9 Things I Wish I Knew When I Started YouTube

all right item number one is that no one cares about your videos this is two categories of people do not care number one your friends and family do not care and number two the audience also does not care firstly on the friends and family front I was so worried when I started YouTube 6 years ago that people were going to say bad things about it I was afraid people were going to judge me and then I started making videos and I realized no one cares no one cares people are busy with their own lives people

are doing their own stuff they do not give a flying toss whether or not I have a YouTube channel or whether or not I make videos they're never watching my videos my videos is not aimed at them and so me making videos is not for the sake of my friends and family and so many people get held back by the worry of what their friends their family their co-workers their boss their aunt their Uncle their dog is going to think about their YouTube channel no one cares everyone is doing their own thing you can absolutely

do YouTube and I guarantee your friends and family will not care secondly the other category of people that doesn't care is the audience when I first started making YouTube videos 6 years ago I thought people would care I started making videos about me and my friends singing songs a cover of payone by Maroon 5 a cover of Adele or whatever and the way I now think about this and what I kind of wish I'd known before is that videos on YouTube are not actually free people are paying for watching your videos they're just not paying

with their cash they are paying with their time and attention and those are two currencies that are even more valuable than money and so when you're new to YouTube and you make a video and it doesn't get any views and you think oh the algorithm doesn't like me it's not that the algorithm doesn't like you it's that your video is not worth watching people have not decided to click on that video people have not decided to watch it because it has not provided them with any value and these days increasingly people have so many choices

of how they can spend their time on the internet the thing they want to do is they want value whether that's value in the form of entertainment or education or inspiration it needs to have some kind of value and if there is no value in the video then people will not watch the video and if people are not watching the video the algorithm will recognize that no one's watching it and is therefore not going to recommend it and this is enormously liberating and enormously freeing when you're getting started because it means you don't need to

overthink it no one's going to watch the first several videos anyway you have to start off by being bad and over time by being bad repeatedly you will eventually be good at making videos your videos will start to add value you'll start to figure out what your Niche is and then when people give up their time and attention to watch your videos it will actually be worth it for them and now the algorithm is going to start recommending you and then your channel will grow and then at some point you'll become a millionaire and then

life will be all great lesson number two is the difference between being an architect and being an archaeologist now what I wish someone had told me when I first started YouTube is that there are two approaches to finding your Niche firstly there is the archaeologist approach the archaeologist approach is where you think okay there's some interesting videos I can make over there and you start making those videos and you make a handful of them and you see what happens and then you realize no one cares and you're not very good and maybe you didn't enjoy

making those videos so then you go to a new topic and then you do this a bunch of times and eventually by exploring enough hot zones just like an archaeologist would eventually you'll be making that video and then something good will happen maybe you'll get one comment when normally you have none maybe that video will get 100 views when normally it gets three that's like the equivalent of the archaeologist digging and then finding something like oh hello there's something here and now that you found something interesting in the area you continue to excavate and you

continue to dat and this means basically continuing to make more and more videos about that topic now the alternative way to approach YouTube is as an architect now an architect who does not bother a kind of willy-nilly digging in random areas an architect has a plan they've got the blueprint they know exactly what's going to happen and only once they have all the information out there and it's all written down do they start to hire someone to lay the first brick and lay the foundations if you're trying to approach YouTube like an architect and you

have no experience with making videos you're trying to make the plan you're trying to figure out your niche in advance chances are you're not actually going to take any action because it's very difficult to figure out your niche in advance the vast majority of people that I would recommend should start by being an archaeologist if you don't yet know how to make videos it doesn't matter what you're trying to make videos about your Niche is irrelevant focus on making the videos digging like an archaeologist and over time as you get better at making videos you

will then start to figure out what works in terms of how you feel about making certain types of content and also what seems to be resonating with the audience in my case I started off with making videos about singing no one cared I then started making travel Vlogs about my Adventures on my medical elective in Cambodia and Vietnam no one cares I made a series talking about how I was building a medical app no one cared I started vlogging about life as a medical student broadly no one cared but it was when I started making

specific educational videos helping people who were applying to medical school back in the day 6 years ago that was when people started to care and based on that people started to ask me how do you do all this studying for exams what study tips do you have and I started making videos about study tips and people cared I dabbled with a bunch of other series at that time that no one cared about but then people started asking me how are you so productive and I made videos about that and then people started to care to

the point that now 6 years later I'm the world's most followed productivity expert I've written a book about productivity it's coming out in a few months link down below but none of this was intentional it was all the archaeologist approach of like digging making the videos and consistently just sticking to producing one or two videos every single week even while I was a full-time medical student and trying to prepare for my final year exams so if you're allowing the concern about not having a niche hold you back from making the videos please don't let it

just go for it and I promise your Niche will emerge over time lesson number three is the importance of supply and demand now supply and demand is an economic reality but is also very much a reality here on YouTube and basically what happens here is that the more supply of a particular type of content there is the higher the bar gets raised in terms of how you stand out the lower the supply and the higher the demand the lower the bar gets so for example right now YouTube is absolutely saturated with videos from students teaching

people how about how to study for exams there is a very high supply of that content there's still a pretty reasonably high demand for it but the bar is very high that means if you're a brand new YouTuber without any camera gear without any experience talking to camera without any experience editing just filming on your phone it is very unlikely that you'll be able to stand out now based on this reality there are two different approaches you can take one approach you can take is just improving the quality of your videos I want to continue

making videos let's say about productivity I know the bar is here and therefore I want my videos to be there for example so they cross the bar and so that they stand out in a crowded Market the problem is it's very hard to make videos stand out in a crowded Market generally you need some kind of unfair Advantage more on that later but the alternative approach is to choose not to compete in a niche where there is already quite a lot of attention we've had thousands of students go through my course the parttime YouTuber Academy

so far and I like 80% of them want to make content about productivity personal development finance and business because they enjoy that stuff but the problem with all of those very broad niches is that they are very very very saturated and generally the ones that we find succeed are the ones who Niche further and further down so that they can make very specific videos about a specific topic that they have some sort of unfair advantage in lesson number four is the importance of thinking in systems now back in the day for the first let's say

6 to 12 months of me making videos where I made my first 50 to 100 videos I was focused on thinking one video at a time I was thinking in terms of videos I was like cool what video am I going to make this week and then I would write the video I'd film I'll edit I'd publish and as the video was uploading I'd think about the title and figure out the thumbnail I'd publish the video I'd look at the comments and then I'd move on to the next one this is an absolutely exhausting way

of making YouTube videos if you're focused on making the videos one at a time the big level up that I had about a year into my YouTube Journey was when I started to think in terms of systems I read a fantastic book book called The emyth Revisited by Michael Gerber which is a book about how small businesses grow and how small businesses fail and initially I thought I wouldn't learn anything from it but then I realized that a YouTube channel is a business and businesses grow through systems and through operations now there are some people

that choose to view YouTube as a hobby and if you want to view it as a hobby that's totally fine but if you want to view it as a business I.E something that makes money while providing value for other people rather than as a hobby which is something you do for yourself for fun if you want to view it as a business then there's a profound importance in thinking in systems so instead of thinking what video can I make today what video can I make tomorrow think what is the system that I can build that

would make the process of making every subsequent video way easier than it currently is this might involve like I do having a Content Library a database of video ideas this is all the stuff that we teach in our course by the way it might involve systematically brainstorming titles and thumbnails in advance it might involve having a systematic house style for your thumbnails so it's less work to create thumbnails every time it might involve having a specific system for how you look at YouTube analytics and what action you can take on them and completely ignoring the

analytics that you don't intend to act upon the point point is by thinking in systems and by treating your YouTube channel as a business as a sort of media business which is basically what it is you can start to benefit from economies of scale by the fact that you're making multiple videos over a very long period of time and systems are a form of Leverage it's like the same amount of effort combined with leverage gets you way more output and especially as part-time YouTubers if like I was you're trying to grow a YouTube channel while

you've got a really demanding day job or while you're a student systems and leverage are one of the key principles that will take your YouTube channel to the next level without it completely ruining your life now if you're in that boat and you do want to take YouTube seriously but you're not sure exactly what the next steps are then you can take my completely free quiz it's called the YouTube growth scorecard and it's a completely free assessment that I've put together based on my six plus years of experience to try and figure out like what

are the key things that it takes to grow a YouTube channel into a sustainable and profitable business and you can take this quiz completely for free and based on your answers to the questions it will give you a score for all of the five different aspects of growing a YouTube channel business and it will give you actionable tangible takeaway points depending on how you answered and depending on your score so you can check out that completely free YouTube growth scorecard by clicking the link in the video description all right lesson number five is the profound

and ridiculous importance of titles and thumbnails honestly I don't like the fact that YouTube is so reliant on titles and thumbnails but the truth of the matter is the video could be the absolute best thing in the world but unless the packaging for it is sufficiently intriguing for the target audience that you're aiming for no one is going to click on that video and if no one clicks on the video they don't even have an opportunity to watch it this means and this is the thing that I wish I'd known when I when I started

YouTube that it's very very helpful to think about the title in the thumbnail before you even think about writing the video back in the day as I mentioned I would think about the title and thumbnail as I was uploading the video this is very very inefficient because it takes a lot of effort 10 20 hours sometimes to make a video way more if you're making videos that require lots of research and lots of effort and putting in all that research and all that effort and all that time and effort and blood and sweat and tears

into making the video but then thinking about the title and thumbnail as the final 30 seconds is completely the opposite way around of thinking about it so now what I do on this channel is that we really think about the title and thumbnail first and only when we can think of a really nice title and thumbnail for a video do we then even consider what the video outline is going to be or think about writing the video now as part of my part-time YouTuber Academy I've interviewed dozens of ridiculously successful YouTubers from several hundred, subscribers

to over 10 million subscribers and I always ask them what is one thing that you wish you knew before starting YouTube and this is the one thing that they say they always talk about the importance of the title and the thumbnail and every single YouTuber learns this the hard way that over time you've got to do your title and thumbnail first and then worry about the content of the video itself what I would encourage you to do is to think about who is the person you actually want to be watching this video cuz whatever the

video is it's not aimed at everyone this video is not aimed at everyone it's aimed at people who want to start or who want to grow a YouTube channel who are probably quite sophisticated who are probably highly attractive and very intelligent people like you and therefore it wouldn't make sense for me to make the thumbnail for this video something like this that would be pretty absurd right like it's a bit it's not really the vibe of this sort of educational video Even though this thumbnail might work for a Mr Beast video it's not going to

work for a video on this channel because it's a different kind of target audience so yes title and thumbnail are very important but that doesn't mean you need to follow the Mr Beast formula for titles and thumbnails think about what would resonate with your target audience relatedly we come to lesson number six which is the importance of the first 30 seconds so if the title and thumbnail were ridiculously important the first 30 seconds of your video are like second secondary in terms of importance but also very very very important you'll see that in the first

10 or 20 seconds a lot of people will have clicked on the video and then they will leave the content and with a lot of channels especially educational channels you'll get 30 seconds into the video and only half of the people will be left remaining that means that any effort you put into the first 30 seconds of the video or the first minute of the video will be disproportionately seen by way more many people than the effort that you put into the second half of the video where maybe only 10 or 20% of the audience

is remaining and so the way to think about this is that if you're spending lots and lots of time on your editing but the the funky animations you're making come 7 minutes into the video chances are very few people are going to see them try your best to frontload the effort into the video so that as soon as someone clicks on it they see oh a lot of effort has gone into this and then they're more likely to stick around once they turn their phone sideways once they click full screen at that point you can

back off a little bit but you do have to do quite a lot of work up front to get people hooked onto the content lesson number seven is that at the start of the journey gear doesn't really matter I know plenty of YouTubers in the educational space who have just been filming with their iPhone some to this day who just film with their iPhone and they've got hundreds of thousands of subscribers and are making at least six figures a year here on YouTube and they're just filming with their phone gear does not matter at the

start however if you can afford gear and you can level up your production value it is one thing that makes your content stand out from the crowd but again this's depend depends on your target audience there's like a sweet spot for production value for certain educational niches that are aimed mostly at intelligent adults which is probably people like you having decent production value is pretty good in the tech Niche for example having good production value is basically a requirement because people like that sort of thing in the tech Niche but if you're doing for example

a lifestyle Vlog that's trying to be relatable then shooting your content with like Cinema cameras is going to make it seem less relatable rather than more relatable and so there isn't really much point in doing that so for every different type of content and for every different audience there is a sweet spot of production value and if you can get to that sweet spot by investing in gear and lights and cameras and Ms and stuff then fantastic but you don't want to make the mistake of going too far along that spectrum and especially in the

early days especially if you're just starting out you can absolutely get lots and lots and lots of subscribers and lots of views by filming things with your phone the main thing is the quality of the content itself rather than the production value of the cameras that'll come later and that is something that can give you that little bit of sprinkle of extra spice over time all right lesson number eight is to find your unfair Advantage now having taught over 3,000 students from my parttime YouTube Academy we've been analyzing the data painstakingly and trying to figure

out what is it that makes the most successful YouTubers Stand Out compared to everyone else and in almost every single case where we've had a student whose channel has really blown up after taking our course a big part of it is that they've had some sort of unfair advantage to lean into now what is an unfair Advantage an unfair Advantage is something that would be very difficult or impossible for someone else to replicate so hard work is not an unfair Advantage hard work is a totally fair Advantage it's like everyone can compete on the realm

of hard work but an unfair Advantage is something that's a little unfair something that would would be very difficult for someone else to actually take as their own Advantage for example when I started YouTube I lent into my unfair advantage of the fact that I was a Cambridge University medical student because there weren't many Cambridge University Medical students making videos about how to get into medicine at Cambridge crucially being a Cambridge University medical student and trying to make videos playing the guitar I don't have any unfair Advantage there therefore there's not much point in doing

it because it's it's very unlikely to be successful but I found a domain of video making where I was leaning into an unfair Advantage similarly let's say that you've painstakingly worked really hard to teach yourself a language and now you want to make make YouTube videos teaching other people how to learn that language that is in a way an un Advantage because it's very hard for someone to compete with you because they would have had to learn the language and especially if you're trying to create videos in a saturated Marketplace which a lot of different

niches are on YouTube these days it's important to think what are the ways in which you can personally stand out what unfair advantages do you have now crucially this does not matter at the start we talked about architect and archaeologist and at the start the main thing you need to do is just make a few videos but definitely once you get to the point of treating your YouTube channel like a business and thinking strategically about how you're going to grow and how you're going to stand out thinking what are the personal competitive unfair advantages that

I have that could help me stand out from the crowd is a very helpful way of helping you figure out what your angle for videos is going to be and then lesson number nine is something I wish someone had told me like months into my YouTube Journey rather than 2 years into it which is when I started doing it which is to Outsource your video editing as soon as you possibly can the vast majority of the big successful YouTubers I know have outsourced their editing and when you do Outsource your editing you find that it

frees up an absolutely enormous amount of time for you to be able to focus on the things that you can do better which is writing and filming the videos and I was held back so much at the start by thinking that no one could replicate my editing style it would be hard to find an editor I tried Outsourcing to someone and then it didn't really work and I then I threw it away thinking that oh it would take so long to train them I might as well just continue editing the videos myself I told myself

that I enjoyed video editing and it was fun and therefore I should continue doing it but what it took was a mentor of mine who had several multi-million dollar businesses to sit me down and be like look Ali trust me you need to Outsource your editing and I thought all right cool so then I Outsource my editing and it completely changed my life and that was when the channel really started to Skyrocket because all of a sudden my own time was freed up to be able to make more videos to be able to think more

strategically about the channel to be able to learn more stuff and share it in videos rather than what it was previously which is every day I'd get home from work in my day job as a doctor and I'd be editing videos for hours and hours and hours and on end now again if you're in this position where you want to grow a YouTube channel but you're not really sure what the next steps are you should absolutely check out my YouTube growth scorecard it'll be linked completely for free down in the video description and it'll ask

you a bunch of questions and based on your answers to that it will give you a score for the five different areas of growth on YouTube and it will give you practical recommendations for what you can do as your next steps in each given area so these were nine lessons that I wish I'd learned when I first started YouTube but this list does not lay out what the Strategic step-by-step method that I would follow would be and so if you're starting on YouTube or your Channel's not growing as fast as you'd like you might like

to check out this video over here where I lay out exactly what I would do if I was starting a YouTube channel completely from scratch and in that video I give you my three-part method for growth on YouTube which thousands of people have said have completely changed the way they approach their channel so thank you so much for watching and I'll see you in the next video bye-bye