in this video I'm going to walk you through a five-step YouTube success guide that will give you a clear path to monetization of your YouTube channel in 2025 we are going to cover everything from making sure you've picked the right Niche to developing your own viral content strategy the goal is to give you a concrete plan to hit 1,000 subscribers 4,000 hours of watch time so that you can monetize your YouTube channel by the end of 2025 but just before we get into this video I want to make sure that you download the success guide
in the video description so that you can fill it out as we go through it in this video it is 100% free and we're not even going to ask you for your email address so you've got nothing to lose and the first step is what I like to call the foundations these are just a few important steps you want to follow before you start making any videos so that you don't waste time picking the wrong Niche making videos people don't want to watch and most importantly of all you don't enjoy making and it starts by
completing this checklist going through this process will ensure that the topic or Niche you pick is something that you're passionate about and you won't get bored of doing my advice is to make sure that you check off at least two of these before you move ahead with the next steps in the guide and then you have two important questions that you need to answer what topics make you lose track of time and what knowledge or skills do you love sharing with others the first question establishes your unlimited passion for a topic it means you're willing
to sacrifice your own time and put it into your videos and do it for months years possibly even decades if YouTube becomes your career the second question confirms your commitment to being selfless you're putting your potential audience first by educating them entertaining them inspiring them you're giving them value and hopefully at the end of any video satisfaction there has to be a realization an acceptance on your part that to begin with you'll be making YouTube videos for free that could be hundreds if not thousands of hours of your time so it has to be worth
doing for reasons Beyond just Revenue whether it be learning new skills building confidence or making videos just because you love to do it this passion for creativity is what's going to sustain you until you've hit those monetization requirements next you're going to want to verify your total addressable Market Tam or Tam basically your Tam is the total number of people who are interested in your Niche or content topics and the reason you want to do this is so that there are enough people who want to watch your videos so that you can build up an
audience that you would be happy with let me give you an example of what we're talking about we'll jump into the niche of vegan desserts and do a search what we can see here are videos tend to get tens of thousands sometimes hundreds of thousands of views and if you go more broadly into the vegan niche as a whole there is a potential to get millions of views Plus on a video on the other hand if my interest was in vintage typewriters most videos in this Niche are getting a couple of thousands of views of
than just hundreds of views as great as these videos may be for their intended audience they're just not going to get as many views as the vegan Niche now don't get me wrong there is a passionate audience for vintage typewriters as there are for all types of topics and niches on YouTube but the total addressable Market of that audience is relatively small so there may be a low ceiling to the number of views and subscribers your channel will receive if you're cool with that understanding of the total addressable Market and that your interest in the
topic trumps the revenue you could potentially make do not let me stop you start sharing your passion for vintage typewriters now once you verified your T the final part of the foundations is figuring out your point of difference or unique Factor this is going to help you stand out against your competition and make you a more attractive choice for the viewer if they know they are going to get something they can't get anywhere else so you want to answer the following questions what unique knowledge or experience can you lean into this is going to help
you start to uncover your unique skills and ideas that you can turn into content that hasn't been made before by anyone else then to go even deeper you also want to answer what's missing in your Niche that you can provide for example maybe you've researched your competition and found out that no one is making really high quality thumbnails which could be a way of differentiating your channel from the competition or how about this for a unique perspective you can take cool video ideas from different niches and Transplant them into yours this can be done through
the vid IQ remix tool that's available with our browser extension whenever you see a thumbnail and title a remix button will appear when you click it it will remix the title into an idea that's relevant for your Niche it is a fantastic way to inject fresh ideas and formats into your videos or maybe when it comes to these style of a videos in your Niche you found that no one is using storytelling to bring them to life this is a really powerful technique that a lot of new creators are leaning into into these days to
bundle this all together what you're looking for is a gap in the Creator market so to speak that you can fill meaning your content stands out and you don't get lost in a sea of competition now we've got the foundation sorted let's talk about understanding your audience and creating content they'll actually want to watch this is probably the most important part of this guide because if you get it wrong you may end up with a very passive audience that ends up watching maybe one of your videos and then abandoning your content So to avoid this
what we need to do is create what I call a target audience profile this is so that we get a clear idea of who our ideal viewer is and what sort of content is going to get their attention so here are a few things that you'll need to find out and the gain they're available on the work sheeet their age range their pain points what problems are they trying to solve this is especially important if you have some sort of education-based Channel where you're making search-based content that's trying to predict what the biggest questions are
that the viewer needs answers to but if you are an entertainment based Channel then you want to find out what they're interested in sports video games trains Geography building a business losing weight the list here is endless and finally what are their values as an example you're passionate about Fitness so your target audience might be aged between 25 and 35 they have no time for the gym they're confused about nutrition they want actionable strategies around fat loss their interests include a carnivore diet healthy eating and they have a goal that maybe they want to run
a half marathon in the next 12 months and their Value Center around hard work being career-driven and improving themselves every day now the chances are this ideal viewer profile might be quite similar to you because he'll share the same passions values and goals as your audience but by thinking about all of this and writing it down it almost becomes a contract that you are going to commit to serving that audience as best you can and that's where the viewers will find the value the heart the sole of your content but to go even deeper now
you want to start studying your competition this is because you likely share a similar audience and you can get detailed insights into what topics formats ideas values grab your audience's attention so next you want to make a list of three successful channels in your Niche and ask yourself this what type of content formats are working for these channels and what's missing from these channels that you can fill with your own content by answering these two questions you're going to be able to come up with your content buckets which are ideas and video formats that have
a high chance of becoming viral moments for your channel they've already been proven to perform well for your competitors and are likely to perform well for your audience as well so you want to start to write these ideas and formats down so that when you decide to start making your own content you have a lot of ideas to get you going and to find the absolute viral gems from your competition let me show you a tool that makes this process easy even faster and easier it's called the video outlier tool and it identifies videos that
are performing well above average for a channel for example this video about Tesla maintenance is performing 79 times better than a Channel's average video but we're not done there because what you can also do is filter outlier videos by small channels only so if I set these subscriber ceiling to 1,000 we find this video about epic EV Road Journeys that's performing more than 100 times better than the channels average so for a new Tesla Enthusiast Channel what we've established is that car maintenance and epic Road Journeys that tests the range of a vehicle might be
viral topics to tackle first so if you want to try out this tool for yourself head on over to app. vid iq.com and once you've created an account you can try all of our tools along with that remix tool I mentioned earlier through the vid IQ browser extension all right so now you know who your target audience is and how to find potential viral video ideas the next step in your monetization journey is to set some realistic goals for your channel so we're going to break this down into 30day 90-day 6 month and 12 month
goals so that you have a clear and actionable plan to achieve monetization in 2025 in the first 30 days you need to decide when you are going to post your first video this is super important because it makes things real and gives you a deadline it will prevent you from staying in a constant state of procrastination it is a real shame when I hear someone say I'm thinking about starting a YouTube channel and they've been saying it for months sometimes even years and I hear it so often here's the thing no one is going to
make the video for you and motivate you to start YouTube is a selfstarter industry you have to find that drive from within so stick a pin in the calendar and get to work once you've picked a date you'll need to decide how much you want to invest in your channel each week so that you can hold yourself accountable if you can only spare a single hour of your time to devote to your YouTube channel each week honestly that's going to be really tough because most tasks whether they be scripting filming editing take much longer than
that and every time you restart a creative task it does take a while to get back into the flow of things so 1 to three hours a week should be considered the absolute minimum for your YouTube channel and I would recommend doing all of that in one chunk if you can 3 to 10 hours is where you'll start to see some real progress and again I would recommend chunks like 3 hours three times a week I would say The Sweet Spot is probably between 10 and 15 hours a week again you'll be seeing lots of
progress in the content that you make but you won't be getting overwhelmed by the YouTube experience and when you break it down that is around about 2 hours a day but guess what I didn't follow my own advice here back when I was starting out to give you a little insight the moment I started YouTube I was at it at least three hours a night every night because I fell in love with video making very quickly and I was willing to sacrifice other Hobbies such as playing video games so I don't know maybe the better
advice is to do as much as you can up to the point where it starts to feel a bit like a chore as for upload frequency we can get into the weeds very quickly with this but generally I would recommend starting with one video per week you don't want to burn yourself out there's going to be a lot of new things you're going to have to learn but at the same time trying to make the perfect video first time out will just lead to creative paralysis you want to get some reps in have some experience
of the entire creative process from idea to publishing over time you'll start to get a better feel for what Cadence you prefer it could be one video a day or it could be one video a month browse YouTube and you'll find successful creators all fall into their own rhythms the advice here is to learn skills and gain experience lean towards video quantity but to build an audience and create a deep connection with that audience lean towards video quality when you start out you're probably in the learning phase more than you are in the building phase
of your Channel all right next you want to set some 90-day targets my advice is to be realistic that way you won't be discouraged if you don't hit 1,000 subscribers in your first 90 days so a solid goal could be 12 videos published 100 subscribers 400 watch hours I know this doesn't sound like much after 3 months but YouTube is all about momentum and you're just coming out of a starting block now when it comes to your six-month goals this is where I do think you want to be considering the momentum that you've built so
far so again realistically you've now published more than 20 videos you have between 250 to 500 subscribers and a thousand hours of watch time what you'll also likely have is a range of videos now that have performed better than average along with others that have performed worse than average this will be useful for making data driven decisions going forward and probably most important of all you'll know whether you love doing YouTube or not if the answer is yes and you can't wait to start about your next video then get to it you'll likely now be
a creator for life if you find success lean into the things that work and identify your bottlenecks and weaknesses and dedicate time and videos to working on improving them this means that your 12month YouTube goal will be a little more bespoke tailored to your individual needs we often talk about improving each video by 1% so what is that 1% going to be for you examples include writing better titles with more curiosity creating eye-catching for thumbnails that aren't overly complex trimming your video hooks down to 10 seconds or less getting better at talking to camera all
of this along with 50 published videos 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 watch hours are realistic goals for those first 365 days of your YouTube Journey everything we've covered is incredibly important to getting your channel monetized but it doesn't mean anything if you're not able to consistently publish videos that viewers can watch that's why the next step is all about streamlining your production so that making videos is fast and easy and you don't get burnt out or bored of creating content so the way you do this is by deciding what days you'll record when you'll edit when
you'll upload the goal here is to build a routine make YouTube a habit and be in the right heads space when you work on your videos maybe this means getting up an hour earlier twice a week to edit your videos or blocking out Sunday afternoons to batch film some content before you start worrying about the working week you'll figure out what works best for you now for the people really serious about YouTube watching this video who are absolutely committed to getting their channel monetized in 2025 and I'll assume you all are since you're this deep
into the video then there's one last step to bring all of this together and that is to create an action plan for the next 24 hours and 7 days this is going to make sure that this isn't just another how-to YouTube video you've watched but never put into practice so I want you to make a list of a tasks you're going to complete in the next 24 hours these could be things like completing this guide that you're filling out right now pick your first video topic or setting up your recording space it doesn't really matter
what you pick here the most important thing is that you get in Motion in this crucial 24 hours and then start making another list of the tasks you'll complete in the next 7 days this could be things like pick your next three video ideas Rec record your first video make your first thumbnail and then as you committed to earlier in this video with that PIN in that calendar within the first 30 days you'll have published that first video on YouTube but that is an epic adventure in itself and this is a complete beginner's guide on
how to do it
