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

Welcome to the second in our exciting new series focusing on some of the most inspiring YouTubers on the platform right now. We're taking a look at their specific creator journey, and the inspiring story behind their success on YouTube.

This episode focuses on Steve Dotto, AKA 

. Steve's tech-orientated YouTube Channel boasts nearly 244,000 subscribers, and 19.9 million views, and he's built a solid business around his YouTube content, after years of mainstream broadcasting. You can read the full transcript of Steve's story below:

Hi, I'm Steve Dotto, a YouTube creator. Now I wasn't always a YouTube creator. I used to be the host of a TV show and an executive producer. But that was then, and I'm much happier now. Let me tell you my creator journey.

For nearly 20 years I hosted and produced a TV show in Canada on how to use technology. I was what you might call a B-List celebrity. People would recognize me in restaurants or at the airport, and they would ask me all the time, "Should I get a Mac or a PC," and I would tell them, get a MAC, eh. And then they'd go and buy a PC. Good times.

In 2011, the networks and I parted our ways and I began to look at what YouTube has to offer. I was blown away. For the first time in my career the most important people were my audience, not tacky network executives, ad agencies, marketing managers and PR hacks. No, no, no - real people like you! I like you.

See, when you're creating TV shows, there are a whole bunch of people who stand between you and the audience. They're the people with money, the people with power. Money to pay for your production and the power to put you on air or remove you. YouTube takes all their power away.

From the first videos I created on YouTube I saw something different about YouTube. I saw that this was a platform that allowed me to build relationships with my audience, and here is the most important lesson that I learned in my creator journey: If you talk to your community, really talk with them, listen to them, and respect them, they will become your greatest asset. Answer every comment. Reply to every question and your creator story will be a success.

Oh it's not all roses and chicken wings, however, there's a certain loneliness to being a YouTube creator. All the people I used to be on a team with have been replaced by USB ports on my computer. Now, USB is a fine communication technology, but it's a lousy lunch date. Thank goodness I have my dog Farley hanging with me. All YouTube creators need a Farley in the house to keep them company.

Then of course, there's that unpleasant need to pay the mortgage. Oh, I've turned YouTube into a healthy business now, but you have to kiss a lot of frogs before you find the golden egg. I might've mixed my metaphors there, but you get the point. It's still really all about the people.

I can look at the milestones, the silver play button at 100,000 subscribers, hitting the million then 10 million minute viewed mark, but nothing speaks to me like going into YouTube comments and seeing the names. Real people, commenting, challenging me, thanking me, asking me questions, and becoming a community. My community.

Huge thanks to Steve Dotto for his time and insights. You can follow Steve on 

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 

For nearly 20 years Steve Dotto hosted a TV show in Canada on how to use technology, but now he's found success and creative freedom via YouTube. Read about his Creator Journey here.

How to Get to 250,000 Subscribers on YouTube: Steve Dotto Creator Journey

Somewhere along your YouTube journey, you're going to encounter this concept called a brand deal. This is when you and a brand work together in some sort of way, whether it's a free product or whether it involve some sort of a campaign. Now we all want those opportunities because this allows us to transition into a full-time career on YouTube.

But how do you go about getting those brand deals? How do the brands actually find the influencers that they want to work with? What actually happens behind the scenes once you reach out to a brand? 

All these questions will be answered on today's episode of TubeTalk, the YouTuber podcast

This week we talk to an industry insider willing to spill the beans on brand deals. 

 is the VP of integrated media at Weber Shandwick, which is a global public relations firm. She deals with brands and influencers and has lots of tips and tricks to share with us.

The New Influencer Marketing: The Consumer Holds the Power

Komal confirms there has been a dramatic shift in marketing over the past few years. And this is where YouTubers can benefit. The power that brands used to hold is starting to change and now consumers really hold the power. They've got access to the internet and all sorts of social media platforms in their back pocket. As brands continue to stay relevant and look to be top of mind to consumers, they're realizing that their tactics need to evolve with these changing trends. Marketing itself, if you break it down into its fundamentals, it's ultimately about engaging with consumers where they naturally gravitate. As people start to shift where they're spending their time, marketers are starting to pick up on that.

Consumers are now spending more time on social media and brands are trying to figure out how to cater to consumers on those platforms. But there's always this tug of way between consumers and brands - consumers don't necessarily want to be marketed to and marketers really want consumers to buy. The shift in marketing is now more of an authentic relationship where brands are trying to give consumers what they need, when they need it, and are trying to make it easy for them to make purchasing decisions, or decisions on what type of services to use. It's about developing a relationship rather than just speaking at somebody.

What Do Brands Look For in YouTuber Influencers?

Komal confirms that it truly depends just because each marketing campaign is so different. The needs of each industry vary, and while influencer marketing is the most common in the CPG, fashion, and retail sectors, there are a lot of industries ranging from banking to B2B companies who are looking to leverage the power of influencers. A lot of them may not know how to do that because influencer marketing is starting to evolve. It's not just about paying customers anymore. It's about relationship building.

it's all about building those authentic relationships between influencers and their communities. Consumers can smell an ad a mile away, and they know when they're being targeted. It comes down to a brand being able to communicate to a consumer the way they need to and it comes down to authenticity.

At one point, brands were looking for ROI in famous influencers, and they were reaching out to people who had these huge social followings. Now those may not be those authentic relationships, because it's not about just broadcasting your message but it's finding those individuals that have followings that may even be in the hundreds, maybe in the thousands, which are so much more smaller but they reach out to their niche communities. The reason they're small is because they're having that one on one relationship with their audience. That's what's so important to brands.

If brands are going to spend dollars to connect with an influencer and really be able to have them market on behalf of the brand, they want to make sure that they're reaching the right person. That targeted approach really lends itself well to building those authentic relationships. In fact, today 70% of teens trust influencers more than traditional celebrities!

Brands also want to spend their dollars with people that are already maybe avid fans of that product or service. Creators that maybe aren’t even looking for compensation, they just . love the brand so much that they would post about it. There isn't anything more authentic than someone who naturally loves a brand, a product or service. Marketers will lean into that to work with them, because the community already knows that if they put sponsored behind something it's not because they're getting just paid to do it, but they already really enjoyed that product or service. That just goes such a long way.

Subscribe to TubeTalk: The Video Marketing Podcast

TubeTalk has been informing video creators amd 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:

A huge number of YouTubers are partnering with brands to promote products or services online. But what are brands looking for? We tell you in this week's TubeTalk podcast.

How You Can Get MORE Brand Deals as a YouTuber: TubeTalk Episode 163

YouTube is all about content and if you can show lots of value on your channel, YouTube is going to suggest your videos to help you generate more views and subscribers. On this episode of TubeTalk, the YouTuber podcast, we’re going to show you how to hack the YouTube algorithm - in the legal and correct way, of course.

We’re joined by Tom Martin, a YouTube strategist extraordinaire. Tom is Certified by YouTube as an expert in both Audience Growth and Digital Rights. He has led the YouTube strategy for some of the world’s largest and most successful media companies, like the BBC, gaining them millions of subscribers and billions of views. He has also consulted with YouTube Creators and Fortune 500 companies to improve their results on YouTube via his company 

He specializes in both YouTube SEO, optimization and channel strategy and has dedicated his time to making sure other YouTube Creators can learn from his experience. He is the author of '

YouTube Optimization – The Complete Guide

Tom confirms that there are a number of factors that could be affecting a channel's growth or lack of growth - he calls them the three Cs of YouTube:

While being consistent with upload schedules and content topics is YouTube 101, being consistent with metadata, or how you optimize your content is key. Titles, tags, and descriptions need to work for you on a channel level, as well as on an individual video level. Having a system for works to create an ecosystem of all of your videos and it’s something Tom has been working on for years. Because of his extraordinary access to a billion views' worth of data, he’s been able to refine this system down as close to scientific process as possible. Tom states that it’s the job of any channel manager, whether you're doing it for yourself or for somebody else, to engineer relationships between your own videos so that you dominate that sidebar. That’s the path to crazy, crazy suggested views.

People totally forget that YouTube is, at the end of the day, a search engine. Good old SEO practices that work in the blogging world and on Google Search are going to have to be applied on YouTube too. It’s not about the relationship between you and your video content, it’s the relationship between your videos as a whole, and it’s a system that Tom unpacks on the podcast.

Keyword Research: The Basis of YouTube Success

Tom’s system is based on a process called keyword research. It’s a tool that is widely underused, probably the most underused weapon that any channel manager or YouTube creator could use. Most people are NOT using it, or certainly not using it to its full power.

Keyword research is often misunderstood because it's easy to do a quick search and say, "Okay, I'm going to put this in the tags of this single video and hope for the best." That's how it used to work in 2012 but that's not the same anymore, because YouTube and Google are a lot smarter now, and they understand content a lot better. Also, there's a lot more competition, and so there's a lot more other videos with similar metadata to cut through. Tom engineer’s relationships between his videos using keyword research, to go a level beyond just trying to rank an individual video. His aim to be the authority in his space, and he has used 

 for the last seven years to identify exact search volume, an incredibly important metric for YouTube creators.

Tom looks for keywords that are getting high search volume (meaning lots of people searching for it that month), but low competition. That combination means that either there's not enough videos being made around that subject to cover that search demand, or the videos are being made, but the competition are not optimizing their videos for the right keywords. vidIQ’s Keyword Tool helps Tom find opportunities in the market around his main channel keywords (or ‘seed’ keywords).

Tune into the podcast to find out exactly how using keyword research will help you truly master the YouTube algorithm today.

Huge thanks to Tom for his incredible insights. For more YouTube tips please follow him on Twitter at 

. You’ll find details of his 'Ultimate Course for YouTube Professionals' 

Subscribe to TubeTalk: The Video Marketing Podcast!

Want To Get More YouTube Views & Subscribers?

Want to find keyword opportunities to grow YOUR YouTube channel? Make sure to download vidIQ today. It will help you research YouTube, understand what's working and what isn't, analyze videos, audit your own channel, and take actionable steps 

On this episode of TubeTalk, learn why keyword research is the secret sauce to cracking the YouTube algorithm, and how to do it properly.

How to Master the YouTube Algorithm: TubeTalk Episode 159

Big YouTube creators can afford to employ a team to help film, record sound, and edit but what about the smaller creators who have to fulfill all of those roles? In this episode of TubeTalk, the YouTuber podcast, we speak to two creators who have worked out what they need to focus on in order to save time and really produce some amazing content and grow their channel. If you want to know what those tips and tricks are so that you can do it on your channel, this is the show for you.

We’re joined on this podcast by Jeff Mendez from 

, and Travis McPherson. Jeff is a West Coast California native who's love of music and tech has led him to create an audio-centric channel. He’s been active on YouTube for 2 years, and his channel has 15K subscribers.

 is a gadget fan who has a love of technology and an interest in entertainment which spurred him to create a YouTube channel. He has 32K subscribers.

3 Tips on How To Get More Views On YouTube as a Small Channel

For any smaller channel working towards building significant views and subscribers on YouTube, listening to this week's TubeTalk podcast is a must! Our guests give us some incredible insights regarding YouTube, and here's just a taste of some of the tips and strategy Jeff and Travis use on their own YouTube channels:

#1 It's Never, Never Too Late to Build a Great YouTube Channel

There is a perception that YouTube is already over-saturated but that isn’t the case - even in 2019. But the key factor is that every creator has their own voice, their own personality and their own story, and spin on things. So, there is no other Travis, there is no other Jeff, or any other creator so it's definitely not too late.

Travis confirms that even a year ago he was convinced that it was impossible to grow a channel on YouTube, but learning what he learned, knowing what he knows now, it's not too late. Literally, there are channels that come out of nowhere and kind of blow up and it's totally possible. It's not easy, but it's totally possible.

#2 Every YouTuber Needs to Put in the Work

A lot of aspiring creators look to YouTube and the opportunity it brings to many millions like free products and free trips and they think, "Hey, Hey I wanna be part of that." Many people have an unrealistic expectation of what YouTube is and how much work you've got to put into that. Even seasoned creators like Jeff underestimated the amount of work being a YouTube creator was.

He assumed it was just as simple as recording your video, and then uploading to YouTube - never mind creating custom thumbnails, or thinking of the best title, or search engine optimization. But all these things go into creating a YouTube video strategy if you're serious about growing.

YouTube is essentially a business, and with every business there are expenses, and marketing, and accounting and all that good stuff. If you treat YouTube as a business it’s a better way to look at it versus, "Hey, I slapped a bunch of videos together and look, people are gonna send me overseas!”.

#3 Find your Niche on YouTune Then Double Down

YouTube hates variety, because it doesn't know how to help you. It loves it when you do one thing, because it can then find an audience for you. When you do two, three, or four things, now it wants to help you, it just simply cannot.

The problem with YouTube is the rules of the game. You try to take any kind of step out of the niche that you've made for yourself, and you may not get any traction at all. So when deciding on your niche, make sure it's something you can do for a very long time. For instance, if you have a cooking channel and are getting some great views and engagement for your content, then three months down the road you want to blog about how you're going to have a baby, you may kill your views dead.

Of course, you need to be adaptable - and the ever changing YouTube algorithm and platform changes will force you to do that. But identifying your niche and sticking with it is what’s going to help you grow. You're going to really struggle if the videos you’re creating aren’t your passion in the long run.

Tune into the podcast to hear more tips on building a solid video strategy around your YouTube channel. Huge thanks to Jeff and Travis for their advice and insights.

On this episode of TubeTalk, learn how smaller channels can break into the big time and get more views on YouTube in 2019.

How To Get More Views On YouTube as a Small Channel: TubeTalk Episode 160

In the latest in our series on 'How to Start a Gaming Channel on YouTube,' we discuss just how important research is. How important? It's probably the MOST important prep you can do before you pick up that video camera, and it isn't an exaggeration to state that the success of your whole YouTube Channel depends on it. So, yes, it's pretty important.

How to Get More YouTube Views with Your Gaming Channel

There are millions of gaming channels on YouTube right now, so how do you stand out from the crowd? We've already talked about 

making you the star of your YouTube channel

 and taking your personality to the forefront. But when it comes to the games, you need to be able to answer questions that nobody else can answer, faster than anyone else, or better than anyone else?

Let's use Clash Royale as the example. Every couple of weeks they release new cards for you to play with, one being a new card called the Giant Snowball. Now you don't really need to know anything about that other than if you search on YouTube for 'Clash Royale Giant Snowball tips', you'll find there'll be big YouTubers at the top of the search rankings. But if you just go down a little bit, you'll find a channel with only a thousand subscribers but a video that has 150,000 views. So, how did this happen?

That video answers a very specific question about one particular game, and it was one of the first videos out on the topic. This is the first video this channel has made, and it has 150,000 views and have gained 1,600 subscribers from that. So this, if nothing else, is proof that you can start a gaming channel in 2019 if you do the right things.

Because I have a passionate knowledge about that video game, I know what to search for. It should be the same for you, whatever game you're interested in. But let's take an example of a game I know nothing about: Fortnite.

I did a couple of searches, and within five minutes I was able to search for 'best shotgun in Fortnite save the world 2018' as a long tail keyword. And instead of finding channels with millions of subscribers, I found channels with a few thousand subscribers getting tens of thousands of views.

So it is possible to do on any type of game. You just have to think of this from a really specific point of view. Are there any Easter eggs that you know of that nobody else does? Is there a big patch coming out with new weapons that you want to cover before anybody else? Think about how you can offer something valuable, new, and unique to your audience before anybody else or, as I said earlier, better than anyone else. And you're onto a winning strategy when it comes to a gaming channel.

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

In our series on how to start a Gaming channel on YouTube, we discuss how research is the cornerstone to generating more views and subscribers.

When it comes to starting a Gaming channel on YouTube, stick to your guns. There's two ways to look at this. First of all, stick to one game for a period of time so you build a rapport with your audience for a particular game, and a particular topic around a game.

I've seen so many channels play Need For Speed one day, FIFA 18 the next, then WWE 2K18 the next day. Your audience is just not going to know where you are on what you've decided on. It's too exhausting for them to keep up.

The second way to look at sticking to your guns is when you have successful content, double down on that strategy. If you find a particular secret, which is really interesting to your audience, find another way to look at that secret or something that's very similar.

 to see which is your best content over the last 30 days. Check on it on a regular basis and see if you can double down on more of that content.

In our series on how to start a Gaming channel on YouTube, we discuss why doubling down on your most successful content is the best strategy.

In the latest in our series on how to start a gaming channel on YouTube, we’re going to take a look at 

. If you look at any of the top gaming channels on YouTube, you will see that their thumbnails are a work of art, really bright, oversaturated, with lots of punch that really draws you into the visuals when you're deciding what to watch next. Two quick golden rules for gaming thumbnails are:

A very common mistake gaming channels make is to take a screenshot from the game and use it as their thumbnail without any further editing or context. And what some channels do is use the same screenshot over and over again with multiple videos. And that just really isn't appealing at all to the casual viewer.

I understand, as a video creator myself, that there is a huge temptation to just push a video out of the door once it's finished. But you should be spending at least 30 to 60 minutes on your thumbnail, making sure that it's not too cluttered, and that the one or two objects in that thumbnail really tell a compelling story.

Look at the top YouTubers in your video game sphere and see how they craft their thumbnails. We're even seeing smaller channels on YouTube producing amazing thumbnails. It's a really competitive area, and video creators are understanding more and more that custom thumbnails are vitally important whatever channel size you are. So, make sure you work really hard on them.

How to Start a Gaming Channel on YouTube: Custom Thumbnails Can Make or Break You

If you want to start a Gaming channel on YouTube, make sure that your custom thumbnails are working for you, not against you.

Welcome to the latest in vidIQ’s recent series on how to start a Gaming channel on YouTube. And this post’s tip is - no game lasts forever, and at some point you will have to pivot. This advice ties itself all the way back to another tip, which is 

you must become the star of your own YouTube channel

. Once you've built an audience, gained their trust, they become subscribers, super fans, then you should be able to take them on a journey with whatever game you like.

When pivoting, you might want to start with games that your core audience is familiar with or comfortable with. So, for example, a lot of Clash of Clan YouTubers went onto Clash Royale. For Fortnite gamers, you might want to move onto Call of Duty, or some similarly themed topic.

When you've built a huge audience, you can go wherever you want. That might be nostalgic retro games that you're a big fan of, or your favorite games of all time. For example, mine is Golden Eye on the N64. But I don't think VidIQ is quite ready for a ‘Let's Play’ on that yet.

To summarize, find an audience, become their best buddies, and then take them on a gaming journey wherever you want it to go.

It seems like these days everybody wants to have a Gaming channel on YouTube, so the competition is more fierce than ever before. And it's relentless. In fact, you could say it's like putting your video game on the hardest difficulty setting. Are you dedicated enough to beat it? That's up to you.

The secret of starting a successful Gaming channel on YouTube is knowing just when to pivot. Read the secret to success from vidIQ

How to Start a Gaming Channel on YouTube: Find the Best Opportunities

In the first part of our 'How to Start a Gaming Channel on YouTube' series, we're going to focus on the challenge that face gamers in 2019 with so much competition about. Now, if you're not a gamer, don't worry. Stick around because many of the strategies that we suggest to you are relevant for all types of channels. We're just putting it into the video game context.

. The most important thing about your channel is not the video game you're going to cover, it's YOU. While the average viewer may find your content through a YouTube search or suggested videos, they stick around because of what you can uniquely offer to your audience. Whather that's through the humor that you have, the energy, the enthusiasm, or the passion. It's all about how YOU and your content makes your audience feel beyond any video game that you're actually playing.

Ask yourself two questions. Question #1: why do you go back to your favorite video game YouTubers? Is it because of the video games they're playing or because of the personality of the channel and that they connect with you directly.

The second question is, if they pivoted from the video game that you're interested in, would you still go to their channel, irrespective of what video game they were playing next?

For some of you this may be your first challenge. Get in front of camera. Talk directly to your audience while you're playing your video games. If you're not ready to do that then get behind the microphone so that people can hear you. You can maybe do a face reveal later on. The key element is making YOU the star of a channel, not the games that you play.

With that being said, the video game or video games that you cover on your channel are immensely important to you. The golden rule of any YouTube channel is that if you're passionate about the topic that you're covering, you'll be passionate about how you share it with your audience. And that always comes through in the videos that you produce.

In our series on how to start a gaming channel on YouTube, we discuss how the creator must always be the star if you want more views and subscribers.

Here's a challenge for you. What is your favorite video game right now? And if you were to start a YouTube channel on it, could you come up with 10 quick video ideas in 5 minutes?

Now this may sound like a tough challenge, so I'm going to challenge myself right now. My favorite video game is Clash Royale. Here are 10 quick video ideas I can come up with off the top of my head:

The best comebacks you've ever seen in Clash Royale

How to spend your money on the right cards on Clash Royale

Which cards should you be requesting from your clan?

Five new game modes I would love to see in Clash Royale

What should I spend my Clash Royale gems on?

I bet most of you had no idea what I was talking about, except for two or three people watching this video who have played Clash Royale. And that's the audience you need to appeal to with your gaming content. You want to really focus down and concentrate on a target audience with a specific value proposition that they can relate to.

Who should be watching? Why should they care? We've brought this up many times before. It applies to your video game channels as well.

YouTube Strategy Tips: If you want to start a gaming channel on YouTube from scratch, you are going to have to find unique content that appeals to a particular audience.

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