Starting a YouTube Channel in 2024 (15 Things I Wish I Knew Before I Started...)

if you want a successful YouTube channel these are the essential things that you must know about and by the way thank you so much to Taylor brands for sponsoring this video more about them later the first thing you should know about is what to focus on to get the results that you want here on YouTube so here is a quick cheat sheet if you want more clicks it's your title and your thumbnail if you want people to keep watching after they've clicked it's the first 30 seconds of your video if you want more watch time

then it's one or more of these five things better videos longer videos more videos your outro and the link that you're using to promote your content and so I'm going to walk through every strategy that I wish I knew sooner when it comes to achieving each of these goals first let's talk about titles what I wish I knew was that I didn't have to always reinvent the wheel a mistake that I would make is I would come up with titles from scratch and they wouldn't perform because it wasn't what people were searching for and I

didn't necessarily do any research if that title was going to do well anyways and so what I would do instead is to use free plugins like vid IQ and scan through which videos are doing well relative to that Creator's account you could see that through the outlier score through vid IQ now if you don't want to use a plugin what you can also do is pay attention to the number of views a video has and compare it to the number of subscribers that channel has if there are more views than there are subscribers it really

tells you that there is an abnormal amount of traffic that is going towards that video and so it's definitely a Hot Topic that you might want to capitalize on for your channel once you've identified High performing videos on the platform you then want to take their titles as the foundation for your video the reason why you want to do this is clearly those videos are doing something right that that's attracting viewers to want to click and so you take the title and then you're going to want to do one of three things you want to

make the title either more current by adding the year to it and in fact that's actually how I grew my channel really fast as a beginner I was competing in a really saturated Niche which was Instagram and so to make my videos stand out from the competition I added the year to it to make it more relevant and as a result more people chose my videos over my competitors the second thing you can consider modifying about the title is to make it more a niche and so if you see a topic that is popular on

YouTube but you know is extremely competitive then you can Niche down on that subject who stand out for instance I saw a lot of topics about people quitting the 9 of5 and so to stand out I Niche down to quitting the 9 of5 for Millennials I Niche down to a specific demographic and I ended up getting a lot of clicks and this video took off on my channel because it attracted a specific audience now you don't always have to Niche down to a specific demographic you can also Niche down to a specific industry the point

is is you want to take broad highly competitive topics and highly popular topics on YouTube and then Niche it down so that you can stand out from the crowd the third modification that you can make to a title is to adapt it to your Niche so for instance I saw this video from a Creator where the video was doing extremely well for their Channel and the title was my biggest advice for starting and running your art shop I'm not in the art Niche but I may take the structure of that title and modify it as

my biggest advice for starting and running your YouTube channel and so a reason why you might want to implement this strategy is because you've already identified title structures that are already doing well on the platform that are causing people to click the second reason is because your title is similar to other high performing videos it's going to increase the chances of your video being recommended with those High performing videos as well which is going to lead to more views for you and just to help you illustrate this further here's a spreadsheet of something you could

do and put together where you have all the titles that you know you notice are outperforming on YouTube whether it's within your industry or not list down the number of Subs list down the number of views and right next to it think about how you might modify the title for your niche and I Promise You by just doing this alone versus coming up with a title from scratch is going to save you so much time and increase the chances of your video performing now what's equally as important if not more important than a title is

your thumbnail and what I wish I knew sooner was how to make good thumbnails in general so the first rule of thumb is to make sure that you're not using the same title twice a mistake I used to make is I would have my title and then I would have the exact same copy in the thumbnail what you have to realize is that you have two opportunities to hook your viewer and so instead of wasting that real estate on your thumbnail by saying the exact same thing that's on your title you want to have something

in your thumbnail that's going to complement your title and increase curiosity so you get more clicks for example this thumbnail has a question that I'm asking as well this thumbnail makes me curious on what the system actually is because visually it looks pretty fascinating this thumbnail makes me wonder what exactly took 8 years and this thumbnail shows me a result that I want and that I'm curious on how to achieve and so as you can see with these thumbnails whether it has copy or not it makes me ask a question it creates curiosity which is

why I'm going to click on the video not to mention you want to make sure that your thumbnail passes the mobile test so what I do is I put my thumbnails on canva and I zoom out as far as possible to give me an idea of what my thumbnail is going to look like on mobile typically the highest performing thumbnails have very high contrast they're easy to read and look at and they have less than five words Beyond this what I also do is on canva I have a mockup of my own channel and any

thumbnail that I'm considering uploading I will mock it up on my channel and compare it to my other thumbnails to eval how strong this thumbnail is in comparison to all my other videos now that I've given you some easy strategies to get people to click on your videos the next thing is to try to get someone to keep watching after they've clicked and a lot of times it comes down to the first 30 seconds of your video data shows that in less than 30 seconds if your video is not hooking the viewer they are going

to opt out and so for the first 30 seconds what you don't need to be doing is asking people to subscribe you don't need a channel trailer you don't need to introduce yourself but instead you need a hook that's going to Peak someone's curiosity for them to keep watching and here are some of my favorite hooks that I've used on my channel number one asking a question that you know your viewer is wondering about if you want to know which types of reals get the most amount of views with the least amount of work then

you got to watch this video calling out a mistake if you are a coach consultant or course creator and you're thinking that using the same strategies of last year or this year are going to work in 2023 you are wrong calling out an important opportunity the social media landscape is changing and if you do not have a YouTube channel already I highly recommend that you create calling out a misconception now if you think growing your YouTube channel is all about choosing the right keywords you're wrong even YouTube tells you that keywords are not important and

highlighting a result that you know your viewer wants if you want to learn how to explode your reach with Instagram reals then keep watching this video because I have some strategies you likely haven't heard of before now these are just examples there are so many other hooks out there so make sure you do your research and watch videos that make you want to keep watching but these are the hooks that I've used that I found pretty effective beyond what you're saying in the first 30 seconds you also want the first 30 seconds to be visually

compelling on YouTube videos actually autoplay and so for me in my first 30 seconds I add captions I add visuals I do everything it takes to make the first 30 seconds the most visually attractive to cause that person to actually click on my video and keep watching while a strong intro is going to cause someone to keep watching a strong outro is going to have someone continue watching the other videos on your channel which will ultimately increase your watch time and so with your outro you want to make sure that you are as specific as

possible in what video you want that viewer to watch next here's an example 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 the moment I started being hypers specific I saw three times increase in clicks for the next video the next thing

I wish more YouTubers knew about and that I wish I knew sooner about was the link that you Ed to promote your videos instead of using the regular link that YouTube gives you what you want to do is you want to click on the play all button on your channel grab that code at the end of the link and paste it to whatever video you want to be promoting if you share that link with that code when someone clicks on your video it's going to automatically show all of your videos instead of your competitors and

after they're done watching that video it's going to automatically play your next video this is going to cause you to have more watch time because most times people maybe genuinely want to watch your next video or they leave their YouTube on in the background and so your videos could be autop playing and racking up more views and by the way if you use your code at the end of any YouTube video even if it's not yours if someone clicks that link it's going to autoplay your next video as well now Beyond implementing these essential strategies

for YouTube success I also wish more creators knew about the responsibility and seriousness of creating content I remember I watched this video about how cardi B sued a Creator because she was saying things that cardi B did not like and cardi B did not feel was true and because this Creator was not set up as an LLC cardi B could come for her personal assets such as her house her car her jewelry her handbags even for me a rookie mistake that I made because I wanted to save time and save money is I took someone

else's terms and conditions put it on my website and a few weeks later their lawyer contacted me threatening me to take it down or else they would take me to court luckily I took it down and nothing happened after that but that was absolutely my wakeup call of realizing how serious of a business this is and that I needed to learn how to protect myself as a Creator and what I wish more creators knew about is that many YouTubers who do this for a living actually set up their personal Brands as a business specifically as

an LLC meaning if someone were to sue them they're suing the business and not necessarily them personally so they cannot come for their personal assets such as their car their home or their personal bank accounts which leads me to introduce the sponsor of today's video Taylor Brands Taylor Brands is an easy and affordable way to get your LLC Taylor Brands offers all the legal requirements to set up your LLC such as your EIN registered agent annual compliance and operating agreements all you have to do is answer a few simple questions about your business and their

easy to ous platform will get you set up with your LLC and not only can Taylor brands set up your LLC they are also the ultimate business Builder and all-in-one solution for starting your business in general for example they can check what licenses and permits your business might need help you with contracts and service agreements design your logo register your domain and build your website help you with trademarks so no one else can steal your genius idea set up your business account track your invoices with a finance manager and give you access to a tailor

Brands expert to answer any questions you might have all this to say I wish I knew about Taylor Brands when I was first starting to make setting everything up a lot smoother that's why you want to click the link in my description box to get started with Taylor Brands and get 35% off selected LLC plans thank you so much Taylor brand for sponsoring this video so that I can create videos like this full time the next thing I wish more new YouTubers knew about was managing their expectations with AdSense when I first started I thought

that I could just quit my job and do this full-time which by the way I actually did quit my job to do this fulltime and I quickly had to become a coffee Barista because I realized that number one it takes a while to get monetized on YouTube as a reminder you need 1,000 subscribers and 4 ,000 hours of watch time and also even if you are monetized you need a lot of views to even make good money and so rather than heavily relying on AdSense Revenue here are some other Alternatives of making money that you

can consider getting a part-time job yes I know it's not ideal but remember it can be temporary and it can also fund your channel so you can grow your channel even faster which I'll talk about later you can offer templates or courses so for instance if you have a video that talks about how you budget your income perhaps you can sell your budgeting template on top of that or offer a budgeting course you could also sell your time which is the easiest thing to start out with so for instance if your YouTube channel is about

health and wellness you can consider offering a coaching program or consultation calls where people can pay to hop on a zoom call with you and you coach them one onone or just answer their questions in addition to this you can also consider starting a paid Community outside of YouTube where people can pay to get exclusive content from you access to you and also access to a community of people who share similar interests all of these are Revenue Alternatives that don't necessarily cost you a lot to start and can also earn a lot more than AdSense

Revenue especially if you're just starting out now on the topic of making money on YouTube Here's another thing that I wish more new YouTubers knew about and that is not every YouTuber gets paid the same a YouTuber who talks about finance and real estate is generally going to get paid way more than a YouTuber who does kids animations or talks about politics and this all comes down to the Channel's Niche and their CPM and what CPM is is cost per thousand it's the dollar amount an Advertiser is going to pay you for every thousand views

that your video produces niches that have advertisers that have higher budgets will typically have a higher CPM whereas other niches where advertisers don't have a big budget or is not a niche that is Advertiser friendly will have way less of a CPM and so I wish that I knew this sooner because when you're on YouTube and you're looking at how much a YouTuber makes you want to put this into consideration because even though the money that they're making might be true for them it might not necessarily be true for you and so you want to

make sure you manage your expectations on that now since we're on the subject of niches how do you exactly pick a niche for your channel now of course you could look at this graph right here and pick it based on the CPM and whichever Niche is going to pay the highest but personally even if you're picking the niche that has the highest CPM if you're not passionate about the subject you're likely not going to make that much money anyways because you aren't going to be consistent and so my advice around here is if you already

have a product or service that you know you're going to sell and that's why you're going to be on YouTube to get more visibility on your product and service then you should absolutely start YouTube with a specific niche in mind it sounds like you already know what you're doing but if you are someone who is doing YouTube for the first time you don't have a product or service you're not really sure exactly what you want to do or how you might want to establish yourself then do not be afraid of exploring in fact when I

first started rather than pigeon ho holding myself into a niche because I seriously wasn't sure what I wanted to talk about I instead thought about the person I wanted to create videos for and in my case I really wanted to create videos for that person who was in their ear early 20s and so I started to brainstorm all the things that people in their early 20s typically are interested in finance postgraduation working in corporate social media mindset and so I did all of those videos and eventually I noticed which topics I likeed talking about the

most and which videos performed the best for me and in my case it was my videos on social media that I genuinely liked and that took off on my channel and so I started doubling down on that topic and once I started doubling down that's when my channel truly skyrocketed because I was not only establishing a niche for my channel but when one video was successful and attracted that specific viewer because I had other videos lined up on a similar topic that viewer would go to watch my other videos which then increased my watch time

and increased my views in general now when it comes to equipment if you don't have the budget quite yet nowadays an iPhone is perfectly fine but if you do have the extra money to invest and by the way this is where the part-time job comes in handy and I actually use a lot of my paychecks as a coffee bista to buy equipment for my channel here's my recommendation on some top equipment that you should absolutely invest in first is a good quality SD card don't cheap out and buy an SD card that has a very

low memory on it because you are going to absolutely regret this if halfway through your filming session you run out of storage and now you're forced to stop your filming session to delete footage or be forced to delete footage that you actually need second is a dummy battery a lot of times filming videos can take hours and so rather than buying a bunch of replacement batteries or interrupting your filming session to charge your battery you you want to get something like this that plugs into a wall and allows your camera to run at all times

now of course this is meant for people who do a lot of talking head videos like me if you are someone who's vlogging then you'll likely be better off buying replacement batteries instead next rather than spending a lot of money on the camera I actually prefer you spend more money on the microphone a lot of times people are pretty forgiving when it comes to the visual aspect of a video but they are not forgiving on the audio and so you definitely want to invest in a good quality microphone and by the way I'll link my

recommendations in the description box below Now by having a good SD card dummy battery and a solid microphone even if you have the oldest most basic camera by having these three accessories it's already going to make your filming process a lot easier and in fact I actually think that you should invest in these three accessories first before you even consider upgrading your camera and when it comes to the camera itself what I wish more new YouTubers knew about is that if you have limited budget instead of spending all of your money on a good camera

i' rather you spend more of your money on a good lens a lot of videos that you see here on YouTube that have that nice blurry background is because of the lens they are using and a really common lens that a lot of creators use to get that nice bouquet effect is the sigma 16 mm f1.4 lens and so to save you money just simply buy a camera that has basic features like autof Focus buy the camera body only and then invest in a better lens such as the sigma 16mm f1.4 you are going to

see a drastic difference in your videos and it's absolutely going to elevate the production quality of your content now the last thing that I think creators should invest invest in when it comes to better videos is lighting and I say this as the last thing because for years I only used daylight lighting and it took my channel to over 100,000 subscribers just fine and so if you want to save money I personally don't think lighting is the most essential but if you have that extra extra then of course you can invest in lighting and I'll

put my recommendations in the description box below Now by sharing my equipment recommendations and the Order of priority when it comes to investing in this equipment it absolutely will save you some money but I'm also here to save you time which is why I want to talk about systems and why having systems is going to be so important in terms of your YouTube workflow so let me share with you some of the systems that I have first I have a b-roll system a lot of times in your videos you might want to add additional footage

to make the video a lot more engaging and a rookie mistake that I used to make is because I didn't have a system of organizing my b-roll I would always have to refilm those scenes or spend a lot of time looking for that footage and so now I have organized folders of every single type of b-roll that I typically use in my videos such as me working me filming I have videos of me crying screenshots of my Revenue tutorials that I share Often by having this type of system it really speeds up the editing workflow

I also have a system for thumbnails where I have a bunch of poses that we can use for future thumbnails and periodically I'll add more poses with different outfits so I don't have to be chasing my tail every single week to take pictures for the thumbnail and for my workflow in general I use notion and I'm able to track each stage that my video is at from idea to writing to filming to editing and to it being published and when you actually open the card I also have a section where I can put other videos

and thumbnails and titles that inspired the particular topic or subject that I want to talk about Beyond this even in my Creator Studio settings if you click upload defaults you can also pre-up load your description and so every single time that you upload a new video 80% of your description can be already done so as you can see these systems are really simple to implement but also save you a ton of time now if you want to take saving time to the next level the next thing you want to consider is outsourcing and the first

thing that I would recommend Outsourcing is video editing the moment that I allow someone else to edit my videos was when I was able to be a lot more consistent on the platform create better videos and also have more work life balance with all that time that I was spending on video editing I was able to get back and focus on other areas of my business and of my life now if you need help on how to find a video editor my recommendation is to use a platform like upwork and in fact I found my

video editor through upwork now when it comes to my advice on hiring video editors through upwork I don't recommend putting all your eggs in one basket and instead I would spend spend some money on hiring three video editors give them a one minute clip to edit so it's not going to cost you too much give them the exact same brief and see which video editor does the best job then you provide feedback and see which video editor has the best communication and so by doing this you're going to minimize your risk of choosing the wrong

editor you're going to test and see which editor fits your Vibe the most and then once you've chosen a video editor that you want to work with you now have that reassurance that you actually like them now Beyond just Outsourcing to a video editor on platforms like upwork did you know that you can also Outsource other aspects of your YouTube channel as well such as script writing and making thumbnails now of course not everyone has the money to do that which is why you also want to lean into using AI technology to speed up your

workflow as well for example AI can create your thumbnails outline your scripts come up with titles simplify your language so it's easy to understand for your viewer and even create videos using your own voice which is why I want you to hit the notification Bell and the Subscribe button because in my next video video I'm going to show you exactly how to create videos like this and show you a crazy opportunity on how many creators are making money on YouTube without even showing their faces and thank you again to Taylor brands for sponsoring this video

allowing me to give away valuable information to creators for free make sure you click the link in the description box below to get your business started and get 35% off selected LLC plans with Taylor Brands as always guys I appreciate you and I will see you in my next video I