How to Start a Successful YouTube Channel in 2021

With the rising trend of the video blogging culture, YouTube is a great opportunity for any tech-savvy millennial or video content creator and its reasonable for them to be tempted by the idea of starting a YouTube channel. You can leverage it to represent entertaining, educating, marketing content or to become a popular online personality. You are at the best page if you are wondering, how to start a YouTube channel from scratch.

Welcome, all the YT enthusiasts to the only resource you’ll need to accomplish your dream of becoming a successful YouTuber!

Why it’s the best time to start a Youtube channel?

• With 2.3 billion users worldwide as of 2021 (Statista 2021), Youtube is a business tool (Oberlo.in) and a great creative outlet to share your expertise, express your creativity, great exposure for your talent, help you make some extra money, and an incredible answer for every creator’s search, who wants recognition, fan following, sales, promotion, and what not.
• Approximately 87 percent of people say they want to see more video content from brands in 2021. Companies are now investing in video content as the best marketing tool.
• 70% of internet users say that they have a YouTube account (Datereportal,2019) but the first thing to make sure of before starting a channel is having all that you need to record and upload high-quality videos repeatedly. The equipment you choose to use can affect your production style, video quality, and target goals. Many creators aim for a highly polished video, while others use their talent to substitute much expensive equipment to look professional, and authentic.
• Thousands of channels make 6-figures on advertising revenue alone with number of channels earning six figures per year on YT grows by 40% every year, as per data by AdWeek.
• According to research by Think with Google, 86% of vlog content comes from creators and, 44% of online users watch a vlog every month.
• People watch more than a billion hours of video on YouTube every day (source-Hootsuite).
• YouTube is the world’s second largest search engine, video sharing, publishing, and distributing site, and 2nd most popular social media platform, as per Hootsuite.

How to start your own YouTube channel like a Pro

Develop a Strategy to kick start your success dream

To form a strategy, answer these questions:

What do you want your channel to accomplish on YouTube?

Work for your audience first and then for yourself. Viewers are greedy, they want to know what they can gain from your content; therefore, you represent their needs as much as conceivable in your videos.

Who is your target audience?

You must produce videos according to the consumer behaviour, demand, and interest, so you need to know who's going to watch your content. Keep in mind people belonging to which age, gender, and location might be interested in your content?

How are you going to distinguish your content from competitors’?

What uniqueness and quality you will provide to drive your target audience? Finding a way-out strategy from existing YouTubers in your niche helps you to understand, how to start a successful YouTube channel.

Why should viewers watch your content?

Confirm your value proposition and tell your audience who you are, and why they should watch you.

How frequently are you going to represent your content?

Will you upload every day, once a week, at a specific time of the day? Think about when your target audience is most likely to be online, and how much content they will love to watch, and then modify your content to those viewing habits, always work on what's going to be best for you and your audience.

Many also buy real active YouTube subscribers through various authentic sources to boost their YouTube channel fast.

Find your Niche and stick to it when you start a Youtube channel

Ask yourself, what's your channel about? If you have an answer such as, "My channel is about cooking, and it's about travel, "and it's about gaming too," then it's about too many things. You must get free of all of the "ands". As, a viewer interested in one subject may not be in another subject, which may cause harm to your channel viewership, rankings, and subscriptions. It should be about only one exact topic, because when you start your channel, you need to drive a very specific audience to make them subscribers. YT audience gets enthusiastic when they find videos tailored to their interests and this eagerness can lead to more viewership, watch time, subscriptions and engagements. You can rule hearts if your viewers feel like they’ve reached a show made unambiguously for them. Take time to reason about the subjects you love. Perchance it’s beauty? Travel? Fashion? Yoga? Lifestyle? Cooking? Research and decide which theme you would relish making videos about.

Keep reading to know more!

How to create a YouTube channel

• Visit YouTube.com and click “sign-in” in the top right corner of the page
• Log in using the Google account you want to use to manage your YT account.
• Move over to your YouTube settings
• Click on your profile picture in the top right corner of the screen and then click "Create a channel."
• Follow the required steps to learn how to create a YouTube channel for business or personalised channel representing your creations.
• Create your channel- You can create a personal channel or a channel using a business or other name.

Then head to customize your channel and

• Upload a profile picture
• Add a description of your channel
• Add links to your sites, this can include custom links to a website, blog, or social links to Instagram or Twitter

Voila! You’ve created a new channel!

Now, let us dive deeper into the important components towards learning, how to start a successful YouTube channel

A. Channel Name

What Is a Channel Name?

Channel Name is the authorized name for your channel on YouTube. It appears on your videos, your channel page, and in YouTube’s search results.

Best practises

• Your channel name should describe your topic
• It should be unique
• Avoid using numbers
• Have a consistent channel name and domain name
• You can use “Shopify Business Name Generator”. Just enter a word or phrase that you want to embrace in your Channel Name, and the tool will come up with 100 name ideas that consist of that term.
• Go for the "Use custom name" option, if you want to represent a business or brand.

B. Channel Art

What is Channel Art?

Channel Art (“Channel Header Image” or “YouTube Banner”) is the large banner that appears across the top of your channel page. It visually represents a channel’s brand and nature.

Best practices

The image you choose for your Channel Art should let your target audience know-

• The subject of your channel
• What value your channel provides
• Uniqueness of your channel

Channel art is fundamentally YouTube’s version of the Facebook cover photo. Channel art is important for any channel as customized & personalised art represents your personality brand to your target audience

Size: YouTube recommends uploading a single 2560 x 1440-pixel image with file size of 6MB or smaller.

Where it appears?

YT is available on a range of diverse devices; from as small as an iPhone to as large as a 60-inch TV.

• On TVs, the channel art appears in the background, behind the content on your channel.
• On desktop and mobile devices, it appears as a banner across the top.

You can create channel art from scratch using a tool like Figma or Photoshop. You can even leverage a free image-creating tools like Canva or Adobe Spark. These tools have ready-to-go templates you can quickly customize to your liking. You can consider adding your tagline in your Channel Art. In this way, new viewers can see it and promptly comprehend what your channel is all about.

C. Channel Tagline

What is a channel tagline?

Channel tagline is a quick, punchy description representing your channel’s value proposition. It’s a good strategy to showcase what makes your channel unique in a few short words.

Best practices

• You can use Fotor, as it is a free tool that has a feature explicitly premeditated for creating Channel Art.
• Also, Canva and Snappa are both high-quality drag and drop online graphic design tools to make channel art.

D. Channel icon

What Is a Channel Icon?

A Channel Icon is a small, visual representation of your channel on YT and on Google. Channel Icons appear on Channel Pages, in the YouTube search results, and on video watch pages.

Why Is Your Channel Icon Important?

Your Channel Icon appears in more spaces on YouTube than any other component of your channel.

How to add your channel icon (profile picture)

Channel icon shows next to your videos and channel, on all YT pages. You must select an image that can be visible at very small resolutions. Brands can go for their logo here. Size: Your channel icon should be under 800 x 800 pixels and in a JPG, GIF, BMP, or PNG file. To update your channel icon, go to your channel homepage and hover over your existing channel icon till you see the edit icon appear. Hit that icon and then you can upload a new profile icon.

Where your Channel icon appears?

Channel Icon appears in the following places on YouTube:

• Watch pages
• Your channel pages
• Video comments
• Subscriptions
• Featured channels
• Related channels
• Search results
• Community tab

Your icon is the first thing viewers see from your channel.

Size: Your Channel Icon should be an 800 x 800 px image.

Best practices

• Use a headshot
• Use your brand Logo

Stay tuned for the best ever disclosed practices to know, how to start your own YouTube channel

E. Channel description

What Is a Channel Description?

A Channel Description (also known as an “About Page”) is a brief summary of what type of videos you circulate on your channel. It appears on your Channel Page and in YouTube’s search results.

Significance:

• YouTube lays a lot of weight on the terms you use in your Channel Description to rank your channel with its algorithm
• A well-written Channel Description can also convert the target audience into subscribers.

Best Practices

• Use keywords in your Channel Description to boost your channel’s ranking with YouTube SEO.
• Start strong with the first 100-150 characters of your channel description highlighting important parts of your value proposition.
• Represent the advantages viewers will receive from viewing your videos.
• Think of terms that your target audience would type into YouTube to find your channel. Then, scatter those into your Channel Description.
• End your description with a clear call-to-action to subscribe. This inspires viewers to subscribe while they are on your channel page.

F. Channel trailer

What is a channel trailer?

A Channel Trailer is a short video/snapshot of 15-90 seconds designed to help viewers swiftly learn about a channel. It automatically displays at the top of a Channel Page for non-subscribed visitors.

YouTube Creator Academy states: “Show, don’t tell”.

Represent your subject in an entertaining way like a movie trailer provoke eagerness in its audience, before releasing and encourage them to watch it. Therefore, include a highlight reel of your best clips in your Channel Trailer. Your Channel Trailer can be a powerful way to turn channel page visitors into subscribers YouTube Creator Page recommends that you “keep it short”. YouTube marketing strategists recommend that you limit the length of your trailer to 30 - 60 seconds.

Best practices

• Intro of your personality and channel
• Impression of the types of videos you distribute
• Showcase reel of your video content
• Represent your posting schedule, if you want to
• Call-to-action to subscribe

Create Your First Video and Promote It

How to earn with Your Youtube Channel: Monetization

YouTube is a fantastic method to supplement your income. You may make money right now by making films, or you can use your existing material in innovative ways to increase your passive income.

Here are a few options for making money from your previous posts.

• AdSense may be used to generate advertising money.
• Begin making videos as a YouTube Partner.
• Collaborate with businesses to develop sponsored content that takes use of your fan following to generate revenue.
• You may sell the content you make to other businesses and sponsors.
• Make money by selling items connected to your videos.
• Using applications like Patreon, you may collect direct money from your fans and followers.
• Create a crowdsourcing campaign.

Marketers spend 50% of their time generating online video content for YouTube but they are still unable to generate the results that they desire owing to over 30 million daily viewers. This becomes a vital reason why people consider the option to buy genuine YouTube subscribers or other alternates such as to buy YouTube comments, etc., to increase engagement.

After creating a channel, the next step is to upload your first video! Bravo! You can create an introductory video.

Make sure to:

• Produce a high-quality video with a clear sound. Add subtitles if essential.
• When uploading your video, research the right keywords and add them to the title, description, and tags (we will discuss it later)
• Select a thumbnail that can improve your click-through-rate (we will discuss this in detail)
• Cross-promote your video on your website, social media channels, and forums.
• Ask your friends and colleagues to share your video on their social media to drive more target audience in the opening itself.

Now, let us explore more fundamentals and key strategies to know, how to start a successful YouTube channel.

Strategy no. 1- Support Yourself with the Right Equipment

• Most YouTubers use DSLRs, mirror less cameras, together with other necessary accessories for videography such as tripods, lenses, studio lighting, and even smartphones. For those who want to make a video on the go, a mirror less or action camera and a decent monopod or handheld gimbal stabilizer are good ones.
• You must improve the audio quality, lighting and try to remove all background disturbances.
• Capitalize your video quality with a good microphone that you can mount on your camera.
• You can go for a small microphone that can be stuck to your shirt (Lavalier mic) for shooting fitness videos or any other type of video that requires you to be distant from the camera
• You can use a good condenser mic to record clear voice-overs.

Strategy no. 2- Script, plan, rehearse your videos, and get inspired from the powerful videos in your niche

Work hard to improve your camera presence, so that your viewers connect better with you. Rehearse your script to avoid deviating from your topic. Before recording a video, read out your script in front of your friends and ask for suggestions. Only the best shots should end up in your final video so that it results in an engaging and watch time productive video! If you want to know, how to start a successful YouTube channel, the secret is to get inspiration from competitors and everywhere else. Jot down your ideas. Watch other videos and shape upon their notions to make them your creations. Remember to add uniqueness and innovations to stand out.

Strategy no. 3- Optimize Your Videos to rank high with YouTube algorithm

Another secret to how to start a successful YouTube channel is giving your videos more visibility & discoverability by optimizing the content to rank on YouTube

Video Keyword Research

What Is Video Keyword Research?

Video keyword research is the process of finding words and phrases that your target audience uses to search for video content online.

Why Is Keyword Research Imperative for a Channel?

According to JumpShot, YouTube is the world’s 2nd most popular search engine. Millions of people use YT search every day to find videos about cooking, gaming, education, sports, makeup, travel, lifestyle, business, and more. It is possible that someone from your target audience may be searching for one of your videos right now. Therefore, identify the keyword they’re using to search and optimize your video around that keyword to rank higher in SERPs by the algorithm.

Best practices

• You can find the relevant keywords using Google search suggest a feature, YouTube search suggest a feature, Google trends, TubeBuddy, or VidIQ.
• You can steal keywords of a powerful video in your niche to appear next to it in recommended and related videos.

If you want to know, how to start a YouTube channel from scratch, you need to understand the concept of keyword research and use it to optimize your videos for search presence. You must gather ample content for each video page, including a comprehensive title, a thorough description (minimum 300–500 characters), and a handful of tags. Seventy percent of millennial YouTubers use videos to learn new things (think with Google), therefore, aim for clickable descriptions that solve user’s problems.

Strategy no. 4- A good readable and eye-catching thumbnail

What are video thumbnails?

A video thumbnail is a reduced size version of still images that performances as the preview image for your video. It is like a book cover and a game-changer in itself. Size: Have a resolution of 1280x720 (with a minimum width of 640 pixels). Use an image format such as JPG, GIF, or PNG. Remain under the 2MB limit. Try to use a 16:9 aspect ratio According to YouTube’s experts, 90% of successful videos use a custom thumbnail. An eye-catchy and compelling custom video thumbnail can make all the difference when it comes to a viewer clicking through to your video.

Best practices

• Use amusing facial expressions
• Show your face speaking in a fun and inviting way.
• Include your brand.
• Be optimized for any device.
• Use bogy colour backgrounds
• Use bold & clear text with stylish fonts
• Use consistent colours or themes in thumbnails so that your audience will always recognize your channel.
• You can use a tool like Canva.
• Verify Your Channel

Strategy no. 5- Start with Simple Editing Software

Keep reading to know, how to start a YouTube channel and make money You can begin with easy and simple editing software to enhance your videos. And further, move to advanced software to edit your content. If you don’t know how to do video editing, you can leverage simple programs like Windows Movie Maker or Apple iMovie. These programs are comprehensible and are easily downloadable (for free) if you don’t already have them on your laptop.

Strategy no. 6- Invest in the Right Audio Equipment

Remember, bad audio is so much more disrupting & annoying than a bad video. Therefore, get yourself a steadfast microphone for your camera, and if you're recording from a computer, you can't go distant wrong with a Blue Yeti.

Strategy no. 7- Structure your videos with Template Videos

Develop a representation formula that you can use as a template for your future videos. Think about the hook, an introduction, a teaser, a call to action to subscribe to our channel, and create a structure and story behind each video, and give your audience reasons to watch your creations.

Strategy no. 8- Learn to leverage analytics

Analytics provides you interesting and useful insights into your channel via key metrics such as the sources of watch-time, click-through rate, audience retention, organic traffic, demographics of viewers, performances of your videos, etc. Use them to find your best performing videos and identify what is common in them, repeat those practices as they work in your favour. Studying analytics find the answers to these questions and work on the shortcomings

• How do viewers engage with our videos?
• When do they drop off?
• Which videos convert the most viewers to subscribers?
• Do our audience demographics match with your buyer personas?
• What is your click through rate?
• This represents how tempting your titles are, and how clickable your thumbnails are. Study the click-through rate for your channel as a whole and on individual videos.
• What is your total watch time?
• The more watch time you get, the more the algorithm is going to promote your video on search pages.
• How does your video stack up to comparable videos, in terms of whether viewers are still watching or not, and try to improve the relative audience retention?
• If your average view duration is 60 or 70%, you're doing really fine, and it gives you a license to try testing longer videos.

Strategy no. 9- Build online community

YT is about connecting, sharing, and collaborating with other YouTubers and viewers. Thus, to know, how to start a successful YouTube channel, you need to make an effort to build your network and community. Collaborations among creators have proven effective in serving a channel's growth and gaining new subscribers because it helps both collaborators gain exposure with the other’s subscriber base. Talk to other creators, make friends, and ask a larger YouTuber or even influencer about a possible collaboration.

A. Increase engagements on your channel- Connect and interact with Your Viewers

Over time, you’ll slowly gain followers and get comments from viewers on your videos, and ultimately, you’ll get messages on your personal social media accounts too. Reply to as many comments as you can. And ignore the negative ones.

B. Cross promote your content on social media platforms

Upload your creations on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and Snapchat. Read and respond to all the tweets, comments, and any other messages you get and give your audience upmost importance. Interacting with your target audience can also help you gain motivation for new content ideas.

Strategy no. 10- Upload Videos Regularly

You need to be consistent in producing new videos to grow your channel and sustain your success. Regardless of how imperfect you think your video is, it’s important that you keep publishing your videos out there, as it is with podcasting. You can upload daily, twice a week, once a week, or according to your schedule so audiences know when to check back. This increases your viewership, particularly once you gain a number of active subscribers. Figure out a suitable schedule that works for you, stick to it.

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