starting a YouTube channel today is very different than when I posted my first video in 2016 now since then I've grown a channel to over 1 million subscribers and I make a full-time living off of this Channel and so what I want to show you in this video is how I would approach YouTube today if I was starting from scratch check this out out here in Forest got myself a breakfast burrito on the way up here but before I Go off into a trail over there somewhere I want to go through my six-step strategy that
I would use if I was starting a YouTube channel right now today like if I'm making a video right now this is my first video this is the six-step strategy that I would use and this is what I've learned after years of being on the platform helping other creators grow their channels and you know growing this channel to over a million subscribers I would have a completely different approach now than I did did when I first started and so in this video what I want to go through is my exact step-by-step method that I would
use if I was you and you were trying to start a YouTube channel and get going down this crazy journey of making content oh man I was just adding this Yellowbird ghost pepper hot sauce onto my burrito and whoa my mouth is on fire right now oh man okay let's get into step one now the first step in the process is figure out what you're producing so this is the type of content and the people that you're targeting and ultimately like what are you trying to do so let's strip this away let's go to the
very core of why you're going to produce a YouTube channel and why you want to make content so what is your goal are you trying to do this as a full-time career are you trying to do this as a part-time career make a little extra money on the side are you trying to do this for fun like what is your intention with your channel and that's going to help dictate kind of which direction that you go with your content and how you approach the channel because if you're someone who's trying to make this a full-time
career well then you want to start thinking business first so how are you going to make money off of doing this whole YouTube thing is it going to be off of the ad Revenue because if that's the case you're going to be looking at making videos with tons of views getting consistent views over period of time and just like really blowing up the channel whereas if you're someone who's going to be making money off of products off of YouTube then you don't need as many views you could have a very small Channel but if you
have a very targeted specific audience well you could create products and solutions for those audiences and you don't need a ton of people because you're going to be selling this product to the specific Market market and so you could have a smaller Channel with less views it really depends on what you want to do so right now I want you to think about what is your intention and I want you to be honest with yourself now I just noticed that my low cut filter was turned on on my microphone so this might sound a little
bit different now however let's dig a little bit more into this first step so you want to know your intention now the second part of this is to figure out who you're going to be targeting so who are the people that are watching your content on my channel I Target creators I Target those of you who are interested in building a YouTube channel making videos and my kind of sub Niche I would say would be Adventure because personally I like doing adventure style content and I love working with those of you who are also making
Adventure style content out in the middle of nowhere it's what I like doing however you need to figure out who it is that you are targeting and what is that person's goal watching your videos so are they coming to be entertained are they coming for knowledge are they coming just to learn something educational something general like these are things you have to think through are they looking for inspiration are they looking for motivation like figure out what it is that that viewer wants from your channel so that you could best satisfy that so you're going
to be focused on making a TV show around what you're doing think of it in that way so what are the kinds of things that people are going to be interested in in that niche in that genre of content and you're going to approach it very differently than if you're someone who's doing an educational Channel someone who's targeting someone who wants to learn something specific say you're an ocean kayaker and you want to teach others to enjoy ocean kayaking well you're going to have a specific person on a specific part of their Journey so you
might be targeting people who are getting into it you're going to teach them about gear you're going to teach them about techniques you're going to teach them about where to go there's a whole world of cont content that's very educational that's going to help someone but it's not necessarily entertaining the same way that if you were making a entertaining Channel around ocean kayaking then you might go on a 24-hour Ocean Kayak to some Island that's something that anybody would be interested in and could be a fun video and it's going to be a a little
bit different audience than the people who are actually trying to do this for themselves now there's always going to be crossover there's always going to be exceptions to the rule I this is why I'm kind of talking a lot about this first step which is figuring out what and why you're making your content who's it for what is their goals from watching your channel what are your goals as a Creator like what do you want to do you should really think through all of this and then we can move on to step two okay step
two research this is a very vital part of the whole process and something you're going to continue to do as your channel grows as you start building your following because research is going to help you figure out what kind of videos you're going to create and so right now if I was starting a Channel or if I'm getting going I would start researching the other creators in this niche of content the other creators that are targeting the same audience that I'm targeting and start looking out what's working seeing what type of videos and you might
find in a niche there's going to be creators that push towards entertainment there's more that push towards educational there's some that do a blend of both and you really want to start looking for like what is working for this Creator's content now I highly suggest start a new channel and start watching videos from all of these creators that are in this specific style of content whatever you're producing because then after you start watching a lot of this content and you come back to your home screen day after day after day you're going to start seeing
new videos pop up stuff that the algorithm is suggesting that you go and watch this is a great indication of what's working because the algorithm is going to put videos in front of you that have good watch time they have good average view duration they're just good videos all around because YouTube's whole intention with serving you videos is trying to find videos that you're actually going to want to watch so the algorithm is looking at all of the data and finding the best videos for a viewer they're not looking for your video video to find
the Right audience rather they're going audience first just as I'm talking about you need to go audience first because YouTube as a company wants to satisfy the viewer and so they're going to see say Avatar a they like these kind of videos I'm going to show them these other videos that we think they'll like and so if you create a YouTube channel where you become the Avatar of exactly what your viewers and you're watching all the content YouTube's going to start feeding you suggestions of videos that do well videos that perform videos that are going
to be good for that Avatar this is a great technique to be able to start getting the creative juices flowing and figuring out what you're going to produce and this research phase is something that you're going to always come back to it's something that I'm constantly coming back to and I'm looking at new topics and trying new things and it is very bright whoa this Sun keeps going in and out in and out in and out there we go you're going to keep coming back to this again and again because audiences evolve over time and
your channel is going to evolve and my channel has evolved multiple times and I've pivoted and I've done all these things but that's also why I've created this six-part system because I have kind of struggled at times to figure out exactly what I'm doing and I've kind of made a lot of content that didn't go anywhere if I was starting today I would be way more targeted way more focused and really hone in on this audience well that's weird it's a says a message let's figure out where it [Music] goes no idea so I'm just
going to hang out here on Top of the Rock so being more specific over being more General is definitely a superpower in the world of YouTube because if you could be more specific and could Target a specific audience you're going to grow much faster if you're approaching this as a business mindset trying to make money off this trying to go full-time it's much harder to do a broad General Channel than it is to be more specific I getting eaten alive by flies up here so let me get down and this transcends just YouTube channels if
you are a production company let's say you are someone who does something very specific say you do videos for restaurants and you're very specific at this one type of content well your website and everything that you do is going to be catered towards making that kind of content whereas if you have a production company that's General you do do documentaries you do commercial work you do some narrative projects on the side and you have a client come to both websites website a is cooking website B is General well if that client is a restaurant looking
for a video made about their restaurant who do you think they're going to choose even if website B has this amazing footage and all this cool stuff and they're doing these crazy travel videos documentaries big Productions well most likely they're going to choose website a the cook cooking production company because they are specialized in this one type of content and so when you think about a YouTube channel and if you have that specificity especially when you're being an educational Channel if you're teaching something that specificity is really important but even if you are entertaining if
you can Target one type of person or a certain style of content you're going to have much more success than if you were just going Broad in general and kind of just doing a bunch of random topics on the channel This research phase is going to be something you're going to do again and again and it's always going to help pivot and drive what you're doing on your channel now step three it's time to make some content because you don't want to get stuck and just overanalyzing everything so the third step of the process is
to script outline shoot edit all the stuff it takes to actually make the video and I highly suggest if you're just starting out using scripts or outlining is really going to help you on the process if you just Co out somewhere and you're trying to make a video out here and then you run over press record and you jump down you're like welcome to my YouTube channel well there's a good chance that you're not going to know what to say it's going to be super choppy you're not going to be very confident with it you're
going to get all choked up and so instead of trying to go through all of that which I did a lot of that when I first started out my channel I would start with a script at the very least an outline and if you're someone who needs a little confidence boo boost on camera then having the script is going to be a huge help in allowing you to make videos and just be yourself on camera cuz what you can do with a script is you can go through that script before you press record you can
sit there talk to yourself look in the mirror or just hang out and try it a few times but you could get in the habit of talking on camera because it is kind of awkward at first even if you've been doing this for a while it can be sometimes awkward to just like put on the camera especially when there's people around I have the advantage of being out here alone so for me it's kind of nice allows me to just kind of like do whatever I want be as crazy I want doesn't matter but if
you are like on the street and people are staring at you yeah you're going to feel it you're going to sense those eyes and it's just something that you're going to have to get over if you are someone who's going to be hitting record and you're in public if you're at home sitting down behind a desk or you have a nice set it's even easier because you flip on the lights and you start recording and it just makes the whole process so much simpler and especially when you're getting going or you're trying to get momentum
on the channel you're trying to be consistent you're trying to get out a video a week finding ways to make it easier for you to actually make the videos but also mentally to be able to get in the mindset to make the videos is going to be super important because once you get the rhythm going then you can start introducing some different things and you can start making it more Dynamic and put more into your videos but just getting the process going as one of the most important things in getting that momentum going because you
want to get in this rhythm of putting out videos cuz success on YouTube doesn't come from one video so this step of the process outline and then shoot you have to learn how to use your camera audio lighting you have to learn how to edit you have to do all of those things and here on this channel that's a lot of what I teach so if that's something that you want to learn more about then make sure you hit that subscribe buttton turn on the Bell notifications like this video because on this channel that is
a lot of what I focus on is helping you make better videos bugs there is so many bugs it's like the first really hot day up here in the mountains in Southern California and the bugs are out to play now the next step of the process is to upload your video to YouTube and release it so there's a few key things you need to do when you upload your video you need to make sure you have a solid title and thumbnail that are targeting your audience and this is something even on the development stage of
the video you should be thinking about coming up with your title and thumbnail all that but you want to optimize your title and thumbnail and also I would suggest coming up with three variations of your thumbnail and using the YouTube ABC testing test and compare that is built in because this is going to help figure out what thumbnails work for your audience and the more that you can do these tests the more it's going to help so title thumbnail you're also going to want to make sure you have your your description set up properly so
if you are someone who is going to be focused on generating leads to be able to make money off of this then what you're going to want to do is have your description have the proper things in it and you don't want to have this crazy cluttered description you don't want to have like 20 different links in there you want to have one targeted link that's going to what you want your viewers to do after they watch this video now if you don't have just a singular product then you could use your description to fill
with other styles of links it's like affiliate links or if you are offering some sort of service you could put your services in there but when you're thinking about your description you want to make it super clear on what your viewer is doing if you are asking them to do something after they watch your video wow it just got really bright okay back in the trees and also with the upload process you have to go through and label everything properly in your video and just get it ready to post and I highly suggest if you're
going to be trying to be serious about YouTube you get in a rhythm whether it's a video every week video every other week two videos a week whatever it is you want to try to find a rhythm that works for you a consistency that works for you and start making videos on a consistent schedule the biggest growth spurts that I saw on my channel was when I was doing two videos a week consistently for about a year I just turned off the super intense stabilization I didn't realize it was punching in so much but you
want to come up with your upload schedule you want to make sure that you understand everything everything that you need to do when you're uploading cuz there's all these boxes you have to check and all of this other metadata you want to make sure you have a description that's clear concise that's going to be helpful for the person actually watching the video and not just flooded with a bunch of links and you want to make everything consistent title thumbnail description all of it consistent and all goes back to that central idea that you've created you
know what's pretty cool is this whole area that I'm at used to be an old gold mining town like over there in the field there used to be an entire town I did a whole video about this area on my second Channel and you can actually see there's one house left still standing and you can go through it walking around here there's actually some mining claims over here like areas are roped off people still mine this area hoping to find the motherload of gold they always thought they were going to strike it rich but nobody
actually found the the main vein that is said to be out here but that brings us to step five which is analyze and adjust so every time you make a video you're going to want to analyze the data on what's happening with that video and when you're looking at your data you want to be looking for patterns you want to you want to see things that are working and double down on that kind of content or strategies that you used when you made those specific videos so we could do a full Deep dive into analytics
and what we should look at in analytics but at its core what you're looking for is viewers to come to to your Channel watch your videos and watch for a long period of time and then watch other videos so some of the metrics that you want to look at average view duration so you want to look at the graph to see when your viewers are dropping off and if there's any dips or if there's any moments where there's spikes and viewers are keep coming back you're also going to want to look at your click-through rate
this is how well your title and thumbnail are performing if you could start getting your click-through rate higher that that means your title and thumbnail are working better for the audience that you're targeting now a word of caution if you're doing click to rate you get it super high but then your average view duration is low that means there's a disconnect between the video and what the viewer is actually getting so you want to make sure that you're still getting average view duration longer or average for your channel while still jumping up your clickthrough rate
now another metric that you want to look at is your traffic Source because you want to see where your traffic is coming from is it coming from search is it coming from suggested is it coming from browse you might see that different traffic sources are going to perform better if you're doing a lot of shorts well you're going to see shorts really spiking there now another metric that you want to look at is is the average views per per viewer so how many videos do they watch typically if you have one then viewers aren't coming
and watching multiple videos but if you could get this number to grow 2 3 4 five that means viewers are coming they're watching One video they're coming back for more videos they're watching multiple videos and that's a metric that you want to keep growing because you want to make sure that you're targeting the right people and they're coming back again and again now there's an advanced feature in your analytics that you could go into the advanced tab Tab and you look in the upper right and left hand corner and you'll have this menu that pops
down and you'll see this thing called groups now you can group your content kind of like playlists into different groups based on what type of content you're producing so if you're following a bucket strategy where you're making similar type of content I would group those videos together so here on this channel one of my groups is beginner guides cuz I do beginners guides for different pieces of gear now I can make another group for a different style of content and I could start comparing these groups against each other and I can start seeing what's working
on my channel instead of looking at it as pure individual video basis you could start grouping videos together and look more broad because you might find that well one group of videos might actually perform much better so maybe I should put more emphasis on that style of content and not do this other stuff that's not really performing that well the biggest thing when you're looking in your data is you're looking for patterns you're looking for things that are bringing viewers to your channel getting them to watch longer and getting them to stick around on your
Channel and if you are someone who's really focused on income well you're going to want to look at the RPM and the CPM of videos and really find that kind of content that has higher cpms and also is making more money you could start looking at your data and seeing which videos are making more money and you might use a strategy where you start targeting the videos that end up bringing in more ad Revenue because you're focused on making more money on your channel and often times these videos also are good performing videos for your
audience I've heard different creators ERS talk about a strategy where they just focus on the high earning style of videos and it ends up actually growing the channel because those videos are the types of videos that the viewer wants to watch which is part of the reason why they actually generate more income now step six it's actually a fairly simple step repeat again and again Step One is probably something that you're going to have solidified and you're going to just keep going but it doesn't hurt to go through and re-evaluate your goals and what you're
doing and what your channels about but the rest of the steps 2 3 4 5 six those are all you're just going to keep rinsing and repeating to be successful on YouTube you really have to give this some time and you have to put in the Reps and you have to keep making videos it took me a couple years before I really started figuring out how to make this whole thing work and my goal is is helping you jump start that process so you don't have to go through the pain that I went through making
hundreds of videos and getting no views on them because I didn't really know what I was doing and so you just want to go through this process research make videos that are targeted for your specific audience and then analyze your data looking for those patterns looking for those things that are working and making more of that kind of content you're going to find that you'll start building that audience and the momentum will really start growing and there's no secret hack and there's no special tip that's going to just make your channel take off really is
putting in the Reps and putting in the time and you have to be ready to make a lot of videos because if you want to build a YouTube channel look at all the successful creators how look at how much time and effort they've put into those channels how many videos they've made you have to be ready to do that because making a handful of videos isn't going to do anything it's all about being consistent over a long period of time and next you should check out this video right here which goes through a nine shot
formula that I use when I'm out filming by myself to make fun adventure videos I'll see you over there
