Well another day scrolling through YouTube and I happened to stumble on a video which I considered to be pure gold. The reason it caught my attention and why I decided to share my thoughts on it is because I myself am a content creator and I see quite a number of creators on Hive.
Most video content creators have tried to t build YouTube channels, Facebook pages, Instagram pages and TikTok Channels. The one I attempted to build and honestly been making a number of attempts to succeed in is YouTube.
I have to say, it's the hardest platform to grow on. Some creators make YouTube tutorials on getting thousands of subscribers and they make it sound easy but when you try it and you're not lucky in the first instance, you begin to understand what I'm trying to say.
Now to the video I stumbled on.
The YouTube Video
In this video the YouTuber or author shared his insights on the reality of starting a YouTube channel and I completely agree with all of his points. He wanted to succeed with a faceless YouTube channel.
Yep, some of us are a bit shy to bring our faces out there or on camera and I'm no exception. If you look at some of my early posts you'd see me trying out 3speak videos and shorts. I'm very comfortable with getting my voice out there but still not with getting my face out
The creator made a solid point at the beginning of his video. If you look at big channels like that of Mr Beast's or Logan Paul, you see the success side of YouTube and yes it's so true. If you manage to succeed, you'd be pulling in thousands if not millions of dollars annually.
This I think is one of the things that inspires people the most to start their YouTube career. But what has been the reality for the masses?
The reality has been centralization hitting them right in the face when they start out with their very first video. I believe I don't need to explain the difference between centralization and decentralization since anyone that was able to sign up to Hive has already been previewed to this.
It's almost as if the algorithm is working against you but that's of course not the real truth. Centralized platforms are designed to push the videos that the masses would watch and it doesn't care what effort you put into your video, especially if you're a beginner just starting out with no external way to pull in views to your video.
The author decided that for the next 30 days he was going to give it his all, and that's how most creators start out, putting in their all and getting better. The author, just like I did with my YouTube channel, spent hours and hours editing videos and trying to get the good at it.
But as he said, the experience he had was nothing like the motivation success stories of some other YouTubers.
Honestly, it sometimes looks like a matter of luck. I have created dozens of new YouTube channels and deleted almost all of them so I would know.
The first video you make is actually the hardest one in my opinion and the author shares the same view. The reason is that you're trying to find the right niche, the right style, the right tools to use and right methods you'll employ to keep being consistent with uploads.
All of that makes it that much hard to start the very first video and after going through the hassle, unfortunately most beginners don't get what they hoped for.
Another thing is that not everyone or I would say most people are not exactly experts at the advanced editing levels that some big YouTube channels display.
The author said he made some really bad YouTube shorts using Capcut. Capcut is actually my personal go-to editing tool and it's got a lot of good editing features. When the author succeeded in posting his very first YouTube video, like most people he was super excited waiting to see his video start getting views. But after a while waiting he had nothing happening, absolutely no views, no comments, no likes. No engagement what so ever.
But he didn't stop there and posted regularly every week until he started getting some hundreds of views. But still hundreds of views on YouTube is considered bad but for beginners it's a proof that something is going right with your content.
The hardest part about YouTube is when you create a channel that's just not going viral with thousands of subscribers. You can fall into this trap of starting new channels and changing niche thinking maybe the problem is from the niche. Like I said earlier on, I have created dozens of YouTube channels which I ended up deleting and this was the exact reason why. Every new channel I created was on a new niche style.
The author continued posting regularly and improving but learned a vital lesson which I myself also learned. If you create YouTube videos and no one is clicking on them to watch, it doesn't matter how much effort you put into it, it's just going to be buried by some Mr Beast Video.
The author was determined not to fail so he started learning about SEO, Keywords, probably hashtags, title and description styles, and most importantly the YouTube algorithm, that machine that determines who succeeds and who fails on YouTube or any other centralized social platform.
In my experience with starting a YouTube channel, getting your first comment is the best thing ever. It makes you so happy knowing that someone paid attention to your video and took time to say something about it. When this happened for the author he learned that YouTube ain't just about getting your view counts up but it's about interacting with actual people on the platform.
However, when you start thinking about the people and not the views, this fear of what if they don't like the next video comes into your mind. I think the reason this happens to people and of course myself on YouTube but barely happens to me on Hive Blockchain is that on Hive I'm kind of aware of the people that may end up seeing my post.
These are friends I've made and people that I've built a special bond with. But on YouTube, you don't know anybody.
As you continue building your YouTube channel, you could get to a point where the engagement results you're looking for doesn't match the effort you keep putting into the video editing. This is a big test to most people and I think that's where most people quit.
The thing is that, when you don't get a huge subscriber base quick enough, it may take you a really long time before you get out of this zone of putting in more than you get out of YouTube. Some creators as the author mentioned have videos about "How they got thousands of Subscribers in a week" but the reality is that it's never guaranteed that you'll get it.
I tried asking chatgpt about tips on growing subscribers on YouTube and I was amazed when chatgpt responded with "sometimes it's about luck". There are big YouTube channels that talk about how to get subscribers when the truth is that they got lucky with the algorithm at the early stage or at some point.
But after 30 days of the author working harder and pushing through, he gained a decent amount of subscribers and by decent I mean a little over 200. It ain't viral level success but it sure is good enough to motivate anyone to keep pushing through.
The main lesson the author taught in the video about YouTube success is to just start, don't overthink things.
But I also have a counter lesson for this based on my own experience. If you're going to build a YouTube channel that'll succeed, be mindful of the quality of each video you make. Be consistent with a particular niche and be consistent with both the value proposition and the quality of each video. Why is this important?
The reason is that, just in case one of your video starts to go viral, it'll introduce your other videos to the viewers and that'll determine whether they'll end up subscribing to your channel or just liking that one particular video and ignoring the rest of your videos which of course will totally kill your ratings.
I had one viral video hit over a million views one day and I got about 4000 subscribers. In less than 3 hours I had lost almost half of the subscribers. This happened because most of my videos in the past were really really bad and there wasn't exactly one particular niche I was following, just throwing random video ideas out there and naming the channel after me.
This made me learn a vital lesson. People don't follow or subscribe to your channel or social media page because of one good video, they subscribe to what the channel offers as a whole.
I hope this helps a content creator out there. Thanks for reading and see you in the next one