5 YouTube Tips For Beginners

I started the Project Life Mastery YouTube channel in early 2012 and over the years, it's become one of the most effective ways for me to reach and impact millions of people around the world.

Over the years, I've been able to slowly grow my YouTube channel to over 75,000+ subscribers and 4,000,000 views, which is pretty awesome.

The content on the channel now exceeds over 350,000 views per month and gains over 6,500 new subscribers every month.  I've now hit a “snowball” effect where things are growing every month.

Over the years, I've learned A LOT about YouTube and can provide a lot of YouTube tips for beginners.

I get asked all the time, “How can I grow my YouTube channel?  What should I focus on?  How do I get more views and subscribers?”

If you're just starting out with YouTube, it can be overwhelming and even frustrating to grow.  That's why I decided to create this video blog on 5 YouTube tips for beginners that can help someone get started and grow their channel.

Watch the video below:

(Click here to watch on YouTube)

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Video transcript

Five YouTube Tips for Beginners. Now, if you're just starting out on YouTube, then I understand it could be challenging and even frustrating to really grow your YouTube channel because every YouTuber goes through a process at the beginning of putting out content, publishing videos, but nobody really cares, right?

Your videos aren't getting views or YouTube channel hasn't been established yet in YouTube. You don't have any subscribers or anything like that. You have to go through a process at the beginning which takes time to really build your YouTube channel, get followers, get subscribers and ultimately get views.

While there's a lot of different strategies that I can share with you in this video, things that have worked for me now to get to the point of where I'm at which at the time of this video is around 75,000 subscribers, over four million views, understand that the beginning phases for me were very slow.

It's almost like the grasses are growing, and then all of a sudden just skyrockets, and that's the phase that I'm at right now because I've published so many videos and I've built up my YouTube channel to have such an authority in the eyes of YouTube that my videos rank really well on YouTube. YouTube does a lot of promotion and marketing for me.

When you're first starting out, there's a lot of things to focus on but I really want to focus you in on I believe the five most important things, these five tips that can help you get started. If you're someone watching this right now that's brand new to YouTube, maybe you're considering starting a YouTube channel or maybe you've already got a channel set up but you're in the beginning phases, you really want to know how to grow it, I think these five things can really help you over the long term if you focus on them.

Get outside yourself and just do it

Again, understand it's a long-term process. It takes time to really grow your YouTube channel. Maybe I'll do another video for those that are a little bit more advanced. I'll share some tips and tricks on another video. Make sure you subscribe by the way to get access to that next video.

The five tips that I have, first thing is really simple which is basically just do it. It might sound really simple and very rhetoric, but the truth is, is that publishing YouTube videos is very easy, and what holds people back is they make it harder than it needs to be. There's a lot of barriers that people have about just putting themselves on YouTube, just getting behind a camera and actually putting themselves out there.

I understand it could be scary. I can understand you might be nervous about that and you might have some fears of failure and rejection and all these things. Really overcoming that is really the first step in having success on YouTube. Getting outside of yourself and not worrying so much about you. Focus on serving other people. Understand that you're creating YouTube videos, not for yourself. It doesn't really matter how you look at your videos.

A lot of people, they are so insecure about how they sound or how they look, and all those sorts of things that most people don't even notice. It's all in your head, guys. Most people don't even notice a lot of the things that you're so worried and insecure about. You have to really get outside yourself and just do it.

1. You don't need the right equipment

Other barriers that hold people back is they believe they need the right camera equipment. They need to have a really expensive camera, a microphone, and all that stuff. The truth is you don't. You don't need any of that stuff to get started. I've been doing this for a few years now, and as I started making money in my business, I invested in high-quality camera equipment and microphones and all that stuff. You have to understand, I didn't start that way. I started back in 2012 just with a little digital camera and a stack of books. That's all I did.

I just had a stack of books in my room, put the camera there. I didn't know anything about lighting, filming, any of that stuff. I just knew how to press a button and get in front of the camera and start talking.

Sure enough those videos, they're not the same quality as what my videos are today because I evolved. You have to understand that. You can't be a perfectionist in this process. You just have to get started. Just record videos and put them out there. The quality of the videos isn't as important as the content, what you're sharing in the videos, who you are in the videos. If you can communicate with passion, emotion or be exciting or entertaining in some way, you're going to stand out regardless of the quality of the video.

In fact, the number one YouTube video that I've published that's gotten over 700,000 plus views is my morning ritual, and it's a video that I did back in 2012 on my little digital camera in my room on a stack of books. During that video, my camera fell over. I didn't even edit that out. I just went and just put the camera back and just started talking again.

It goes to show that was my most popular video. My quality and everything has improved so much since then, and yet that's the one that has been the most popular on YouTube. Don't let anything hold you back, guys. Don't have any of these barriers or fears because understand, they're just excuses that are preventing you from taking action. Don't worry about the quality. If you have a laptop or a computer with a digital camera on it or webcam, use that. If you have an iPhone, use that.

A lot of my videos, like I have an expensive camera gear and stuff, but a lot of my videos, I use my iPhone. Now, I've upgraded my iPhone since to the iPhone 6s Plus which has a really high-quality camera, but you don't even need that high quality of a camera to get started. I had videos where I'm out of focus, it's blurry, the sound is cutting out, the lighting is horrible, and I still published those videos because I believe that in those videos, there's still a positive message. There's some valuable information that can still benefit someone.

If one person can benefit from my video, then I'm going to put it out there. I don't care what anyone else thinks. If one person can benefit, great. I'm happy with that because I don't want to have my fears or insecurities or issues hold me back from changing someone else's life and someone else benefiting from that video. That's really just the first step is just get outside of yourself, overcome these barriers, these fears that you have and just do it.

You get better over time. If you look back at my YouTube channel back in 2012, I've gotten better every single month, every single year. The more that you do it, the better that you get. Just do it. That's the most important thing. Don't make any excuses. Like I said, just do it frequently because that's going to help improve you and you're going to get better and better at it over time.

2. Be committed and consistent

Next tip that I have is the habit in consistency. Going back, the more that you publish, the better you're going to get it. If you want to get to YouTube, you have to understand, you have to commit to it. You can't dabble with it. You can't just publish a video once a month and really expect your YouTube channel to grow.

The more YouTube videos that you can put out there, the better. The more frequency, the more that you're going to be rewarded by YouTube because YouTube will reward you and they'll rank you better. They'll promote and market your videos, the more frequently you're putting out videos.

When I first started, I was putting out a YouTube video about once every two weeks to once every week. Today, I've upped that to almost every day putting out a video. I'd ideally like to get to the point where I'm putting out three videos a day. The more content you publish, the better that you get at YouTube and creating videos. Also, the more content you have out there on YouTube that has a chance of bringing in more subscribers and reaching a lot more people.

Consistency, frequency is very important, and also the habit. You have to understand, creating YouTube videos is a habit. Making sure that you're committed to it over the long term. You're not going to see results tomorrow, a week from now or even a month from now but really, six months and a year plus from now is where you're going to see the real rewards.

I've been doing this for a few years, and just now I'm seeing a big benefit and the real rewards of work that I did three years ago. If you have that consistency, that habit of doing it and just keep at it, you will be successful at this over the long term. That's a very important thing.

Understand that almost everyone else that's out there on YouTube is taking them time to get to where they're at. It didn't happen overnight. Just make sure that you have that consistency and that habit, and you'll get rewarded for that over a period of time.

3. Optimize your video for keywords

The third tip that I have is optimizing your videos for certain keywords. A lot of people I know, they create a YouTube channel and they come to me and say, “Okay. I've got all these videos out there. I've got my YouTube channel, but I'm still not growing. I don't have people that are coming to my videos yet. How can I get the views and subscribers and all that stuff?”

When I look at their channel, their channel doesn't have anything that people are really interested in. You have to understand, people go to YouTube to look or watch videos on certain subjects or certain issues or certain categories or certain topics and genres that are popular on YouTube that people are interested in.

If you publish videos on a bunch of content and information that nobody else cares about, no one's interested in, there's no demand for it, people aren't looking for it, then you're not going to reach anybody. You have to make sure that you're creating videos for people, not for yourself, not what you think is cool or your life, and all that stuff.

I understand some people have success of blogging just about themselves and everything, but for the most part to attract people, you have to optimize your videos for what other people are looking for. What are they searching for?

YouTube is great because they're a search engine, the number two search engine in the world. If you type in certain phrases or words in the YouTube search bar, YouTube will give you different suggestions. For example, if you go to the YouTube search bar right now and just type in the words how to, then YouTube is going to have a drop down of a bunch of suggestions of exact keywords that people are searching for on YouTube.

You essentially especially at the beginning stages want to publish videos on certain topics of what people are searching for, what are they typing in, what are they looking for, and then try to rank those videos on YouTube, so when people search for it, your video will come up and people will click on it and want to watch it.

That's one of the best tips that I can provide for you and to help grow your YouTube channel. You can't just put out videos on whatever you want and expect people to really be interested in that. Especially at the beginning phases, one thing I love about the beginning phases of a YouTube channel is you can almost do whatever you want because you don't have any subscribers or followers and nobody really cares what you're publishing. You can just start experimenting, put out videos on a ton of different topics and just see what gets traction and what really takes off for you.

Once you have subscribers over a period of time, you don't really have the luxury of doing that as much because every video that you publish is going to get a lot of views because your subscribers are going to see it. You have to tend your videos over a period of time more towards your audience as supposed to just wherever you want.

That's why the beginning stages is a great time to experiment and publish videos on all these different topics and keywords and different phrases, and just get a bunch of videos out there that can really help attract people to you.

Optimizing for keywords and typically, if you want to optimize a video for a  keyword, let's say it's how to exercise, you'd put that keyword in the title of the video. You'd have that keyword in a file name of the video. Before you actually upload the file, the file on your computer, you do want to make sure you rename that video file to have the keyword in that name. Upload that YouTube.

You want to make sure the keyword is mentioned at least three times in the description of the video, and also in the tags section for the video as well. Very important.

If you optimize it the right way, then you can rank for a lot of different keywords on YouTube. I've got a lot of videos that are ranked for a lot of really popular keywords that end up getting hundreds of thousands of views. It's about optimizing. This video right now, the title of it is probably going to be Five YouTube Tips for Beginners.

I chose that title because before I even created this video, I did research on YouTube and I identified that people are typing in the keyword YouTube tips for beginners. I'm creating a video on that subject just on that topic, and I'll probably rank it on YouTube for it once I publish it.

That's how I think. I still do that to this day. I don't do that with all my videos as much now, but especially when I first starting out. That is a really powerful strategy to attract people to you.

4. Ask people for engagement

Next tip that I have is in your videos, ask people for engagement. At the end of the video, ask people, “If you like this video, like it. If you didn't like the video, dislike it. Thumbs up, thumbs down, I don't care what you do. Just show me something. Show me that you're here. Show me that you're actually watching the video.”

Asking people to like your video, asking people to subscribe for more videos. You can just say, “If you enjoy this, make sure to hit the subscribe button and you can get access to more videos that I'm going to be releasing.”

Ask people to leave a comment. Now, why is this important? This is important because the more likes, the more comments, the more views, the more subscribers that a YouTube channel has, then the better that your videos are going to rank in YouTube.

YouTube will market and promote your videos if they're popular if people like them if they have high engagement. YouTube measures that base on likes, views, comments, shares, as well as how long the duration people are watching your video for.

These are all powerful things, and you want to get people to actually be engaged on your YouTube channel in order for your videos to really take off on YouTube. Having that call to action, asking people to subscribe, I find that to be a really powerful thing. I've taken that to a little bit of a next level by adding an end slate and a call to action at the end of my videos. You'll probably see it at the end of this video.

One useful tip as well, I'll just throw in as a bonus is learning from other YouTubers. I've learned a lot just by following other people on YouTube, and I watch different YouTube videos. I learned a lot just by watching people that are more successful than me.

Make that a habit of yourself as well. Subscribe to other YouTube channels and watch them. Watch how they're speaking, watching how they communicate, watching how they create the titles and optimize their videos. You can learn a lot just by observing other YouTubers.

5. Promote and share your videos

The last tip that I have, tip number five or number six is promoted your videos as much as possible. Share, share, share, share, share. You can't just put out a video and expect to do nothing else and really for it to take off and people to find out about it. You want to share your videos.

You put so much time and energy to creating your videos, you want to put it out there. Don't just put it out there on YouTube but share with people on Facebook, share with people on Twitter, share with people on LinkedIn, share with people on Google+, share it on your blog.

If you don't have a blog, create a blog and embed your videos because YouTube like that. They like it when you send traffic from other sources to your YouTube video. You're going to get a lot more views from doing it that way as well. Even experiment with YouTube ads. That might be a little bit more advance, but YouTube ads can be a powerful way to drive more traffic and get more views for your videos also.

Ultimately, your videos have to be good. Make sure that your content is good, whatever you're talking about. Your channel could be on whatever. It could be on humor-related, comedy. In that case, you want to be entertaining.

If it's on how-to, non-fiction, step-by-step how-to information, then make sure that the information is useful and good quality because you can't just have a lot of crappy videos out there and expect to succeed on YouTube. Your videos have to be good.

When people come to your video, they have to want to watch that video and actually watch it until the end. If they really like it, if your videos are good, people will subscribe. They will want more. You could do all the marketing and stuff you want for your YouTube videos, but if they're not good quality, if you don't do a good job with them, again, that has nothing to do with a camera equipment or the quality, but it's the quality of you, of what you're sharing.

Just make progress with it

Some people might have a hard time with it, but if you have a hard time creating videos, maybe you're not that confident or charismatic or entertaining, then just improve over time. That's the most important thing. Just make progress with it.

If your English isn't as good, that's fine. You'll get better at it over time. If your presence in front of the camera is not that good, you'll get better at it over time.

When I started up, I improved over time, but I'm not even that great today. I'm still improving, I'm still growing over time. As long as you stick with anything, you do it frequently, you do consistently as I said, you will get better. People will enjoy your videos more and they'll enjoy the content a lot more in which case, they'll subscribe, like, comment, and they'll hopefully share your videos and support you as well.

Man, I think those are seven tips. I might even change the title of this video, the seven tips. Hopefully, these tips were helpful for you. Just to give you guys an example and just practice what I preach, if you like this video, hit the like button, leave a comment.

If you have additional questions, leave a comment. I might create another advanced video after this, but I might create some other future videos answering some of the questions you guys might have as well. Let me know what you guys think.  Thank you for watching this video. I'll see you soon.