– I want to share with you today some of the best strategies for reaching that firstbig YouTube milestone, 100 subscribers.
Let's do this.
– [Man's voice] vidIQ – [Woman's voice] vidIQ – [Man's Voice] vidIQ dot com.
(upbeat music) – Hello, I'm Rob, and welcome to vidIQ, the YouTube tool and channel that educates you on your YouTube journey.
For more content just like this make sure to subscribe to the channel, and do this (bell rings) so that you're the first to be notified when here are new videos released.
As always, school is in session.
Settle down back there.
(smooth music) Just before we jump intothese strategies here, let us know in the comments below how long you've been on YouTube, and how many subscribers you have so far.
And when do you think you'regoing to reach 100 subscribers? Now a very reasonablequestion to ask me is, “Rob, why have you set 100 subscribers “as the first big YouTube milestone?” Well, let's be honest, getting to 10 subscribers is pretty easy, because you could just askall of your friends and family to help you get there.
As for 1, 000 subscribers, well, right now that's probablya little bit too ambitious, and that's a trap youdon't want to fall into.
Throughout your YouTube journey, which hopefully is going to be a very long and successful one, you want to set yourselfmanageable targets.
The obvious temptation isto target 1, 000 subscribers, along with 4, 000 hours of watch time, because it means you're halfwayto monetizing your channel.
The problem is, this is going to hurt your short-term, day-to-day mindset.
Because you won't feel as ifyour making enough progress.
For some channels, reaching 1, 000 subscribers can take many months, if not years, and if you think whenyou're starting on day one, and you're into day 17 or day 34, and you haven't yetreached 100 subscribers, how is that going to make you feel? And when you get frustrated, you might start resorting to bad habits and tactics early on.
Those include sub-for-sub, which is against terms of service, and as we all know, neverproves to be successful in the long term for successful channels.
– Hey YouTuber! – Hey! – Fancy being sub-for-sub? – Absolutely! – Great! (sighs deeply) ♪ Hello darkness my old friend ♪ – The next thing you might start to do is go onto large channelsand post comments such as, “Hey, check out mychannel, ” or sub-for-sub, or with this weird arrow pointy finger or the blue thumbs up that says, “Have you subscribed to my channel?” I have no idea why anybody ever does that.
All of those dodgy tactics center around the me, me, me mentality of a YouTube video creator.
As we will always preach here at vidIQ, it is a value that yougive to your audience that will get them to trust you and subscribe to your content.
And if you get completely desperate, you may resort to buying subscribers, which is the worst thingyou can do on your channel.
First of all, it is againstterms of service, once again, and it may resort in yourchannel being terminated, and those subscribers will offer you absolutely zero valueto your YouTube channel in terms of growing itthrough views, watch time, and creating a community.
So I personally believe thatyour first subscriber milestone should be 100 subscribers.
When you first start your channel, you'll be getting a newsubscriber every few days.
Then you'll be gettingmaybe one or two a day, and then you'll begetting ten or so a week, and that should help you reach that goal as quickly, as hopefully, as possible.
(upbeat music) Let's give you a best-case-scenario.
You launch your channel, the first video goes up, and to your surprise, lots of people watch it.
And then you've gotnothing else to show them.
It's always a good strategy to give your viewers a collection of videos to watch on your channel.
So if possible, don't launch with justone video on your channel, or at the very beginning, you want to try and pump out as many videos as possible, which may be against theschedule that you end up doing.
For example, you might bewanting to post one video a week, maybe in that first week, you wanna post three videos, so that people who arefinding your content have something to feedoff of very quickly.
It is often the case thatviewers won't subscribe to the first video thatthey watch on a channel.
It may take two or three videos to persuade them to push that red button.
And if you have more than one video, you can start tocommunicate to your audience in all of the content that you produce, that it is on a topic thatyour audience is interested in.
If you can get your audience to enjoy your first piece of content, fall in love with yoursecond piece of content, and then subscribe as a result of the third piece of your content, then you potentially have a viewer there for months, years, a lifetime possibly.
Now, I wouldn't recommendnecessarily launching three or four videos atexactly the same time when you start your channel.
You want to give each video a moment to breathe on the platform.
If you have a batch of videos you want to upload to YouTube all at once, that is absolutely fine, just make sure that theyremain elicit, or private, until you're ready to publish them, and then when you do publish them, stagger them by at least one day, and then if you don't intend to post on a daily basis on YouTube, probably give eachvideo at least 48 hours.
Now as I say, three in thefirst week is probably perfect.
You'll quickly learn thatwhen your videos get released, you get lots of bonuses from YouTube, and you find that youhave rapid view velocity in the first 24 hours.
But if you launch themall at the same time, it's not giving YouTube a chanceto distribute that content to the potential audienceit's looking for.
As I say, it might not be possible to sustain the volumeof content you push out in the first week or monthof your YouTube channel.
But give your viewers as much as you are able to provide them when you first launch your channel.
The first subscribers to your channel, who you don't know in reallife, are wondrous things.
Just consider what'shappening here for a second.
Somebody somewhere in the world has found your content valuable enough that they want to be notified again when you release more content.
(sighs) Really gets you right there.
If you were able to putthat person in front of you, that would be a cool conversation.
And then it gets to ten subscribers, and that's a line ofpeople waiting for a bus.
And they've got to say something to them.
Then you get up to 25 subscribers, that is a room full of people, and then you start to gettowards 100 subscribers, that is a hall full of people.
Can you imagine standing onstage, and speaking to those peopledirectly in real life? It's a terrifying prospect, but every single one of you is doing that every single day as you try to reach thisfirst big milestone.
Now these real-life peopleare very precious to you, and you want to treatthem with that respect.
When you have such small sample sizes, if people are subscribing to particular videos on your channel, you want to make more of that content.
Yes, we are drifting down thecommon topic of niching down, one of YouTube's mostimportant strategies.
But I'm going to try and keep it fairly light for this video.
Let's say you're watching television, and you come across a new sitcom, and you enjoy the firstepisode that you watch.
You enjoy the characters, the comedy is on point with your type of humor, and you like the way the story is going.
What happens if next week, you tune in and they removehalf of the characters, there are new comedy scriptwriters writing all of the material, and the story has suddenlyjumped the shark in some way? You're probably gonna beturned off from that content.
Now that is a bit of anextreme case of course, in television series, but on YouTube channels, this happens prettymuch with all channels.
To begin with, and Idon't understand this, many creators are a little self-indulgent, because they want to create what they're going to enjoy making, and not realizing there'san audience out there who's already watched someof your previous content, enjoyed it, subscribed to it, and want to see moreor less the same thing.
If you continue to deliver content that your subscribers have subscribed for, you will start to build momentum, I guarantee it.
And remember, I've already said that the first video a viewerwatches on your channel may not convince them to subscribe.
However, due to the wayYouTube's recommendations work, even if a viewer doesn'tsubscribe to your channel, they may see more of your content appear in their browse feeds or suggested videos.
And if they watch a second video from you which is similar to the first, and they enjoy it more, then that will convince them to subscribe.
But it has to stay on topic for the audience's watching habits.
(upbeat music) All right then.
There's something I want to get you into the mindset of as early as possible in your YouTube journey.
It's okay to ask people tosubscribe to your channel.
Some people have a realmental block about this.
Maybe it's because theyfind it too embarrassing, or because they feel as if they're begging toomuch to their audience.
This is not the same as sub-for-sub.
Remember, the viewer isalready in your video, and you are providing value to them.
There's nothing wrong withreminding the audience, “Hey, if you want to seemore of this content, “then it might be a good idea “to subscribe to the channel.
” there are many ways to ask people politely to subscribe to your channel.
For example, in this video, at the very beginning, what did we do? Hello, I'm Rob, and welcome to vidIQ, the YouTube tool and channel that educates you on your YouTube journey.
For more content just like this, make sure to subscribe to the channel, and do this (bell rings) so that you're the first to be notified when there are new videos released.
As always, school is in session.
Settle down back there! In 18 seconds, I told new viewers of vidIQ who we are, our value proposition, and why you shouldsubscribe to your channel in a slightly inventive way.
I'm thinking of actually doing that, pointing to people in theclassroom and telling them off, for all future videos, so stick around for that.
As you continue on through a video, if you get to a point where you deliver something of real value, or a spectacular moment in a video, and that is your payoffto a certain extent, don't be afraid to put in acall to action there as well.
And what I mean by call to action is asking the viewer to subscribe, or something onscreen thatyou don't even address, it's just there, itjust reminds the viewer, “Hey, if you you're liking this, “remember to press that red button.
” You can also add a subscribewatermark to your videos, it looks like this down inthe bottom left hand corner, or is it right hand corner? I can never remember.
People can subscribe to your channel through the desktop version of the video, it will appear on mobile devices, but they can't subscribe to it from there.
This can be really effective for bringing in a few extra subscribers to every single video.
We've got a dedicatedvideo on this over here.
And, don't be afraidto put a subscribe link in your channel description, in the end screens, and maybe in a pinned comment.
Give your viewers as manyopportunities as possible to remind them thatit's free to subscribe, and they'll get value from it, because you're going to give your audience exactly what they're asking for.
Something that's goingto be really important throughout your YouTubejourney is perspective.
You may not like whatI'm about to tell you, but it is the truth.
When you start your YouTube channel, you have no authority, you have no influence, you have no social proof.
From the audience perspective, they are asking the question, “Why should I subscribe to you?” “What makes you differentas a video creator?” From YouTube's perspective, the platform wants moredata from your content.
It wants to know which audienceis watching your content, and for how long, andhow successful it is, and whether or not to pushthat content to more people after they've watched itand indeed subscribed.
I am not going to lie to you, the first few weeks and months on YouTube can be a real uphill struggle.
For many creators, hittingthat first hundred subscribers was the most challenging thingthey did on their channel.
But then, hitting thenext hundred subscribers wasn't so hard, and then the next hundred, and before you know it, you're up to five hundred, and then your coming intothe thousand subscriber mark.
What needs to happen is a connection between the viewer andthe content creator.
When you build trust, you build a relationship, and you get onto a personal level, you somehow impact thatviewer in an emotional way, that creates a bond where the subscriptionhopefully will happen, and then who knows what beyond that.
Now what I hope I've donethroughout this video is establish some of thosebonds so you can subscribe.
You see what I did there? As this portion of the video suggests, accept and embrace the challenge.
Think of it in a completelydifferent mindset.
Enjoy the journey.
You need to determine whether or not you enjoy making videos, that's what you're going to be doing the majority of the time.
And it could take you50 videos, 100 videos, six months, to understandwhether you like that process.
And if you're concentrating more on how you're gonna deliverthe content to your audience, and observing their feedback, rather than looking at thatsingle metric of subscribers, or that single metricof views and watch time, I guarantee you, as I guaranteed to youalready in this video, that you will enjoy theprocess so much more.
And before you know it, youmay not even realize it, you'll surpass 100 subscribers.
You may have noticed that this video has been geared more towardsthe mindset of a video creator.
The journey you are starting out on is a challenging one.
But if you have the right mental attitude, you can overcome anyobstacle in your path, including that firstmilestone of 100 subscribers.
We want you to achieve this, and these videos will help you do that.
Your subscribers, as fewas they may be right now want you to achieve this, they just don't know it yet.
Enjoy the rest of your video making day.
.
