9 Things I Wish I Knew When I Started YouTube

alright, point number one is that no one cares about your videos, these are two categories of people who don't care, number one, your friends and family don't care and number two, the audience doesn't care either , first of all, on the friends and family front. When I

started

YouTube 6 years ago I was worried that people would say bad

things

about it. I was afraid that people would judge me and then I

started

making videos and I realized that no one cares, no one cares, people are busy with their own lives. they are doing their own thing they don't give a damn whether or not I have a YouTube channel or whether I make videos or not they never watch my videos my videos are not directed at them so making videos is not for the sake of my friends and my family, and so many people stop worrying about what their friends, their family, their co-workers, their boss, their aunt, their uncle, their dog, are going to think on their YouTube channel, no one cares.

It matters, everyone is doing their thing. Which you absolutely can do on YouTube and I guarantee your friends and family won't care. Secondly, the other category of people who don't care is the audience. When I started making YouTube videos 6 years ago, I thought people would care. I started making videos about My Friends and I Sing Songs, a Maroon 5 Payone cover, an Adele cover or whatever, and the way I think about it now and what I

wish

I'd known before is that the videos on YouTube isn't actually free, people pay. By watching your videos they are simply not paying with cash, they are paying with their time and attention and those are two currencies that are even more valuable than money, so

when

you are new to YouTube and you make a video and you don't get no views and you think "Oh, the algorithm doesn't like me." It's not that the algorithm doesn't like you, it's that your video isn't worth watching.

People haven't decided to click on that video. People have not decided to see it. because it hasn't provided them with any value and today more and more people have so many options on how to spend their time on the Internet, what they want to do is value, whether it's in the form of entertainment, education or inspiration. It must have some kind of value and if there is no value in the video then people will not watch the video and if people are not watching the video the algorithm will recognize that no one is watching it and therefore it will not recommend it and this is enormously liberating and liberating

when

you're just starting out because it means you don't need to think too much.

Nobody is going to watch the first videos anyway. You have to start out being bad and, over time, be bad repeatedly. eventually you will be good at making videos, your videos will start adding value, you will start to figure out what your niche is and then when people spend their time and attention watching your videos it will really be worth it to them and now the algorithm is going to start to recommend you and then your channel will grow and then at some point you will become a millionaire and then life will be a great lesson number two is the difference between being an architect and being an archaeologist now what I

wish

for someone what he had told me when I started YouTube is that there are two approaches to finding your niche: first, there is the archaeologist approach, the archaeologist approach is where you think okay, there are some interesting videos that I can make there and you start making those videos and you make a handful of them and you see what What happens and then you realize that no one cares and that you're not very good and maybe you didn't enjoy making those videos, so you move on to a new topic and then you do this a bunch of times. and eventually, by exploring enough hot spots like an archaeologist would, you'll eventually make that video and then something good will happen, maybe you'll get one comment when you normally don't get any, maybe that video gets 100 views when it normally gets three. that's like the equivalent of an archaeologist digging and then finding something like oh hey there's something here and now that you found something interesting in the area you keep digging and you keep dating and this basically means keep making more and more videos about that. topic now the alternative way to approach YouTube is as an architect now an architect who doesn't bother digging in random areas an architect has a plan they have the blueprint they know exactly what is going to happen and only once They have all the information available and it's all written.

Do they start hiring someone to lay the first brick and lay the foundation? If you're trying to approach YouTube like an architect and you don't have experience making the videos you're trying. To make the plan, you're trying to figure out your niche beforehand, chances are you're not actually going to take any action because it's very difficult to figure out your niche beforehand, the vast majority of people I would recommend should start by being an archaeologist if you don't know how to make videos yet, no matter what you're trying to do, making videos about your niche is irrelevant, focus on making the videos, digging like an archaeologist, and over time as you get better at creation.

Then you'll start to discover what works in terms of how you feel when creating certain types of content and also what seems to resonate with the audience. In my case, I started making videos about singing, no one cared, then I started making travel Vlogs about my adventures in my medical elective in Cambodia and Vietnam, no one cares. I did a series talking about how I was building a medical app. Nobody cared. I started vlogging about life as a medical student. Overall, no one cared, but that's when I started making specific educational videos to help people applying to medical school 6 years ago, that's when people started to worry and based on that people started to wondering how you do all this studying for exams, what study tips do you have? and I started making videos about study tips and people cared.

I dabbled with a bunch of other shows at the time that no one cared about but then people started asking me how you are so productive and I made videos about it and then people started caring to the point that now, 6 years later , I am the most followed productivity expert in the world. I wrote a book on productivity that will be out in a few months. Link below, but none of this was intentional, it was all the archaeologist approach to something like that. Researching how to make the videos and consistently limiting myself to producing one or two videos each week, even when I was a full-time medical student trying to prepare for my final year exams, so if you're allowing the worry of not having a niche market is maintained.

You're back from making the videos, please don't quit, just do it and I promise your niche will emerge over time. Lesson number three is the importance of supply and demand. Now supply and demand is an economic reality, but it is also a reality. here on YouTube and basically what happens here is that the higher the supply of a particular type of content, the higher the bar is raised in terms of how to stand out, the lower the supply and the higher the demand, the lower it becomes. the ribbon For example, right now YouTube is absolutely saturated with videos of students teaching people how to study for exams.

There is a very high supply of that content. There is still quite a high demand, but the bar is very high. That means if you are a new YouTuber without any camera equipment without any experience talking to the camera without any experience editing just filming on your phone it is very unlikely that you will be able to stand out now based on this reality there are two different approaches you can take one The approach you can take is to simply improve the quality of your videos. I want to continue making videos, let's say about productivity. I know the bar is here and therefore I want my videos to be there, for example, so that they cross the bar and stand out.

In a crowded market, the problem is that it is very difficult to make videos stand out. In a crowded market, some type of unfair advantage is usually needed. We'll talk about that later, but the alternative approach is to choose not to compete in a niche where there is already quite a lot of attention, we have had thousands of students who have gone through my YouTuber Academy course part-time so far and I like, the 80% of them want to create content about productivity, personal development, finances and business because they like that, but the problem with all that. The very broad niches are that they are very, very, very saturated and generally the ones that we find that are successful are the ones that have lower and lower Niches to be able to make very specific videos on a specific topic and that have some kind of unfair advantage in the lesson.

Number four is the importance of systems thinking. Now in the past, for the first, let's say, 6 to 12 months while I was making videos, where I made my first 50 to 100 videos, I would focus on thinking one video at a time. As for the videos, I was like cool, what video am I going to make this week and then I would write the video, I would film it, I would edit it, I would post it and as I uploaded the video I would think about the title and the figure. I would take out the thumbnail, post the video, look at the comments, and then move on to the next one.

This is an absolutely exhausting way to make YouTube videos if you focus on making the videos one at a time. The big break I had about a year into my YouTube journey was when I started thinking in terms of systems. I read a fantastic book called The Emyth Revisited by Michael Gerber, which is a book about how small businesses grow and how small businesses grow. I failed and initially thought I wouldn't learn anything from it, but then I realized that a YouTube channel is a business and businesses grow through systems and operations. Now there are some people who choose to watch YouTube as a hobby and if you want to, see it as a hobby, that's totally fine, but if you want to see it as a business, that is, something that makes money and at the same time provides value to other people , rather than a hobby, which is something you do yourself for fun if you want to see it as.

In a business, then it is of great importance to think in systems, so instead of thinking what video can I make today, what video can I make tomorrow, think what is the system that I can build that would make the process of making each subsequent video easier. much easier. currently this might involve, as I do, having a content library, a database of video ideas, this is all we teach in our course, by the way, it might involve systematic brainstorming of titles and thumbnails upfront, it might involve having a systematic internal style for your thumbnails, so it's less work to create thumbnails each time, it might involve having a specific system for how you view YouTube analytics and what action you can take about it and completely ignore analyzes that you do not intend to act on that point. is to think in systems and treat your YouTube channel as a kind of media business, which is basically what it is, you can start to benefit from the economies of scale from the fact that you're making multiple videos over a very long period. of time and systems are a form of leverage, it's like the same amount of effort combined with leverage will give you a lot more return and especially as part time YouTubers if like me you're trying to grow a YouTube channel while you have a really demanding day job or while you are a student, systems and leverage are one of the key principles that will take your YouTube channel to the next level without it completely ruining your life now if you are in that boat and want to take YouTube seriously, but you're not sure exactly what the next steps are, then you can take my completely free quiz, it's called YouTube Growth Scorecard and it's a completely free assessment that I've put together based on my over six years of experience to try. . and find out what are the key

things

it takes to turn a YouTube channel into a sustainable and profitable business.

You can take this quiz completely free and based on your answers to the questions, it will give you a score for all five different aspects of growing a YouTube channel business and give you tangible, actionable points depending on how you answered and your score for so you can check out that completely free YouTube growth scorecard by clicking the link in the video description, okay, lesson. Number five is the profound and ridiculous importance of titles and thumbnails. Honestly, I don't like the fact that YouTube relies so much on titles and thumbnails, but the truth of the matter is that the video could be the absolute best thing in the world, but unless the packaging is intriguing enough for the target audience the one you are targeting, no one will click on that video and if no one clicks on the video, you won't even get a chance to watch it.

This means and this is the What I wish I had known when I started YouTube is that it is very, very useful to think about the title in the thumbnail before you even think about writing the video in the past, as I mentioned, I would think about the title and the miniature. Whileuploaded the video, this is very, very inefficient because sometimes it takes a lot of effort, 10 to 20 hours, to make a video, much more if you are making videos that require a lot of research and a lot of effort and putting in all that research and all that effort and all that time and effort and blood, sweat and tears to make the video, but then thinking about the title and the thumbnail as the last 30 seconds is the complete opposite of thinking about it, so now what I do on this channel.

It's that we really think about the title and thumbnail first and only when we can think of a really nice title and thumbnail for a video do we consider what the outline of the video will be or think about writing the video now as part of my part-time YouTuber Academy . I've interviewed dozens of ridiculously successful YouTubers from several hundred subscribers to over 10 million subscribers and I always ask them what they wish they

knew

before starting YouTube and this is the one thing they say they always talk about. importance of title and thumbnail and every YouTuber learns this the hard way: over time, you have to make the title and thumbnail first and then worry about the content of the video itself.

What I encourage you to do is think. about who is the person you really want to see this video because whatever the video is, it's not for everyone. This video is not intended for everyone. It's aimed at people who want to start or grow a YouTube channel and who are probably pretty sophisticated who are probably very attractive and very smart people like you and so it wouldn't make sense for me to make the thumbnail of this video with something like this, which would be pretty absurd, like it's kinda, not really this guy's vibe. of educational video Although this thumbnail might work for a Mr Beast video, it won't work for a video on this channel because it is a different type of target audience, so yes, the title and thumbnail are very important, but that doesn't mean that you should do it.

Follow Mr Beast's formula for titles and thumbnails. Think about what will resonate with your target audience. Related to this, we come to lesson number six, which is the importance of the first 30 seconds, so if the title and thumbnail were ridiculously important, the first 30 seconds of your video. They are like secondary seconds in terms of importance but also very very very important. You will see that in the first 10 or 20 seconds many people will have clicked on the video and then they will leave the content and with many channels especially. On educational channels, you'll get 30 seconds of video and only half the people will be left, which means that any effort you put into the first 30 seconds of the video or the first minute of the video will be disproportionately viewed by many more. a lot of people think that the effort you put into the second half of the video, where maybe only 10 or 20% of the audience is left, so the way to think about this is that if you spend a ton of time editing but fun animations what you are doing appear 7 minutes into the video, most likely very few people will see them.

Do your best to include the effort in the video, so that as soon as someone clicks on it, they see a lot of effort. A lot of effort has been put into this and they are more likely to stick around once they turn their phone to a On the other hand, once they click on full screen, at that point you can go back a little bit, but you have to do a lot of work from the beginning to get people hooked on the content, lesson number seven is that at the beginning of the journey, the team really do not care.

I know a lot of YouTubers in the education space who just filmed with their iPhone, some to this day only film with their iPhone. and they have hundreds of thousands of subscribers and make at least six figures a year here on YouTube and are just filming with their phone equipment, it doesn't matter at first, however, if you can afford the equipment and can level up your production value It is one thing that makes your content stand out from the crowd, but again, this depends on your target audience. There is a sweet spot for production value for certain educational niches that are primarily aimed at intelligent adults, who are probably people like you. a decent production value is pretty good in the tech niche, for example, having a good production value is basically a requirement because people like that kind of stuff in the tech niche, but if you're making, for example, a Lifestyle vlog that is trying to be relatable, so filming your content with Cinema type cameras will make it look less relatable instead of more relatable, so there is not much point in doing so, as for each different type of content and for each different audience there is a sweet spot of production value and If you can get to that sweet spot by investing in equipment and lights and cameras and Ms and stuff then fantastic, but you don't want to make the mistake of going too far on that spectrum, especially in In the early days, especially if you're just starting out, you can get tons of subscribers and tons of views by filming things with your phone.

The main thing is the quality of the content itself rather than the production value of the cameras that will come later. something that can give you a little extra flavor over time. Well, lesson number eight is to find your unfair advantage. Now that we've taught over 3,000 students in my part-time YouTube Academy, we've been poring over the data and trying to figure it out. What makes the most successful YouTubers stand out compared to everyone else? In almost every case where we've had a student whose channel really blew up after taking our course, a big part of it is that they've had some kind of unfair advantage to lean on now what is an unfair advantage an unfair advantage is something that it would be very difficult or impossible for anyone else to replicate so hard work is not an unfair advantage hard work is a completely fair advantage it's like everyone can compete in the realm of hard work, but an unfair advantage is something that is a bit unfair, something that would be very difficult for anyone else to take as their own Advantage, for example, when I started YouTube, I took advantage of my unfair advantage from the fact that I was a medical student at Cambridge University because there weren't many medical students from the University of Cambridge to make videos on how to get into medicine at Cambridge.

The most important thing was that he was a medical student at Cambridge University and was trying to make videos playing the guitar. I don't have any unfair advantage there. So there's not much point in doing it because it's very unlikely that you'll be successful, but I found a video creation domain where I was leaning towards an Unfair Advantage. Similarly, let's say you've worked really hard to learn a language and now you want to make YouTube videos that teach other people how to learn that language, which is in a way an advantage because it's very difficult for someone to compete with you because they would have had than learning the language and especially if you are trying to do so. create videos in a saturated market where there are many different niches on YouTube today.

It's important to think about ways you can stand out personally. What unfair advantages you have now. Fundamentally, this doesn't matter at the beginning of what we talked about. architect and archaeologist and at first the main thing you should do is just make some videos, but definitely once you get to the point of treating your YouTube channel like a business and thinking strategically about how you are going to grow and how you are going to stand out thinking about which They are the personal unfair competitive advantages I have that could help me stand out from the crowd.

It's a very useful way to help you figure out what your angle is going to be for the videos and then lesson number nine. is something I wish someone had told me like months into my YouTube journey instead of 2 years later, which is when I started doing it, which is to outsource video editing as soon as possible for the vast majority of the big ones. Successful YouTubers I know. I've outsourced their editing and when you do that, you find that it frees up a huge amount of time so you can focus on the things you can do best, which is writing and filming the videos, and I was stuck.

So much at first I thought that no one could replicate my editing style that it would be difficult to find an editor. I tried outsourcing to someone and then it didn't work out and then I threw it away thinking it would take so much. It took me a long time to train them. I could also continue editing the videos myself. I told myself that I enjoyed video editing and that it was fun and therefore I should continue doing it, but what I needed was a mentor of mine who had several multi-million dollar businesses. to sit back and say, look Ali, trust me, you need to outsource your editing and I thought okay, so I outsourced my editing and that completely changed my life and that's when the channel really started to skyrocket because all of a sudden.

My own time was freed up to be able to make more videos, to be able to think more strategically about the channel, to be able to learn more things and share them in videos instead of what it was before, which was every day I came home. from work at my day job as a doctor and I would be editing videos for hours and hours and hours and now again if you're in this position where you want to grow a YouTube channel but you're not really sure what The next steps are: definitely you should check out my YouTube Growth Scorecard.

It will be linked completely for free in the video description and will ask you a bunch of questions and based on your answers, will give you a score. the five different areas of growth on YouTube and will give you practical recommendations on what you can do as next steps in each given area, so these were nine lessons I wish I had learned when I started YouTube, but this list doesn't explain what the step by step strategic method that I would follow and so if you are just starting out on YouTube or your channel is not growing as fast as you would like, you might like to watch this video here where I explain exactly what I would do if I were to start a YouTube channel completely from zero and in that video I give you my three part method for growing on YouTube that thousands of people have said has completely changed the way they approach their channel so thank you.

Thank you very much for watching and see you in the next video, bye.