How to get Popular on YouTube Reddit

I am a Youtuber who launched multiple channels last year that both have over 50k subscribers and millions of views, I also have multiple channels with far more subscribers and views that are way older. I have years of experience on this platform (And have many friends who actually physically work at Youtube) and I'm here to discuss a few algorithm quick tips that will put YOU ahead of your competition in 2020. Now, what might have worked for you in terms of getting viewage in 2019 probably don't work in 2020, that's how often the algorithm changes the type of content it favors. In my opinion, it is relatively easy to gain a following on this site within a year given you understand the "game" you are playing here. However there are a few givens that you'd need to accomodate for these tips to really be helpful for you. First of all you need proficiency in using a computer, you should be very well versed in video editing with an actual software that isn't WMM, you should have moderate to fantastic equipment (Quality microphone, quality camera, etc), you should have a good stage presence (Which is extremely important for watch time) And overall you need to be competent if you're serious about making a living on this platform in 2020.

Alright, here we go.

Find your niche IMMEDIATELY unless you want your content to be placed amongst the millions of other videos on the platform that have 10 or less views, you need to immediately communicate to Youtube through your content what it is you are trying to do on the platform. A channel that is excellent at this is JimCantSwim, who has gained a following of like 500 thousand over the course of a year with only 13 videos. His (Very quality) videos showcase his expertise on the (Popular) topic at hand, and it's very clearly his niche that he is best at. Youtube respects this and promotes content that conforms with this. If you want to make videos discussing cars, make sure you brand yourself for that and set up a format that is extremely consistent that showcases to people what you are all about. You aren't going to get ANYWHERE if you post a video about your dog, then one about your car, then one about a video game you wanted to review, it'll never happen.

Watch time is the game All that matters in terms of getting that initial growth is watch time. Youtube does not care about you if you aren't keeping people's attention long enough for them to stay on the website and watch advertisements, which in turn means money for Youtube. Be very grounded in your content and be ENTERTAINING. Showcase your competency in the content that you make, be very self aware and self critical about the content and edit out anything you don't think is your best work that will surely entertain anyone who clicks on the video.

Capitalize on genre trends And I don't mean embarrassing dance or song trends or anything of the sort. Whatever it is that you do genre wise, find the HOTTEST topic in that genre with the most traction and provide the most quality coverage of that topic to give an extreme edge over your competition.

Make your titles SEO friendly I recommend VidIQ and Tubebuddy as they both provide tags and titles to make your videos fit snugly in the algorithm. If you make a video about for example ranting about for example the poor quality of a car, you NEED to title your video in a way that attracts curious viewers rather than in a way that pleases you. If you are making fun of, say a Prius in your video you aren't going to get views titling your video "prius 2020 review". You WILL get viewage if you name that video "Why Do Priuses Still Exist?". That may sound goofy, but you need to have a strong marketing hook within each video and a call to action.

Upload consistently and make sure every upload is either 2-3 minutes long, or 10+ minutes long (Longer videos are best). The golden ratio of uploads in my experience is about 4 a month, if you can maintain a professional looking video weekly then you can easily grow that into something sustainable financially within a few years. 10 minute long videos if they are quality guarantee an average watch time of about 5 minutes, which is very good. 2-3 minute long videos are good because they can easily be sat through to completion which is consumer friendly.

Tone down the edge. Look, it's not 2016 anymore. You can't dress up in a pink uniform and scream at people on camera and maintain a sustainable channel in 2020. You can have a little edge, you can even have strong language in your videos, but you have to have tact to make it on Youtube unfortunately.

Prepare for disappointment Being a successful Youtuber is a hard long journey that requires a lot of work, patience, maturity and skill. You will have serious road bumps, you will start from scratch, you will have to feel these feelings in order to grow on the platform. If you stick with it, and follow these tips, you can easily make a Youtube career within 3 years tops. There are no shortcuts, there is no easy way out of the amount of work it takes to get so far on the platform. It's a cut throat industry like any other.

Here are a few channel genre types that are doing extremely well on Youtube using the tips above that you may look into capitalizing on:

Documentary/Video Essay channels

Lets play channels (Following an updated format)

True Crime

Drama (Yucky but it's true)

Tutorial's & How to's

Commentary

Advice

Education

Channel genres that you probably have no chance of going anywhere with because they're very oversaturated (I wouldn't waste your time on these unless just for fun or for growing a very small cult audience)

Movie/Game reviews, easily the most competitive and oversaturated content on Youtube. If you're going into this category, good luck I wish you the best but it will probably take you 10+ years of extreme work to even get a moderate following in this field unless you're really good or have connections.

Vlogging, unless vlogging about specific topics and it's really well edited.

Song covers/musicians (Unless you really know what you're doing, good luck. If you upload a song/cover to Youtube and just expect it to maybe do well over the course of even a year, you are in a sea of literally 100 million+ NEWER videos made by narcissistic kids with nice haircuts and tattoos).

Makeup

That's it though, every other type of genre on Youtube still has potential for growth in the future if you really put your mind and heart to it. It's just that those content types I just listed are extremely overpopulated and competitive even for Youtubers who have 100k+ subscribers. Not that you can't do them obviously, it's just not going to work out financially or even attention wise.

Lastly, 2020 algorithm thumbnail tips:

- An HD face in the thumbnail front and center is ALWAYS good if you make videos about other people.

- The colors red, blue, green and yellow work extremely well for thumbnail backgrounds as solid colors.

- Avoid text in your thumbnails, it's extremely hard to be eye catching with text in a thumbnail especially considering there is already text in the title bar. Try making your thumbnail speak for itself while complimenting the title (Which should be a call to action), WHILE making the thumbnail eye catching at the same time.

- Avoid anything suggestive in your thumbnails, titles, and descriptions.

- Don't over complicate your thumbnail, simplest is best, but simple doesn't mean lazy.

So yeah, those are my tips for you guys. I really wish you all the very best and I hope your journey is fun and results in a long term career. Believe it or not, if you're capable of getting a thousand subscribers, you're capable of getting a million. Just know that if you play the game, you'll win prizes. I know this sounds like a lot of work and it is but if you get started right now, in 2 measly years you have no clue where you'll be.

[Tips & Tricks] What did you do to grow your channel? from youtubers

How to get famous on youtube (fast)? from ask

NOTE: THIS IS COPY-PASTED FROM A WRITE-UP I DID AT YOUTUBEGAMING.COM

Hey guys, Welsknight here! I was browsing the "Getting Started on Youtube" forum, and almost half of the threads on the first page are asking questions like "How do I grow my channel?", "How do I get 50 subscribers?", and "How can I start building my community?" I hate to break it to you, but there is no magic wand to wave that instantly grants you meaningful, active subscribers and a good community of viewers. But there are definitely legitimate, time-tested ways to grow your community. What are they?

While I certainly don't have all the answers, what I will do is share with you my experience over the last couple of months, both the good and the bad. I started my Youtube channel in mid/late September, and I am sitting at 166 subscribers at the time of this post. I'm very happy with that, although I know that there are people out who have done better in less time. But, I've done enough rambling. On to the guide!

Part 1: Crafting Your Channel

The first thing any new Youtuber should do is put some serious thought into their channel. Answer these questions, and any others you can think of:

What kind of videos are you going to make?

What kind of games are you going to play?

What is your target audience?

Are you going to swear, or is your channel going to be family friendly?

How much time can you reasonably commit to your channel while maintaining your sanity?

What will set your channel apart from the thousands of other gaming channels out there?

What are your strengths and weaknesses as a commentator?

Once you have those questions answered, it's time to start making your channel look good. Get some reasonably professional-looking channel art and an avatar. Make your thumbnails (and don't use MS Paint). Watch, read, and generally absorb as much information as you can about how to make your content and channel as professional as possible. Keep in mind, the goal is to make your channel look appealing, and to try and set it apart from other channels as much as possible.

I made the mistake of not doing all of this first, and I wish I had. I probably missed out on some potential subscribers and viewers because in the first few weeks of my channel, it was not polished. With that said, you can't polish a turd, folks. If your content is not high-quality, or you don't have everything organized nicely into playlists (rather than the big clusterf*** of a activity feed), then you will have a very hard time growing. Leonardo Da Vinci himself could paint your channel art, but it won't help if your content is poor. Which leads into the next part of crafting your channel...

Make sure your videos are as high in quality as you can possibly make them. Nobody really enjoys watching gaming videos recording via a camera pointed at a screen. If you can't make a high-quality video for a game, pick a different game. Always render in the highest possible settings that you can achieve. Now, let me be clear: I'm not saying that you need to record and render in 1080p60fps. I'm saying that if you have the ability, given the equipment that you have, to record and render in 1080p60fps, you should. Don't cut corners or take shortcuts if it means cutting quality. Your goal should be to make every video better than your last one. Learn how to use basic tools like Audacity and Handbrake. Get your hands on a decent video editing software ASAP. Get your hands on a decent microphone ASAP (there are plenty of excellent options for less than $50, and I'd be happy to point you to a microphone in just about any price range).

Consider your content as you edit: is this worth watching? If not, cut it out, or do a time-lapse. For example, I do a lot of Minecraft. Minecraft can be a very repetitive game, when doing large projects. Do you, as a viewer, really want to watch me place all of the 500 wood blocks that make up the walls of my build? Probably not. You want to see enough to understand how I'm building it, but watching me place all of those blocks will just get boring and repetitive, which means that I will either edit it out entirely (jump-cut) or do a time lapse with music.

Consider your schedule: you need to be recording and uploading regularly, whether it's 2 videos a week, or 2 videos a day. Sporadic uploading, that is, 2 uploads in one day, then 3 weeks of nothing, then another video, then 2 months off... that will hurt you, and will greatly hinder your growth.

If you need help improving your content or channel, and you want feedback... ask! I highly recommend http://reddit.com/r/LetsPlayCritiques for feedback, and http://reddit.com/r/LetsPlay for general knowledge and technical questions. Just make sure you read the rules before you post.

So, now you've got quality content and a professional-looking channel. Now what? Well, now it's time for...

Part 2: Promoting Your Channel

How do you get noticed, especially as a small channel? Well, sharing your content with friends and family is a great place to start. However, if that's not something you're comfortable with (I only share my content with a handful of select individuals), there are other ways to promote your channel too. Let's talk about a few different ones:

Reddit: This is probably the best place to promote yourself, but you have to be very careful about how you do it. Reddit is a fickle beast; people there generally do not like self-promotion, and they especially hate spam. Read the rules of each subreddit before you post. Become part of the community, and be invested in it; don't just pop in to post your videos from time to time. Post videos that contribute something to the community, and for the love of god, try to avoid making it sound like an advertisement!

SEO (Search Engine Optimization): Learn it, love it, live it. SEO is love, SEO is life. If I talked about this a whole lot more, this guide would double in length, but needless to say... it's very, very important. There are lots and lots of guides out there about how to properly name, tag, and describe your videos so that they pop up higher in search results; find them, read them, and absorb them. (EDIT: Also consider reading The Market Within The Market: SEO For Small Channels, another write-up I did more recently.)

Twitter: This is an easy one, especially with Youtube-Twitter integration. Hashtag your videos, tweet them to various accounts that will retweet them, interact with your followers, and generally make Twitter your best friend and time-killer.

Youtube Forums: Places like youtubegaming.com, Yttalk.com, and other Youtube forums can be great places to make connections, give your channel some exposure, and make friends.

Collaborations: Collaborations with other content creators can also be great! By collaborating with other channels (preferably about the same size as yours), you can "share" subscribers and viewers.

Game Forums: Forums for specific games can be an excellent place to share your content for that game. For example, I am an active member at the Pokecommunity.com forums, where I post all of my Pokemon content. Not only are they generally welcoming of it, you can get some very loyal subscribers there, as long as you are part of the community, not just a video spammer.

Facebook/Instagram/Other Social Media: Yes, you can use them. I have not been very successful with them personally, though, so I'm not going to cover it here. However, if someone else wants to post their secrets to success with other forms of social media, I will be happy to update this thread and give credit.

Because it is such a common thing, I'm going to talk about sub-for-sub. For anyone who doesn't know what sub-for-sub is, it's agreeing to subscribe to someone who subscribes to you, based solely on the fact that they subscribe to you. I'm all for checking out the channels of your subscribers, and subscribing back if you like their content. But simply subscribing with no intent to ever watch a video is pointless, and honestly, kind of immoral. Sub-for-sub is how you see channels that have 1500 subscribers, and only 15 views on their videos. I would rather have my 160 legitimate, hard-earned, and most importantly, active subscribers, than 1600 subscribers who only clicked the button because I did the same for them. It hurts your engagement, and frankly, it makes you look bad and unprofessional. Don't do sub-for-sub, plain and simple.

Let's wrap it up (TL;DR) with some promotion do's and don'ts.

DO:

Promote yourself, anywhere and everywhere.

Always try to represent your channel positively.

Become a member of the communities where you promote yourself.

Be creative in your self-promotion.

Make sure you're promoting a channel with content that is actually worth promoting.

DON'T:

Be spammy and annoying.

Do sub-for-sub.

Forget that you represent your channel, always.

Be afraid to ask questions.

Cut corners.

Thoughts, comments, questions, or concerns?

EDIT: Just an update on my sub count, to prove that the information within this guide isn't complete nonsense. When this was originally posted, I was at 166 subscribers. As of January 5th, 2015 (a little less than a month after the OP) January 24th, 2015, I am now at 402 693 subscribers. Remember, a huge part of channel growth is working your butt off to get yourself out there and make it happen.

EDIT 2: It's now March 2016. I'm sitting at about 45k subscribers and almost 1M views/month. A little bit more credible than <1000 subs, I think.