Ask any YouTuber and they will tell you that generating significant views and subscribers isn't easy. But with the right strategy and tools, any video creator can build an engaged subscriber base when they understand what those subscribers want to watch.

Appealing to an audience to watch content you are passionate about making is just the first step, you need to know how to reach them and get your videos discovered. Our guides to how to guide more views on YouTube will give you the best tips to succeed on the platform.

How To Get More Views on YouTube

Do you want to make money on YouTube? Millions of creators are earning a very good living from the platform by uploading content that drives huge views and engagements. Whether that income is from advertising revenue, merch sales, or brand deals, we keep you updated with best practises and ideas.

How To Make Money on YouTube

Do you know how to do keyword research so you understand what videos people are actually searching for on YouTube? Do you know how to create a custom YouTube thumbnail? Do you know how to create a Playlist on YouTube?

vidIQ has a ton of tips that will help every creator maximise their video content. We publish content every week to keep you up to date with all the best practices.

YouTube Tips & Tricks

If you’ve put off creating your own YouTube channel because you’re overwhelmed with the choices you need to make or are panicking because you feel you lack the right skills to succeed, worry no more and welcome to the only resource you’ll need to fulfill your video creator dreams.

If this is your first time here, we have a 

 that aims to educate you on your YouTube journey. And if it is your plan to grow your channel, make sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel, and click on our notification bell so you don't miss any of our latest tips, tricks, advice, and news.

How to Start Your YouTube Channel: 10 Top Tips

We promised 20 tips to kickstart your YouTube channel, so let's start delivering on that promise with 10 tips in this post and 10 tips in the 

. All the tips are covered in this video too:

So amazingly, there are still some people out there who are thinking of starting a YouTube channel and have been for months, possibly even years. My advice to you is, ready or not, start now. And I'm not telling you this as a New Year's resolution. Every moment you hesitate or procrastinate, there are thousands of video creators starting their YouTube channel today, and gobbling up all your potential audience. You don't want that.

Feel the fear, do it anyway. Start, press record. Record whatever you want today. It doesn't matter if it doesn't end up on YouTube. You need to gain experience in getting in front of the camera, getting behind the camera, using your editing program. You need to start creating content to find out whether or not you enjoy making videos before you know whether or not you enjoy being a YouTuber.

Tip #2 Learn How YouTube Works, No Seriously:

The chances are, that the first video you make is going to absolutely suck. Fantastic, you've made a video. You've made the first step, and in six months’ time, you'll look back at that first video and think yeah, that really was terrible, but you've gotta start the journey somewhere. And with that, you've gotta start your YouTube channel somewhere as well, even if you're not ready. Create a YouTube account, upload a video to YouTube. You don't have to publish it, that's the important thing.

You need to gain experience going through the workflow of uploading videos. The last thing you want is having a brilliant video ready to upload, but you don't know how the YouTube system works. Again, experience is going to trump any advice any of us can give you, so record a video, upload it to YouTube. You don't have to publish it.

Tip #3 Develop a Strategy you Will Actually Follow:

While getting some practical experience behind you is obviously a good thing, you also want some form of strategy. So, answer these questions:

What do you want your channel to achieve on YouTube

, and when you're answering this, try and answer it from a viewer's perspective, not your perspective. So I don't want to hear about hitting 10,000 subscribers, a million views, or whatever. If your viewers know that you're in it for your own self-gain, they will see through it and immediately switch off. Viewers want to know what they can gain from the content, and you want to sell that as much as possible in your videos.

 Again, try and be as specific as possible. What age range? What gender, if you are going to a particular gender? What type of demographic? What are they interested in? You need to know who's going to watch your content.

 There are millions of gaming channels out there, hundreds of thousands of Fortnite channels out there. How are you going to distinguish your content from everybody else who's already on YouTube making content? You need to disrupt the status quo, not join it, because you'll never be seen.

how are you going to deliver this content?

 Is it going to be every day, once a week, at a particular time of the day? Think about when your audience is most likely to watch YouTube, and how much YouTube they can watch per week, and then tailor your content to those watching habits, and think about whether you're going to do video on demand, live streams, what's going to be best for you and your audience?

Tip #4 Find Your Niche and Build the Hell Out of It:

live streams, you'll know this one off by heart. Niche down. Let me give you a quick example. What's your channel about? If you're giving an answer such as, "My channel's about beauty, and it's about travel, "and it's about vlogging," then it's about too many things. 

. It should be about one specific topic, when you start your channel, because you need to appeal to a very specific audience.

Once you've grown your channel, and you've got millions of subscribers who fall in love with you, you can take them on a journey wherever you want, but to begin with, the audience is only interested in the content. They have no investment in you. Try and remember that. It's a cruel lesson to understand, but it will help you when you first start out on YouTube.

Once you've thought about and answered all of these questions, I want you to wrap it all up in a nice little present, called your value proposition. This is your elevator pitch. Try and tell your audience who you are, and why they should watch you, in around about six words.

. It tells you the who, YouTubers, video creators, and why they should watch, because they will learn how to grow their channels. But we've managed to do that in four words. Now it's your turn.

Tip #6 Invest in the Right Audio Equipment:

If you've just started out on YouTube, and you're wondering what your first tech upgrade should be, it is 100% audio, and here's why. Bad audio is so much more distracting than bad video, and everybody hates onboard microphones. 

So if you can, get yourself a dedicated microphone for your camera,

 and if you're recording from a computer, you can't go far wrong with a Blue Yeti.

Tip #7 Create a Formula with Template Videos:

Videos need structure, so when you make your next video, try to think of how you will develop a show formula, that you can use as a template for your future videos. Remember at the beginning of this video, I literally gave you a hook. An introduction, a teaser to what's going to be going on for the rest of this video. Then we have the branded intro, followed by an introduction to who we are for new viewers, a call to action to subscribe to our channel, and then we jumped into the meat of the content where we are right now, and at the end of this video, you'll see how we round this all up.

Your show formula will take time to structure, and it will evolve over the course of your YouTube journey. Try and keep an eye out for this when you watch your favorite YouTubers. As rough and as random as they might appear, there is always structure and story behind each video, and that's why you watch them.

Some people love analytics, others hate them, but there are a couple that are crucial to keep an eye on, whether or not you want to look at that analytics. The first is 

This represents how enticing your titles are, and how clickable your thumbnails are. Check the click-through rate for your channel as a whole, and on individual videos as you test. I'm not going to give you all of the same target to reach. Check what your current click-through rate is, and whether it's two, four, six, or eight percent. I want you to try and improve that by two to three percent this year. It will bring in so many more views.

The other metric, as it always has been, is 

. Generally speaking, the more watch time you get, the more YouTube is going to promote your content. But if you make shorter videos, that doesn't necessarily mean you must make longer videos, because your audience might not react very well to those longer videos.

What I will say is maximize the value of your watch time in the videos that you have. That's by looking at relative audience retention. How does your video stack up to similar videos, in terms of whether people are still watching or not, and try and improve the relative audience retention. Having said that, if your average view duration is 60, 70, 80%, you're doing really well, and it gives you a license to try testing longer videos.

Verify your YouTube account. That will give you access to the most important tool on YouTube, which is custom thumbnails. We've got a video here on how to do it.

Tip #10 Create an Engaging, Interesting Channel Banner:

If I see another generic cityscape, or rolling hills in the channel banner when we do channel audits, I'm going to rip out my hair.

10 more tips or creating and growing your YouTube channel

If you want to take your YouTube channel to the next level and 

 then make sure to download vidIQ. Join over 1 million other users and use vidIQ to help you research YouTube, analyze videos, audit your own channel, and take actionable steps 

Members of the vidIQ family that have upgraded to our Boost and Pro packages get immediate access to the Academy 

 so you can kickstart your YouTube success today! Access to the exclusive vidIQ academy will give you a huge advantage over your competitors from the get-go. 

Kick off your YouTube dreams with the tools you need to launch YOUR channel. We've got the top tips just for you!

How to Start a YouTube Channel: 10 Brilliant Tips

Buckle up, video creators, 2019 is going to be a year of milestones...

Set channel milestones for subscribers, views, uploads, likes, hours watched, and comments, and peep your best performing months for the same metrics — for free 

When vidIQ surpassed 100,000 subscribers, we were awarded the Silver Creator Award (thanks, YouTube!), however, since then we’ve achieved some pretty significant milestones… ones that don’t come with shiny plaques.

Ending 2018 on a high note as we surpassed 250,000 subscribers.

Milestones, like fingerprints, are unique to each individual. Our definition of a milestone may be different from yours, so it makes sense that we should have the ability to celebrate milestones by the metric and measure of our choosing.

The Achievements tool gives you that flexibility — whether you're aiming for your first 100 subscribers, your first 5,000 views or 10,000,000 hours of watched time, our tool will track a milestone if it's relevant to you, no matter the stage of your YouTube journey.

If you already have the free vidIQ Chrome extension, you can access Achievements on the left-hand navigation bar of most YouTube pages.

When you click on it, you’ll see six key achievements from your channel: subscribers, views, uploads, likes, hours watched and comments.

The headline achievement is always your next expected milestone, so in the case above, vidIQ is expected to smash 250,000 hours of total watched time on the channel in just two days time.

Zoom into the Hours Watched key achievement to see a further breakdown of your most recent milestone achieved, including the date, minutes watched and even years watched.

Keep an eye on the progress bar along the bottom of each metric to gauge when you’re forecasted to hit your next milestone.

So what do you do when you actually achieve your milestones? You celebrate them, of course.

Click on any of the key achievement boxes to instantly create an achievement or certificate to share on social media.

In the example above, we hit 125,000 likes in December of 2018 — an achievement we shared with our Twitter followers. To do the same, simply select the Twitter icon to automatically generate a tweet complete with text and an image, click on “Tweet” and there you are, job done.

We could have stopped there with the Achievements tool, but we wanted to add a little extra spice by giving you visibility into your best-performing months for the same key metrics.

From the Achievements screen, simply scroll down to see how you’re currently fairing compared to your best months.

For example, in December 2018 vidIQ had its best month yet for subscribers — 18,600 of ‘em. The progress bar along the bottom shows how we’re tracking for the current month. At 1,123 subscribers, we’ve got some work to do to match a monumental December.

The diamond symbol represents your best ever month's performance — mouse over it to confirm the date.

Of course, just like key achievements you can click on any of these boxes and share your success.

Now (full disclosure) there is one more section in the Achievements tool which to be honest, is a little undercooked right now, and that’s the Top Performing Video section.

At the moment it displays the video on your channel with the most views. We’d like to add additional metrics (such as the video with the most watched time or the video that’s generated the most subscribers) but we want your input.

What would you like to see in the Top Performing section? Let us know in the comments below.

And if you love Achievements but you're wondering how on earth to get it, this is just a tiny piece of a super powerful tool.

Research YouTube, analyze videos, audit your own channel, take actionable steps and track your milestones… 

all for free with the the vidIQ Chrome extension.

Introducing our brand spankin’ new vidIQ Achievements tool, empowering YouTubers to define, monitor, achieve and celebrate their unique milestones at a glance.

Introducing vidIQ Achievements for More Views and Subscribers

We know that some of you have battled through a lot over the last 12 months just to get your content monetized. 1000 subscribers, 4000 hours of watchtime, and an agonizing application period. But, you finally made it. #HereComesTheMoney!

With the run up to Christmas you've probably seen your revenue from your YouTube videos gradually climb too... then BAM! Here comes January and all of sudden you are earning even less peanuts than you were this time last week. The question is WHY!?

In summary it comes down to economics. But the more important question should be why does this really matter, because if this REALLY concerns you, then I'm afraid you are REALLY selling yourself short!

Install the vidIQ Chrome Extension for free today: 

Why does your Adsense revenue do so badly in January?

Why YouTube AdSense Revenue SUCKS in January

We asked many amazing creators what it takes to get more views and subscribers in 2019 and this is what they had to say:

Andrew LakeMaker: Spend a good 3-4 hours per thumbnail, they are that important.

Evan Carmichael: Better understand your data to come up with new video series.

Spankie Valentine: Focus on the artistic and creative process.

Derral Eves: Data does not lie. use data to drive decissions.

Sean Cannel: Master your craft by keeping to the basics, leveling up and learning as much as you can.

Ernest: Strive for higher audience retention and sharing.

Brian G. Johnson: Keep on striving for perfection even though that's not possible.

Want to know how to crush your YouTube channel? Hear from many of the best.

How to Get More YouTube Views & Subscribers

YouTube Rewind is designed to celebrate all that is good on the platform. The 2018 edition features Will Smith, Baby Shark, Ninja and many other famous YouTubers. But what was once a loved tradition now seems to be one of those lightning rod videos that people will click on and immediately dislike irrespective of the content.

Here is an explanation on why it did so bad

Marques Brownlee has a lot of great ideas and theories on why this video blew it.

Haters are always gonna hate but there just seems to be a lot more of them on YouTube these days. It wasn't always like this. People use to look forward to the annual YouTube Rewind video. In 2012-2016 millions would watch and like it and less than a hundred thousand would dislike it; a ratio of more than ninety percent in the positive.

As the years have gone by and YouTube has become global and more mainstream however, they've also been hit by bad news stories such as adpocalypse and the controversy over Logan Paul - remember he was one of a poster boys of last year's Rewind. 2017 saw a 25% drop in approval while 2018 sees the Rewind being disliked almost twice as much as it is liked.

So what's going on? More people are watching YouTube than ever before, more video creators are making more money on YouTube than ever before yet more viewers seem more disillusioned than ever before

We noticed something about YouTube Premieres

In this video we talk about our thoughts on how they used YouTube Premiers for this video and why that confused us.

We'd love to hear your constructive thoughts on why you think this is happening on YouTube. Let us know in the comments.

People seem to really hate the YouTube rewind 2018 video. In the first 24 hours, it received over 2.35 million dislikes making it the 9th most disliked video of all time on YouTube.

YouTube Rewind 2018 Hits 2 Million Dislikes in 24 Hours

T-Series is definitely gonna overtake PewDiePie. No. PewDiePie just got half a million subscribers in a single day.

I woke up to this morning was something quite incredible. First of all, it starts with vidIQ. We did a video last week about another MrBeast antic on the subscriber race. And it'd been doing relatively well, but overnight, it exploded in views. At one point, we were giving it 20,000 views per hour. And that told me something about the current situation with the PewDiePie-versus-T-Series subscriber count. And no doubt, I'm sure you've seen all of these over the past couple of weeks. Live subscriber counts of the battle. The number of people watching these livestreams on Sunday morning exploded. The top result here, FlareTV, at one point had 70,000 people watching the subscriber count. To give you some perspective, that's the entire population of Andorra watching two numbers compete with each other.

This was supposed to be the endgame. The YouTube universe was starting to smell blood. By the end of December the 1st, T-Series was less than a hundred thousand subscribers behind PewDiePie. It seemed as if not even a MrBeast-inspired stunt by Justin Roberts, apparently spending $1 million on a billboard in Times Square, asking people to subscribe to PewDiePie, could save him now.

And by noon, just as PewDiePie surpassed at 73 million subscribers himself, the subscriber gap was down to less than 20,000.

It could've been the billboard, it could've been a tweet, it could've been the livestream. It could've been PewDiePie's latest video with a rather direct title. Or it could've been something going down on Reddit which you're always keen to tell me about in the comments because I forget that corner of the internet. Whatever happened, the subscriber gap between PewDiePie and T-Series has increased once again. The breakdown of the day is astonishing in itself. From noon to nine p.m., PewDiePie gained 350,000 subscribers. Over the course of the entire day, PewDiePie gained 544,000 subscribers.

As for the subscriber gap between PewDiePie and T-Series, you know, the other channel in this story. Well, up until noon, as you can see, it got as close as 16,000 subscribers and then PewDiePie absolutely obliterated T-Series in the second half of the day. Look at the increasing difference between three o'clock and six o'clock. It's astonishing. It should also be noted at this point that T-Series had a pretty good day as well. They average 155,000 subscribers a day, but they doubled that on December the 2nd. And that's rare. Usually, they're very consistent and they don't have such spikes. But what they do have, just like PewDiePie, is passionate, committed fans rallying behind their cause as well.

If you want to take your YouTube channel to the next level then make sure to download vidIQ. It will help you research YouTube, analyze videos, audit your own channel, and take actionable steps 

It was all set to happen on December 2. T Series was less than 20,000 subscribers behind. By the end of the same day, they were only 230,000 subscribers behind.

Pewdiepie VS T Series - 500,000 Subscribers In One Day

1 Studio Beta Individual video impressions and CTR

In the new YouTube Studio Beta click on Analytics then click on top videos.

A list will pull up where you can sort by highest CTR

Click on reach viewers and you will see unique viewers on the right.

This allows you to understand how many views you get per viewer. You can see this metric under build an audience.

This metric shows how your latest has done compared to other content.

With compare metrics you can compare lots of metrics together to get a visual feel for how you are doing.

Do you need to know your YouTube analytics to grow your channel right? Well here's 10 you might be missing and where to find them!

10 YouTube Data Secrets You Didn't Know!

The upload process can be a daunting process. You've got thumbnails, titles, tags, hashtags, cards, endscreens, translations, description and a whole lot more to consider.

Every day we all watch videos and think, well this video is missing this or that, no wonder it isn't doing well. We've come up with a list of 15 video upload tips to follow to help your YouTube video off to a flying start.

The upload process can be a daunting process in this video we show you how to properly upload videos to YouTube.

How to Properly Upload Videos to YouTube

Need ideas on making your next video, here are 30:

Start talking to camera and see what happens

Try to add a cliff hanger at the end or beginning

Double your video length and see what happens

Or shorten your video and see if that changes the pace and tone of the video

Struggling to come up with content? Here are 30 YouTube ideas for ANY channel!

Want More YouTube Views? 30 YouTube Video Ideas To Kickstart ANY Channel

So you're a big fan of Fortnite, PUBG, Clash Royal, WWE 2K 18 or GTA V? And now you want to start a gaming YouTube channel? Awesome! Guess what? So does everyone else! There are millions of channels now about gaming, all competing for those same views and watchtime minutes.

What you want to know is why some channels stand out more than others? A lot of it has to do with channel personality, what the channel can offer that others can't and how enticing the content is. We explore this and a lot more with challenges, subtle gaming references and you'll discover what my favourite game of all time is.

How to Start a Gaming Channel on YouTube: Research is Everything!

How to Start a Gaming Channel on YouTube: The Creator is the Star

How to Start a Gaming Channel on YouTube: Focus on Your Target Audience

How to Start a Gaming Channel on YouTube: Double Down on Successful Content

How to start a gaming channel on YouTube in 2018? It's one of the most competitive video spaces on the platform. Here are 10 great tips to get you started!

How to Start a YouTube Gaming Channel: Tips and Tricks

How do you get your first 100 subscribers? We've got more than 10 tips and suggestions to help you get there. Getting started on YouTube and grinding up to 100 subscribers can feel like the hardest hurdle to overcome. Where do you start with so much to think about? We've come up with some awesome suggestions to help kick-start your channel and think more like a YouTuber and less like someone chucking videos randomly onto the internet!

Getting started on YouTube and grinding up to 100 subscribers can feel like the hardest hurdle to overcome.

Introducing vidIQ Achievements for More Views and Subscribers

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Pewdiepie VS T Series - 500,000 Subscribers In One Day

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