How to grow a YouTube channel from 0 subs in 4 weeks | Week by week plan | Grow on YouTube

so you want to launch and grow a successful YouTube channel but you're overwhelmed one person tells you that the first thing you need to do is buy a camera someone else tells you that the first thing you need to do is work on your thumbnails and all you want is a week-by-week plan which will tell you exactly how you can start and grow your YouTube channel in 4 weeks or less well you guessed it you're in luck because that's exactly what I'm going to do in today's video so grab a notebook grab a pen like

the video subscribe to my channel if you haven't already and let's get started before we do though this video is brought to you by screen more on them later all right guys I'm just going to get right to it I'm not going to hang about we're going to start with week one so I'm about to break down what you should be focusing on during the first week of you creating this YouTube channel and then I'm going to give you a checklist of what you should have done by the end of week one are you ready

great so one of the first things you want to focus on is of course your strategy now don't be too intimidated by the word strategy because I think it makes it sound like this elusive thing that's really hard to create no we're going to start off with a simple strategy and in order for you to create it you just need to answer a couple of questions the first question is who is your content for think about the intended audience of the content that you are going to create this is incredibly important because if you start

creating YouTube content without thinking about who it's for it's not going to land with anyone no one's going to look at it and think this is for me because actually you don't even know who it's for right who's it for how old are they what life stage are they in what do they care about what are their interests what's their Vibe right think about who that person is write as much as you possibly can in response to that question it's worth noting that because you're just starting your YouTube Channel fresh all you need is a

clear idea of your audience you don't need a niche yet now if you want to get further down the line when you're like actually I do want a niche and if you don't know what a niche is it's basically like a category or a topic that you create content about right if you get further down the line and you're like I do want a nich the beautiful thing about this method that I'm teaching you right now is that further down the line you can have a look at your analytics and you can see which videos

are performing best for you that information will tell you which Niche to focus on right so instead of focusing on a niche really early doors what I'd rather you do is think about who your audience are and just create content for that group of people you can talk about different things if you want and that's totally okay as long as you're always speaking to your specific audience the next thing I want you to think about as part of your strategy is your content format now the format of your content is essentially if you are going

to do a lot of Vlogs so you're just taking someone around with you for the day or for the week or if you want to do like sitting down talking head videos like the video that you're watching right now now these are the two most common formats of YouTube videos and therefore these are the ones that I want you to focus on because obviously we're just stting out and there's no need for us to complicate things just yet right now what I recommend is that you have a mixture of Vlog content and talking head chatty

speaking to the camera style videos this is important because a lot of creators start their YouTube channel intending to only share Vlogs when new creators do this they sometimes struggle to grow and the reason why is because it's really difficult to create a vlog that is compelling to someone who doesn't know you yet just like flat out it's really hard especially when you're only just getting started with video creation right on the other hand creating a sit down casual style video where you're speaking about one specific topic or one specific aspect of your life it's

a lot easier for you to create and it's also a lot easier to convince someone to go ahead and watch that a perfect example of this is a vlog where you're saying come spend the day with me versus a sit down talking head video which is called Story Time how I met my boyfriend soone who doesn't know you might click on the Story Time video cuz that sounds interesting however that same person who doesn't know you probably won't click on your day in the life video because they don't know you yet and therefore they're just

not interested in your day in your life I know that sounds blunt I don't know what to tell you there's no other way of saying it it's just the plain OD truth so in conclusion we want a mixture of Vlog style content and sit down chatty chatty talking head content the third thing I want you to do in regards to your strategy is I want you to immerse yourself in your fellow YouTubers content a lot of the time when I work with creators and they tell me they want to start YouTube and I'll be like

okay cool who are your favorite YouTubers and they'll be like desperately trying to think of that one YouTuber who they watch like once every few months it's totally fine to start a YouTube channel and not be someone who has watched YouTube for years however if you intend to be active on a platform it's important you immerse yourself on that platform you'll be surprised in how much you learn when you watch YouTubers content so go ahead and watch a bunch of YouTube content I feel like that's a pretty great piece of homework to do but it's

going to help you in the long run as well okay so the second Focus area for week one is going to be your equipment because I want you to start filming your videos in week two which means you need to make sure you've got all the equipment that you need in week one now the first thing I want to say is that you don't need anything fancy to start your YouTube channel this video that you're currently looking at on the screen this was my first ever video that I uploaded 3 years ago I filmed this

video on my old phone I didn't even use the back camera which by the way if you're going to film using your phone always use the rear cameras because these are far higher quality than the front cameras right I didn't even do that though at the time I used the front camera I didn't have a microphone and I wasn't even looking directly into the camera lens and yet here I I am 3 years later and I'm a full-time YouTuber of course I updated my equipment over time I now look at the lens and I'm filming

using a fancier camera however I did manage to grow without these things in the beginning right and you can do the exact same thing so I'm going to run through a few things that you're going to need you will need some form of camera however this does include your camera phone as I mentioned if you use your phone make sure you use the rear cameras right please do not buy a fancy camera purely to launch your YouTube channel I would rather you wait get monetized and reinvest that money in camera so you're going to need

some form of device which can film a video You're then going to need editing software again I don't want you to purchase any editing software instead I want you to use free software or software that you already have if you have an Apple device like a Macbook or even your phone you will have iMovie and that's a really great beginner friendly editing software you can also download free software such as Da Vinci resolve that's what I used in my early days Da Vinci resolve has a free option and it includes more than enough for you

to get started with editing your videos you then may potentially want some audio equipment now this is especially important if you are going to have some form of vlogging element to your videos because filming yourself outside without some form of microphone is going to get a bit tricky right cuz it's windy especially if you live in England like you'll never hear you however if you're only going to film yourself indoors you can actually get away without having a mic for a little while but I do want it to be one of the first things that

you purchase once you're in the position to do so so in terms of cost-efficient microphones that you can use you want to be looking for a wireless Bluetooth mic that you can just clip onto you because then you can use it when you're out and about and you're vlogging and you can get these from Amazon they're fairly inexpensive start off with something cheap that gets the job done and as I said you can upgrade and get something fancier further down the line the next consideration is of course lighting now when you're out and about it's

just up to you to figure out where the light is right so that's about you doing some test shots checking where which direction the sun is and just making sure that you are being well lit if you are filming indoors natural lighting will work as long as you've got somewhere in your home that has a good sufficient natural lighting if you do not have someone with good sufficient natural lighting you might want to invest in a ring light there are better lighting options you can get like I'm currently using a soft box however when I

sled out I used a ring light and I used it for like over a year maybe even two years and it was perfectly fine and they're fairly inexpensive right so that's what you want to focus on if you don't have a sufficient natural light wherever you're filming final thing I want to mention here if you are going to film yourself at home please do not tell yourself that you need to get a studio or go film somewhere else because your home isn't aesthetic I hear this all the time now don't get me wrong I'm very

proud of my background I'm not going to sit here and be like oh I didn't like where I was filming when I started out no I've always liked this background and I'm very fortunate about that however if you're in a position where you don't necessarily like the backdrop of where you're filming all you need to do is find somewhere what has a plain backdrop okay you don't have to have photos on the wall or a light and a plum you don't need all of that you just need something what plain because the focus of the

video will be you all right so we're at the end of week one it's an important week I'm going to run down what I need you to have done by the end of the week and then we'll move on to week week two so I want you to have your startart strategy in order for you to have that you just need to have had written down answers to those questions that I rant you through if you want more help with this and you actually want to create your full strategy I do have a collection of

master classes and resources called my YouTube Creator Vault that is currently available on my website I'll link to it below because it will give you a workbook and a lot more information that you might want right the next thing I want you to have done by the end of week one is to have five YouTubers whose content you like ideally you want to subscribe to them maybe save their videos so that you've got them and they're easy to refer back to but find five YouTubers who create similar content to the content that you want to

create and save their videos and when you watch them just ask yourself what is it about their content that you like this kind of critical analysis is going to serve you well when you are creating your videos and you're reviewing them right you want to slowly start to practice the process of reviewing content the third and final thing that I want you to have done by the end of week one is I want you to have filmed a test video now this test video is just to make sure that you're happy with your setup and

the equipment that we spoke about it doesn't need to be long a minute will doe if you're going to do vlogs and sit down talking head videos then you're going to want to test both right so you want to get out and about and do a test video and you want to be at home and do a test video as well and I just want you to upload it onto your laptop and just look it and be like okay what's the lighting like what's the sound like what's the camera like and just make sure you're

happy with it before you go ahead and start filming a lot more videos all right my loves so we move on to week two let's do it okay we are on to week two congratulations we've only got a few weeks left time is absolutely flying by so in week two there are two things that I want you to focus on the first thing is going to be setting up your YouTube channel now I don't want you to spend too long on this because this is one of those tasks that if we let oursel get carried

away then we will you know we don't need to spend long on this what we essentially want to do is get the Bare Basics set up now the basic elements of your YouTube channel that you need set up is your profile photo and your banner that is essentially what you need done there are other elements that you can customize on your YouTube channel further down the line but remember we're trying to get your channel launched within 4 weeks in the most effective and efficient way so we're just going to focus on picking your profile photo

and creating your banner now with your profile photo you want to choose a photo that is most relevant to your channel right and the type of content you're going to create if you are creating content about you or if you heavily featuring your content which I do recommend then you probably want to use a photo of yourself right and ideally this photo of yourself you've got no one else in it unless they are going to feature prominently on the channel and also you don't want to have a photo where there's too much going on right

a classic rule to follow when it comes to your profile photo is a to be one subject and that subject needs to be clear so if you're the subject then you need to be clear in your photo you don't want to have all these other things going on around you right when it comes to your banner it's going to be a similar Vibe you want the graphic that you pick or the photo that you pick whatever it is it needs to mirror the vibe of your content again so if you're going to pick a photo

then pick a photo that mirrors the type of content you're going to create if you're going to create a graphic Banner then create one that again mirrors the type of content you're going to create you can go ahead and look at my YouTube Banner if you would like and just have a look to see what the vibe is for that one but also so remember I told you to find your five favorite YouTubers that create content similar to the content you want to create go and look at their banners and see which ones you like

once you've got a good idea of what you want to have as part of your banner I want you to go ahead and watch this video and fast forward to 6 minutes and 30 seconds this is a section of a previous video of mine where I break down exactly how you can create your YouTube banner and size it correctly because YouTube banners if you've not created one before they're actually really tricky because you upload one photo but it will crop it differently depending on if someone's looking at it on their laptop versus the TV versus

the mobile app so you have to create a banner that works across all these different devices and that can be tricky but as I said I give you literally a screen recording step-by-step overview of how to do that in that video so I recommend watching that section when you're done with this video the next thing I want you to do in week two super exciting because I want you to start filming some content specifically I want you to film your launch video now I want you to set out with the intention to just film this

one video this week right don't set out to film eight videos or whatever it's not going to work yet let's just film the one this is your first ever video that you're filming and I want this video to be a casual get to know me Style video now the video that I showed you earlier I'll put it back on the screen my first ever video that I uploaded was exactly that it was essentially a video where I spoke about all the side hustles that I had at the time my full-time job I know I don't

have any side hustles and now I do this full-time so things have changed but that's what the video was about and it was really casual and because I was talking about a personal experience it was a lot easier for me to film which is why I want your first video that you film to be a similar style ideally like a story time or a get to know me Style video think about whatever the focus of your channel is going to be think about your audience and think about a topic that you think your audience would

be interested in right I want you to then prep your video write down a few talking points and then sit down with the setup that we've already tested in week one and film your first video as I said because it's going to be a casual style video hopefully it will be an easy video for you to get started with in addition to that because of this style of video that you're filming you can actually set that video as your channel trailer and you can do this by heading to YouTube Studio going to the customization Tab

and uploading your channel trailer there and what this means is that when someone lands on your channel this is the first video that will automatically start to play and it will be a good video for this because it's going to be a casual get to know me Style video fun facts that first video that I keep on referring to that's my channel trailer I know I should change it it's so old but it is and it worked really well for me for years all right so should we go to the checklist for week two what

I need you to have done by the end of this week is set up your channel so you've got your banner you've got your profile photo great and then I also need you to have filmed and uploaded that's right guys your casual get to know me Style video yeah so you've now got your channel up and running and you've got a video up and running so things are moving all right let's take a quick break from our week by- week plan because there is something that I need to discuss with you I know you're just

starting out on your YouTube Journey however it's important for us to have an idea of how we're going to monetize our content further down the line in the earliest of Days of Our Journey for example I created my first paid offer literally three or four months after uploading my first ever YouTube video I was thinking about monetization from the early days and I really believe that that is a big reason why I was able to monetize my content so quickly and I was able to quit my full-time job just six to seven months after uploading

my very first YouTube video so if you see this as a way for you to earn income whether as a full-time Creator or as like a part-time side hustle then I want you to strongly consider uscreen now uscreen is an all-in-one membership platform which essentially allows you to turn your content into a profitable business and earn reoccurring income from your video content now if you're not familiar with the whole idea of video memberships I'm about to blow your mind essentially how a video membership using uscreen would work is you would sign up to uscreen services

and that would Grant you access to a whole load of different features for example you would be able to create your own membership site which would house a selection of your video content your audience would then pay a monthly fee in order to get access to this exclusive Bank of content in addition to being able to host all of your videos behind this pay you can also do things like create a community using uscreen Community Hub now this community Hub allows you to effortlessly blend your videos with different Community features like member posts and chats

and challenges all of that good stuff now something that I absolutely love and spoiler alert something that I am currently trialing is the mobile application feature that comes with us screen so essentially when you join new screen and you use their services you are able to create your own branded mobile app so basically you can create a membership in everyone's pocket so people could take your video content around with them and engage with it when they're on the go not just when they're at home on their laptop or on their computers right it essentially is

giving you the ability to become part of your members daily lives which is insane this mobile app that you'll be able to create using new screen we will allow your members to join lives to watch your video content to take part part in different Community chats and different Community initiatives and you'll even be able to send push notifications directly to your members mobile phones so they never miss out on the incredible things that you'll be doing as part of your community one of my favorite UK screen memberships is called the filmmakers academy one look at

their membership website you'll get a clear idea of what you can actually create using uscreen and just how high quality the end result is uscreen is a membership platform that is built specifically for video creators so as I continue to run you through what you need to do in weeks three four of your launch plan I want you to keep uscreen in mind for your monetization strategy if you want to find out more about uscreen which I'm sure you do head to usus screen.tv I'll also put the link in my description all right let's move

on to week three I just had to check my fingers cuz I thought I was doing two no I'm doing three okay we're in week three now I know what you're thinking what else is there to do Jade you've already got me to create a strategy set up my YouTube channel and I've already got a video live like surely I'm done unfortunately no there's a few more things we've got to do but we're almost there we've only got two weeks left so week three I want to focus on a couple things the first thing is

batching now hopefully because you've already done your first video and it was a casual style video you got a bit used to and familiar with speaking in front of the camera so now we're in a position where you can actually sit down and film a couple of videos in one sitting that's essentially what batching is I want you to start by challenging yourself to film either two or three videos no more than three because we're just getting started with filming ourselves and you know we get fatigued and filming more than three in one go is

difficult like I I don't even film more than three in one go I've been doing this for years now in order for us to do this effectively I want you to focus on your sit down talking head chatty videos I don't want you to go ahead and do three Vlogs in one day like we that's it doesn't work that doesn't work so what I want you to do instead is focus on filming three sit down casual talking head videos in one go now in addition to the fact that batching Vlogs is almost impossible another reason

why I want you to focus on these styles of videos is because it gets you in the habit of batching talking head videos in the future these are always great videos goes to batch especially when you're talking about something which is what we call Evergreen which is basically a subject or a topic that isn't seasonal so if I'm going to sit here and talk about Christmas then it's not Evergreen because it's only going to be relevant in a certain time of the year but if I sit here and talk about my favorite books then it

is Evergreen because it will be relevant all year round and these books will continue to be some of my favorites for years to come so if you get in the habit of batching these types of videos when you're talking about something that is an evergreen topic it means that you can always have them in Your Arsenal is that what people call them like in your back pocket I use one of those phrases that I don't usually use out loud and now I'm second guessing myself you're going to have these in your back pocket so that

if a time comes where you're running out of content or you've gone on holiday and you need to post something you can share those videos right so that's why we want to do that what I also want you to do when you're batching these videos is focus on the key points of the videos that you're filming and I want you to sit down get your phone out if you're not filming on that already and I want you to film a short version of it so let's say you are doing a storytime video about how you

broke up with your ex-boyfriend if there was one specific part of that video where you talk about how you felt after the breakup I want you to focus on that one part get your phone out and I want you to use what you said in your longer form video to film a 60-sec short okay if you're not familiar with shorts they're basically like reals or Tik toks but on YouTube they're really great for allowing you to reach a broader audience especially when you're just starting out so it's important that as we start to get comfortable

filming these longer videos we also start to challenge ourselves to film shorter versions too okay so I want you to film a couple of short videos during this filming session as well all right the thing that I want you to focus on in week three is your thumbnails because you might have noticed that I've not mentioned those yet your thumbnails are essentially adverts for your videos that's the best way to think of it if people don't click on your thumbnails then people won't watch your videos and YouTube will not recommend your content so thumbnails are

very important now I did mention previously that I have my YouTube creative vault which is a collection of resources and masterclasses that you can actually purchase on my website I have a whole masterclass on thumbnails where I do a full tutorial where you can actually watch me create a thumbnail so if you're really stuck with thumbnails I do recommend looking into that resource however to get you started there's a few core things that you want to keep in mind the first thing is what I've already mentioned see your thumbnails as adverts for your videos so

think about what you can write on your thumbnail or what photos you can use on your thumbnail which are going to entice your audience to want to click on your video the second thing and this one's going to annoy you is when you're starting out I want you to spend as much time designing your thumbnails as you do creating the video I know that sounds ludicrous but someone told that to me once I can't remember who I heard that somewhere if if it was you who I heard it from I'm so sorry I've not credited

you please let me know in the comments but I heard someone say that once and I took it on board and when I was starting out on my journey I spent just as much time with my thumbnails or at least almost as much time with my thumbnails as I did on my videos and that really forced me to really think about what I was putting on my thumbnails to really trial new things to really learn new skills when it came to designing them so that's why I'm going to pass that advice on to you in

case you're wondering I use canva to design my thumbnails a lot of creators do I'll put a link below in case you've not signed up to canva yet I do use the pro version because that's what allows me to do things like remove the background from my photos for my canva so I do recommend the pro version all right so this is your week three checklist by the end of this week you should have gotten familiar with creating thumbnails and hopefully you would have created a thumbnail for your launch video and added it in I

also would like you to have filmed a couple of different videos as well uploaded them and scheduled them so they're ready to go too okay guys we're on week four we're almost done I'm so proud of you for making it this far this is what we're going to focus on in week four we're going to focus on SEO that's basically it right so it's not a terrible week but there is still a fair amount for us to do in case you don't know what SEO is SEO stands for search engine optimization yes it does sound

complicated you are correct and yes it can be complicated but luckily not for us in the way that we're going to be using it in week four we're not going to be using it in a super complex way that really fancy marketing professionals do we're going to be using it in a really simple but effective way essentially what SEO is referring to is search so you know when you go on to YouTube and you search something into the search bar and you get videos suggested to you that's basically search and the reason why those videos

are popping up is because they're optimized for search hence the term search engine optimization so what we want to do is follow a few different steps to increase the chances of our videos appearing when people are searching for YouTube content so if you head on to YouTube now and you type in Instagram tips YouTube tips content creation tips I'm going to pray to the YouTube gods that my video appears somewhere on that page it might not be first it might not be second it might be eth I don't know but should appear somewhere and the

reason why my video is going to hopefully appear is because I'm using the tips that I'm about to break down to you so the first thing I recommend you do is download either chewbuddy or vid IQ now these are tools which basically allow you to find keywords for you to use in your videos Now keywords are essentially words or phrases that describe what your content is about and it's these keywords that YouTube will use to try and figure out what your video is about when YouTube can figure out what your video is about increases the

chances of YouTube deciding that your your video is going to pop up next time someone types in like Instagram tips into the search bar right now the reason why I've given you two options there is because I've previously been a true buddy girl like it has been the platform that I usually use for search and I still use it for search however I am traling vid IQ I've heard great things about vid IQ they've got a lot of new features that I'm currently triing and I am loving so I'm going to be honest and open

with you right now yes I've used true buddy in the past and it is worked for me however vid IQ is looking pretty tempting right now so why don't you have a look at both and pick for yourself now what you're going to do is you're going to use either chw buddy or vid IQ to look up different keywords for you to use in your video content once you find some keywords that are super relevant to your videos and which chewbuddy or vid IQ think are competitive or think are effective you basically just want to

include them everywhere you can so put one of those keywords in your video title put them in your description name your video file with that keyword say the keyword in your video you want to use the keyword in as many different elements and different places as you possibly can when it comes to you filming but also uploading the video onto YouTube YouTube because the more you use these keywords the more likely YouTube are to pick up on your hints and to realize what your video is about that's basically all you need to do to get

started with search so I'm going to move on to the final checklist for week four so there's two things I want you to have done by the end of this week I want you to have downloaded either truebody or vid IQ and started getting familiar with search engine optimization which basically means I want you to have found some good keywords for your previous videos and your future videos and start implementing them all over your content the second thing I would like you to have done is filmed a different style of video I know last week

I had you filmed some talking head chatty chatty videos casual style maybe this week you challenge yourself to go ahead and film your first Vlog the important thing to remember is that you're not going to get good at something if you don't do it first you're not going to magically be incredible at content creation without actually creating content you need practice so the sooner you start filming these different formats of content the better yeah okay my God I feel tired after that we got through a lot of stuff and if you followed all of my

steps in weeks 1 through to four you'll now have a well-branded YouTube channel which has a channel trailer has multiple different videos on there all different styles of videos and all designed for one specific audience you would have also had some good thumbnails on there and you would have optimized your videos for search and you would have done all of that in four weeks proud of you all right if you feel like hanging around I recommend watching this video it's actually part of a series that I create which is all about viral Trends on YouTube

these Trends are really important for you to get familiar with if you want to really grow on YouTube and if you want to be with a Chance of growing pretty quickly thank you so much for watching as always don't forget you can check out uscreen by heading to us screen.tv or clicking the link in my description thank you so much for watching guys and I can't wait to see you in my next video