YouTube is an Ever evolving platform it's so much different than when I started this eight years ago man honestly if you would to asked me this even just a few years ago I want to start a YouTube channel what is it that I should be doing my answer would have been totally different than what I'm about to say I've had a lot of wins and a lot of losses on YouTube if I had to start my channel from zero in 2024 knowing what I know now this is what I would do let me just preface
this video by saying this is not a catapult schi to the top or growth hacks video the likelihood of you blowing up overnight on YouTube is highly unlikely and honestly you really don't even want that because it's just going to pigeon hole you into being known for something that you don't necessarily want to be known for you don't follow these other tips the death your channel could be as fast as the overnight blow up the truth is you got to put the work in simple as that all right let's get to the video if you're
thinking about starting a YouTube channel you 100% have a favorite creator or handful of creators work that you absolutely love maybe you love the way that they deliver the information or you love the way that they produce their videos or you just think that they're funny whatever the case may be if you would have asked me a couple years ago what should I do if I want to start a YouTube channel right now I would have probably told you to just emulate their style try it out see what you like about it what you don't
like about it and in turn you'll be able to develop your own style but in 2024 I'm not sure if that's the [Music] play I think the biggest problem with the emulation method is that you don't lean into your unfair advantage and unfair Advantage is your element that gives you an edge over the competition now I know what you probably thinking I don't have no advantage over nobody but the truth is we all do my unfair Advantage is that before I started this YouTube channel I had been freelancing music videos for four six years prior
I wasn't a professional by any means but it gave me a unique perspective Ive on the film making space and I was able to bring that to YouTube where this wasn't as abundant now I'm able to utilize these skills like cinematography and also scripting and planning out projects just like the one you're looking at right now it doesn't have to be related to film making at all though are you funny did you excel in writing at school are you great at telling stories are you a working professional in the field that you're trying to make
YouTube videos about what is it about you that makes you great do more of that and do less of what you're terrible at for the sake of replicating somebody else's success say your favorite Creator is charismatic and great on camera but you absolutely suck at that you're more of a Storyteller you tell incredible stories you can tell an incredible story and just throw b-roll over top of a voice recording you don't have to get in front of camera and suck at it say your favorite Creator is great at creating concise pieces things that take a
lot of time to plan a lot of writing and you just absolutely suck at that you're better at just going off the top of the head being funny living in the moment do more of that man lean into your own personal unfair advantage and not theirs and I'm I'm not saying don't use other creators content as inspiration for your own but make sure everything that you do you put your own spin on it so it's truly yours we don't need a clone we already got the original when I first started my channel8 years ago I
had absolutely no idea or even belief that this would get to as big as it's gotten I was really just creating random Vlogs because I enjoyed it and that's cool because it kept me in it but if I would to start my channel from zero in 2024 I would think about where I would like to see my channel in the future and try to align my current content with that if You' asked me a few years ago what to do I would have just told you to throw a bunch of stuff at the wall and
see what sticks but the problem with this is that it makes it very hard for an audience to stick with you through this phase if they loved you for doing one thing and then you start doing 29 other things why would they stay you got to identify the quality of content that you want to eventually provide and work towards that straight out of the gate if you want to provide a slightly less bit of quality but you want to produce more of it works towards that if you want to produce a higher quality video and
produce less of it work towards that it's really no right or wrong in this either like McDonald's isn't selling festar meals but they're still getting millions of clients it's no right or wrong another thing that I would do is I would identify the types of brands that I would like to work with in the future and try to align my Channel with the type of place that they would want to advertise at I didn't know it in the past at the time but me doing those free reviews for Canon cameras Sony cameras Panasonic cameras is
the sole reason that I was able to work with them in the [Music] future slightly after I started my YouTube channel I got that one hit of success and I was hooked I put my blinders on for that 100K plaque and I was down to do almost anything to get it so when I got that one first viral video my sole purpose became trying to replicate that success if you have asked me a few years ago what should I do do I would have 100% told you just double down on whatever's working but knowing what
I know now I'm not sure if that's the move I mean on one hand if what has gone viral for you is perfectly aligned with where you see a channel in the future 100% keep going with it that's great but if you just so happen to be in that weird phase where you were just throwing stuff at the wall to see what sticks and a oneoff video goes viral do not keep making those same videos for the sake of subscriber bro it's just going to hurt you in the long run you're going to get burnt
out because you're going to be trying to make content that you actually want to make because you're trying to upkeep that previous success from that oneof viral video then you're going to be known for something that you don't want to be known for and in the future if you try to Pivot to make the content that you actually want to make it's going to be way harder for you to keep those subscribers in your audience it's not the move if I was growing my channel from zero knowing what I know now in 2024 I would
not allow the analytics to irrationally skew my judgment on the type of content that I want to make one of the most vital tools for emerging YouTubers or even the ogs is the free video editor cap cut and these features make it a no-brainer gone are the days of spending hours chopping up a talking head video the new remove filler words feature scang video clip highlights all gaps and filler words and allows you to instantly delete them with the click of a button this literally cuts down hows it work autoc captions allows you to automatically
add text captions to your video without the hassle typing on every word and cap cut also has powerful color grading tools to get your video looking as best as it possibly can if you're an upcoming Creator on the budget or just looking to take advantage of these groundbreaking features make sure to check out capcut using Link in the description below it's extremely easy to use and I highly recommend it now let's get into the behind the scenes of how I make this [Music] video another video let's get it I'm excited but I'm a little bit
stressed out about this one the main reason being I don't have as much time as I usually do ideally I would like to just work on this video as long as it would take me to finish it but sponsors man we got to get that bread so let's get this drain rolling not a great thing about this video is that we're not going to be using lighting well to my knowledge so that and itself should cut down a ton of time that it will take to produce this video I want to start this video off
with some good old car mount shots I love car mount shots you know me you know these are my goto now this right here is the cam tree gripper this is a single suction cut piece from hold on from this bigger carmount set right here now this caramel set is actually terrible and I would not recommend that you buy it it does allow you get some creative angles but it just the Assembly of it is just freaking terrible but I like this single suction cup from it that's what I've been using inside of the car
because it's the fastest thing to use and I just got a GoPro grip head on the top of it not grip head uh ball head on the top of it if you are looking for a car mount I've done tons of different videos on different Affordable Car mounts I'll leave some link down in the description if you don't have one definitely get one because it allows you to get some really creative shots but with this single one I only recommend that you use this inside of a car do not strap this to the outside of
your car for anything this is extremely dangerous but in the car it's cool if it falls it'll just fall on the ground realized that framing was freaking terrible but we still going to Let It Rock cuz it's a BTS and we don't care how it looks we probably blown out in some more stuff turns out I think that I'm going to need to make a bigger build for the car rig I don't think that this single suction cup will be what I need to get the angle that I need inside of the car and also
a thing that I don't like about doing a single build is this has so much freaking slip on it so I'mma probably build like a two suction cut Mount and then do the car and we get a roll let's do it all right this is current dilemma with my Mountain situation I'm holding it up watch when I let it go that's what it's going to be doing the whole time which also isn't good for this win even I don't know I got to figure this out but this is taking me way too long right now
I might have to abandon this shot unfortunate unfortunate man I've been here for like 40 minutes trying to figure the shout out and I just I'm wasting so much time this happens though where you have a shot in mind you try to set the shot up for a long time and then you realize you should have just kept it at a simplified form I'm about to just go back to a singular suction cup if I do do a car mount shot at all which I don't freaking know this is just like taking me off man
it's the process though S I go this probably looks terrible but yo after all of the wrestling and trying to get the shot to look good this is what I landed on r5c Sigma 24 mm f1.4 and then I got that mounted to that uh back passenger side window suck cut Mount super simple it's going going to be the first angle but but I'm sure I'm going to run some more just to make sure I get the most out of this setup let's get it I'm feeling a little discouraged but I know once I get
these shots it's going to be up let's go all right next location the great thing about Virginia is that beauty is never far away you can't find many cityscapes here where I live in Virginia anyways if you want City looks they're pretty much non-existent but if you just want a beautiful landscape beautiful sunset all you got to do is drive down the street man that's the one thing I do love about being in Virginia it's super chill it's not a lot to worry about it always looks good I used to get like extremely discouraged about
being home and having a shoot at home I used to think man it looks boring here it's no buildings it's no City looks but if you ever feel like that where you live the real key is to hone in on the beauties of the city or town that you're in if it's vintage lean into that if it's Landscapes lean into that if it's a city obviously lean into that beaches all that good stuff like that man never feel discouraged though it's always beautiful to someone else this first location though I'm like literally just on the
side of the road you can see this uh this posted fence right here beautiful behind it nice little cityscape not cityscape landscape look I'm really just about to set up the r5c with the 24 mm on it and just sit on his fence and get some lines off and just let the location speak on it speak for itself yeah let's do it tripping over my words right now [Music] hey those shots turned out a success great shots another really great thing about this location is that right across the street is also something fire so I'm
literally going to pick this gear up and move it over there but I want to talk to y'all real quick about something the fact that this is a video about starting a YouTube channel I feel like this topic is very on point on point relevant relevant is the word I'm looking for this topic is very very relevant if you do this for long enough you will run into this problem or it's not even a problem you will run into this coincidence I guess is what you would call it where you're thinking about an idea or
you're in the process of creating a video then you're browsing YouTube right before you shoot that video or while you're even in production for that video and one of your creative peers will have uploaded the exact same concept for a video and at this point you got to make the ultimate decision of dang do I even continue to go through with this idea because it's already been done at this point or do I just do it my way and just let it ride and more often than not the videos are going to be completely different
anyways the reason I bring up this concept is that this morning I go on my YouTube subscription fee and I see potato jet uploaded a video that was very similar to this one right here where it's just I guess tips on starting a YouTube channel at this current moment now this isn't by any means an original idea we've seen this hundreds of times done before and we're going to continue to see it done more in the future if you run into this issue if this happens to you just make sure that your video is your
video Throw Your spin on it make it your own concept make it into your own style develop it so that it's yours regardless of if it's the exact same topic don't sleep on your perspective because if somebody out there looking for your unique perspective and it might be on the exact same topic about a video that they just watched so stroll with it see you through to the end all right these next shots right here the focal point of these shots is just a complete wide open landscape shot but these trees are kind of the
focal point of it I like them they feel a little eerie but the fact that they're against a blue Sunny Sky backdrop it makes them a little bit more soft but I like the contrast between the two fields in the shot it's also wide open I can breathe in a shot if I just walk through it so that's what I'm going to do [Music] the shot is got man I'm feeling good your boy just got a brand new backpack because of y'all y'all don't even know it man for the Freezy let's go yall probably didn't
hear me in that last clip because it was kind of loud over there but I got a brand new backpack because of y'all for free I'm hyped about it too this is a Timber bag my uh bag that I use for all my cinema stuff is also about Tima and I love that bag so I wanted to get a Tima camera bag as well this one's fire too it emulates the one that I previously had which was the low proo tactic joint I don't I forgot what it's called but the reason the how I got
this for free is a couple months ago when the iPhone 15 Pro Max dropped I dropped a video about film making accessories forward and I was able to sign up to moments affiliate program after I dropped that video and from the accessories that y'all bought I got some affiliate money for free so I went to cop this this is a dope backpack though forever grateful for y'all man y'all be coming through for the kid I'm honestly extremely surprised at how fast this is going compared to the last video that I made but the fact that
I don't have to use lighting makes this so much easier along with the fact that the location that I'm at right now is just beautiful from every single angle it's just making it easy dog all I got to do is turn left or turn right right I got a new angle for the video so we just going to continue that and keep it rolling Dam there we go y see these bushes behind me these bushes look good like I think I'mma frame up a shot right here just with the bushes like they just look good
man the sun's creeping through it's just viy right here man got to get this shot in real quick my bad I keep kicking a triod that's why I keep on you know getting Whiplash that's my [Music] fault [Music] yeah it turns out your boy is a and I forgot to scoop another battery for the BTS camera so y'all are on the iPhone what do you know H now I realize I've been doing a bad job at explaining the shots that I'm getting and why I'm getting them so let me just kind of break this one
down to my philosophy behind capturing this shot right here now this shot is not special at all the things about the shot that I do really like though is that the sun is peeking through these bushes of the tree which gives me a little bit of light separation you know spottiness on my face with the lighting but the shot also has some really cool leading lines in the background with the tops of the bushes or trees and also this uh Edge on the sidewalk so that's really why I'm doing it I'm offset myself in the
frame so I'm not Center be more on the uh right side of the frame looking straight cool little composition nothing over the top all right I see that bench right there that's what I'm looking for I'm going probably lower the camera down so we have some of this foreground with these bushes and then try to get that as the focal point of the shot it should be [Music] cool all right man day too I ain't going to lie to y'all I am freaking flustered right now I'm I'm feeling a little anxious I'm not really feeling
the process right now but it's mainly because when you shooting during the day man time is extremely limited that short period of time that short period of of sunlight that you get when the Sun is setting is extremely stressful like especially during the winter because you know it gets freaking dark at 5:30 p.m. and on top of that I got so much other stuff to do I need to go to the gym I'm trying to cram That Into The Day The Show Must Go On I'm out here in 50° weather with shorts on because I
got to go to the gym right after this so your boy be working man I got to get that bread we got to get paid we got to deliver the content it's uh it's all a blessing man but sometimes this is a difficult thing to juggle you know often it is often this is a very difficult job to J it's insane to even say that this is my job grateful though I really like this location that I'm at but it's honestly just a Spur at A- moment type of location the sun's about to go down
in probably like 30 minutes so I'm trying to put together a build get some shots off to throw on the video before it gets dark because I can't let this day go to waste I just got sponsors that need delivering I got a lot of other things I got to do so let's get to [Music] it [Music] all right man let's figure this out okay there we go okay so from this area you can see this scene looks pretty wide open it looks cool but in terms of the lighting you see the way that the
sun is hitting me you probably can't hear me because there so much freaking traffic the lighting splits really well so I want to shoot that way so I think I'm going to sit on the back of my car get an angle from that way and then we'll get in for some close-ups but I'm really just positioning the shot this way for the lighting strict got to get good [Music] lighting right now I feel like I'm speed dating you know when you speed date you don't think too much about it you just try to fill it
out and that's how I feel right now with these shots that I'm getting I can't think too much because if you look right there I can't see the screen the sun is literally almost behind this tree line so I got to get what I can get real fast and just hope that I got it hope [Music] y'all can see in a matter of like 2 minutes that sun is pretty much gone and I am dark as can be so what I'm going to do is I'mma walk up to the top of this hill and we
get a we get a a brand new Sunset you feel me you ever running trying to chase the light man always go for High Ground cuz that's where the sun going to be all right I got to utilize this little bit of sunlight that I got so I'mma just mess around in this field these ain't my favorite shots that I've ever shot in my life but sometimes you just got to you just got to roll with it man you just got to laugh at the at the adversity that comes with creating and uh that's really
just the entire message of a video like this about somebody wanting to start a YouTube channel you going to run into days like this you going to run into times like this when you're trying to film something and everything is just wrong where you got only an hour of time to shoot something and you just got to make the best out of that situation and in order for you to continue this for an extended period of time keep that longevity you have to find the fun in just the adversity and you have to get it
done comes very often comes very [Music] often [Music] I got this one piece of hair sticking up that looks absolutely insane but it looks worse now I would say today was a success I got flustered but I didn't allow it to I didn't allow it to guide my mood obviously I'm a little upset I didn't get to the location that I wanted to get to but at the end of the day like when it's time to show up you got to show up I don't know the root of this quote or I really don't even
know the correct way to say it but I think that it's absolutely true that us as humans however long we have to complete something is how long we need to get it completed so like if you have 9 months to complete an essay in school you probably wait until like 2 days before that deadline to get it done I got an hour shooting right now I got a deadline with a sponsor and I got it done and if I had another week to do this video I would take another week to do this video so
you really just got to get what you can done in the time frame that is given to you just work with it roll with the punches man day three this should be the last and final day we've been cooking on this video I ain't going to lie I thought that this was going to take way longer than it took but this year be the final day the great thing about today is that it's not super sunny it's kind of like overcast but we still got that little bit of Pop of light coming through the clouds
it reminds me of like LA on a hazy day but that's great because we don't have to wait until specific time to start shooting and we can pretty much shoot from any angle we don't have to try to figure out the best angle of the sun and the scene we can just get stuff that looks [Music] cool [Music] all right so this is the next location yall probably can't hear me because it's super duper freaking loud right here I'll put sub toas right here so y can see what so y can actually hear what I'm
saying or see what I'm saying these concrete slabs back here are fire I love them I really love the way that this Shadow is hitting this wall but I think that I waited just a tad bit too late to shoot it because if I stand in this vicinity then I'll be shadowed and I don't think I'll pop out in the scene so I might just have to walk up the street and shoot a blank concrete slab it sucks though man because that shape on that wall just adds so much back there composition wise [Applause] unfortunate
man this spot this clean this clean concrete slab actually looks a little bit better because it has like a platform for me to kind of stand on I don't know why I decided to wear white forest today like what am I thinking I'm walking through mud I'm walking the grass dirt I got on black military force I'm tripping right now we got the concrete slab back here what y'all can see and then you also see like this platform right here I got the frame framed up Center frame you can see the platform you can see
me you can see the uh the slab of concrete but you can also see a slight sliver of the sky in the background which actually adds a slight bitter color pop to the scene Everything feels a little bit warm in the scene but just to have that little bit of color contrast at the top of the scene just adds a lot to it so you on the r5c we got the 24 mm Sigma I'm going shoot a wide and then uh we're going to move in for some close-ups kind of play around with dep the
field um Super Simple Man all these shots in this video are super duper simple and I hope that that's inspiration to y'all that you can go out and do this stuff what I'm doing right now is not difficult it just takes a little bit of willpower being a content creator full-time content creator full-time YouTuber if you want to get into this a lot of this is just existential BS that you got to deal with mentally it's not physically hard to do the job once you get out of your mind and stop thinking about what everybody
going to think about what you putting out or if it's good enough or you trying to one up yourself every single video this thing becomes comes fairly easy you just got to get out and have fun man and if you are passionate about something it'll read through the lens hopefully y'all can see how passionate I am about this how much fun I am having making it regardless of all the BS that comes with it like the sun going down and it just getting significantly darker and now I got to change my exposure that just comes
with it but we having fun it's cool man it's no pressure no pressure at [Music] all [Music] all right that shot turned out dope the closeup I was going to go to another location but honestly I think I'm about to just exhaust this location and if I need to get more shots I'll move around um just for the sake of time I don't really got a lot of time right now so we got to get what we can get and um a easy way to get what you need done and still have it look somewhat
good is to use depth the field shall dep the field if it's too ugly you could always blur it out I know that's terrible cinematography advice but you know sometimes you got to do what you got to do I like this area right here we got a lot of different leading lines you got the the top of the wall then you got the this one wall right here that kind of gots her eye that way and then we got the tops of these little posts so I think I'm going probably post up in between one
of these and get like a slight off axis angle uh just to play into the favor of the leading line so let's do [Music] it [Music] we rolling I'm going get this done because I've been trying to do this clip I probably tried to do this clip like five times already but this is the one right here I got some more stuff to say I know this is a long video but if you made it this far in the video thank you so much you're the goat appreciate you I enjoy the fact that you watch
these videos in its entirety go ahead and drop this down in the comment section below to let me know that you made it so I can go ahead and drop you a heart or something in the comment section I don't freaking know but look as I'm wrapping up this video I'm realizing that I didn't talk about growth at all growth tips nothing about growth on YouTube and I didn't want this to be a growth video because it's so many other videos on YouTube about people who know so much more than me about this topic they
know about how the algorithm Works they know how to hack it they know how to uh get in the search engine and get up on the homepage and all that sort of stuff like that that ain't really my Lane but I do have some valuable tips that I feel like will help you stay on track while you're going through the process of being a YouTuber because I've been doing this for a long time and I been strayed off path a couple times these things right here keep you straight on path head forward no looking right
left back none of that stuff like that all right and I'm going try to fire these off really quick because I don't want this video to be extremely long it's already long all right the first tip um about growth on YouTube is that nobody cares about you and I know that that sounds harsh but that's just the truth when you're just starting out a YouTube channel nobody knows who you are so you making a ton of videos about your perspective about something is kind of counterintuitive to growth because nobody knows who you are Instead try
to make videos about things that people are already interested in and then in those videos you'll be able to implement things about yourself your approach um your personality all of that your Charis your charisma all that good stuff like that don't make a 100 videos about your morning routine because nobody knows who you are even though these can catch win the likelihood of them catching win is highly unlikely when you're a new channel and nobody even knows who you are don't make videos from the perspective of a million people already knowing who you are it's
just not going to work the second tip is that Trends are cool as long as they're relevant so I'm a filmmaker on YouTube I'm in the film making space I guess so it's tons of of cameras that come out and people are super interested in them it would be smart for me to hop on those trends that are relevant to my Niche I'm not going to make a video about the brand new hot wings from popey's because that's a trending topic in the food Niche you know stay on topic all right it's cool to follow
Trends and hop on waves as long as they're relevant to your Niche on YouTube and that's where you want to see a channel going the future that's cool all right the third tip is that quality isn't always quality as a filmmaker it's very easy for you to believe that the sharpness of your video or the angles of your video or the lighting in your video equates to Quality on YouTube but that's not necessarily the case true quality and content online as a whole not even just on YouTube on Instagram or Tik Tok all of that
is the three pillars is it inspiring did is it teaching me something or am I being motivated no that's not it it's INSP cation it's uh education and it is uh what is the third one what is the third one entertainment that's what it is my bad I just had a brain F am I being entertained am I learning something or am I being inspired those are the three value pillars and without these three things all your fanciness and all your cool camera tricks and all your cool compositions and crisp AK footage don't mean nothing
the people care about what they're getting away from the content and that's a selfish way to look at but as a viewer that's what it is our time is limited I don't got time to watch you do all these cool angles that ain't really teaching me or entertaining me at all so think about the true quality what am I going to bring to the table quality does not always equate to Quality it's very easy to get stuck in this mentality as a filmmaker because that's our job a lot of the times to make something look
as cool as possible and to make it as sharp as possible but on YouTube quality don't really equate to Quality all the time the next tip is never remove yourself the past year on YouTube for me personally I got into a space of like trying to make my videos as concise as possible let's trim it all the way down let's trim off all the fat I wanted to be 0% body fat on the video no fluff straight to the point 100% information boom boom boom like I'm trying to gamify creating content and that ain't really
the play because I got to a point where I'm trying to trim off all of the fat off the video that I'm removing myself from it I'm removing my personality my take on things my uh my my Charisma like I'm just losing a lot of myself in the video because I'm trying to chimmer down and make it as short as possible so whenever you get into the space of like mastering your videos and trying to make them as concise as possible don't remove yourself because you are what's going to keep people coming back to a
video there are tons of creators whose personality that I like that I'm down to watch their videos regardless of what they're even about and that's because I enjoy them I enjoy their uh their take on things I enjoy their personality and with the way that I was making videos this past year trying to trim the fat all the way down if I remove all of these things then I don't give the audience an opportunity to feel that at all so don't ever remove yourself from the videos all right the next tip is nobody owes you
anything it's very easy for you to get into a space of like feeling entitled to viewership or feeling entitled to uh engagement or feeling entitled to even a sell a customer in your business like nobody owes you anything you know just roll with the punches don't get into a point of being bitter and thinking that you deserve these views because your videos got more quality than this other guy and vice versa like that ain't really it all right nobody owes you anything just keep rolling with the punches create create the content that you want to
make consistently make quality content the viewership and the viewers will come and last and final tip because I want to end this and I want to get up out of here is uh invest in vid IQ or tool buddy these are really great tools for doing research on YouTube for uh getting content ideas for seeing how other videos are performing for some of your peers uh these are just great tools they are kind of expensive but if you're trying to take this serious I do think that these are 100% worth the money all right lot
of talking lot of talking a lot of talking but if you enjoyed this video you had to have enjoyed this video you watched it all the way through do something for me engagement watch drop it a like Drop it a comment let me know what was your favorite shot in the video your least favorite shot in the video did you even care about the shots in the video was it a great video was it a bad video let me know down in the comment section below do something all right I'm done talking make sure y
check out cap cut it's free it's a great video editing platform and the remove fow words feature is actually gamechanging if you're doing a lot of talking hit videos you can chop those down and literally seconds with this feature is insane all right I'm out [Music] peace
