How to Start a YouTube Channel - Beginners Guide (2024)

hey friends welcome back to the channel so over the last 7 years I have made over a thousand YouTube videos and grown my channel to over 5 million subscribers and in this video I want to share some of my best advice for beginners who want to start today this is something I've personally learned a lot about over the years I've also taught thousands of students in a part-time YouTuber Academy over the last four years with some amazing reviews and recently I was actually invited to give a talk as part of an event that was run

by think media and there were a bunch of questions from the audience all about how to grow an audience on YouTube and so this video is going to be the best pieces of advice from that event so this is a little magic trick um I have a sort of thre part framework for thinking about YouTube and I want to talk through this because you know I've done some videos about this if in in case you might have seen but I really think it's it's worth appreciating where we are on the YouTube journey and sort of

this is level one we've got level two and we've got level three level one is get going if you are under 100 subscribers I think you are squarely in the get-go stage I'd say this is Maybe I don't know like 20 videos sometimes I say 10 videos sometimes five videos like this is where you're just getting started with YouTube this is where we don't want to overthink anything we just want to start making videos a lot of people are worried about finding their Niche finding Niche is something you don't worry about when you're in the

getgoing stage at level two you're get good and this is where the whole point is that we're trying to get better at the at the art and craft of making YouTube videos and as you know there's an internal Quality Bar and then there's an external Quality Bar the internal Quality Bar is where you're no longer cringing at your own videos and you think yeah you know if if a colleague if a friend if a family member were to watch my videos and say hey I saw your YouTube channel the other day I wouldn't die of

cringe and embarrassment inside right if you're dying of cringe and embarrassment every time someone watches your video probably your videos are not sufficiently good to meet your own internal Quality Bar either that or we've just got loads of emotional issues which maybe we might want to see a therapist about but yeah usually that's a sign that the videos are not quite internally good enough potentially and then we have the X external marker of is this good and this is where we start getting comments from people and maybe the views at this point are still you

know only 10 views 20 views 30 views but we're starting to get a few comments we're starting to get comments coming in saying like oh this I found this video really helpful this was really entertaining this was really insightful this sort of stuff and then finally we come to level three which is get smart now crucially in between level one and level two there is a choice and this is the choice of do you want a casual relationship with YouTube or a serious relationship with YouTube now the thing that dictates a casual relationship is just

like a casual relationship in real life yeah you know we're not that committed to each other we're just going to see each other whenever it's convenient a serious relationship is one where you commit to seeing this person regularly a serious relationship with YouTube is one where you commit to being consistent on your YouTube channel it doesn't have to be once a week but like you commit to a certain level of consistency and you stick to it if you happy with just having a casual relationship with YouTube the rest of this talk is not going to

apply to you because it's casual it's like what El like you can't can't expect any results if you're going to have a casual relationship you can't expect to build something good with a person you love if you're going to have a casual relationship with them uh maybe that's controversial but I don't think it should be then once you get to level two there is there's another decision you need to make do you want to treat YouTube as a hobby or do you want to treat YouTube as a business and if you want to and it's

there's no right or wrong answer here a hobby is something that you do for fun and a hobby is something you do for yourself I play the guitar and the ukulele I do things as Hobbies I do them for fun and I do them for myself a business is something that primarily you do for money and primarily you do to add value to others because the way businesses make money is that they give value to other people and then they monetize that value so on a scale of 0 to 10 zero being Hobby and 10

being business if you're being honest with yourself where is your relationship with YouTube on the scale of 0 to 10 I also like to treat YouTube as a business because I want to make money from it I want to add value to other people and of course Want to Have Fun along the way but the having fun is not the primary goal having fun is the secondary goal at a certain point you find that once the business is off the ground having fun then then continues to become the primary goal and actually when you have

fun as the primary goal actually the business starts to get really good but a lot of us are in the getting started stage and in the getting started stage we've got to be optimizing for this key thing we've got to be optimizing for the value we are providing to others crucially it's only at this stage that I think you should worry about your Niche most of you guys are are less than 100 subscribers if you're less than 100 subscribers don't worry about your Niche right it doesn't matter just have a think what videos would I

want what videos do I like to make if you're an educational Channel you might like to think what do I know right now that I didn't know 2 years ago or 3 years ago or 5 years ago and what can I teach myself what I want to talk about next is consistency and time management and this is this is by far the most common question I get um in case you guys aren't familiar with my story I used to be a doctor I was working full-time and for the first 3 years of my YouTube channel

I was a full-time medical student and then working full-time as a doctor here in the UK in the National Health Service including during the pandemic now I don't know about you guys but if you have a real job it is unfortunately not optional to go to that day job you have to you have to rock up you got to like wake up at 6:30 got to drive an hour to work in my case got to be at work from like 8:00 till 8:00 a.m. to like 5:30 p.m. and hope that you don't have to stay

behind late you drive an hour back home from work it takes a bit longer because it's rush hour and everyone's trying to get home you get home you cook and you eat something and then by that time it's time to sleep again and and go and and then just repeat the process and go to work the next day and so like where the hell do you find the time to make the YouTube videos this was always the struggle for me in the first 3 years of my of my YouTube channel even now I still struggle

to find the time for YouTube videos because now I'm building a business and blah blah blah and have a whole team of like 20 people and all that jazz and I thought that hey when I become a full-time YouTuber I'm going to have so much time to make YouTube videos but every full-time YouTuber I know also struggles to find the time to make YouTube videos so if you're worri if you're struggling with time management and you're struggling with consistency don't worry about it even those of us with millions of subscribers and millions of dollars in

Revenue are struggling with time management and are struggling with consistency so like Tak all Us in that and so I want to share some of the things that have really helped in the world of creating educational content that makes it feel a little bit more effortless essentially what I realized after talking to a business coach who this is kind of a fun story um I was outside the hospital one day this was like two and a half years into my YouTube channel and some dude who was like some dude in his 40s he recognized me

outside the hospital CU I was in my scrubs he was like Ali Ali abdal I've been watching your YouTube channel and I asked him what he does and it turns out he was an executive coach for uh GSK galaxo Smith Klein which is one of the biggest pharmaceutical companies in the world and I asked oh what does an executive coach do and he said oh I you know I help them I help them grow their business and help them be more productive in their business which is kind of interesting and he offered to do a

few free coaching sessions for me which was kind of fun and in one of these coaching sessions I told him that look I'm struggling with time management and consistency when it comes to my my YouTube channel and what we did was we got out a big piece of paper and we drew out the stages of video production and the first stage is idea generation the next stage you know at the time I was making the video first and then doing the title and thumbnail but what I what I appreciate now is that title thumbnail and

even hook tth comes first if there is only one thing you you take away from this talk please make it that do not even think about what your video is going to be don't even think about writing the video unless you know what the title thumbnail and hook is going to be you don't have to create the thumbnail in canva or photoshop and stuff but like you should have a very good idea of what's the title what is the thumbnail and what's the hook and by hook I mean the first 30 seconds all of that

stuff should be done way in advance of actually trying to write that video if so you start with the idea this is the concept of the video you got title thumbnail hook then it comes down to writing the video then it comes down to film then it comes down to edit and then sort of like publish and analytics and stuff that sort of thing and at the time he asked me you know how much time are you spending at each level of the process and I was spending like 10 hours a week on editing which

was just really dumb and he encouraged me to Outsource my video editing and so after 2 years of doing all my video editing myself I decided to Outsource my video editing the number one tip unfortunately that I would recommend for anyone who is struggling with consistency or time management is you cannot be editing your own videos unless you really really really love it and if you really really really love it then fine okay is it the highest value thing you could be doing etc etc but we're thinking like a business right editing is for most

channels a thing that could be done by other people so you automatically free up a ridiculously large amount of time by just Outsourcing your video editing then at this point people like well I'm not making enough money and etc etc and yeah I I I would really be thinking what is the dollar value of your time maybe your YouTube channel isn't making money but how much do you value your time would you rather edit videos for 8 hours or would you rather spend those 8 hours coming up with new ideas or coming up with filming

new things or spending time with your family or hanging out with your kids all of that stuff what I realized is that even when my YouTube channel wasn't making money I should have really outsourced my editing because yeah I was working as a doctor I was earning like $15 an hour so my time is worth at least $15 an hour right and I can find an editor for $10 an hour great I've now got arbit Char on my time I have now freed up this enormous bottleneck which is the fact that it takes me 10

hours a week to do my editing so the first recommendation I would give is please please please Outsource your video editing people always have issues with this I have a whole session in my course where we teach people how to Outsource their video editing people always like oh I don't have the money no one can edit like me but like my style is so unique and every time for the last four years I've been saying to every student in my YouTuber Academy that like guys come on you just need to Outsource your editing here's how

you do it and every single person I've ever met who's actually outsourced the editing has come back and said to me wow I'm so glad you pushed me to Outsource my editing because now I have all this free time and now I'm not stressed anymore etc etc so if there is one thing you take away from this talk please let it be that if you are currently doing your video editing I would implore you do whatever you can to Outsource that get it off your plate because usually for most people editing is not the fun

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page where you'll be guided on how to sign up for an account and if you use that link you'll also get a free share up to the value of 100 it is free money you might as well so thank you so much trading 212 for sponsoring this video what's the thing that takes the next amount of time idea generation is kind of quick making a title and a thumbnail like you just take a lot of photos you have a thumbnail photo library you have you have a house style for thumbnails it's not that bad the

writing process has the potential to take a very large amount of time so if if you are a educational YouTuber and you are struggling to produce videos consistently I would very much recommend not scripting your videos and instead just talking through bullet points ideally when it comes to this thing around finding your Niche ideally the thing you're making videos about is something you feel you're enough of an expert in that you don't need to script things word for word because usually talking through bullet points you're more confident on camera you're more comfortable doing it and

it takes a lot less time than scripting videos word for word so what I realized for myself is that if I wanted to be consistent with making YouTube videos especially when I had a day job is that I could not script them word for word I tried but it would take me like 12 hours to script a video and then I'd be trying to read it off a teleprompter and then it would be a total show and I'll be like Oh I'm stumbling over my words and so if I just removed that requirement to script

things word for word and I just thought about bullet points then that made all the difference so number one is no scripting no scripting uh uh number two is that there is a magic number of things to say in a video and that magic number is three back in the day and even to this day I still feel the need to say more than three things in the video I still feel like ah I need to say nine things or 11 or 13 or 17 things to make this video worthwhile cuz I have all this

imposter syndrome but what I've realized over time is that the audience cannot take in 17 different pieces of information three at an absolute stretch four or five is a good sweet spot so now when I'm thinking about making a video on once I figured out what the title and thumbnail and hook is I think okay if I had to only say three things what are the three things that I would say for this video and I'm going to show you exactly what my script writing process is so in the chat can you give me a

video title and I'll pick a random video title and I will show you exactly what the process looks like of how I would turn that into a YouTube video how to raise your selfworth Amanda Welliver okay that's actually good I've never done a video about how to raise your self worth so let's see what this process would look like okay cool we start off with a concept which is sort of something about selfworth going up now I need to think about title thumbnail and hook so how to raise your selfworth what I'm thinking about is

that is this really the best framing for this topic um so this is literally the process that I that me and my team go through uh how to raise your selfworth what I'm doing is I'm doing some title and thumbnail research and I'm figuring out okay does this video have like what is the framing of this video that would make this have the best chance of getting views So Okay so we've got self-esteem from Psych to go oh watch this if you're struggling with your selfworth 1.2 million views that seems promising psych to go is

a very big YouTube channel so like you know I'm not going to I'm going to take that with a bit of a pinch of salt how to improve your self-esteem 500k on J shed's video struggling withow low self-esteem essentially well I'll just go through YouTube and I'll think okay other than the title of how to raise yourself worth is there a better way of framing this video is it about self-esteem is it about self-worth is it about not caring what other people think is it about how to be more confident in yourself could I frame

a video about selfworth based on confidence this is sort of the thought process because you know one of the things that I've really realized about YouTube over time is that 80% of the value is in these two things literally 80% it's the concept the title and the thumbnail and the hook if you can get this stuff right it like massively increases your chances of this of this video potentially going big and potentially growing your channel which is why it's worth not just going with the first title that comes to mind how to raise yourself worth

but to think about like what are the different alternative framings of this title that I could potentially do okay so as I'm looking at these view counts what I'm seeing is that the the something around confidence seems to be getting more views than something around selfworth I can still make a video about self-worth but the packaging of the video is just in the initial framing of it so if I were just thinking about this out loud how might so I I know I want to do a video about selfworth and if I can frame it

in the language of confidence what might that look like this is literally what we go through when we do our thingies and we think okay cool what's Point number one what's Point number two and what's Point number three okay so if I were doing this video how to raise yourself Worth or how to become more confident I would be kind of Point number one would be get out of your own way where I would say something about kind of most of the blockers that hold us back are internal blockers we think that it's actually external

circumstances but actually it's internal blockers Etc that's Point number one the next thing I'm going to say is that competence equals confidence so it's very hard to have high self-worth if you've never done anything interesting some might say um I don't really believe in the sort of you should just love yourself as you are I I believe in it in that it's a great play it's a great thing to Aspire to I think most of us find it very hard to just spontaneously love ourselves as we are without any evidence so competence equals confidence equals

evidence and the third thing I would say is um affirmations or something I actually think affirmations are great affirmations and mantras these are the only three things I'm saying in this video the video is about how to raise yourself Worth or how to be more confident or something like that I'll finalize the title get out of your own way competence equals confidence affirmations and mantras are like a nice thing to do then I have a uh video creation framework that's called the hives framework H stands for hook I stands for intro v stands for value

and e s stands for end screen sales pitch at the end of your videos we don't want to hear any of this that's like like comment subscribe blah blah blah as soon as the audience gets even a whiff that the video is about to end they will click off the video so we need an end screen sales pitch hey if you guys enjoyed this video you're going to love this video over here where I break down in more detail exactly how to be more confident when you're feeling awkward in social situations so check out that

video right over here that's the end screen not all right guys you know this was a really hard video to make you know I really appreciate all the love I'm getting all the support I'm getting from you guys oh man I just love reading the comments it's so nice I hope you guys enjoy the video you know drop a comment down below and let me know what you think blah blah blah people are just going to turn off and you'll see your end screen like retention absolutely plummet we want an end screen sales pitch we've

got we want a hook to me the hook is just the promise I think with educational content hooks are easy enough the think media YouTube channel is actually actually does a really good job of hooks we often use think media's YouTube channel as a thing uh as like an example when we teach sessions for our own YouTuber Academy cuz you guys do a really good job of you know I remember of one of Omar's videos was in this video I'm going to show you how to set up the perfect Studio setup with a budget with

under $100 let's get into it it's like oh that's a nice hook Omar elor is telling me exactly what I'm getting in this video cuz essentially when someone clicks on the title and thumbnail what we're doing is we're creating an expectation in the viewer's mind so the think media video of how to set up your studio with under $100 I click on that video expecting to learn how to set up a studio for under $100 now with educational content I can get away with my hook basically just being the title of the video so if

my title of the video is how to raise yourself Worth or how to be more confident in this video I'm going to share my top three tips for how you can be more confident easy that's a hook that's the promise we don't need to overthink it the nice thing about educational channels is we don't need to do oh my God guys in this video we're going to give a million dollars to the person who's got the highest self-confidence and we're going to go on a trip and we're also going to do this and we're also

going to that sort of stuff is kind of necessary in the world of entertainment thankfully it's not massively uh necessary in the world of Education if what you have to say is sufficiently valuable oh by the way if you are enjoying this video then you're probably the sort of person who will get a lot of value from the part-time YouTuber Academy this is my online course and community that we've been building for the last four years we've got thousands of students from all around the world and the idea is that we'll teach you everything that

me and my team have learned about how to build a multi-million subscriber multi-million dollar YouTube channel but also we're going to give you the systems the processes the tools the templates you can literally just copy and paste them into your own system and you'll be part of this online community we do regular online workshops we share a lot of stuff my team's always in the circle Community responding to people and sharing useful stuff and we also do in real life meetups at various points throughout the year so we might like to see you at one

of those anyway if any of that sounds good you might like to check out the parttime YouTuber Academy linked down below next up we have an intro now the intro is optional but if there's only one thing that you take away from this talk I would recommend you figure out what your intro would be you don't have to include an intro in every video but I personally think it's a good idea an intro is who are you and why should the audience care in my humble opinion the point of the intro is to explain who

you are welcome the audience to your channel and give them a sense of your credibility like why should they give a that you are the one making this video you know audiences are paying for your video they're not paying with their dollars they're paying with their time and their attention which is even more valuable than money so what is it about you that is that is deserving of their time and attention you can do that within your intro so for example for me 7 years ago I started make making videos aimed at medical school applicants

in the UK and so I would say hey guys welcome back to the channel if you're new here my name is Ali I'm a final year medical student at Cambridge University and in this video I'm going to talk about how to do your interview prep if you're applying to med school the fact that I'm a final year medical student at Cambridge University is a massive flex and it's social proof and it's credibility and it's like oh this guy knows his stuff that's why he's talking about this it is so much easier to grow a YouTube

channel when you actually have some real world credibility for the thing that you're trying to teach in the world of Education yes you could be a 17-year-old life coach if you really want to but it's very hard to grow a YouTube channel as a 17-year-old life coach so for example self worth and confidence here is what I would do hook in this video we're going to talk about my top three tips for raising your selfworth so that you can be more confident in any situation hey friends welcome back to the channel if you're new here

my name is Ali I'm a doctor turned on R preneur and I'm the author of The New York Times bestseller Feelgood productivity Flex Flex you know I've been making YouTube videos now for 7 years and in that time I've made over 900 YouTube videos now when I started out I was super unconfident I had very low self-worth I had imposter syndrome all the time and now 7 years later I've learned so much along the way and I've learned all these strategies and tools that I can I can use to be more confident and now I

feel like I genuinely do love myself I genuinely have high self- worth and I get invited to give talks and do stuff live and it's just super fun and so in this video I really want to share everything I've learned along the way hook intro and why why am the person to do this crucially you don't need to have major Flex credentials one major kind of Flex one major credential you could have is just the fact that you used to struggle with the thing and now you don't struggle with it anymore so you have learned

something along the way one of the things I don't like about YouTube is that it's very easy to think that you have to be a guru a guru is someone who has all the answers but I don't like being a guru I prefer to be a guide a guru says this is what you should do a guide says hey here's how I did it and maybe it can work for you and so reiterating in your intro that actually this topic is this thing that you've learned about is something that you have personal experience in that

can really help help viewers feel more relaxed feel more like they can trust you and it's a thing that you can just do for any video then you give them the value which is 0.1 point2 and3 and then you give them the end screen sales page and now the video is done and honestly this is the level of prep I do for most of my videos .1 Point 2 and 3 maybe I'll write it out notion of it maybe I'll add a few bullet points to be like okay comp equals confidence maybe I want to

site the study um I think I I'll use uh bandura's um selfefficacy because I'm I'm familiar with the research around it maybe I can talk about my book there yep cool that's fine affirmations and mantras I can talk about manifestation and how that works um I can talk about HEBs law in Neuroscience that neurons that fire together wi together and so actually if you repeat something often enough to yourself you genuinely start to believe a thing okay cool yep I can talk about that so that makes it a bit juicier and getting out of your

own way internal blockers well h i can talk about how 80% of all issues are emotional issues when it comes to business when it comes to YouTube when it comes to anything I don't really have any data for that stat but that's fine and okay cool yep I'm ready to film the video this is literally the process that I use to make videos and this is what I've been doing for the last 900 plus videos on my channel over the last 7 years cuz I found that when I have to spend freaking ages trying to

research the topic it takes the joy out of it it makes it take way too long and ideally I would like to make a YouTube channel that is a guide it's not a guru a guide doesn't need to do research a guide can just say hey I've done this thing and here's what I've learned along the way and I hope you find it useful let's go into the Q&A now uh Robert says for Ali if you were to write a new book after feel productivity what would it be about and what are you excited to

share that wasn't in this one oh okay that's interesting um I I kind of want to draw a diagram here because I think I think there's something interesting here there's like sort of this idea of of what's your Niche um so for example if anyone knows who Ryan holiday is if you had to use one word to describe what Ryan holiday does what is that one word he is the stoicism guy um cuz he's written loads and loads of books about stoicism he's known as the stoicism guy if you had to use one word to

describe James Clear what would that word be probably habits he is the habits guy if you had to use one word to describe Mark Manson what would that word be that word is now it's obviously subtle subtle is the word that youed to you know um habits is a very highly lucrative word to be known for so James Clear makes loads of money for corporate speaking stoicism is pretty lucrative uh the FW is not lucrative at all so Mark Manson does not make any money doing corporate speaking gigs because it's not corporate friendly now if

you had to use one word to describe Ali abdal what would that word be I'm hoping you all say one word and I'm hoping that word is productivity and so when it comes to positioning your brand or your whatever as a thought leader it's it's useful to figure out like what is the thing I want to be known for what is the word what is the phrase Cal Newport well he's kind of the deep work guy Tim Ferris well whether he likes it or not he's the 4H hour guy RIT SEI the I will teach

you to be rich guy or the money guy it's useful to know what that thing is and so just as a bit of an interactive thingy to the audience if like 10 years from now as you continue down your journey as an educational creator what would you like people what what's the one word or phrase you'd like to be associated with your brand so for me I like being the productivity guy that is highly lucrative if I wanted to make money I could do loads of I can I can find lots of ways to monetize

productivity it's fun I can reframe productivity and almost like redefine it to be not just about work but about holistic time management and using our time well blah blah blah and so what I'm trying to figure out for my next book is the first one is Feelgood productivity so feel good productivity is the first one and then and so and so the challenge is how do I keep the word productivity being my word but like still do something that's interesting so something I'm thinking about is like productive relationships is kind of interesting something about like

how to not waste your life is kind of interesting it's about productivity so it's like I'm not I'm not really sure but I would love any ideas if you can give me in the chat if you guys have any idea for for a future book that I could do why is it that some of my videos will get 10,000 views and some won't even get 500 when I feel like I'm copying the same format each time could it just be the topic this is a big this is a big question why do some videos get

get more views than others uh what we have found is that it basically comes down to the concept of the video now I could make a video called how to raise your selfworth and maybe it'll get 100,000 views I could make a video called five passive income ideas for teenagers how to make $10,000 a month in your sleep which of those do you think is going to get more views it's a hint it's not the one about self-care because no one gives a about selfworth in relation to the amount of kids that there are on

YouTube who want to learn how to make money so a lot of it is down to the concept and we have done so many analyses of the analytics on our Channel we have like millions of views we can do all the analysis and we have found that honestly the thing that makes a video get more views is just that the concept was more viral the concept had more views like the concept of the video what the video is actually about that sort of dictates the ceiling of how many views you could reasonably expect to get

if I searched YouTube and I was doing video about selfworth and I found that the most VI the most views anyone's ever got on a video about self worth is like 50,000 my video is probably not going to break 50,000 views but if I search YouTube for passive income ideas and I see that the videos with 30 million views okay you know that that specific concept has a little bit more potential the other thing to keep in mind I've attended a lot of events hosted by YouTube a lot of these like fancy invite only YouTuber

Summit in Valencia where the YouTube team and the algorithm team hangs out and I've chatted I've sat next to dinner with people who are literally Engineers for the YouTube algorithm and I always ask them the about the algorithm and there's one thing they always say the algorithm is the audience and content is King the algorithm is the audience when you're asking why does the algorithm not dot dot dot dot dot dot just replace the word algorithm with the word audience why does the audience not like blah blah blah blah blah blah why does the audience

not care about this particular video why does the audience not and if you think about the real people that you're trying to Target the real people that are on the other end paying to watch your video with their time and attention that that person could be spending time with their kids but they're not they're paying that time to watch your video what would that person want and so that's the the thing that we always like try and try and get to this is the Mantra that I read to myself whenever I film a video I

don't care about the performance of this video my only goal in making it is to share a message that I think is worth sharing for whoever wants to hear it this is going to sound a bit wooo but I intend to integrate my mind heart and soul into this and to share this message in a way that feels authentic and natural three I am not trying to force anything here I'm merely speaking from the heart with the mind to inform structure and content and the soul to remain connected to the purpose behind the video I'm

going to enjoy myself and treat this process with lightness and ease when I'm on my death bed I'd give anything to me back here in the present moment doing what I love sharing myself with the world in a way that's enjoyable and energizing I'm going to keep that in mind and not treat this process with too much seriousness heaviness or importance cuz we're just filming YouTube videos the at the end of the day guys like we don't need to be too serious about it and finally I'm speaking to an individual who really cares what I

have to say and who really wants to learn from me to level up their own life I'm in service to that person not to my own ego not to the retention stats not to the algorithm I'm purely in service to the person who has clicked on this video and whose life can be genuinely Changed by what I'm about to say I read this to myself whenever I film a video because it helps me appreciate that this is not about the views it's not about the algorithm it's not about like the thing it's it's it's not

about the outcome it's about the fact that I can potentially share a message that has the potential to help at least one person and I can do that in a way that's fun and by staying cor to that truth yeah there's all this around like the titles and the thumbnails and the strategy and all that kind of stuff all of that stuff is kind of secondary to the value that I'm potentially hoping to give to the person on the other end of the screen and the fact that I'm enjoying the process while doing so how

do we Outsource our editing where can we find people to edit there is a method here this is the method you want to create a job description where you give people a trial task and the trial task that I recommend that I recommend for all our students in our YouTube Academy is you upload raw footage of yourself speaking to the camera like a raw you know the the thing straight out of the camera from from your video you upload it to a Google drive or a Dropbox or whatever and you find editors and the trial

task should be to just edit the first 60 seconds of that video in your style then as you get people applying for that job they're submitting their application which is the first 60 seconds of the edit and that means you can instantly judge is this video editor actually good or are they pretty crap now then the next question becomes okay now how do you get people to actually see that how do you get people to apply well if you have an audience it's easy you just put out to your audience you put out an Instagram

story a YouTube Community post a newsletter issue um Twitter LinkedIn whatever the thing might be and you say to your audience hey guys I'm looking for a video editor if you're interested apply here if you don't have an audience You It's tricky because now you have to go to a place where video editors hang out so you could go to ytj jobs.com YouTube jobs you could go to upwork you could go to Fiverr you could go to people per hour people per hour is the one I recommend people per hour is how I found my

first editor when I didn't put it out to my audience uh I'm going to give you a few like benchmarks um if you currently Outsource your editing how much in us do you pay for a video to be edited how much do you pay in us for a video to be edited in my experience $50 per video gets you a really bad video editor yes you can find a diamond in the rough but you're going to spend ages trying to find the like the there might be a 13-year-old kid in Pakistan who will Who do

it for $50 a video but you're going to be going through loads and loads and loads and loads of 13-year-old kids in Pakistan to find someone who's really good at $50 per video I think around sort of 100 to 150 you can get a reasonable editor probably in you know a country where the US doll is particularly strong uh $1 to $150 per video per video that gets you a reasonable editor when you're getting into about 200 to 300 you get a good editor when you get to about 500 you get a very good editor

and we currently pay ,000 which is $1,300 to our editors which gives you world class this to me is the sort of the spectrum of the amount you pay for video editing when I first started trying to Outsource editing I tried to do $50 video and I tried one person and it they were terrible and I was like ah no one can edit videos like I can I'm I should just keep editing my own videos and I kept editing my own videos for like ages um when I moved to paying 100 to 15 50 per

video that was when I got an editor that was actually quite good I would say he was good rather than reasonable I found him on people per hour people per hour these numbers it's it's all like how much is your time Worth right like for me my business is huge so of course I can pay $1,300 per video back when I was working as a doctor uh my my my channel I think was making about 3K a month and so of course I could afford to pay $150 per video cuz my channel was making 3K

a month it just sort of depends on your circumstances you could probably find let's you know I'm from Pakistan so let's say I was actually living in Pakistan I would find a local video editor super cheap but it would take me ages to find the local video editor because most people are not very good just in general um this is not just in Pakistan just like in general most people are not very good at the thing they're trying to do a few people are very good and those few people know how much they worth is

so it would take me a while to find the editor essentially there's this balance the more money you're willing to pay for an editor the less time you have to spend finding that person and dealing with that person and feeding back on their videos the less money you're willing to pay for an editor the more you have to pay for that in terms of time because it's going to take way longer to find that person uh this is roughly for like 10 to 20 minutes long video most editors don't charge by the minute and you

know yeah about a 10 to 20 minute long video uh another context that might be interesting uh for hour 2hour long episodes of our podcast we pay $600 to our podcast video editor to do a whole podcast edit but yeah hope that helps okay cool next question was it easy for you to be yourself when you started your Channel or did you try to be someone else great question actually the person I tried to be was Peter McKinnon I have so much love for Peter McKinnon I love the guy Peter McKinnon is big part of

why I started the YouTube channel Peter McKinnon made photo and video tutorials fun he added personality to the whole thing and he made me feel like oh I'm learning Lightroom I'm learning Photoshop I'm learning how to use a camera and stuff and I'm enjoying enjoying the process and so I would watch Peter McKinnon's Vlogs all the time I'd watch all of his videos and I thought okay can I be the Peter McKinnon of med school can I make talking about boring medical topics Vibe and personality in the same way that pet McKinnon does and so

you know there's this idea of imitate then innovate imitate then innovate start off when you're a beginner by trying to imitate the people that you admire and then over time you can worry about the Innovation later so actually my failure to imitate Peter McKinnon has resulted in the person I am today because I'm way more confident on camera now again thanks pet McKinnon because I've been doing this for for a long time and I started off basically trying to copy what he does I didn't do though what's up guys but I you know I I

I tried to think how would Peter McKinnon talk about medical school admissions kind of weirdly and my failure to imitate Peter McKinnon ended up in the personality that I now have which is basically my authentic personality now so yeah Good Vibes Matas hey I've seen that you've turned your videos longer in the past few months and my question is basically if it's working and how did you impact your channel how do you think people that maybe don't have D credibility yet can make longer videos and make it appealing for any audiences I think it's it's

really hard to make long videos appealing unless they're really really good it it doesn't really matter how long your videos are but generally it is harder to make a longer video because it takes more scripting if you script your videos it takes more filming it takes more editing so what I would personally recommend if you're starting out and don't have much credibility 8 to 12 minutes is very good either that or you go hyper long form so there is a friend of mine called Simon squib who um released a video recently that went super mega

viral 30 years of business knowledge in 2 hours and 26 minutes 2 hours and 26 minutes is a long ass time also he's got 30 years of business knowledge that he's condensing into those 2 hours 26 minutes it's really good video 3.9 million views published 1 month ago Simon's Channel absolutely exploded since this video has come out a month ago so there's like normal video length which to me is 8 to 12 minutes for an educational Channel and then there is hyper long form which is ridiculously long where in a way the fact that it's

ridiculously long is an indication to the audience to be like holy this is ridiculously long this must have so much value packed into it but generally what I'd recommend 8 to 12 minutes is a good a good length one of the things that you guys might find interesting is when we analyze all of our students of our parttime YouTuber Academy we've had like 5,000 people go through the academy the ones who have succeeded have broadly been the ones who have lent into some sort of unfair Advantage if you have an unfair advantage that would be

difficult for someone else to replicate I think you're far more likely to succeed on YouTube we all have unfair advantages sometimes it's difficult to see what they are from the inside because we don't know ourselves so one question that you might find interesting to ask your friends and family is what am I good at what do you think I'm good at if you had a question about something like what are the sorts of things you might like your friends and family might want to learn from you and what is it about you that they will

they would want to learn that maybe you're particularly good at like empathy and so you can teach people about emotional intelligence maybe the fact that you've been working in SAS sales for the last 20 years is like means that you know a lot about how B2B sales work so you can do a YouTube channel talking about that leaning into your own Fair Advantage what I personally feel is that the more you can lean into advantages that you already have the more likely you are to grow on YouTube I don't know how we got to that

point but yeah okay so that brings us to the end of the video if you have gotten to this point you probably care about growing a YouTube channel and so firstly could I request that if you have anything specific that you'd like to know about please can you leave a comment down below because I want to make way more videos helping people be greaters because I love this stuff and it's my jam and it's just really fun to talk about so if you could leave a comment on this video with whatever you're struggling with I

can try my best to make a video on that topic and actually if you do want a more comprehensive video about what I would do if I was starting a channel completely from scratch today then check out this video over here thanks watch watching and see you later bye-bye