Cleaning up Your Channel
1
Determine your definition of success. Being successful on YouTube can range from gathering a certain number of subscribers to making money; before you set out to optimize your YouTube channel for "success", you should know exactly what you need to accomplish in order to meet that goal.
Subscriber success is usually a matter of promoting your videos as aggressively as possible. It will take time, but you can usually build up your subscriber base in this way.
Monetary success is a bit trickier on YouTube, as you'll need to reach a lifetime video view of 10,000 and verify your account before you can start earning money.
Keep in mind that success on YouTube is still largely contingent on luck. You can do everything correctly and still not gain subscribers or amass channel views due to YouTube's algorithm.
2
Figure out your content area and audience. If you don't already know what genre your videos belong to or who they're for, you'll have a hard time sticking to a specific content area, and your subscriber base won't grow due to having no real niche. Figuring out the what and the who of your videos will help streamline and focus your content.
Once your videos begin to fit a specific pattern, you can make micro-improvements to them to help them continue to fit your audience as it grows.
Create a channel if you haven't yet done so. If you don't already have a YouTube channel, you'll want to set up a new YouTube channel for success by doing the following:
A unique, easy-to-remember username which summarizes your content
An eye-drawing profile picture
A concise but complete explanation of your channel's purpose
4
Remove dissonant videos from your channel. If you have a channel which you've had for a while, you might want to delete the videos from your channel. This will help prevent confusion if viewers stumble across your older content while looking for your new-and-improved stuff.
You don't have to delete your old videos if they fit your content area and production value.
5
Link directly to your subscription box. Any time you paste your channel's web address somewhere (e.g., in a video's description box or on social media), you can add a tag at the end of the address to link directly to the Subscribe button. Anyone clicking the link will be prompted to confirm that they want to subscribe to you:
Open your channel's page.
Select the URL in the address bar.
Copy the URL by pressing Ctrl+C (Windows) or ⌘ Command+C (Mac).
Paste the URL somewhere by pressing Ctrl+V (Windows) or ⌘ Command+V (Mac).
Remove the "?view_as=subscriber" section from your channel's address.
Type ?sub_confirmation=1 at the end of your channel's address.