if you were to create a travel video – it might be about the story, angles, different transitions and music.

For me specifically as a tutorial channel. My goal is to give the viewer the best end result possible, in this case a beautiful website/blog or ecommerce store but also ensure they understand the process and enjoy it!

So I would create the website for myself few times. Write down the instructions, try to eliminate unnecessary steps, write notes of points or concepts that I should mention, practise recording a few times before doing the final record.

Really focus on helping the user in the video and make it the best video you can. If it’s not, the tags, titles, descriptions or whatever promotion you do – won’t help!

Ask yourself, would you watch it yourself?

Once that is a yes, you can do promotions through answering questions on quora, posting it on social medias, searching on forums to help people and send them to your video etc. Emailing blogs or other influencers to share your video with their audience.

If you are also doing tutorials or some kind of teaching you can also upload to places like udemy or skillshare. Kill two birds with one stone!

#6 Increase your watch time

Your main goal is make sure people watch your video all the way through. There are many tactics here and there for different styles of content.

But for my channel, “how-to tutorials” – things like replying to comments will help increase watch time.

Because if you think about it, if someone is stuck and you help them to get back on track its normal to assume that it would increase watch time – which increases your ranking on the youtube search.

And you also have to make sure that – people understand what you are saying and what you are doing. It’s important they understand. Think of it like people who are watching as students in maths class – if they don’t understand they are less likely to pay attention. Less likely to enjoy it and then less likely to share it with their friend.

Everything plays are role in your success and it’s these little things to think about especially when you are just starting out which is important.

#7 You are NOT just a youtuber!

Youtube is just a platform.

It’s a platform that allows anyone to create videos to reach millions, if not billions of eyeballs.

When I was just starting out creating my own little website and blog in 2011. I didn’t see the entire picture. People told me that “hey, you can build a review blog and make money.”

I didn’t look at it from a business perspective. I was young, naive and didn’t really know what I was doing. Now I can understand the bigger picture and it’s important that you do to.

At your core, you are an entrepreneur or business. And you are using using Youtube, Blogs, Podcasts and Social Media as a free way to attract your ideal customers/viewers to eventually buy something. It could be your own t-shirts, online courses, strawberry jam (if you are a cooking channel) etc.

The best way for beginners to start is affiliate marketing, which means that you don’t need to create a product – instead you promote someone else product and you get a commission.

There are many monetization methods such as Youtube Ads, Sponsorships, Patreon but the best way long term is to create your own products.

This allows you total control over the product/experience, also you have a direct relationship with the customer and you reap more of the rewards.

For example on Peter Mckinnon’s channel, he sells his own LUT packs and presets – which you can see in the description of his videos. These are $20 a pop. And each of his videos gets a few hundred views. I think we can safely assume he is making an easy six-figures/year from that alone.

Why you should start now

You don’t need any special equipment. Just need a camera, the one on back of your phone will do. If you want to record tutorials, reviews or showing something on screen you will need screenflow (what I use for mac) or camtasia for Pc. Those can be used for editing too. And I use a Blue yeti mic with a pop filter for recording audio.

Honestly, I wish I started Youtube when was 18. There is no such thing as traditional media or business anymore, this is the base of any business – even if you are a restaurant. Instead of just thinking about making money from selling food.

People can use Youtube as a media channel to promote, create recipe videos which can reach a worldwide audience at zero cost. Then you could monetize through your own cookbooks, affiliate products such as pots and pans, you could package your sauces which you make and export it. There so many possibilities so I wish more people knew as it could really help whatever business you are currently in.

This is not going away, I realised this when I saw my 2 year old cousin, scrolling through youtube videos and browsing and choosing the video to watch like a pro!

So I looked up some toy reviews he was watching and if you see the red percentages you can see the like vs dislike ratio.

It shows anywhere from 60-70% likes and 30-40% dislikes.

Compared to normal videos it’s a very high dislike ratio and then I was thinking to myself, why it happened because it’s just a cute kid sharing his toys – why hate on him?

Then I was like “A-HAA” it must be because the little kids watching must be really young and they probably randomly press it.

After a closer look at the comments, the theory seems about right 🙂

This is the world we live in now and we aren’t going back. So if you’ve been on the fence – just start!

As Gary Vee say’s claim your 2nd row of beach front property now. Or it’s going to be a lot harder, more expensive as more people jump on board!

I don’t think I could cover everything in the post above, so drop your comments below! And let me know what is stopping you from starting one today?”

That was an incredible feedback, right? Let’s see what else we’ve got!

How to grow your YouTube channel: Darrel Wilson

Photo credit: Darrel Wilson, https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5alq-VmYnfQZt7YaNgdcGw

Our next hero is Darrel Wilson – a successful YouTuber who has been recording different video tutorials for about 3 years. Although his first video got no views at all, he didn’t give up and went on making videos. Now he has more than 96 thousand subscribers and shares his experience with us.

To take part in our interview, he has recorded a full-scale video where he explains:

• How Darrel started making videos and what difficulties he had at the beginning;
• What equipment and software he uses to make high quality videos;
• Why creating valuable content is a must if you want to grow your YouTube channel.

Enjoy!

Darrel did a great job, so don’t forget to click the like button and support him 🙂

How to grow your YouTube channel: Alex Cooper

Photo credit: Alex Cooper, https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCRjLXuZ79cDAICXYO5RGJA

Alex Cooper is a video blogger from the UK who runs a couple of amazing YouTube channels. The most successful one is called WP Eagle and it’s all around WordPress. This channel has more than 27 thousand subscribers and continues growing rapidly.

Upon our request, Alex has recorded a nice video where he shares his tips on:

• How to grow your YouTube channel,
• Where to find inspiration,
• How to produce and promote your videos,
• How to overcome different obstacles that can prevent your project from succeeding.

We are incredibly thankful to Hogan, Darrel, and Alex, and their kind feedback means the world to us.

Now, you know diverse tips on how to grow your YouTube channel, and I hope they will inspire you to make your own videos and boost your business through this amazing platform!