Transcription
If you're watching this, chances are you're having trouble breaking a thousand subscribers and getting monetized. And maybe you've been stuck at 50 subscribers for months. Or maybe you hit 200 and then growth just stopped. Or maybe you're putting out video after video and nothing seems to work. And I get it. I was there.
When I started my first channel, it was unbelievably hard to get 1,000 subscribers. And I had to try a bunch of different things before I found what worked. And of course, after months of grinding, I was able to break past 1,000 subscribers. And today, I now have over a million on my main channel. But not only that, but last year I was able to replicate the success with my second channel, and I was able to get to 1,000 subscribers in around a week. And then this year, I did the same thing on a third channel, except instead of me recording, I actually had my 50-year-old brother, who's not tech-savvy and has absolutely no social media presence, get to 1,000 subscribers in 19 days. And I'm going to show you the five tips that I use to do this so that you can break through your first thousand subscribers. So, if you appreciate me doing this type of content, let me know by gently tapping that like button. And let's jump in right now.
All right, tip number one is don't buy subscribers. Okay, I know this one is super tempting, buying subscribers, buying views. Do not do it. It's absolutely not worth it. Because the thing is, buying subscribers will actually hurt you in the long run. These are random bots that will never care about your channel. They won't watch your videos and they won't comment and they definitely won't share. And this creates a massive problem. Your engagement rates tank. YouTube sees that you have a thousand or 10,000 subscribers, but none of them are actually interested in watching your videos, which sends a message to the algorithm that your content sucks. So, this will actually bring more harm to your channel than good. And your algorithm will push your videos to the wrong set of people as well, or worse, it won't push your videos to anyone.
Now, there are a bunch of people online offering to get you more views and subscribers, and you can find these gigs if you search it up on Google. And there's some instances where they will offer SEO services, for instance, on Fiverr. Now, what they actually do is they put fake views and subscribers on your channel. Then they show you the numbers and say you're getting results. And sometimes they outright sell you subscribers for like five bucks per 1,000. And I've seen channels with 100,000 subscribers getting 200 views per video. That's a 0.2% engagement rate, which is awful. And healthy channels typically get 3 to 10% engagement rates. So don't fall for this scam. It kills your engagement rate and it confuses the algorithm. YouTube is smart. They can detect fake engagement and your channel will get shadowbanned. So real subscribers come from solving real problems for real people and giving them real value. So focus on making great content instead.
Now if you do want a quick way to sort of pay for subscribers that actually works, you can go to the promotion tab in YouTube Studio and you can pay for subscribers from First World English-speaking countries. Now, if you want to get to a thousand subscribers, it will likely cost you around $1 per subscriber, although you can get it a little bit less than that. So, it may cost you 50 cents per subscriber, but that's still going to be about $500 to $1,000 that you spend getting your first 1,000 subscribers on YouTube. Now, there are ways to make this even cheaper. I'd have to put it in a separate video, but if you do want to buy real subscribers and not have YouTube actually penalize you, then that's the way to go. So, yeah, to do this, you just go to the promotions tab and then basically just pick one of your videos to promote. With that being said, this method still isn't perfect because again, the people you're attracting, you know, they came to you from YouTube ads, but they still might not be all that attached to you, and they might actually think you're a bit sketchy 'cause you're running ads. So, there's ways to do this that make a lot of sense and can actually grow your channel a bit faster. But the way most people do it probably isn't going to help that much.
All right, quick break. Quick break. This Tuesday, 9:00 p.m. Eastern time, I'm doing a one-time only workshop where I talk about hybrid YouTube automation, which is YouTube automation that actually works. And at this workshop, I'm going to be giving away my one-click script writer. This is a GPT, a piece of software that I've been working on. It's been trained on thousands of hours of my teaching, my scripts, coaching sessions, etc. And you can make a script in as little as one click using this software. So, I'm going to be giving that away for this one time only at this workshop. So, make sure you show up, click the link in the description, pin comment below. Also, make sure to put it on your calendar, save the date, Tuesday, 9:00 p.m. Eastern time, and I'll see you there. And also, you'll be able to ask me questions live. So, I look forward to meeting you. See you there Tuesday, 9:00 p.m. Eastern time. And now, we'll get back to your regularly scheduled programming.
All right, tip number two is to establish your niche, but always remember that you are the niche. And I'm going to explain exactly what I mean by that. So, this is huge. Pick a niche that you'd be willing to talk about for the next 1 to two years minimum. Now, I see new YouTubers jumping around to different topics constantly. This is one of the most common mistakes that I see new YouTubers making. And it's not the worst thing in the world, right? You can try out different topics. Generally speaking, you want to at least operate in a sort of like general niche. For instance, you don't want to be making content on, you know, the dating or relationships niche and then the making money niche and then also the health niche. That's too far away from each other. But you can make multiple different types of content in the making money niche in general. And there's a lot of different ways to make that. For instance, that's what I did when I first started. I made content on budgeting, uh, investing, how to pick a good career, how to pick the right college degree, how to save money, how to get grants from the government, and these are all topics that I knew a little bit about, but they were all under the umbrella of making money or just money in general. So, if one topic didn't stick all that much, but I still got a good amount of people who ended up subscribing and watching that content, they'd likely be interested in the other content that I made as well, because it has something to do with making money. But a lot of new YouTubers, man, they're all over the place. One week they're doing gaming content, the next week it's cooking videos, then they try tech reviews. And if you keep switching niches within months of starting on YouTube, the algorithm will get confused and it won't know who your audience really is. And here's what happens. You get views from gaming fans on your gaming video. Then you post a cooking video and those gaming fans don't care about cooking. They don't watch and your view duration drops and the algorithm again thinks your channel sucks and it thinks your content is bad when in reality your content is pretty good. It's just you're making it for the wrong audience. Think about it like this. Pick your two favorite shows ever. For me, it's Breaking Bad and The Office. Those are my two favorite shows. However, if I clicked on The Office and then Breaking Bad popped up, I would be disappointed because I was in the mood for a dry comedy and a gritty drama popped up. So, even though I absolutely love Breaking Bad, it's my favorite show ever, I wasn't in the mood for it. And it's the same thing when you post a bunch of different types of content on your channel.
And the absolute worst thing you can do is to start new channels all the time, right? You start a channel, you post a few videos, it doesn't do well, and then you start a new channel. I used to do this, right? So, when I'm saying don't do this, it's because I used to make a lot of these mistakes myself. If you try something and it doesn't work out, that's totally okay. Just start trying other things. And this is where the concept of you are the niche comes in. When you create a channel, you can try different things. And if something works for a while or it doesn't work at all, you can always pivot to a different niche. But always remember that you are the niche at the end of the day. And you want to design your channel in such a way where you can change niches if one doesn't work out or you can try different video ideas if one idea doesn't work out. Right? So very, very few people plan everything out perfectly from the beginning. Most people their first idea doesn't work, their second idea doesn't work, maybe 15 ideas in for their niche and their, you know, what video ideas they're actually trying, they finally find something that works for them. And once they find that thing, they double down on it.
Okay, tip number three, and this is incredibly important. Assume that everyone watching your video is new to the channel and new to the niche. Okay, so this is something that makes a massive difference and it's something that took me a long time to figure out and I still struggle with this to this day. Assume that everyone who watches your videos is a beginner. This is something that politicians do. They speak in such a way that even the youngest person, like even a 5-year-old, could understand what they're talking about. So they speak in like, see, if a 5-year-old can understand what you're talking about, then someone who's very intelligent and older can also understand what you're talking about. But if you speak for, you know, 20-year-olds or 30-year-olds, only they can understand. Then you just basically cut your audience in half. And because of this, people will click off your videos. They'll lose interest. And YouTube again will think that your videos suck. So, make your videos in such a way that even a 5-year-old could understand and assume that everyone watching has never seen your channel before and maybe isn't even familiar with the niche or they're just complete beginners. So, I see creators making this mistake all the time. They'll talk to their audience like they're talking to someone else who's in their industry. And that will turn a lot of people off because they just simply don't understand what's going on because you're assuming that people have seen your videos before or they've seen other videos or they're familiar with the niche before. And most of the time they aren't. And by the way, you might be thinking, well, I have, you know, a B2B channel. I have a very sophisticated audience, so I don't need to do that. Actually, even with sophisticated audiences, you should still try to make it as simple as possible. You know, I remember, for instance, I used to be a pharmacist and people would come into the hospital and they would have presentations for us. And I would always remember the best presentations were the ones where they made it dead simple to understand. Because even though we're all pharmacists, you know, we were all medical professionals, we were all smart, we all were tired because we'd usually do these presentations during lunch and we would be tired at that time of the day. So, we don't want to have to think about these things. We want it to be as easy as possible to understand. And most people that are watching content are in the same boat. They don't want the content to drain their energy. They want the content to be super easy to understand so they actually gain energy.
Okay. Another really good tip, and this is something that's good when you first start your channel, but it's something you should actually stop doing once you're around 30,000 to 100,000 subscribers, and that is to put a subscribe CTA directly after the intro. So, this is psychology 101. If you don't ask someone to do something, chances are they're not going to do it themselves. So, you have to tell them what to do. You have to tell them to click on the subscribe button. And again, this is something that's quite important when you have a small channel and you want to attract your initial audience. And to be honest with you, after you have 30 to 100,000 subscribers, I would recommend not doing this anymore because there's other things you could be saying for your CTA that are more important. But getting those first initial few thousand subscribers, even up to 30,000 subscribers, it's a good idea to do this. And it will double or triple the amount of people who actually subscribe per video. Plus, another reason this is important is when you have a small channel, almost everybody who's watching your videos are a new audience, right? They're not familiar with your channel, so they're not going to be annoyed when you ask them to subscribe. Whereas once you have, you know, 30 to 100,000 subscribers, a significant amount of people who watch your videos are not a new audience. They're people who are either already subscribed or they've been watching your videos for a while. And so asking them to subscribe can actually be a bit annoying. And remember, it's really important that you do this right after the intro. So you have a good hook, a good intro to get them to watch the video. And then right after that, you ask them to subscribe. And this is when engagement is the highest. This is when the most people are watching your video. And this is when people are most excited about your content. So, you could say something like, "If you want more tips like this, make sure to hit that subscribe button right now. It really helps the channel grow, and you'll get more content just like this in the future." Something along those lines, which by the way, you can subscribe if you want. But yeah, be direct, be specific, and tell them exactly what to press. Another trick here is don't ask them, tell them, right? You notice I said make sure to hit that subscribe button right now, not consider hitting the subscribe button or can you hit the subscribe button. People are more likely to do it if you actually tell them to do it. But with that being said, this is an example of something that you should do when you have a small channel, but you actually should stop doing this later on because there's other things that are more important to ask them to do once you have a channel that has a larger amount of subscribers.
And the next tip is in the same exact boat. This is something that you should do when you first start on YouTube, but you should stop doing once you get to a certain level, and that is respond to every comment. Now, this is a great way to get engagement and become likable. But most creators ignore their comments completely, and that's a big mistake. Comments are free engagement and engagement tells YouTube that your video is good and YouTube promotes videos with higher engagement because YouTube is really focused on not just getting views but having a really good experience, right? They want the customers or the people who are on the platform to have a really good viewer experience and engagement is a sign that they're having a good experience. Plus, responding to comments makes you seem more human and more approachable. And people like creators who actually care about their audience. But responding to every comment takes forever. And this is something that my brother found out very quickly when he started his channel. He was committed to responding to every single comment. But after his first video took off, which by the way, literally the first video we posted on his channel took off and got over 400,000 views, he was immediately overwhelmed and there was no way he could respond to every comment. Now, a trick here to respond much faster to every comment is to use a tool like VidIQ where they help you come up with customized yet AI automated comments. And these are actually quite good as well. So, you can install VidIQ. It's free. I think they'll help you come up with comments for a limited time for the free version and the paid version is unlimited, I believe. But a word of caution here, VidIQ does a pretty good job, generally speaking, coming up with comments, but usually it'll give you five different choices and you should try to pick the choice that makes the most sense for the actual comment itself. Most of the time it does a good job, but sometimes it's completely off, right? So you always want to read before you post. With that being said, this will allow you to respond to comments probably 10 times faster than doing all of them manually.
Now, a trick here is to start responding to comments immediately after you post a video. So, instead of just responding to all the comments, you know, as they come in, respond to comments immediately after you post a video. And that will actually alert people and then they'll end up just naturally going to your channel and seeing, oh, hey, you know, Zach posted a new video. And then they'll end up watching it. Plus, it'll subtly let people know that this is the time of day and the day of the week that you post videos. And they'll be more likely to actually comment on your videos during that time which again leads to even more engagement. So it makes you look really good in the eyes of the algorithm.
What's happening guys in the editing process of this video and I have an opportunity for a select group of people. So these are people who are serious about growing their personal brand on YouTube. So basically we figured out recently how to grow a personal brand and combine all the upsides of a personal brand with the upsides of automation, right? Using AI, using things like this to basically grow your personal brand 10 times faster, which in the past used to take decades to do, and now you can do it significantly faster. And you can do this to get a better job. You know, we work with beginners that just want to get a better job with their personal brand. You can do this to make money as a side hustle. We work with a lot of people like that. We can do this to make more money if you already have a side hustle or a small business. Or if you're already crushing it on YouTube, we can help you crush it 10 times more. We've worked with people like that as well. I mean, I literally can show clients at each level. People that we've gotten from zero to over 10K, zero to like over 30K, uh, from like 1K per month all the way up to 185K per month, from around 30K per month, all the way up to over 500K per month. So, literally at every single level and it works for everyone in every situation. With that being said, we are only working with three to five people and they have to be people who are very serious, right? People who are dedicated to making this work. So, if you think you're that type of person, go ahead and apply it down in the description and the pin comment below and you can be part of our group of three to five that we help. So, see you there. Have a good one.
Okay. The next tip is just a general philosophy that I think is honestly the most important thing. And this, by the way, out of the five tips, this is the most important one. And that is the idea is pretty much everything on YouTube. And I call this like the hot dog method. Okay? So, let me let me just explain what the hot dog method is 'cause you're probably very confused here. When it comes to opening a restaurant, location is everything. And when it comes to YouTube videos, ideas are everything. So, if you were to open a like the best restaurant in the world, a gourmet five-star restaurant, but you put it right outside of Bellagio Buffet, and it was outside of the exit, so all the people who walk past your restaurant are people who are full, right? They just ate a buffet, so they're full. They're not interested in food. You're probably not going to do that well, right? You're probably not going to make that many sales. And that's kind of an analogy of trying to make videos on a topic that's saturated already. And then even worse than that is, let's say you open up that same gourmet restaurant, but it was in the middle of the desert, right? Nobody's there. This is something that a lot of people do as well. They basically try to make videos on ideas where nobody cares about the idea. So again, the first thing that people do, this is probably the most common one, is they basically just copy big creators and they try to make the same videos as those big creators, which is not a good idea because again, there's a lot of saturation there. And then the second thing that people do that's a big mistake is they make videos on ideas that nobody cares about. In the first example, there's a lot of demand, but there's also a lot of supply. In the second example, there's no demand and no supply. And what you want to do is have the best of both worlds. You want to have a massive amount of demand and not very much supply. And that's the hot dog method. What you're doing here is you want to be able to feed people hot dogs and they buy it up like crazy. Right? If you were to open a hot dog stand, but you put it right next to a crowd of starving people, you're going to sell out like crazy. Even though the hot dogs aren't that good, you are still going to sell out every single time. I actually had a friend during college that would do this. He would go to the bars right when they close around 1:00 a.m. and he had a hot dog stand and all the people would flood out of the bars and he would sell out every single time. And he actually paid for his entire college degree just doing this on Fridays and Saturdays. So, this is the hot dog method, right? And the reason I call it hot dogs, like obviously you could make better food. Hot dogs are, I'd say, pretty mediocre food, but you don't want to have to make better food, right? You don't want to have to make incredibly good videos that are heavily edited. That's what you have to do if you're competing in a saturated market. But what you want to do is just find the right ideas where you don't have to make those super heavily edited videos. And that is the hot dog method. So, just understand that the idea is the most important thing by far, right? If you find the right ideas where there's a massive amount of demand, there's not very much supply, you're going to be ahead of 99% of people. The second most important thing is the thumbnail, title, and intro. That's basically like the marketing for your idea. And then the third most important thing is that you're actually posting consistently. Well, I guess that's kind of the most important thing, right? 'Cause if you're not posting at all, obviously, you know, it doesn't matter how good you are at YouTube, you're not going to get views. So, you have to post consistently, right? So, you post consistently, finding the right ideas, and you have good thumbnail, titles, and intros, and you're making sure to deliver value, which is the fourth most important thing. And if you do those four things, and it's just a matter of time before you get to 1,000 subscribers.
So, these are the five tips that I use to grow my own account, then a second account, and then my brother's account in 19 days. All of them to a thousand subscribers in a very short period of time. These are the most important things to focus on. And if you want to know more information on exactly how to do this, I have a live training Tuesday, 9:00 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. You do not want to miss out on it because this will be a one-time event where I give away some super valuable tools that we have never given away again and will never give away in the future. So, make sure you sign up for it. It'll be down in the description and the pin comment below and put it on your calendar. Now, if you miss the live training event for whatever reason, you can still sign up and there's a good chance that you'll be able to get the replay and you'll get signed up for the next live event that we do if we decide to do another one. So, definitely click that link anyways. And also, check out this video right here where I worked with a client who had only 85 subscribers and we helped her grow all the way to 50,000 plus subscribers and making over $80,000 a month. This will be a case study. Check it out right here.