[Music] This is the world's fastest and weirdest YouTube course. In the next 10 minutes, I'll show you how to go from zero to 1,000 subscribers in just five simple steps. And the best thing is you don't have to physically do any of this stuff except for this one.
No one cares, which is really important. We'll get back to later. But what you do need to do is listen and take action.
And first, we'll start with a classic piece of YouTube advice. You know what they say about the YouTube journey, myself included, start a channel about something you love. But here's the thing.
What if you love Rolex spoon collecting? I never thought I'd put those words together in a sentence, but apparently that is a thing on YouTube. Just nobody watches those types of videos.
So, I'm pretty sure if I started a channel within that niche, despite my outstanding reputation on this platform, the only people watching would possibly be my wife through pity and my dog if I could tease him with a treat on a spoon. So, if your goal is to rocket up to a thousand subscribers as fast as you can, don't make monetizing the channel any more difficult than it should be. Pick a niche with a potentially big audience and naturally a niche you're passionate about.
For example, you might have seen this guy on YouTube. His name is Kevin and he's turned his passion for gardening into a very, very successful YouTube channel. He's got over three and a half million subscribers and his videos typically get hundreds of thousands of views.
Now, obviously, it helps that Kevin makes fantastic videos on YouTube. But what can't be ignored is that his niche is enjoyed by tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions of people across the globe. That's a pretty enormous niche to tap into.
But what if Kevin had gone too far into the weeds with this niche? Let's say theoretically that Kevin's true calling in gardening life is DIY bonsai fencing for lefthanders. Yeah, you get the point, right?
Nobody's going to watch that. So, here is a super quick way to check if your niche has potential. Go to YouTube and type in your niche and look for videos uploaded in the last 12 months with, let's say, at least 100,000 views.
A million views or better is perfect. If you find them, great. That means you have a pool of people already out there interested in your niche.
So, dive straight in. And now for a secret weapon. This is a pizza.
And as delicious as it is, it's completely useless for your YouTube channel. Unless, of course, you have a pizza YouTube channel. However, this might be of more use to you.
Now, I call this the 7030 rule. 70% of your videos should be modeled on what already works on YouTube, while the rest of the time, that 30%, you can become that creative genius, just like I did with this metaphor. A great example of modeling what works is a video that we made a few years back called Big Mistakes Small YouTubers Still Make and it's backed us almost 3 million views at this point.
But why did it work so well? Well, the simple reason is we didn't pluck this out of thin air. As you can see, the title format, Big Mistakes a type of person makes already been proven to be successful for this video many years earlier.
So, we simply took the idea and reverse engineered it for our audience. Now, this doesn't mean you can't be creative. I encourage you to always experiment with fresh new ideas within moderation.
If you do want early success on your channel, then I recommend channeling around about 70% of your energy into ideas that already work. And by all means, be very creative within the confines of those video ideas. So, let's get back onto the computer and build what I'm calling a swipe file.
Go to YouTube and find the top three, five channels in your niche, but also channels you enjoy watching from outside of your niche. Grab 30 viral titles and thumbnails. Dump them into a Google doc, and you can use it as inspiration every time you need a video idea.
What you can also do is check out Vid IQ's remix tool that takes successful titles from literally any video on YouTube and remixes them into a title that fits your niche. It's essentially reverse engineering the idea just like we did earlier. This saves you from just guessing all of the time with your video ideas because you're learning from what your audience already loves to watch because it's been proven on the platform.
However, for most beginners, all of this pre-production stuff is actually pretty simple to implement, especially when you compare it to the performance side of things. Let's be honest with ourselves. Faceless YouTube automation channels aside, what is one of the hardest parts of starting a YouTube channel?
Trying to talk to camera without looking like you're being held hostage. So, the next tip I want to share with you is the no one cares confidence hack. Your first videos will be awkward.
There's no denying that. You're going to sound like a customer service robot. You know what the one thing is that's irresistible to an audience?
a trending topic and that is fine. I gotta be honest, even some of Mr Beast's early efforts sounded like he was a sleepy math teacher. Now, I'd show my face.
Like, I don't care. Like, I don't mind showing my face, but uh this iPhone doesn't have a front-facing camera. And as for Marquez Brownley, same deal.
So, if you haven't subscribed already, you might want to do so. Uh sorry if this is choppy at all. I'm using my webcam for these first few videos.
So, here is the reframe. Your first few videos aren't likely to get many views anyway. So, why do you care?
No one cares. Use these early videos as your talking to camera practice gym, but I know I know it is easier said than done. You've actually got to look at the camera as well while you're saying stuff.
So, to help you through this perfectly normal but painful early stage of your YouTube journey, here's a couple of confidence tips to help you. Commit to talking to camera for 25, 50, even 100 videos, whatever number you think you can reasonably achieve in 6 months. Just make them.
And probably more importantly, have fun making them. Don't put yourself under any pressure to perform. And since this is pretty important, film your intro or your hook at least five times in a row.
You'll notice by the last time that you film it, you've perfected that intro and you've loosened up and relaxed. Then for whatever cadence, pace, tone, and energy you want to set in your videos, try talking 20% faster with 30% more energy. There is something about talking to camera that makes it look excruciating when you watch it back.
So, you do have to perform somewhat to camera without it looking forced or inauthentic. So, imagine your middle level is a five. You want to try and dial yourself up to a seven or an eight.
And if you want to really take this the extra mile, then look for Toast Masters and improv groups in your area. Yeah, we're talking about something in real life here. These are organized groups where you can practice public speaking in a safe and supportive environment.
They will dramatically improve your speaking ability and make your content far more engaging. Before we move on from this topic, however, I do want to be clear that talking to camera can feel like a very personal fear and challenge for every unique individual. So, the last thing I want any creator to be doing is beating their head against the wall if they're still feeling incredibly awkward.
The important thing is to try and to keep trying to keep making videos until you figure it out because eventually you will do. All right. Part of any beginner's YouTube course includes something about thumbnails, right?
And this course is no different in that regard. The common mistake many creators believe is that they just need to make their thumbnails look pretty and colorful. But if a viewer doesn't understand what your video is about and it gives them no reason to click, it doesn't matter how beautiful that thumbnail is, you're not going to earn the click.
So, let's adopt something called the three C's. Ideally, you want these three C's impeccably balanced, working in perfect harmony, but I realize in reality that can be a tricky juggling act. These are create curiosity, spark interest in the viewer that compels them to click, convey the idea.
It is critical that the thumbnail is simple enough to understand in 2 seconds or less. And yes, catch the eye. The thumbnail does need to be visually appealing, but that doesn't mean it has to be beautiful.
This thumbnail is a perfect example of those three C's in action. Within just a couple of seconds, you get an idea of what the video is about. It's going to reveal things that we don't commonly know about the NFL.
It creates curiosity because naturally, you're asking yourself, does an NFL ball really have all of that technology inside it? And lastly, it catches the eye because it has an extreme level of contrast and yes, a red arrow. And here's another really cool yet much simpler example.
Again, you've got high contrast between white and blacks. The thumbnail and title combination is so bizarre and yet so compelling that you just have to click. But at the same time, it gives a pretty clear promise in less than a second.
You know what you're going to get from this video. And this thumbnail proves that you don't need crazy design skills to win the clip. If you understand the psychology behind what makes a person click, you can keep your thumbnails really simple and effective.
But then after the click comes the hardest part. You've earned maybe 15 to 30 seconds of the viewers attention span and you've got to do a hell of a lot in that time to keep them watching. Because if your viewer bounces in that time, then unfortunately your video is likely to be buried under 900 hours of I don't know mukbangs and Roblox gameplay videos.
So, here is the trick. Curiosity loops. These are mini cliffhangers you drop throughout the video to keep people watching.
In its simplest form, a curiosity loop is where you tease something for the viewer, but hold back the reveal of it. That means the viewer keeps watching until at least they find out what it is. And we use a pretty simple technique of that in this video.
And the best thing is you don't have to physically do any of this stuff except for this one. No one cares, which is really important. We'll get back to later.
And if you're still watching at this point, that curiosity loop definitely worked on you because that was five minutes ago and you're still watching. So for your next video, try planning out a really simple curiosity loop. In the first 15 to 30 seconds of your video, promise a piece of value or tease a moment in a story that you don't pay off immediately.
And a way to delay that is to use one simple word, but. And now that you're aware of this technique, you'll be looking out for it in the most successful videos on YouTube and catching them. but done in more subtle and sophisticated ways.
Look, curiosity loops, talking to camera, making better thumbnails. You are at the very beginning of your YouTube journey. But where does it all start?
With a video, the idea. And there is a saying that I definitely subscribe to that is a good video cannot rescue a bad video idea. Now, I did touch on this topic in this video, but I could ramble on for a lot longer, and I did.
in this video I'm recommending over here. It goes into a lot more detail about picking the best video ideas to help you get a lot more video views.
