How To Start a YouTube Channel in 2023 (The ONLY Video You Need to Watch.)

there is about 40 questions that new YouTubers are not asking themselves before they start their Channel that's causing their channels to die prematurely in today's video I'm gonna walk through my thought process of what I would do if I was starting my YouTube channel today to ensure my Channel's success let's dive into it the first phase before you even upload videos to YouTube is your research phase and throughout this phase I would ask several questions like number one why do you want to start a YouTube channel what is the ultimate goal here because there's a

lot of different goals that people pursue some people want to get YouTube famous and they want to be an influencer and they want to grow their subscriber rate other people have a business and they want to use YouTube to generate leads to that business and then there's a sub segment of people that want to unlock an extra Revenue stream and they're going to be optimizing for monetization and getting as much AdSense Revenue as possible now of course throughout your journey of being a YouTuber you can try to accomplish all three of these goals but when

you're starting I personally think it's helpful to understand what is the primary outcome that you want because now you're going to be able to understand what your metrics of success are and that's going to dictate how you optimize your channel for example if you are someone who is wanting to get YouTube famous then your metric of success may be the number of subscribers that you get on the channel but for other people if your metric of success is getting customers for your business then your strategy might be optimizing for search and not necessarily caring about

the amount of subscribers you convert and even not caring so much about the views that you get you might only want a hundred views on your video as long as some of those views convert into buyers meaning that if you only need five clients a month to your business maybe you don't necessarily need hundreds of thousands of views and you may not need to have videos go viral on the other hand if you are someone who wants to unlock another Revenue stream for yourself then you might want to consider how fast can you get monetized

on YouTube how can you get the highest CPM which is basically what YouTube pays you per thousand views on the AdSense side or even how can you make sure you're strategic with your ad breaks all three of these people have different objectives and therefore their course of action is going to be different that's why to anyone who's starting their Channel I would encourage you to ask yourself the question of what is my primary outcome that's really going to help you identify what your course of action is what your metrics of success are and who you

should be listening to when it comes to how to reach those objectives now throughout this research period the second question that I would ask myself is what am I good at and what am I genuinely interested in now if you were someone who's using YouTube because you have a business and you want to get more customers you likely already know the direction that you want to take your channel whereas for someone like me when I started my YouTube journey I didn't have a business I didn't care about getting customers I wanted to do YouTube for

fun and more importantly I wanted to be an influencer I wanted to grow my subscriber rate that was my initial objective of why I wanted to start YouTube because I knew I wanted to be a YouTuber I wasn't 100 clear on what videos I should be creating and looking back I think it's really important to find topics that you're genuinely interested in because YouTube is hard there are going to be times where your patience is tested there's going to be times where you might feel like you want to give up but if you are someone

who's doing YouTube and you're sharing topics that you're genuinely interested in that's going to give you a Competitive Edge over someone who wants to do YouTube just for the sake of doing YouTube and is trying to copy and paste what other people are doing now of course I don't want you to overthink this too much because over time you are going to evolve as a creator for example when I started my channel I was genuinely interested in helping people quit the nine of five and this is a topic that I could talk endlessly about four

years ago but as I grew in age and experience in maturity my interest also shifted and you can see my channel shifting along with my interests as well but all in all I personally think that if you want to create longevity for yourself on this platform it's going to be really important that you find a reason outside of getting subscribers and outside of making money if you want to stand the test of time now if you are someone who is uncertain on how you can answer this question of what am I good at or what

am I genuinely interested in I highly recommend that you ask your friends and family for an objective opinion one thing that I like to do is I like to ask people what they believe my strengths are or what they believe is something that comes extremely easy to me that doesn't come easy to them that's how I found my Niche about social media I didn't realize how good I was about social media until people told me and a lot of times when you're genuinely good at something or you're genuinely passionate about something it seems really easy

and when something comes easy it's easy for us to Discount that and think that it's not worth starting a Channel about because we think that oh if it's easy anyone can do it but the truth is is that your secret sauce is in the things that come easy to you because there are plenty of things that you're really good at that other people aren't good at and that is going to be the secret sauce of your channel now once you've identified the things that you are good at or the things that you're genuinely interested in

meaning things that you can talk endlessly about and come up with so many content ideas on the next question that you want to ask yourself is who do I want to create videos for and that person that you're thinking of should be a singular person because oftentimes when you try to talk to everyone you talk to no one and so through this process of being in the research phase of trying to figure out what my identity is on my channel I would really hyper focus on that one person that I am ultimately creating videos for

so for example when I was trying to figure out the direction that I wanted to take my channel and what types of content that I wanted to do all I knew was that I was passionate about creating content helping people figure out their quarter life crisis and how to quit the nine to five and my experience including the nine to five and so so I started asking my friends of whether or not they were going through that situation and I had one friend her name was Joey and she was going through the exact situation that

I wanted to help people in and so whenever I was creating videos or whenever I was trying to figure out the direction that I want to take my Channel or the types of content that I wanted to create I always thought of Joey and I asked Joey what her pain points were what she's looking to learn on the channel what questions that she has and any time that I created content I asked myself what would Joey want to see what would Joey want to hear and what would Joey want to learn by really zoning it

to that one person that I was trying to help it really helped open a lot of possibilities but it also helped me remain focused on the mission of my channel at the same time knowing what I know now as someone who has a multiple seven-figure business and has over 600 000 subscribers on YouTube what I would do in addition to what I said is I would create a Google doc that actually outlines my ideal subscriber this is the one person that I'm trying to help I put in the name and I also answer a few

questions like what does this person value where else are they finding information who are my competitors what questions do they have what pain points do they have what outcomes do they want and by having it in a Google doc it not only helps me and keeps me grounded when I'm creating videos but as you scale up your business and as you hire people to help support your content this is a DOT that you can share with your team and I really wish that I did this from the get-go so that I wasn't scrambling later on

and like I said earlier you will mature as a Creator and this person that you're trying to help will evolve over time I can assure you right now the person that I'm trying to help today is very different from the person that I was trying to help four years ago but as a new Creator I really think that these are things that are gonna future proof your channel and give you a sense of direction for those days where you want to give up now as you start brainstorming these things and by the way if you

are unclear of what this person is wanting I highly recommend that you actually go out and talk to people do market research I know in the beginning of starting my channel I actually talk to people who were in the corporate nine to five asking them what their pain points were asking them what their outcomes were asking them what resources they were tapping into what books they were reading what other YouTubers they follow what other podcasts they are listening to but ultimately one of the main questions that you want to know is what is this person

interested in and by the way this doesn't have to be super Niche you don't have to confine yourself to a niche so for example when I started my channel I knew that I wanted to help people that were in their early 20s Millennials that were about one to three years into their corporate job and realizing how much they hated it and of course I I could create a bunch of videos like this that was addressing that directly but I also asked myself that as a human being as a person what other topics is this person

interested in and so I started to understand that hey this person who's in a corporate job they also struggle with finances or they also struggle with mindset or they're also interested in social media and potentially starting a side hustle these were other sub topics that I knew they were interested in that I thought of creating for my channel and what ended up happening is because I didn't necessarily confine myself to a niche and only doing videos about quitting the nine to five the fact that I experimented with these other sub interests that they had it

allowed me to actually find what my secret sauce was and also experiment on the channel and what ended up happening is I noticed that even though my primary content was about quitting the nine to five my content about social media was actually what was taking off even more and so I ended up doubling down on that Niche once I realized number one people really enjoy this topic that I cover and number two I really enjoy this topic that I cover and that's when I realized to double down and that's how I ultimately found my Niche

and grew my channel and I mentioned it in this video right here I think it's a mistake to immediately pigeon for yourself right away as a Creator I think it's important to experiment within a target audience and then from there after three months identify which subtopic are performing the best on your channel what feels good to you and then doubling down on that and that is exactly how you can find your Niche on YouTube especially if you are someone who is unclear now once I identified what different things that one person I want to create

videos for is interested in I will go straight to YouTube search and start searching up those topics just to see what other existing videos already exist this is going to show me what's possible and it's going to show me the gaps that exist in the market and the opportunities that I could be doing for my channel and so some things that I would be looking at as I'm doing my research is number one asking myself what videos already exist based on the topics that I'm interested in pursuing and are those videos performing and how I

like to see that is I like to understand the view to subscriber ratio so for example if I see a video and there's tons of views on it more than the person has subscribers it tells me that this is a pretty hot topic and those videos are actually fueling the growth of that person's Channel these are usually the videos I'm looking for to see what the market demand is for the topics I'm interested in pursuing in this research phase you just want to stay Broad and just see what the overall demand is and what the

overall Market looks like eventually you may want to consider niching down and we can cover that later on when we talk about titles But ultimately in this phase you do want to search up broad keywords just to validate the demand and what else is out there in the market now as you are reviewing videos that you believe are doing really well for other creators under the same topic that you're interested in pursuing you then want to start taking notes of why you believe that Creator is crushing it with that video is it the title that's

really compelling and click-worthy is it the thumbnail that you find super captivating is it the way that they edit the video is it the hook that they have is it how they engage with their audience is it how concise they are you want to start taking notes so that you can identify the patterns of why you personally believe those videos are doing well this is really going to help you understand what other people are doing well that you can also do in your videos now on the flip side another question that you're going to want

to ask is what is missing from those videos and what this ultimately means is you want to critique that video and see how that Creator could have improved and how you can do this is looking at the comments section and seeing what Their audience is saying so for example if Their audience is saying hey you know you didn't really cover this question or hey I have a question about this that shows you there is an opportunity for your video to cover that topic or or cover that question that that other Creator failed to cover in

their video or maybe you see complaints in the comments section that their audio is really whack or that the Creator is talking too fast or that the b-roll and all the editing is a little bit too flashy and it's nauseating these are all things that you want to take note of as well because those are the areas of opportunity and can be areas that you fill in your video so that you get an edge and a competitive Advantage now at this point you might have spent a couple of days mulling over the direction that you

want to take your channel and doing some light research and by the way you do not want to be stuck in analysis paralysis it should not take you over a week of actually planning your channel what's really key here is taking action because speaking from experience it's really you taking action and filming videos collecting data in order to actually improve your channel you sitting behind the desk and doing as much research as possible is not going to speed up how fast your channel is going to be uploaded and how fast you're going to be successful

that's only determined and by you actually uploading videos so I want to make sure that you're not stuck in the research phase for too long but anyways after you have a good understanding of the direction that you want to head for your channel and you've done some light research on a few topics the next question that I would ask myself in preparation to actually plan your content is what are the next four videos that you want to create what are the topics specifically that you'll be covering in your next four videos now you might be

wondering why four videos and the reason why is because as a newer YouTuber you are going to severely underestimate how long it takes to film prepare edit your videos and what I find is a lot of new creators prematurely tell people that they're launching their YouTube channel and all they do is just do one video and once they've published that video they realize oh crap now I have to do the second video and the third video and the fourth video and because I didn't prepare and plan ahead of time they end up giving up really

quickly because because they don't have a plan and it's a lot easier to give up when you don't have things outlined in advance not only this if you prepare at least four videos in advance it's really going to give you peace of mind that you have time to catch up in between your videos because a lot of times especially for newer creators it is going to take you longer to upload your video every single week because this is a new skill that you're learning so to make sure you are preventing failure and preventing you giving

up prematurely I believe that planning out your first four videos is already going to give you a great head start now as you think about your first four videos this is where I recommend using tools like tubebuddy or vid IQ and I just recommend doing the free version if you would like especially if you're someone who is not 100 sure if YouTube is something you truly want to pursue but using plugins like tubebuddy is really going to help you narrow down topics that will give you a Competitive Edge so for example if I was interested

in creating a topic about Instagram what tubebuddy will tell me is that this is a very very highly competitive topic meaning that there's a lot of demand for it but because there is a lot of demand for it as someone who is just starting out it might be really hard for me to stand out in the algorithm and so what I like using tubebuddy for is to verify the competitiveness of certain topics and what you want is you want to find a topic where there is a lot of search volume for but there's not a

lot of creators doing those videos and so with a topic like Instagram it is not only a really popular search term but a lot of creators are already doing videos about Instagram in general and so what I like to do on tubebuddy is on the side I like to click around and go through the rabbit hole and find topics where maybe I can get a higher score on tubebuddy so even if Instagram as a whole may be super competitive I might want to narrow down my search and click on how to create Instagram captions or

something and now it's going to show me that there is less competition in that area because I've niched down on that video now another Pro tip is if you're using a plug-in like tubebuddy it's going to show you a weighted and unweighted score unweighted score is in general how competitive a topic is whereas weighted score is tubebudding will take into consideration your channel so for example for me Instagram is a really really competitive topic but what you'll notice is my weighted score has a different result and it actually tells me that if I pursue a

topic like Instagram my account specifically would do really well likely because I've already created a lot of content about Instagram my account is four years old and I've already racked up that algorithm juice and so I'm going to have a different score than someone like you who is just starting out but the bottom line is is as you were trying to figure out the first four videos that you want to create you ultimately want to find topics that are a little bit more Niche that don't have a lot of other creators doing that topic and

is something that is in demand and so you want to try to Niche down that topic now this part of the video If if you are feeling overwhelmed about how to find topics for your content I want to break it down super simply you just want to know how you can differentiate your topic your video so for example when I started I wanted to create a video about why I quit my job when I noticed that there was already a lot of people doing that topic and so what I did was I said you know

what instead of doing why I quit my job I'm going to make it more specific and specifically tailor it to why I quit my corporate job and not only this I'm going to take a step further and say why I quit my corporate job for Millennials this was niched down twice and it actually became my first semi-viral video that I ever had on my YouTube channel and so ultimately even though you validated the demand for the overarching general topic that you want to do when you are actually considering what videos to create as a new

Creator I highly recommend you ask yourself how you can differentiate your video a few degrees more than what everyone else is doing this is going to ultimately really help you stand out in a busy Marketplace now once you've answered the question of what are the first four videos that I want to create you now want to answer the question of how often do I want to post what is my posting schedule is it going to be once a week which is what I recommend for those of you who are starting out if you are someone

who is really busy is it bi-weekly is it once a month is it twice a week which I do not recommend if you are just starting out here on YouTube but this is ultimately what you want to get clear on and Beyond just the frequency you want to ask what day do you want to be publishing your videos so for me when I started my channel I chose Sundays because I was working at a coffee shop at the time and I was working basically Monday to Saturday so Sunday was the only time that I could

really do uploads but now I really regret picking Sunday as my upload day because now I have to wake up early on Sunday to publish my video to promote it and I prefer to have that Sunday to myself and so these are things that you want to consider in terms of your lifestyle and when you want to be online when your video publishes because ultimately when your video publishes you want to make sure that you're online to engage in the comment section to promote it on your Instagram stories to make sure that it actually publishes

back then I used to schedule my video and for some reason there was a glitch or maybe something happened or maybe I made a mistake and my video actually didn't publish and so the time that you choose to publish should align with what your lifestyle is and eventually as you scale up you're going to be able to hire people to do that for you but for now these are things that you want to consider now if you already have an audience on Instagram or on another platform I just recommend that you ask people hey when

do you actually watch YouTube videos and ask your audience what they think your upload schedule should be these are all things that you might want to consider before you start your Channel at this point you have a clear idea of what your first four videos are going to be and you have a solid understanding of what your post frequency is going to be be and what day and what time you want to do your uploads now you want to ask yourself where do I want to organize this content because eventually you're going to want to

script for those videos and so where are you going to actually organize it now for me back then I used to just do it on a Google doc but now knowing what I know I would actually use something like notion or Asana or anything that can show a kanban board now for me I like to use notion and I actually created this custom dashboard for myself that I sell to my subscriber so if you want to check it out you can check it in the link in my description box below but I set it up

so that I have different columns and on one column I have all of my content ideas and from there I will move it to the next section where I'll actually be scripting for those videos and then afterwards once I scripted those videos I move it to filming to Showcase that these are the videos that I'm now filming in queue once that's done I move it to editing to Showcase that it is now in the editing process and then afterwards I move it to upload and so this really keeps me organized and eventually if you ever

hire a video editor a social media manager someone to support you and your channel it's going to be really helpful for them as well because this is ultimately your content schedule and it's the full workflow of how your videos go from idea to publish and so personally I recommend notion and if you want to make your life easier you can check out the link in my description box below but if you don't want to do that you can also use something like airtable Asana Trello anything that is a kanban style that allows you to move

things from left to right now once I've created my kanban to organize my content I will now put the four video topics that I had in mind and I will really think about the title that I want these topics to be if you are someone who is wanting more views on your channel you need to understand that the most important things is your title your topic your thumbnail and also the hook that you have in your video and what I mean by that is when someone is evaluating on whether or not they want to click

on your video first of all they need to know whether or not that topic is of Interest to them so if that topic is about Instagram they're going to be like Oh I'm really interested in that the second thing is the title What specifically is that video about and does it entice me to want to click and also if that person isn't necessarily reading the title and they're only looking at the thumbnail they're also asking themselves based on the thumbnail alone is this video something that I would want to watch and now because of YouTube's

algorithm updates and user interface updates when people are scrolling through mobile or on desktop if they actually hover over the thumbnail it's gonna start playing the video and that is exactly why you want to make sure the hook of your video is also really engaging and we'll talk about the hook later but ultimately these are the main components of what causes someone to click so that's why at this stage you really want to spend more time thinking about what titles are working for other people and how you can model it for your channel so for

example let's say you're on the home page or maybe you're on the explore page or you're just searching for videos on your own and you're seeing that hey there's a really cool title that someone created did and they have a viral video how can I use that same title formula for my Niche for my video so for example if one of my videos was if I was bro this is what I would do to start my business even if your channel has nothing to do with business or let's say you're in fashion if I was

broke this is how I would create my capsule wardrobe as you can see you are modeling my title which has been proven to do well because I have tons of views on this video but you are applying it to your Niche this is a really great way to actually not start from scratch and actually just model what has worked for other people now in addition to modeling the titles that have worked for other people what you can also consider doing is front loading the search term and then back loading an emotional trigger so this is

something that I usually do is in the front of my title I usually put in the key Search terms that I know that person is looking for for example how to create consistent content on social media but then in parentheses I will put something in my title that really creates an emotional Trigger or will cause someone to actually click I kind of call this The Click bait portion of my title so in this title I wrote a hundred posts in 30 days that person who was looking for a video on how to create consistent content

they may choose my video over someone else's simply because I have that clickbait portion that really shows someone hey if you follow my strategies you have the potential of creating 100 posts in 30 days and I'm going to show you how and so that's how I like to do my title now you might be wondering why would I front load search terms first the reason why is because on mobile and on desktop a lot of times the second portion of that title is cut off and so if I know someone is searching for a specific

topic I want to make sure that immediately the first half of my title already tells them what to expect from my video personally for me I think that's going to get more clicks simply because I'm already assuming that the second half of my title is already going to be cut out and so at minimum I want to make sure that person knows exactly what my video is about now as a pro tip if you are someone who has a little bit of money to spend and you want to supercharge your results on YouTube you can

also download a plug-in like vid IQ pay for your premium subscription and on fit IQ it'll actually use their AI technology to recommend titles for you this is a really cool tool that you can use it is absolutely not necessary I definitely have not used this feature until recently when I found out about it but I also want to mention that if you are someone who is either really lazy or someone who just wants to double down on their channel in the least amount of time that being said though once I've identified the titles that

I want to do for the first four videos I would pick one video that I want to work on First and in that video the next question I would ask is what would be a compelling hook to get someone to watch the remainder of my video you should be spending a lot of time thinking about that one statement that you are going to say in the beginning of your video that's going to cause someone to want to to keep watching most times on YouTube 50 of your audience will not make it past the 30 second

Mark which speaks to why it is so important that you nail the intro within less than 30 seconds and ideally you should aim to retain at least 80 percent of people after 30 seconds back then I used to make a mistake where I would say things like welcome back to my channel I'm so excited that you're here make sure to hit the Subscribe button in today's video we're going to talk about this my name is Vanessa and I would waste so much time and my intro would take way too long which is why I was

seeing huge dips in my channel when I looked at my audience retention report and by the way you can access your audience retention report by going into your analytics clicking on engagement and then scrolling down you're then able to see at What stages people are dropping off in your channel and what I noticed is that when my intro was way too long I was not retaining over half of the people that were clicking on my videos and if you actually watch this video from the beginning you can tell that I started with a really powerful

statement and what people don't know is that behind the scenes I spent a lot of time thinking about what that one powerful statement is going to be and this powerful statement should be something that really gets people on their toes for example in the beginning of this video I said that hey there are 40 questions that new YouTubers do not ask themselves which is why most of their channels are going to fail if you were a new YouTuber and you heard that hook you'd be like oh crap I want to know what those 40 questions

are and oh crap I need to watch this video if I want to be successful and so regardless of what Niche you are when you are planning out your videos you want to make sure that you understand what is that one powerful statement that you're gonna say in the beginning of your video that's going to be less than 30 seconds that's immediately going to hook someone to keep watching because most times if you can successfully hook someone after the 30 seconds they're more likely to watch until the end of the video now once you've identified

that hook what is that specific one powerful statement that you're going to create the next question that you want to ask is what is the five main takeaways of this video and by the way it doesn't have to be five it could be three it could be five it could be ten heck in this video there is 40 Main takeaways But ultimately you want to ask yourself what is the body of this video and you ultimately want to bullet point this a mistake that I used to make is I used to over script my videos

and what I found was when I was actually filming my videos my script really overwhelmed me now I really follow mostly a bullet point format so that I can have a simple framework to follow when I'm filming my videos and by the way we'll talk about filming later on but ultimately when you are scripting your videos you want to ask yourself what is the five main key takeaways that I want this user to leave with after they finish watching my video and by the way if you need help with scripting I have my scripting for

Success Vault for YouTubers and you can just check it out in my description box below where I cover scripting tips tips in depth and I also share examples of previous scripts that I have done now once you've outlined the body of this video the next question that you want to ask yourself is what is the next video that I'm going to recommend my viewer to watch after they're done watching this video so like I mentioned I talked about how important it was to nail your intro you should be spending a lot of time figuring out

what that intro is going to be but you also want to figure out what is the outro going to look like this is also really important a lot of people think that it's the body of your video that's the most important but I disagree with that it's actually your intro and outro that you ultimately want to spend the most time on and that you want to nail down and so for the outro you want to be very specific in what you recommend your audience to watch next now a mistake that I used to make actually

I made two mistakes one of the mistakes I made earlier on in my channel is when I finished a video I wouldn't even recommend or even have a call to action of what my audience should be doing and so I would just cut the video and just say good goodbye now the second mistake that I made As I Grew in my channel is I learned from that mistake but then I would say hey if you like this video watch these two videos that I have right here so now I was leveling up by recommending two

videos that I felt my audience should be watching this is still a mistake because I was giving people way too many options and when you give people more than one option they tend to not do anything and not take action recently I changed up my strategy and now my outros are very specific I will say hey if you like this video I want you to watch this video specifically in this video I'm going to walk you through how to get XYZ result this ultimately increase the amount of clicks that I got on my next video

in the outro and by the way if you don't know this already in the outro you have an opportunity to add any screens and end screens are videos that you can link at the end of your video so that people can click and watch something else and so ever since actually being very specific on that one video I want people to watch and being very specific on that one end screen that I put at the end of the video I saw 10x results meaning I saw way more clicks on that video and the reason why

this is important is because YouTube favors creators who have high watch time and who encourage Their audience to stay watching videos on the platform and if at the end of every video you were very intentional on the next video you want your audience to watch you are then creating a binge watch Loop where every time someone finishes your video they're going to watch the next one and the next one and the next one and not only are you racking up the watch time you're also showing to YouTube that you're really good at keeping your subscribers

and your viewers engaged and keeping them on the platform for longer and when YouTube sees that they're going to reward you by pushing your videos out further in the algorithm so ultimately if you are someone who already knows the first four videos that you want to create your first video likely won't have a specific call to action because you don't have any other videos that you've done in the past but then your second video that call to action is going to tell someone to watch the first video that you created then your third video is

then going to recommend someone to watch the second video that you created the fourth video is then going to recommend someone to watch the third video created and so on and so forth and as you create more videos you can be more intentional with what your outros look like and what video you recommend specifically But ultimately as you map out those four videos you want to start thinking about how you can create that binge watch cycle so that you're already starting your channel off in a good foot now this part of the video we've covered

the preparation phase when it comes to scripting and preparing your content now I want to talk about the next phase which is preparing for filming when it comes to preparing for filming you want to ask yourself this question what equipment meant do I already have that I can utilize for my channel when I first started out I didn't go out and buy a brand new camera I asked myself do I already have a camera that is functional that I could be using did my mom have a camera that I can use does my family member

have a camera that I can use and I use that the very first camera that I used I think was a Canon T3i and it was a camera that was my family camera I didn't go out and buy new equipment because I wasn't 100 sure if I even wanted to be a YouTuber just yet and so I highly recommend when you're starting out to be Scrappy and really think about whether you can borrow someone else's equipment whether your family already has equipment or whether you already have equipment that you can be using and if you

are someone who has an iPhone it's really easy to also film with your iPhone especially if your iPhone is of high quality you could go into your settings and actually change your video settings to film in 4k if you want to and I actually have a video right here where I demonstrated what the quality would look like if you used your iPhone camera to film so check it out if you are interested but ultimately a mistake that I see a lot of new creators making is they spend so much money on their equipment and after

two videos they realize YouTube isn't for them or they give up and the worst part is is now they're in the hole with this equipment that they already paid for and so my recommendation is to already think about what equipment you already have that you can maximize first before splurging on your Channel now once you've answered that question the next question that I want you to ask is now what equipment is missing and so let's say you have a camera but you don't have anything for audio then you might want to go to Amazon and

find an audio source that is compatible with the camera that you have not only this you might want to also make sure you have an SD card that is able to take up enough memory a really big mistake that I see new creators making is they cheap out on the SD card they buy an SD card that is like eight gigabytes and it's not enough because a lot of times filming content for YouTube can take up a lot of storage and you want to make sure that you're buying an SD card that's at least 256

gigabytes if you want to Future proof your channel and finally you also want to ask yourself how are you going to make sure you have enough battery life to run your videos a lot of times we underestimate how long it takes to film and for most cameras it's going to die in the middle of filming especially if you are new to filming videos and you're not filming videos fast enough and by the way it's totally normal when I first started it took me three hours to film my video and even today it takes me about

two hours to film the video and so you want to keep that in mind and now you want to ask yourself what is going to be my battery source and what I recommend is finding spare batteries that are compatible with your camera so for the camera that I use is a Sony zb1 and I actually have three backup batteries on charge all the time just in case my battery dies in addition to this back then I would also buy things like Adobe battery and a dummy battery is something that you can actually plug into your

camera and plug into the wall so that your camera is continuously running these are really underrated equipment pieces that a lot of new creators don't think about that end up biting you in the ass as you're filming so I highly recommend that you prepare for that and then finally you also want to ask yourself how are you going to be propping up your camera are you going to create a makeshift tripod with a bunch of books stacked up are you going to go on Amazon and buy a really cheap tripod or do you already have

a tripod that's available at home you want to make sure that your camera is study especially if you are someone who's doing sit down videos now once you've done your inventory of equipment you already have and what equipment is missing and ordering those on Amazon if you need the next question that I want you to ask yourself is which areas in your home are going to be your filming spots so for me in my home I have about two to three filming locations one is in my dining area one is in my living area and

one is in my office this allows me to get a good vibe of which areas of my home I might be filming depending on how lighting is and depending on how I'm feeling that day just to switch things up but ultimately what's most important is understanding what the lighting situation is in those filming areas because if you are noticing that the lighting isn't great you may want to add lighting to your equipment list now for me I've never really liked artificial lighting and I like to prioritize having daylight lighting so I will actually make sure

that my filming schedule matches when daylight hits my home at the same time if you or someone who lives in an area that's relatively dark or maybe you're starting your channel in the winter time you are going to want to consider lighting because lighting can be very volatile and you don't necessarily want your video to have inconsistent lighting throughout which will then distract your viewer but all in all by understanding the locations that you want to film it's going to help dictate what time of the day you want to be filming for your videos and

that is the next question that you're going to want to ask yourself now once you've answered those questions you now want to look at your calendar and ask yourself what days of the week do you want to actually film your video and how long you think you need to block off in order to film that video now I said this earlier but a lot of people underestimate how long it takes to film a video I know when I started my YouTube channel I knew that I was going to do a 10 minute video so I

assumed that it would take me 30 minutes max to film I was completely wrong it actually took me three hours to film you have to remember that this is a new skill that you're learning and you are going to Fumble you you are going to remember what you want to say you are going to experience Tech hiccups and so you want to account for that so if you are a new Creator I recommend blocking off three to four hours for your first video just to make sure there is enough buffer time and I would also

recommend filming earlier in the day rather than later because if you make the same mistake I did and assume it's only going to take 30 minutes you're also going to have a tendency to film later in the day at around 5 PM or 6 p.m and if that video takes longer and you're hitting the evening hours now your lighting is going to be completely gone that's why to be on the safe side I highly recommend filming earlier in the day like 10 a.m 11 A.M 12 P.M to make sure that you are creating enough buffer

space if mistakes happen now once you've blocked off that time the next question that you want to ask yourself as you prepare to film is what exactly is your filming strategy are you going to have your script nearby do you plan on memorizing your script are you going to invest in a teleprompter when you are filming do you plan on filming in one continuous clip or multiple different clips now for me what I prefer and I've always preferred is putting my script or my bullet points on my laptop and making sure that my laptop is

nearby and so for example even in this video my laptop is literally right in front of me on a table and my filming strategy is instead of filming everything in one continuous clip I will start speaking a few lines and then I will stop recording and this allows me at every point to have a checkpoint in my script and actually look at my script before I hit play again and this also helps me from an editing standpoint because the end result is instead of having one really long clip full of mistakes I now have multiple

little clips that I can then string together and if I ever make a mistake because I'm filming it in sections I can easily just delete the last clip without deleting everything else and so ultimately this is a lot easier for me and I have been using the strategy for the last four years which is why I want to share it with you but again everyone one is different and you won't know what your filming style is until you actually film videos but I personally think it's really important before you start filming videos to just ask

yourself how are you going to prepare yourself for filming and what is your ultimate strategy when it comes to being able to access your script and also making sure that you are being very efficient with your filming time now at this point of the video I've really shared some advice and questions you should be asking around how to script your videos and how to film your video so you should be prepared to film your video at this point now once you're done filming your video the next phase is really about editing now I no longer

edit my videos but I used to edit my videos when I first started and the first question that I asked myself was what is the editing software that is the most easiest to use and is the most accessible for me and at the time when I started my channel I had a Macbook and so what I used was iMovie it was already in my MacBook and I was semi-familiar with it so I was comfortable with editing my videos on iMovie however as my channel grew and as I grew more experienced in editing and by the

way if you want to see how I used to edit my videos just watch my first two videos on this channel it's so different from how we edit videos now but as I grew experience I then invested in purchasing Final Cut Pro to elevate the quality of my videos but I didn't start that way and instead I started with something basic and simple like iMovie now for you you might be thinking to yourself I don't even know how to use iMovie I don't have MacBook what else can I use well you can use apps like

vidio or descript or any other type of platform online that can help you edit the key is is to just ask yourself what is the platform you'll be using that you know how to use that makes sense for you to use and that isn't completely out of your price point this is one thing that I don't think a lot of creators think about that I highly encourage you to think about so that you can manage your expectations when it comes to creating videos on your channel now once you've identified what software you will be using

to edit your videos you also want to ask yourself this really crucial question that not a lot of creators ask which is how will I know when I am ready to Outsource video editing a lot of people they White Knuckle video editing but the truth is is that video editing should be the number one thing that you Outsource the moment that you can on your channel filming already takes a lot of time but editing is what's really going to crush you and what takes the most time out of this entire process of creating videos on

YouTube and if you are someone who wants to fill more videos you want to make sure that you're either being super efficient with your editing or you Outsource it completely so that you can focus on the right things because when it comes to YouTube there are so many things that you can Outsource but the one thing that you cannot Outsource is you actually showing up to camera speaking to camera and filming the dang video and so you want to ask yourself how will I know when I'm ready to Outsource now this is going to be

very different for everyone but for me I'm told myself that I would start Outsourcing once I started making money in my business and so when I actually signed my very first client with my business this I reinvested that money back to hiring a video editor now for some of you you might already have a nine-to-five job a paycheck and so maybe you can Outsource video editing right now or maybe if you are someone who has some savings you might want to consider investing in your Channel or telling yourself hey I want to make sure that

I actually like being a YouTuber so if I film and I edit and I publish at least eight videos AKA two months worth of videos and I realize that I really like this then I will take some money that I saved up to hire a video editor now a lot of people don't feel like they're ready or they can't afford to hire a video editor and this can be true but at the same time I see a lot of people ordering ubereats every other day ordering Starbucks buying expensive things for themselves buying expensive shoes expensive

purses extensive whatever and they still tell me that they can't hire a video editor your video editor is going to be one of the most important hires to your YouTube channel that's going to ultimate definitely give you your time back and so this is why if you already have some money in your account I highly recommend that you actually invest in your YouTube channel by hiring a video editor if you can now if you are someone who is ready to hire a video editor the next question that I would ask myself is how will I

be transferring the clips back and forth to my editor what would be the feedback process now for me I like to use an app called frame dot IO and what I like to do is I drop my Clips to my video editor my video editor then drops it back in frame IO of the edited version of that video and then I use spring.io to provide my feedback this is a really easy back and forth process and I highly recommend frame dot Io if you are someone who wants to collaborate with a video editor at the

same time though if frame i o is not something that you want to invest in right now you could easily use Google Drive Dropbox and just give your feedback in a spreadsheet or in a Google doc this is the most Scrappy way that you can do it but ultimately if you are someone who's going to hire a video editor you want to ask yourself what is going to be your process when it comes to providing feedback to your video editor and you also want to ask yourself the question of who is uploading the video to

YouTube now for me I get my video editor to upload my video to YouTube and what you can do is on your YouTube account you can actually add brand managers to your account where they don't have the password to their account so you're protected but they have all of the credentials to be able to upload and unlist videos at their discretion and so that is the permission that my video editor has and so that way since she already has the full file on her computer it's a lot easier for her to upload the video to

my channel now whether you decide that you're going to edit the video or your video editor is going to do it you want to ask the question of how are we going to keep our viewers engaged this is what's ultimately going to contribute to your view duration and making sure people watch until the very end of the video and so you want to start compiling other videos and really pay attention to how people edit their videos and give those notes either to yourself or to your video editor so for example if you are watching my

video and you love the fact that we have these headers that actually have the title of each tip that we're giving or each question that we're asking you might want to screenshot that or send that to your video editor to use as inspiration or maybe you love the fact that some YouTubers in the beginning of their video show their Instagram handle you may want to share that to your video editor so that they can incorporate that in the video as well or maybe you watch my videos and you love the fact that we have b-roll

for a lot of my content you might show that to your video editor and use that as inspiration so ultimately Beyond just researching what content people are doing or what titles they're using or what thumbnails they're doing you also want to pay attention to people's video editing style and ask what you want your videos to look like as well and either create that on your own or collaborate with a video editor to make it happen now at the same time if you are someone who is editing your own videos I don't want you to feel

discouraged because you have to remember that if you are comparing yourself to my videos you got to know that my videos are edited by a professional video editor and so your edits are definitely going to be different but what I recommend you doing instead is maybe looking at my first few videos that I ever uploaded because those were edited by myself and you can see the difference in the quality now you shouldn't let video editing quality deter you from launching your channel and from launching your videos as long as you have things like titles for

key points that you're making in your video I personally think that's already enough and if you want to spice things up you can go to a site like pixels to get stop video to really highlight the things that you're saying I think at minimum those are things that are doable but you don't need to go overboard when it comes to editing until you have enough money to hire a video editor to get really fancy but ultimately you don't want to overthink this especially if you are someone who's not actually a video editor alright now that

we've considered questions that you should be asking when you're hitting the video editing phase now let's talk about the optimization phase this means that your video is already edited and now you're uploading the content to YouTube now at this stage you want to ask yourself the title that you previously determined is that actually the title that you want for your video Once that's confirmed you then want to put that in the title section but then the next question that you want to ask is in the description what are some key things I always want my

viewers to know about this is where it's going to be really beneficial for you to leverage the upload default setting you go into your creator Studio you go into settings and then you go into upload defaults and now you're going to be able to paste a description template so that every time that you upload your video that same description is going to be there so for me in my upload template I always have affiliate links to my equipment because I know this is something that a lot of people are interested in and I want it

in every single video I also will have links to any products or services that I sell that I want people to be able to access on Evergreen and I also have a lot of my Social Links because that's never going to change regardless of the topic that I'm speaking on in my content so once you've actually determined what is going to be your description template the next question that you want to ask yourself is what is going to be the description format that I have for every single video that I do because what you have

to realize is every single video that you do is going to be different but you don't want to be creating a new description from scratch even though half of your description is already templated so for example for me I determined that for every single video I will paste the title in the first part of my description and then I will tell people what people are going to learn in that video and each of my descriptions follow a very similar format and the reason why I recommend that you think about this now rather than later is

because the more that you can create a process the more that you you can systemize your workflow the faster it is going to be when you actually upload more videos you want to reduce the amount of time that it takes for you to prep videos and when you create systems and processes Frameworks and templates it's just going to make your life a lot easier and when you get to a stage where you are hiring support whether it's a social media manager of YouTube strategist a video editor if you give them the template they're going to

be able to fill in the blanks quite easily even for me a lot of my descriptions now my social media manager handles it and all I tell her is to follow a specific structure and she follows it every single time now on the topic of descriptions another question that I want you to consider is if you will be building your email list and if so how will you be building your email list and what you want to do especially as a new Creator is to already start thinking about these questions because you want to Future

proof your brand and your business yes you can grow a large audience on YouTube on Instagram on LinkedIn on a bunch of these platforms but all of these platforms are not forever they can always go bust someone can hack your account you can have all of your subscribers removed from you overnight and you may not get them back that is always a possibility that's why if you want to secure the future of your brand you want to be collecting emails because if you have someone's email you're able to easily contact them and keep in touch

with your audience not only this email is incredibly valuable because a lot of people don't tend to change their email addresses as much as they change their social media handles and also out of all the different platforms that exist emails is tried and true even when we were in high school we had an email and today we still have an email and so that is why people often recommend that you build your email list now if you are someone who is asking the question of how do I build my email list what I should be

doing make sure you comment below and let me know if you would like a video about building email lists specifically and how to do it but ultimately what you want to do is you don't want to over complicate this because you can always build your email list in different ways when I first started my channel I built my list by just telling people hey if you want to stay updated on my latest videos and what I'm up to make sure to subscribe to my email list so that we can keep in touch it was really

simple now if you want to take it up a notch you can create PDFs that people can download only if they give you your email address so for example let's say for this video I attached a PDF that was the entire A to Z checklist on how to launch a YouTube channel many of you would likely want to download that by giving me your email now if you don't have the time to create a PDF what you can also do is start a Weekly Newsletter so for me I have my Creator to CEO newsletter where

every single week I share exclusive tips lessons and stories on how to navigate being a Creator and being a CEO I have over a hundred thousand people on this email list because people want Insider info from me and this is a really fun way for me to add additional value to my audience not only this I have another email list that's called the content crew there's about a thousand people on here and it's basically my notification gang it's people who sign up and specifically want to stay up to date on all the content I create

and once a week I will literally send them a link to my latest YouTube video so that they won't miss it it can be as simple as that and so regardless of what Avenue you want to choose I highly recommend at the end of the day to really think about this as a Creator on how exactly you are going to be collecting emails because this is ultimately what's going to Future proof your brand and your business in addition to how you're building your email list the next question that I would ask too before I launch

my channel is what is my cover Banner going to look like now notice how I didn't mention cover Banner in the beginning of this video it's because the cover Banner isn't the most important thing for you to get started but it is something that you'd want to consider before launching your channel and specifically in your cover Banner you want to ask yourself what is the value proposition of my channel all and for example mine is all about helping creators and CEOs supercharge their influence impact and income now if you don't know what your value proposition

is this is a really great opportunity to at least put your content pillars so for example if you identified that you want to talk about social media quitting the nine to five and Financial Freedom then you're going to want to have those three pillars on your cover Banner so people know what to expect and like I said earlier on in this video if you've determined the frequency that you're going to be uploading this is also information you might want to consider putting in your cover Banner for example I upload videos every Sunday now what's most

important is taking advantage of the links that you can put in that section of your channel this is where you can put your Social Links but more importantly you have the ability to add one custom URL this is where I highly recommend that you have that link that's going to build your email list whether that is a free pdf guide your Weekly Newsletter a free training that you provide if someone provides your email these are all things that you might want to consider linking and therein on the cover Banner actually adding a graphic that points

down to that link to draw attention to it so that you can build your list even faster these are things that you might want to consider especially if you're already thinking about building your list is asking yourself how you can make sure that your cover Banner has synergies with them now as you are on the home page of your channel the next question you might want to ask yourself is what playlists are you going to create to organize your videos so what you can do is in your channel customization settings you can set it up

so that it's playlist oriented what you'll notice in my channel is I've actually put a lot of my playlists in the front page where you have Instagram YouTube entrepreneurship and quitting the nine to five all neatly organized now of course if you are starting out you might not have enough videos to create playlists but it's definitely something that you want to consider and eventually customize later on so that you can create some organization in your channel and also make your content pillars extremely clear now Beyond just optimizing your channel as a whole and structuring the

descriptions and creating templates for yourself the next thing that you also want to consider and ask yourself before you schedule out your videos is determining for that specific video what info cards are you going to be showing now if you are just starting and you just have that one video you're not going to have the ability to add info cards but eventually you will have that ability and ultimately before you schedule out your video you want to re-watch your video and find points in the video where you can recommend other videos to pop up on

the side of your video this will encourage people to know that you have other videos available and create that binge ability the next question you also want to ask yourself is what is your end screen and your end screen is what I talked about earlier on in this video which is that one call to action that one video you want your audience to watch next these are the things that you want to optimize beforehand and then the next question you also want to ask is what is your pinned comment going to be so before you

schedule your video especially if it's listed as unlisted you're going to be able to add a comment to your video beforehand and pin it to the top so you want to be strategic with this what I like to do is in my pin comment section I will ask a question that encourages engagement but then I will also say PS and have a link to any of my offers my services any landing pages that will build my email list something that's a little bit more strategic whether that's going to get any more customers or get any

more leads to my business now at this point of the video we have covered a lot of ground but there is one thing that is missing and that is after you schedule or upload your video officially you are going to want to ask yourself how are you going to promote it which leads us to the next phase and that is the promotional phase ask yourself where are you planning to promote your video after you've uploaded it do you have an email list that you want to send a newsletter to and let people know that you

now have a new video uploaded will you be promoting in a Facebook group will you be promoting on your Instagram stories will you be texting your family and friends and by the way if you are someone who's considering to share your links on mobile specifically Instagram stories I recommend that you use this website called linktwin what you can do is you can paste your YouTube link to linktwin and it's going to spit out a special deep link what's going to happen is if you link that link in your Instagram stories on mobile if someone clicks

on it they're going to be directed to the YouTube app directly where they can comment subscribe share and do all the things because they're on the YouTube app whereas if you use this common YouTube link and you put it in your Instagram stories it's going to create a friction point because when someone clicks on it it's going to prompt them to subscribe because it's actually directing them to the web app and so you don't want that this is the pro tip that I have for you if you are someone who is considering to promote your

videos on Instagram story now in addition to where you're going to be promoting your video you also want to ask yourself how you'll be promoting your video will you just share the thumbnail on your Instagram stories and then link it to the video will you be taking it a step further and editing an Instagram teaser that you could put on your stories to promote your video do you plan on taking one 30 second section of your video and converting that into an Instagram reel or Tick Tock or YouTube shorts how do you plan on promoting

your video now for us what we like to do is we like to take advantage of the community tab on YouTube and letting our subscribers know that a new YouTube video has been uploaded and also we'd like to take a section of that video and turn that into an Instagram reel where I post on Instagram and then we also have a teaser that we upload to Instagram story beyond that I also like to screen record me actually scrolling through the entire video posting that on Instagram stories and sharing people the highlights of that video and

why they should watch and if you don't know how to screen record on your iPhone you can go into your settings go into your control center make sure that screen recording is up top that way when you swipe down on your iPhone you're able to hit record and that's going to record your screen and if you have an Android I'm sure there's probably an app somewhere that's going to allow you to screen record but this is a really easy way to get people excited for your video now all in all this was a lot of

information and probably the longest video that I've ever made about YouTube but one of the last phases that I want you to consider doing is after you've done all that I want you to actually document the process whether it's in Asana whether it's a to-do list for yourself whether it's a checklist that you put in a Google doc I want you to actually outline the step-by-step process of your entire workflow on YouTube Here's a screenshot of what mine looks like when I was a solopreneur or I was a single Creator I I reference this to

the T it really helped me not miss any steps and stay accountable and what was awesome was when I started hiring team members they also referenced this checklist and the only difference is instead of assigning those tasks to me I now assign them to my team members and so what are the best things that you can do for your channel and for yourself as a Creator is to stay organized and document your workflow so that it is a repeatable process now if you are someone who still has tons of questions on how to start and

create your videos I highly recommend that you watch this video next where I break down even more in depth my start to finish process of how I make YouTube videos so thank you so much for watching this video but I will see you in this video next [Music] thank you