if you have your own YouTube channel let me know if this sounds familiar I have no experience in video editing video making video anything meet Jen a 58-year-old Creator who started making YouTube videos in the last year just like many of you who's just done this I really did monetize my channel in 10 weeks and not only that but in her first month as a monetized channel she earned $2800 honestly I I went into this thinking that if I could make $200 a month that I would be super happy which kind of makes you wonder
how did this seemingly very Ordinary YouTube Creator succeed where so many have failed to monetize their channel so fast with so little YouTube experience and make so much money from it well today I'm going to reveal to you Jen's exact strategy a lot of it through her own words in seven simple steps and do make sure to watch the whole video because there is one Gem of a tip from Jen that got her from 359 subscribers to over 2,000 subscribers with a single video first let's start at the beginning so number one commitment I was
going to make one video about my analytics every week and I was also going to make my silver and solo video midweek so two videos every week until I was monetized enthusiasm and passion will likely carry you through the first couple of months the first 10 20 videos of your YouTube Journey but monetization does typically take longer than gen's 10 weeks and there will come a point where you simply don't feel like making a video this week so let's agree to a creative contract right here right now to commit to consistency in all of its
forms our general recommendation if you are a complete novice to content creation it's typically one or two videos per week when you first start your channel and this isn't because the YouTube algorithm demands it there are three important reasons why we recommend this this first one is so obvious it might sound a little stupid but the more videos you make the higher potential you have to get more views you have more shots at a Target and when you hit the target your viewers have more videos on your channel to watch secondly you will learn a
lot about making videos very quickly if you've never done it before I have been saying this since I started educating here at vid IQ and my Mantra hasn't changed nothing beats experience in fact if you stop watching this video right now to make your own YouTube video nothing would make me happier and the final really important reason is that by making videos you'll find out very quickly what your audience like and doesn't like and this will help guide you down the right path of what videos to make for your audience and how they should be
made just been told by a faceless vid IQ executive producer to read this out ignore what Rob just said continue to watch all of this video Plus at least another five vid IQ videos before you start making your own video PS don't read this out rob you are an idiot this is the last straw come to my office immediately after you finish work the big thing that I had to learn and decide upon to begin is what is your Niche what are you going to focus on figure out what you're going to make videos about
and you might be thinking well how do I know what Niche to pick when you haven't posted any videos well first and obviously again there are two fundamentals you want to pick a niche that you already have a lot of knowledge in and a keen interest to learn more going forward and naturally you want to be extremely passionate about this topic because you could be talking about it for years but there are two more critical steps I recommend before you jump into the niche first you want to identify the possible audience size of that Niche
and look at how much competition there is in that Niche but there is of course the NeverEnding YouTube problem with all of this finding high demand low competition niches is like finding treasure and that's why we recommend using vid iq's keyword research tool to make this process a little bit easier as you can see you can search specific topics and niches you're interested in and assess how much competition there is for example let's say you wanted to start a channel around building a log cabin as you can see the topic doesn't have much demand and
it has a lot of competition but if you click on the related keywords you can see that there are other keywords like Homestead that have a much higher demand and lower competition there is a link in the description to download this awesome tool check it out now number three you have to watch YouTube videos in order to learn you've got to watch other content creators you've got to watch the so-called YouTube experts pretty religiously in order to learn more not only about video making but about how YouTube works so here's another one of these contracts
commitment to consistent and this one revolves around research watching observing absorbing content rather than just making your own content all of the time so set aside time every single week to Simply watch what other people are doing on YouTube one of the best ways to do this is to study the top five channels within your own Niche start simple go to their Channel watch their most recent video and then sort by the top performing videos and watch them as well study the topics the thumbnails the video structure what is working for them and how can
you apply some elements of that into your own content and what better place to learn all about YouTube than here at vid IQ where we will teach you about the algorithm really you want me to do this make sure to subscribe and click the notification Bell one video that helped me of someone interviewing Mr Beast one of his pieces of advice for new you YouTubers he said uh your first I think 10 or 20 videos are going to suck I fully agree with that don't worry about it stop don't let that stop you from starting
a YouTube channel and trying to get it monetized that you're too embarrassed what we need here are some realistic expectations about your YouTube journey in the beginning the videos you publish are unlikely to get more than a thousand views probably a lot less in fact now it's not impossible you will see creators on YouTube who achieve this but don't feel bad if your videos aren't getting any views to begin with this is completely normal almost expected and it doesn't mean that you suck as a Creator and that you should give up before you've even really
begun what we need to do is Adopt a constructive mentality if your next video flops there are two ways you can approach this you can just throw up your hands and say this is too hard I hate YouTube or you can ask yourself this question what's the one thing I could improve in my next video now for Jen it might be something as simple as putting more consideration into how she frames her videos because this space at the top of a frame just looks weird so crop in a bit more or pan the camera down
to show more shoulder and upper chest and even after all these years I am trying to improve as a creator with every video by not reading from a script so it feels more authentic and genuine and I think this is working out really good if you want to take all of this self-improvement stuff to the next level then you can set up a weekly study session where you do the following wait until 7 days after you publish a video and then rewatch it then write down what you think worked and didn't work in a video
and cross reference this with the videos audience retention graph to see where viewers abandoned the content the act of doing all of this will put it top of mind when you make your next video but perhaps the main thing here is mindset not to beat yourself up every single time a video doesn't perform as you'd expect every creator has gone through this and the first first 6 to 12 months can be especially hard because you might not have enjoyed any success at that point but if you simply focus on improving every single video that you
make you'll be surprised just how fast your channel starts to grow especially when it gains momentum new things that I learned every week you have to learn you have to learn you have to learn I didn't know anything about video editing software and it was really intimidating to look at it I'm going to post a a screenshot of D Vinci resolve which is what I use for editing my videos I had to watch dozens and dozens of videos and get over my complete lack of understanding what we're talking about here are the universal skills all
creators irrespective of their topic need to learn and it is actually one of my favorite tips from Jen because so many creators just want to skip this part and move straight on to monetization but YouTube isn't like this it's like driving a car you've got to understand the fundamentals before you can get really creative although I just told people to get really creative when they're driving about in their cars yeah don't do that so we're talking about simple video skills simple audio skills video editing thumbnail design script writing and so on this is why it's
a great idea to make one or two videos per week when you start out because you're building up a YouTube muscle memory it forces you to practice these skills over and over again every single week and the faster you master this the quicker you can become more creative just not behind a steering wheel I don't have expensive equipment I shot all of my videos and I continue to shoot all of my videos on my phone I have a cheap tripod I have a pretty cheap Gimbal and a little microphone that I use but other than
that I don't have an expensive camera I don't employ anyone I don't have special lighting I shoot in my in my house and out walking the dog the key takeaway here is that to begin with investment in yourself as a Creator the Knowledge and Skills you gain are far more important than investing in equipment it is easy to think especially when you're watching other videos that an awesome setup and High video and audio quality are the keys to the performance of a video and its success but most of it at least now is a distraction
it's window dressing Jenn's proof that you don't need fancy equipment to start a successful YouTube channel any camera on a smartph phone will be more than adequate to get you started these days along with a tripod and a dedicated microphone all of this can come in time but let's figure out if you enjoy making videos first focus on staying consistent with your posting schedule and improving facets of your content creation every time you make a video those are definitely the best levers that you can pull to have the biggest impact on your audience and with
all of what's been said let's now get to Jen's biggest monetization breakthrough step the one that propelled her from 350 subscribers to 2,000 subscribers with one video if something is working double down on it pretty simple right but it is damn effective the reason this works so well is that once you've had your viral moment on your channel it is a clear indication that the topic you covered in the style that you covered it in resonated with your audience now this viral moment doesn't need to be a million views it's something that outperforms your channel
by a significant amount it could be a th000 views in the first 24 hours when typically your videos get 100 views your next video after your viral moment shouldn't be random it should be a similar video on the same topic and this is exactly what happened to Jen's Channel at the beginning with passion and enthusiasm Jen's Channel gained a little bit of momentum but it all stopped dead in week seven where she got just a single subscriber and this is where a positive Creator mindset can really kick in where you just get back up dust
yourself off and go again so Jen went back to of a creative drawing board and came up with a new video style and this video performed much better than average ging her 29 subscribers in week8 you might call that her mini viral moment because in week 9 and 10 something incredible happened when Jen doubl down on that mini viral moment the next video that jeen made in her new style was her Mega viral moment with 190,000 views in week 10 I had gained 1,700 subscribers and 3,100 watchtime hours just from that one video but what
if you've not had your viral moments yet that you can double down on what if nobody's clicking on your videos or watching your videos for any length of time you're just stuck if that is the case it could be down to three big common mistakes many small channels commit but luckily for you we're going to show you what they are in this video and how to fix them