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

Finding success on YouTube can be very, very difficult and exceptionally frustrating. But when you consult with hundreds, if not thousands, of YouTube channels, you tend to pick up some patterns of channels that are set up for success and what they did right to get there.

On today's episode of TubeTalk, we dive into three levels of YouTube success with 

. Sean doesn't just simply have one YouTube channel; he has 

 with 830,000 subscribers, and you know what? Just for fun, throw in his 

 with about 100,000 subscribers. He also coauthored one of my favorite YouTube books, which is 

. He has years of experience, lots of consulting, and lots of brand experience. In this podcast you will learn:

Why the best time to start a YouTube channel is right now

Why the first law of YouTube success is research before you press record!

Why ranking your video content is crucial to success

Subscribe to TubeTalk: The Video Marketing Podcast!

TubeTalk has been informing video creators and marketers since 2014, and is one of the most respected and listened to podcasts in the online video industry. Subscribe today so you never miss an episode! You can find vidIQ's TubeTalk at:

Liron Segev: Sean, thank you for being here on TubeTalk

Sean Cannell:	Man, after that introduction, I don't even know who you're talking about. I'm tired after that introduction. That sounds exhausting.

Liron Segev:	I do not know how you do it, and on top of which, you have an event that you run. Sean, what's got you ridiculously excited about this YouTube world that you're in?

Sean Cannell:	You know, I don't think my excitement for YouTube has changed ever since I first discovered its power and its potential. I am empathetic to the fact that there's demonetization and whole channels dealing with, whether it's copyright issues or the community guidelines shifting, but all that to say, I think it's important we never forget that YouTube is a free platform that I know I didn't create the internet, I didn't create YouTube, and yet, it's changed so many of our lives. It's changed my life and people listening right now. I just have immense gratitude.

I know Susan (Wojcicki) didn't start the company, but if I ever see her, I want to hug her and give her flowers as well as the whole team because YouTube is just this amazing place. It's not problem-free, but it has so much potential, and that potential still exists at such a major level right now.

Liron Segev:	Let's rewind the clock a little. Tell me about the time you decided that look, YouTube is for you. What happened? What were you doing at the time when you saw this amazing potential?

Sean Cannell:	Well, I'll go just a few clicks before that. That was when I got into video. I started video in 2003 just because I was volunteering at my local youth group in my small town, Marysville, Washington, an hour north of Seattle. I picked up a video camera and Adobe Premiere and I started making these weekly video announcements. They were terrible. We always say your first videos are your worst videos. I know every creator can relate to that, but think about what a blessing it was that I was actually putting out these videos that were playing Wednesday night at youth group, and they weren't even posted online yet. I was cutting my teeth. I was getting through that season of suck. I sometimes say, as I walk through the season of suck, I will fear no evil because you kind of go through the season of suck.

I got started in video, and then fast-forward a couple of years, the first YouTube channel I actually worked on was my church's. Now, this is actually shocking because churches are usually years behind, sometimes a decade behind, but yet, for whatever reason, in our small town, our pastor was pretty progressive. Twitter came out, YouTube came out in 2005, but he wanted to start a channel. So in 2007, I'm uploading videos. There's 15-minutes time limits, so we're turning everything into two and three-parts and trying to figure out thumbnails and titles and all that stuff. I didn't know anything, but think about how early that was.

So by 2009, I started a business called Clear Vision Media, and started helping businesses build websites. I did video production for them. Started working with authors and speakers. In fact, that's when I met Benji Travis, the co-author of YouTube Secrets, at the YMCA in our small town. We started to connect. He said, "Hey, my wife's this famous ..." Famous? He's like, "My wife's got like 150,000 YouTube subscribers." I was like, "You're a liar." I didn't say that, but I'm thinking it. Not in our small town. What are you saying, bro? But then I went home. I was like, "What the heck?"

Early on, we actually worked together. I was a videographer for them and doing video production way back in 2009, 2010. That's how I kind of got into YouTube. All the way in 2007, once I started watching some of the early YouTubers, Julian Smith ... Come on, remember the Malk video? Some of that stuff. Early guys. I was so excited about the platform. I didn't know what I was going to do or what the future held specifically; I just knew, man, I see something happening here. I am passionate about it. This seems so powerful.

And now years later, that has come true. That's not just financial or business. I mean, friendships, relationships. Our relationship, us being at events together.

Liron Segev:	And it's international. Go to sleep at night here in the States, and wake up in the morning, and there's 100 comments on your videos from people who've just woken up on the other side of the globe, loving your content, want to engage with you, felt the need to leave a comment on your video. Are you finding that today people starting out have it much easier or is it maybe just very different today to when you got started?

Sean Cannell:	My answer here is kind of unique. I think it's equal and here's why: I think that, for me of course, I had the early adopter advantage because I got into YouTube years ago, but I also had a lot of disadvantages. There wasn't channels like Video Influencers or Think Media, so we were completely just trying to figure it out - testing, experimenting, wandering through the desert, making mistakes, trying to figure it all out.

And on top of that, even the technology was significantly harder. Now we're talking dual pixel auto focus, tap your face, all these things that are so much ... I mean, people trip these days. They're like, "I can't believe the camera doesn't have IBIS. I can't believe it doesn't even have auto-focus." I'm like, "Bro, that's new. Those things are just a few years old." We had to manually focus our cameras and guess what? Just take the extra time to do it.

I think that it's equal because while being an early adopter is easy with less competition or easier, there's still so much to learn. Now you flip it, you can learn faster, you can skip whole skillsets. Editing is speeding up. Even the production, renders, exports, all of that's speeding up. You've got better information, you've got proven roadmaps from people that have gone there and can help you get there further faster, but you do have increased competition. Of course, every day competition is more increasing.

I think it comes down to this: it doesn't matter. Is it too late? Can I still break through? Is the weather perfect right now? It just never will be perfect.

The best time to start a YouTube channel was in 2005. The second best time is right now.

Liron Segev:	People just need to do it because so many people who are stuck in this cycle of research, analysis paralysis. I'm going to watch another video. I'm going to take another course. I'm going to download another PDF. The best way to do it is to do it. You want to share a message? Just share the message. Simple as that. Do you find some common denominators amongst all the people that you speak to, the people that you consult with, which almost are like the laws of success of YouTube?

Sean Cannell:	Yeah. I actually have a training called the Three Irrefutable Laws of YouTube Success. A caveat here is that my point of view and who I help the most are teachers, coaches, consultants, people with a message, people that want to leverage YouTube to probably drive some kind of business result, and also impact people. While that can blur into kind of your new school creator, the way I summarize it is I help business-minded content creators.

These laws are also based on the fact that YouTube is a search engine. Now, I'm aware—I think that actually everybody can leverage that fact at different points in their YouTube career, different videos that they upload, but it's not maybe as relevant for peer entertainment channels or things like that.

The final caveat, these are two very good, specific examples, there's sometimes comedians and musicians will ask me, "Well Sean, how can I use these laws as a musician?" I say, "Here's the trouble being a musician: your music is either going to be good or bad and people are either going to like it or not. If you title your video right to rank it for such and such cover of a song, look, that's going to be determined by if the market likes that or not."

You have a little bit more of a, in my opinion, challenge. If you want to be a great comedian, you just need to get it out there and grind and put those videos out, or a musician, you need to level up your craft.

I actually think, and this is why I love teaching it, that it's a much more forgiving path to share your expertise, to share your knowledge, to actually be a guide to people that are just a few steps behind you. Whether that's in homeschool, and these are the people in our community, Heather Torres is actually on our team. She's helping people with homeschool. You've got Steve Panate who's helping people with real estate, leveraging YouTube to grow his real estate business. You've even got Dad Verb who is video production and freelance video per day. He's got his own agency, but then he does a Dad Verb channel, parenting channel, to review strollers and different things.

So almost a way to put it would almost be practical. Not that I don't help motivational and inspirational people, but that I love the practical path of YouTube, and these laws apply to that, and they start with this: Number one: research before you press record. That's the first law.

It's everything. That's why I love tools like vidIQ, and KeywordsEverywhere.com, and why I love even YouTube itself. That gives us those predictions and the auto-complete. That can give us insights into the exact videos that we should make.

The biggest mistake most people make when starting YouTube is they don't know what videos to make, to talk about, so they just turn their camera on and just randomly pontificate their thoughts or just make random content.

I've learned that random acts of content typically don't work, unless you're a meme account and being random is your message or you're a comedian and that is what has worked for you. You want to be strategic, specific, starting with the end in mind.

When you use the powerful tools of research, you can not only come up with the specific video ideas you should be making, you also are now going to be leveraging the fact that YouTube is a search engine, and so that you are giving your content the best possible opportunity for not just getting views when you upload it to your subscribers, but being viewed by new people for weeks, months, and years to come, leveraging YouTube search.

Liron Segev:	Absolutely. Research, research, research, research. So many people pick up the camera, will film. We've all seen them at events. They're walking around with their GorillaPods and filming for hours on end, and then they have three SD cards full of hours of videos. Now what?

But if they did their research, and they knew that they wanted to come out with five tips to make your YouTube videos better, they'll shoot five tips and they're done because they know people are searching for that. I cannot stress this enough. Totally echo that. Research, research, research, unless you really have a following on TikTok or Instagram and you're leveraging that audience to come across to YouTube. If you're starting at zero, research is so, so key, and YouTube is that search engine that wants to marry a query, a question, with an answer. Be the answer. Love that. Hit us with law number two.

Sean Cannell:	Law number two then is rank your videos. The purpose of your research is to get that video ranked. Now, here's my definition of ranked videos: there's of course search, which is if someone types in an inquiry, homeschool versus public school, in the search box, and then there's the top result, there's a second result, there's a third result. Those are ranked videos. They're ranking for a particular search query.

Heather Torres, on her homeschool channel, when she made that video, it ranked in search based on how she created the content and how she optimized it, and therefore, she grew her channel so far to 13,000 subscribers, which are focused homeschool moms that are wanting to just learn and grow. That is ranking and search.

But we know that, actually, the largest traffic source on YouTube is suggested videos. What I've discovered is I define ranking as both. Ranking is search and suggested. Ranking simply means that you're getting seen. Suggested video, in a way, is a ranked video. It's YouTube saying, "This is worthy of being put on the sidebar because of the minutes watched, because of the consumption," and that's the one-two punch of YouTube. When I look at my traffic, a lot of times we get about 1.5 million views a month on Think Media, and about 40% is usually suggested videos and 20 to 30% is search, but the practices, the tactics, I believe, of doing search right, gives you much more leverage for suggested. When you get that mix right, you'll leverage both and you can experience the dream.

When a video is ranked, the dream, for me, is views while you snooze. Think Media gets roughly 2,000 to 3,000 views every 60 minutes, whether I upload new videos or not. Crazy powerful and that is search and suggested traffic predominantly.

Liron Segev:	Well, there's a couple of things on that. Firstly, you said that her channel's got 13,000 subscribers, but you also said a very, very keyword here, which is focused. It's not a numbers game, which is the vanity metrics is driving me insane, which people just think, "I've got to get subscribers. I've got to get subscribers. Sub for sub. Let me just get as many numbers of my channel as possible." If you're doing this as a business and you're looking to grow a course, you're looking to get more people through the front door of your shop, you're doing it with a business intent in mind, it's not a numbers game; it's the right number game. So it's the intent that's absolutely critical to that. I love the idea of focus and in fact, and I think you actually told me this once, that nothing will suck the joy out of YouTube faster than comparing it to other people.

Sean Cannell:	Absolutely. You know, what's interesting is I think it would probably be encouraging for people to hear that you also never know what's going on under the surface. You never know what someone's CPM is. Someone might be getting 10 million views a month, but their CPM is 50 cents, and you might be getting a fraction of that, but your CPM is $10. Furthermore, you don't know what's happening on the backend of their business. So many people judge on the surface.

This comes our way a lot. They'll say, "Man, you don't need to get views," like some troll gamer kids somewhere, and I'm like, "That's fair." Because if you compare that to a Jake Paul or a PewDiePie, then correct. Compared to that, I'm just a blip on the radar. But let's flip that. 1.5 million views a month is insanity! That is a crazy amount of traffic and this 16-year-old, is actually probably a 36-year-old living in his mom's basement with four subscribers, is commentating on how many views we're getting, also not realizing that there's an entire business model behind that's generating multiple seven figures.

You just never know what's really happening and too many people, yeah, they're judging by the surface. They're judging vanity metrics, what's happening on the surface, and they don't really even understand how the game works.

Liron Segev:	All right, so that was two laws. What's the third?

Sean Cannell:	The third law is then reoccurring revenue. To recap, number one, research before you press record. Now you're going to make the right video for the right audience. Then you want to rank your videos. We could share resources. Obviously, the book. We didn't really go into how, but if you could pull that off. Number three though, you need this, you want to have reoccurring revenue in place.

Why are these the laws of YouTube success? Well, by the definition of these three laws, success in my mind is freedom; you're using YouTube for leverage. You're achieving that goal of generating revenue from YouTube, not like you would generate revenue from going to work at your job. I worked at Red Robin, a hamburger place here in America, for ten years. I was a busser, I waited tables, and so I knew what it was to go in and I traded time for money.

What I'm after here with these laws is leverage and freedom because if you are making the right videos, they're ranked in search, therefore they work for you when you're not working, but only if law number three is in place, and that is reoccurring revenue is set up.

Now what's cool about YouTube is if you are getting views while you snooze, like our friend Sonny so famously said, if you're doing that, then you are making ad revenue. That actually can be pretty great. We could maybe do a conversation some other time about feature YouTube accounts or niche YouTube accounts. I got a friend, he's got 15 channels. He's making $100,000 a month just in ad revenue. He's not in the videos. So ad revenue actually really can be a strategy, it can create leverage of course, and people realize that, but in a significant way.

But then I'm into probably the second biggest one is affiliate marketing because if videos are relevant to affiliate marketing where you're doing product reviews, tutorials of some kind, when those videos are viewed while you're sleeping, you also are making sales through affiliate marketing.

I will say this: I'm less of a fan of brand deals, and more and more, my mindset has been shifting about brand deals based on some of my mentors and stuff, and that's just my personality. I hate having a boss. If I'm working with four or five different companies, it increases my stress level because I've got four or five bosses. While there are just very few brands that we love working with because it's just a great synergy, it's almost like family, my favorite is really taking your power back and building a business on your own terms.

That monetization strategy is sell something. Your income is correlated by the amount of buy buttons you have on your website. The listener might say, "Well shoot, I don't even have a website." Okay. Well, then I don't know. I guess you could send someone to a PayPal, but thing one. Thing two, how many buy buttons are on your website? Well, zero. Well, if your income is correlated to the amount of buy buttons you have on your website, then we might have a problem of why you're not making any income.

What's really exciting, because again, going back to vanity metrics, there's that famous article, I'm sure you've brought it up before, many of your listeners have probably heard it, Kevin Kelly, 1,000 True Fans.

Look, you don't need a million subscribers, 100,000, or even 10,000; but you need 1,000 true fans, and however you serve them, whether that's through a box that comes out every quarter, some kind of a digital course, some kind of merch, some kind of physical product, some kind of white label or outsource or eComm, if you want to create this freedom business embracing the power of YouTube online video, and impacting people in the process, then setting up reoccurring revenue streams is hugely important.

This might go without saying, but I actually kind of want to emphasize it here. It's this: you need to make more money. A listener might be like, "Yeah! Tell me about it. That's a moot point." But no, I actually think that a lot of creators, that's why we help business-minded content creators, and a lot of content creators are not business-minded.

Our views towards money are very interesting, right? It's how we're raised. We can sometimes have different mindsets. When I say you need to make more money, it's because I hope that you're listening and you've got a big dream, you've got a big vision, you've got a vision that's bigger than money, but it's going to take money. I think that sometimes, we have that starving artist perspective, and that can really put a lid on us as creators.

It's like look, you need to make revenue because doing this is hard. You've got to hire a team eventually. But also, you've got to make revenue because is your vision bigger than you? I've heard some people say, "You know what? I only need enough money for myself and my family," and they view that as contentedness, which I respect. In my opinion, that's selfish. Why? Because there's more needs around planet earth than just you and your family. So if you have the ability to create content, build your influence, generate revenue, make way more than you think.

People are still like, "Okay. Yes, I would love to." But I actually think it has to fit into the framework of why because reasons come before results. A lot of creators plateau, I even think they burnout because they hit a certain level of success. This YouTube thing can rush in and you can experience success, you can experience money, but they don't necessarily know how to manage it or know how to build a business, or how to actually keep their own fire lit. Sometimes they drift a little and maybe because their vision needs to expand.

So anyways, I just encourage people, when you set up that reoccurring revenue, now you can build more momentum. How amazing is it that you could actually pay somebody else and help feed their kids, build their family, that you could bring people together with you and actually build a movement all around this fact of YouTube? But the only reason that's going to happen is if you create leverage because you can't be working 60, 70, 80 hours a week trying to feed the YouTube machine, grinding it out, as a solopreneur forever. You've got to create leverage. You want to rank your videos and have reoccurring revenue streams so you can continue to make a greater impact and go forward with your mission.

Liron Segev:	The more money that you make, which by the way, I don't understand why people almost feel bad for saying that, it's almost like they hide their head in shame, go, "Well, I'm making X-number of dollars per month out of my YouTube." Good. That's the point of this because conferences cost money, travel costs money, meeting costs money. Would you suggest that people go into YouTube with the end in mind? In other words, go into YouTube thinking of this as a business and therefore everything revolves around a business mission?

Sean Cannell:	I would suggest what you said first, absolutely, that they should start with the end in mind, but I wouldn't say that it has to be a business mission. I think that what you said first is what's so important. Having real personal clarity on the fact of is this meant ... This is actually a conflict, not really a conflict, but it's something that we talk about in our community a lot in the sense of people, they want YouTube to be their full-time job, but they pick a niche or something that couldn't even support that.

Here's an example. Only around 8,000 people a month search for underwater basket weaving. Now actually, you could make underwater basket weaving a full-time job. Of course you could, you probably could build different revenue streams, but only 8,000 people a month means the market size is not very large.

You've got to start with the end in mind. If you say YouTube is a creative outlet for me, it is something. You might have a target to say, "You know what? I hope to earn an extra $5 to $10,000 a year so that YouTube is going to be our hobby channel and our vacation money," and you set a clear vision like that, you put a level of hustle in it, you love doing it, but you don't ... I mean, I'm not saying you have to build a team and scale.

It's completely predicated on your vision, but if you flip it because that's where people are out of alignment; people are saying, "Yo, I want to be a millionaire," and then they start an underwater basket weaving channel and they're frustrated because it's not growing as fast. The market you're in, your niche, your business model, your plan is incongruent with your aspirations.

That's probably the way to summarize it. If you can get clear ... I heard a quote, "Definitiveness of purpose is the starting point of all achievement." It's hard to figure that out. It's easier said than done, but that's why, in our book, chapter one, the first law of the seven secrets of YouTube success is clarity. Start with the end in mind.

Yeah, you just want to be clear on your goals, and I think something to consider is be clear on your goals of the whole picture. If I'm open, I know that YouTube, for as much good as it's done, it's pulled out probably some negative tendencies in me as well. The algorithm is kind of vicious. And I don't mean vicious by not ranking videos. It is a content monster that ... I actually really feel like, unchecked, it can drive you to burnout. It can drive you to just keep feeding it, keep hustling, keep grinding.

Early on, when we were talking about comparison and vanity metrics, I think that's the other thing to consider too. What is your vision for your lifestyle? What is your vision for balance? What is it you ultimately want to build? That's so personal.

A lot of times though, we don't think through those things, and we just charge the one mountain of views or of a target of money, but you want to think about that big picture.

Kind of to wrap back to that, that's why you also don't really want to judge because some people are choosing to work 60, 70, 80-hour weeks on this, and of course their numbers are probably going to be superior. But if you just say, "I want to upload one video every two weeks. I figured out a few income streams because I want to be able to have more time and margin with my family. I've got a bunch of kids," everyone's in different seasons and the people I respect the most are the people that, really, they're thoughtful and they just have wisdom about what's right for them. They figured out ... It's no judgment. If someone wants to crush it all day long, or on the other side, someone is on a slower pace, well, of course the numbers or the growth is going to be incongruent there-

But that person may be living the most wise life that's more to be modeled because there is kind of a dark side to this YouTube thing that can almost take over your lifetime and mind, and we can forget how to be human.

Liron Segev:	Exactly it. It's your personal situation. You cannot compare someone with four kids, mortgages, school fees, all of those bills that come with it, to someone whose mom and dad are willing to pay for their lifestyle whilst in the Hamptons, they're making vlogging videos. The two worlds are so far apart, your responsibilities are different, your time-constraints are different. Again, we're going back to the whole stop comparing, run your own race, but be smart about the race that you're trying to run. My problem with the algorithm at the moment, and I'd like to hear your thoughts on this, do you think that because of the algorithm, it's almost killing creativity because we have to play to the way the algorithm wants to work?

Sean Cannell:	You know, that's an interesting question that's pulling out, maybe, some deeper stuff here. To me, that is the conflict of artist and businessperson. So, the first answer's yes. I do actually think, at some level, it is killing creativity.

I do think that, if we get super introspective, we could just take that because obviously, people that are super creative, certain artistic videos, certain creative videos that are outside of the box win, still, on YouTube here and there or whatever, but overall, no, I agree with you because what YouTube is saying, especially now with YouTube Studio Beta, how clear it was ... I threw up a video that's a little off-brand and it's like you're down 56%, your subscribers have no interest in this. And you're like, "Well, when was it just ... What if I wanted to create a video?"

That's what I mean about the tension between being an artist and being a creative or a business-minded person. I think that is, it's interesting. It's almost like two different personalities, but you're good if you can blend them.

I'll tell you this. For me, this is the way I do it. I'm not saying this is right. I am on YouTube for a mission that's bigger than YouTube. I'm on YouTube to accomplish things but my life is not about just YouTube. Therefore, in my opinion, business actually takes priority over creativity. Some people, that would rub them the wrong way and that's why maybe they don't want to follow me or whatever because they're just more like, even though extremely business-minded, they may be more like Casey Neistat. They just maybe want to follow a creative, kind of that person who is such an artist spirit, so they resonate with that.

That's completely fine. Whoever you vibe with. But I go into YouTube, it is my passion, I love helping people, but I also want to create leverage so I can spend time with my wife, my family. Does that make sense?

The reason artists are often times starving is because they're not thinking about business marketing. I know that went a lot of ways from the algorithm, but yeah, it's kind of almost an unfortunate, but I understand it. I respect that it's about economics and ad revenue, and yeah, I think you have to play in that framework.

For the artist that maybe feels they can't do that, it's like well, there's not much you can do about it. You could just share it on another platform. Keep trying to share it. Try to get your art seen.

I actually think that there's a great book that can blend the two, and I don't think they have to be at war, and it's called Real Artists Don't Starve by Jeff Goins. I definitely recommend that because I think that to maybe even have a better relationship with the algorithm. There's probably a lot of people, maybe if they've got stress in their marriage or with their partner, maybe they're stressed with the algorithm. We have a love-hate relationship. There's some drama in our relationship.

I think Real Artists Don't Starve is just that idea that look, the game is the game, however it changes. A, you need to pay attention. You need to be always current and updated and aware, and that's why this podcast and stuff you do and tools are so important. You've got to pay attention. And then what happens, and Gary Vee talks about this a lot, what creators and all of us and business owners, you just get romantic about things. You wish it was a certain way. You wish that artists were more ... We wish independent creators were more represented in YouTube Rewind or something, and we can just wish, and complain, and worry about everything that's going on.

And by the way, YouTube should be paying attention, as they are, and making changes and not offending the creator community. But we're living in the area of just offense, excuses, complaining, blaming algorithms. It just is what it is! You just have to succeed or not in that framework and not wish it was some other way.

Liron Segev:	And we live in such an echo chamber that we create for ourselves. We follow the same people who think the same as we do, so it's the whole round circle, tap each other on the back situation. When you go, "The algorithm sucks. YouTube hates my channel," you're going to get a whole bunch of people saying, "Yes, the algorithm's bad. Yes, they hate your channel."

It's this echo chamber, but it's also about the balance. So yes, you want to put out a creative message into the world, but don't forget, YouTube is just a tool. You might do better on TikTok. You might do better on Instagram. It's just a leverage. It's just yet another lever that you can pull to get your message out there. But I think blaming the algorithm for all the ills of the world, I think that's a flawed logic too. There's a balance between business, talking to your community, engaging with your audience, and what's this thing called the AI and what's it going to do to my metadata and what's it going to do with my video?

I do find it interesting because it is almost a conflict, but we have to understand it, and I agree that when you log into your dashboard, your new Studio Beta dashboard, and it's very glaringly obvious in your face saying, "You're down 50%," what? Now you've got to start thinking, "What am I doing wrong?" Well, it's not that. You've just got to have a different perspective. Think of that video in isolation compared to your channel as a whole. I found, and I'd like your opinion on this as well, do you find people look at individual videos and then make decisions based on that and therefore, "My channel sucks. It didn't do well. I'm quitting"? Should they be looking at a channel as a holistic tool versus just one-on-one videos?

Sean Cannell:	Absolutely. I think that not only looking at your channel as a holistic whole, but also not judging too soon. My biggest recommendation when people are starting YouTube is I say, "Look, not until you get to your first 30," but what I want to say, and sometimes say is, "Actually, not until you get to your first 100 uploads do I think you're even starting."

It's almost like if you go to the gym — which I don't do, so I don't even know how I have this information — it's almost like if you go to the gym and you haven't been in years and you're out of shape, not only do you not have the form, but you could barely lift the weights, so it's all ugly. Your arms are wobbling. You walk in, everyone's like ... Some gym shark dude's got the hat, shirt, Beats headphones, and you're coming in, you don't have the right clothes, the right form, you don't know anything. You're scrawny. Whatever. You've got to show up 100 times to even actually start exercising right.

The same thing's true on YouTube. I see people that they're like, "Yo, your stuff doesn't work. I've been following Video Influencers. I can't believe your stuff doesn't work." I'm like, "Okay. Fair. Let me look into your stuff." Click through on their channel. Bro, you have three uploads in the last six months.

You can't even say whether it works or not, and even if you had 30 uploads, what I still say is true. I think that you're still in a learning, self-discovery, finding your voice, refining your message, getting through the production process, the workflow process, and most people, that's actually the season where they get stuck. There's the start season. Immediate follows it is stuck. You start, and then you're like, "Okay. I put out a video. Took me five hours, ten hours, fifteen hours and it got five views. Shoot, I make more money at my minimum wage job." Of course you do because you're just starting.

But over time, you're going to create that leverage and build that momentum. If you can press through that season, there's so many rewards on the other side. But that goes back to the beginning of the call. You have to walk through the season of suck, I will fear no evil. It's like hey, I'm in it, man.

This the season of finding my voice. So I would agree, look at it as a whole. And then the thing, if we play both sides though, when you said is it based on one video, you probably even know more about me than the algorithm, but from what I've been studying lately, YouTube seems to be in this place where, this is what I'm hearing, that if you have two bad uploads in a row, that it's going to affect that third upload in relation to how much velocity it got right there, like it said it Studio Beta. To your point, yes, the algorithm, unfortunately, not only is it killing creativity, but it's actually almost forcing your content in a certain direction. It's saying, "Look, only give us what works. Therefore, if that means changing your message or only talking about certain topics," it's frustrating, and that's the tension of only being business and algorithm-minded.

But on the flip side, again, it is weird to judge that because we could take it so personally and forget that okay, hey, this is a free platform that you're making money on.

I do think it's interesting. I come from a faith background so I follow some different, of course, preachers online, and I was actually hearing one talk about Instagram. I think it illustrates the same point because of course Instagram has an algorithm as well. What he was saying was look, there's certain clips of messages that are just kind of going to naturally go viral. They're just the shareable thing, they're the thing that everyone wants to click like on, and they just blow up. He goes, "And then there's things though that why did this get 50,000 view.

Did you know there are three main laws of YouTube success? Find our what they are in this week's TubeTalk podcast with special guest Sean Cannell.

The Three Laws of Major YouTube Success: TubeTalk 180 with Sean Cannell

You've done all the hard work. You've shot your video. You've edited it. You've created a great thumbnail. You've uploaded it, and given it an amazing title. So, you just waiting for those views, right? Wrong. The work doesn't stop at the upload. Let's find out why on this episode of TubeTalk.

A common mistake I see with a lot of YouTubers is that they think that the work is done the second the video is made live, then they sit back waiting for those views. Well, that's not necessarily the case. My guest this week is Antony Ambriz, who is a YouTube growth and content strategist, who has built, managed, and grown multiple YouTube channels for influencers, entrepreneurs, and companies. He’s generated over a billion views and millions of dollars in sales for his clients all through YouTube. In this podcast you will learn:

How to use your videos for mailing list generation

How to provide extra value to your email list subscribers

How to collaborate with your viewers via mailing lists

Why Facebook Groups are so valuable for video creators

How to Build Your YouTube Audience on Other Platforms: Full Transcript

Liron Segev: Anthony, thank you for making the time to be with us.

Anthony Ambriz: Oh, I'm excited to be here.

Liron Segev:	This is going to be a very special episode because, well, clearly you've worked something out on YouTube, which is one thing we all want to know how to do. How do I make my channel pop? Where do we begin?

Anthony Ambriz: First thing's first, I would say once you have your content, you have your voice down, you're working on it, you've got that part done, then your optimization is key. You've done everything you can do to really get out there on YouTube and get the exposure that YouTube wants to give you. After that, you sort of have to go outside of YouTube.

Liron Segev:	We're basically assuming at this stage that you know about thumbnails, you know about titles, you know about descriptions. You've done everything you can to optimize yourself on YouTube. Are you saying the work is not done at this stage?

Anthony Ambriz:	Yes, I'm definitely saying that because oftentimes what I see is everyone's putting all their blood, sweat and tears into producing this amazing video. They put it out there. It's optimized. It has the right keywords, everything, the beautiful thumbnail, and then they just sit. They just put it out there and they just sit back and try to rake in the views, but then that's it. There's so much more to do afterwards.

Liron Segev:	Okay. Well, you've opened up this door. Guess what? We're going through this. Okay. Let's start. I've done my thing, where do I begin off YouTube platform?

Anthony Ambriz: The first thing I would say is that the biggest kind of distribution strategies that creators need to focus on is creating that email list.

Anthony Ambriz:	Your channel contains a lot of content. If you were to create a guide of ‘here's my favorite tech’, ‘my top 10 choices for Father's Day’ or for whatever holiday we're going into, for Christmas, you just create this list and you say, "Here's my list. I want to give it to you for free after watching the video," right? You sort of want to entice them at the beginning of the video with "I'm going to go over this tech, but the end, I have something special for you."

Right there you've given the viewer a promise to wait out until the end. They're more geared to watching your whole video for the big reveal. The big reveal is that you have a list that they can download, a guide, a checklist, whatever it is, and then they just have to opt in with their email and then you give them the guide.

Now, I know this might sound complicated because now we're dealing with like landing pages and opt in forms and all those things, but it could be easily set up. Even the guide itself, like if somebody's using a Mac, they can use Pages or Keynotes or if they're using a PC, use PowerPoint or Word, and it's just creating something really simple, export it as a PDF, upload it to something like Google Drive or Dropbox, and then go into a platform like MailChimp.

MailChimp lets you set up landing pages and then set up your hosting for your emails and all that stuff. Then you just set up that link, people put in their email, and then you can send them the guide that they wanted to download and go from there.

Liron Segev:	The steps are not so complicated once you break it down. We have a link in the description. You can call it out in your video. You take them to what you refer to as a landing page, which essentially is just a one pager saying, "Hey, I'd love to send you this guide. I need your email address so I know where to send it to." That's kind of the definition of the landing page. Of course, you can get more complicated as you grow by having pixels and remarketing techniques, but that's a conversation for another time. Let's start with the basics. Now I'm asking for an email address. Behind that you run MailChimp.

MailChimp gets the email address, then sends them the guide. Everybody's happy. Now MailChimp has sent out this email. It's got the attached PDF and the link to download. What do I do now that I've kind of gathered these email addresses?

Anthony Ambriz: Now it's just sending out a welcome email to let them know that they're now part of this newsletter of sorts, and then provide value right off the bat. Give them something else after that. Share with them another really helpful tip that they can use. Then after that, you start to get into this flow of once a week when you have content. Let's say you're doing just one video a week and once a week you share that video with them as soon as you publish it. Right away you have like a locked-in audience from your email subscribers that know you have a new video out on your YouTube channel, and so then they just start to watch it.

You already brought in an audience to YouTube. If we're getting really complicated or very intense here, now you're starting the session watch time off of your video on your channel because you've led them from an email, which then looks good for you.

Liron Segev:	I love that. Essentially, you're in charge of your own notifications if you think about it. We know notifications are a bit weird or wonderful to say the least at the moment, but this way I get to push a button. I get to notify my audience. This is absolutely superb. Then just as a pro tip here, what do you think of an idea of having maybe an unlisted video that's not available to the public, but as your first welcome email, maybe it's an additional three tips that the general public doesn't get to share?

Anthony Ambriz:	Oh, yeah. I think that would be wonderful. Everyone wants to feel like they're in the VIP section. That exclusivity and treating your viewer like that, I think that's fantastic.

Liron Segev:	All right. I'm building my email list. I'm in charge of my own notifications. Of course, you’ve got to comply with the whole opt out. You want to play fair because it's your brand at the end of the day. It's your name on these things. You do all of that. Does MailChimp handle your unsubscribe notices?

Anthony Ambriz:	Yes. They'll put all the legalities in and handle for people to opt out and do all those things, so you don't have to worry too much about that.

Liron Segev:	Okay, fantastic. I've now sent them a notification every time I put a video out. Maybe if I put out three or four times a week a video, do you think maybe one email as a digest will be good enough at the end of the week or should I give them one email per video that goes out?

Anthony Ambriz:	I would say doing a digest is a lot better, but having it highlight maybe your best video, the one that you really want people to pay attention to, and then just making a little note of like there's other videos that they can watch as well.

Liron Segev:	What else do we do with this mailing list?

Anthony Ambriz:	I mean in the end, that's up to you what you want to do with that. I think one of the biggest ones that I like to do with an email list, besides offering courses and things of that nature, is promote upcoming videos. Let's say you want to do a big premiere for one of your videos, right? You're getting that setup, or you want to go live on your channel. When you go live on your channel, that's only going out to your subscribers on YouTube. You can now use this email list as a way to do a live launch. You set it up where you send out an email and you say "Hey, in a week I'm about to go live at this date. I'm going to do a really cool video."

This is where you might run into sending out a couple of emails to do this because you want to keep reminding people that you're going to go live on YouTube. You do an email campaign, and set it up to go out a number of times. You can do five emails. You can do three emails. I usually say if you're just starting out for the first time, maybe just do three emails. One at the very beginning to announce it, one the day before, and one the day of.

All these emails are doing is just announcing you're about to go live and share a really awesome training or an awesome unboxing or whatever type of content you're doing.

Liron Segev:	Could you involve the community at this stage? Like maybe ask for any questions and maybe kind of feature some of these questions on your channel?

Anthony Ambriz:	Oh, definitely, yeah. I think one big factor about going live is that you want to involve the community and saying "I'm going to answer the questions that you ask on this live stream. I have this topic I want to address, but at the same time, we're going to have a section for Q and A. We're just going to have a party. It's going to be fun." If you want to go a little above and beyond, you can do like a giveaway on that live stream, whether it be a discount code to something. If you have merch, giving away some of your merch.

Liron Segev:	Okay, perfect. Even if you don't go live, because a lot of people are still scared of doing that live stream, maybe use this as a way to gather questions from your audience so that you can feature them in a video. Not live video, but you can say, "Hey, so-and-so asked this question, which is a great question. Let me address it," and make maybe a ask me anything kind of video. But again, it's about making your community feel special and in the VIP section.

Anthony Ambriz:	One thing I would say is often times when creators are thinking about collaborating, you can collaborate with your viewers. That is a good example of a way to collaborate with your viewers there. They're the ones offering you content to share in your videos.

Liron Segev:	Okay. A superb approach, collaborate with your viewers. That is beautiful because normally we think collab means others creators. That's kind of the first thing that comes to mind, but people don't think that your viewer is actually a great, great source of information. They're your fans and they're the ones going to keep coming back again and again, especially if you feature them. That is just hot nuggets right there. Love it. Anything else on the email list or we're moving on to tip number two?

Anthony Ambriz: The second one I would say is Facebook Groups. Now, I'm sure a lot of you out there are probably members of Facebook Groups. I think Facebook brought out a stat saying that a billion people a month are active in Facebook Groups. That's one of their biggest things. Facebook Groups are just a fantastic way to get your viewers to really form that community and really build it around the topic that you all love or you could build it around your own personality, right? Your own brand.

Liron Segev:	Okay. Let's unpack that a little bit. Are you saying start your own Facebook Group or you saying join Facebook Groups and have discussions there?

Anthony Ambriz:	I would say do both, but definitely start your own Facebook Group.

Liron Segev: Not everyone's going to have a niche where they can start a Facebook Group where they'll actually get members or maybe that's more of a fear I suppose. Like if I start a knitting Facebook Group, who's going to join that? Well, maybe I'm overthinking it. Maybe if people are watching my knitting videos, why wouldn't they want to then talk to me on a Facebook Group?

Anthony Ambriz: What's great about Facebook Groups is that if you get viewers from your YouTube channel over to a Facebook Group, and you get to see who they actually are. You get to see their actual names. You get to see their actual profiles. You get to really understand and know your audience, and then a lot of that community starts to build. Again you can get them to start helping you and collaborating, interacting with your content, helping you create new content. Doing a Facebook Group also helps you collect the emails too because you can always setup a question like, "What's your email? I want to send you something.

Liron Segev:	You also mentioned being part of other groups. The problem I see in a lot of these Facebook Groups is that people just spam their links to their videos. That's a no no.

Anthony Ambriz: Again, it's about providing value, right? If you really are genuine and you want to help people out, when you go into those groups, start a conversation. Be a part of other conversations. I think you get noticed more when you join in on other conversations and actually help by answering questions that people have. I've been a part of some groups where the admins never answer any of the questions, but it's just the community really taking over. That gives an opportunity for you to be noticed. When people see who's answering their questions and who's commenting, most people start to see the profile and investigate who this person is.

That way they'll usually find whether it's your own Facebook Group or your YouTube channel. If you're really talking about that on your personal profile on Facebook, they'll find it and then you'll get a new viewer, a new fan.

Liron Segev:	That's also another important tip - to make sure that your own personal profile, the one that you're joining the Facebook Group with, has very clear links to your YouTube channel, very clear links to what you have to offer so people can see it and go, "Oh, here's another click, go to your channel and then maybe subscribe to that because they enjoy your content.

Your work as a YouTuber isn't finished just because you've uploaded that video. Find out how to build your audience on other platforms on this week's episode of TubeTalk.

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