How to be a Youtuber and create a successful channel from scratch? step by step guide

For a few years, video content has been growing by leaps and bounds, leading many to believe that in this new decade it will surpass written content, if it has not already done so. While YouTube is still a long way from overtaking Google as the top search engine, a real fact is that Google itself is showing more and more video content as recommended results.

That is why more and more people interested in being a youtuber, since it represents a good monthly income and a great power of influence that we can take advantage of in different ways. However, not everyone knows exactly what to do to be a successful YouTuber.

In this article we are going to give you a guide to everything you need to know about being a youtuber, and you can reach 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 hours of viewing as soon as possible what you need to be a partner and start monetizing your channel.

What is it to be a youtuber? Is it the same as having any channel on YouTube?

Being a youtuber is creating a YouTube channel on a topic that we like or that we completely master, to create related videos and create an audience. The concept would be identical to creating a personal blog, which is why these videos are also known as Vlogs.

Nevertheless, not everyone with a channel on the platform can be considered a youtuber. If we create a niche channel with documentary information on a topic, and we only put our voice in the background of some images, then we are not quite YouTubers. To be, we must share our opinion and introduce ourselves by our name or our alias.

A youtuber is an influencera person who creates a personal brand related to a specific topic, and said brand grows and gains weight among the community of each niche in question.

What are the most important aspects that a youtuber should take into account before starting?

2 out of 3 YouTube channels will fail, reality is that cruel on this platform. Many people get frustrated when they see that their channel has died and their audience no longer gets as many views as before. This is because 80% of people who create channels do not work professionallybut for this it is a simple hobby.

While you should enjoy talking about and creating content about your chosen niche, it is important that you take it with the necessary seriousness because the competition is so great that you must apply strategies that most do not apply to position yourself above them. For this reason, we are going to share with you several aspects that you should always take into account before starting your channel.

YouTube SEO

SEO is the acronym for Search Engine Optimization. For many years it was thought that it was impossible to apply it on YouTube, but since it was defined as a search engine, things changed and professionals began to develop positioning strategies to make the channels that use them position themselves above the others.

Although later in this guide we will teach you about SEO, we still it is important that you look for more information about it so that you can master all the optimizable aspects of this platformthus getting your channel to appear in the first results of search engines above your competition.

Niche and audience

It is very important to define a niche and a target audience. It is proven that the channels that grow the fastest are those that work on the same niche, and not those that present a cocktail of content on different topics. For example, IPAP is a website on the Internet, so our YouTube channel should be about this theme.

It would be a mistake for us to create a channel in which, in addition to talking about the Internet and technology, we also touch on art, medicine or sports., since the people who enter our channel will do so looking for content about our specialty, and not about other topics. So it is very important that you define from now on the type of channel you will create and its respective niche and target audience.

Expectations

The second thing you should keep in mind are realistic expectations about what you can earn as a YouTuber.. It is normal that after seeing how thousands of kids around the world have a movie life thanks to the money they generate on the platform, but this is not achieved overnight.

If you hope to become a viral phenomenon that after a couple of months starts generating four figures a month, possibly you are one of the 2 channels that always fail out of 3because seeing that the months go by and you don’t get anything will frustrate you.

Specialists believe that a digital project, whatever it may be, you need at least a year of life to start generating at least 3 figures. Certainly there are special cases in which channels with less than 6 months of life reach 100,000 subscribers and begin to generate good money, but these are definitely isolated and very special cases.

80% of new channels will have to work hard sharing content for at least a year before starting to earn some money and you may have to wait another year to be able to afford to say that you live from your channel.

Social networks

Something you should never forget is the potential of social networks. A study by Forbes states that currently more than 70% of the time that people are connected to the Internet they do so by looking at their social networksso a lot of clicks and viewership are likely to come from them.

It is important that you create social profiles on at least two other platforms besides YouTube. The most recommended are Instagram and Facebook, although Twitter should never be left out. The truth is that your personal brand must have a presence on several platforms to increase its growth potential.

Competition

Although high competition does not mean that it will be more difficult to position yourself on it, it is good that you take it into account because the greater the competition the more you will have to work to stay above it. In addition, high competition also influences our profits, and the more competitive a niche is, the higher the payments from advertisers will be.

channel type

This is an aspect to which we could make a whole section, but we will simplify it here so as not to make things so long. There are three business models on which you can base the monetization of your channel:

• Advertising: these are channels that monetize exclusively with the ads of Google ads that appear during the playback of your videos. This is the most difficult model to create since large audiences are needed to generate thousands of dollars per month.
• Membership: Affiliation is the commercial agreement between an influencer and a brand, in which the latter pays the former for recommending their products. This is a model that does not need a very large audience to start, but the earnings are based on how influential the youtuber is.
• Subscription: This is a business model in which you offer exclusive content with more value than what we normally share on our channel, to later offer it to our audience in exchange for a monthly subscription.

Depending on the business model you choose to monetize your channel, the type of channel we have will change. In this sense, the most important types of channels and their respective monetization models are the following:

• vlogging: A video blog or Vlog is a channel in which we share our opinion on a topic of interest to our audience. These channels usually share videos every day and their main means of monetization are advertising and advertising. membership.
• Informative channels: They are channels in which we provide information on a specific topic, either defining it or verifying its veracity in case it is a myth or social belief, as well as product reviews or comparisons. They are channels that monetize mainly with advertising, although they also work a little on affiliation depending on the theme.
• Tops: the top channels are those that are always sharing lists of the top 5 or 10 of each niche in question. They are highly audited channels, so their main business model is advertising, although depending on what is said, they can also work with affiliation.
• Specialized channels: If you are a professional in marketing, nutrition and other professions, you can create a specialized channel in which you give your opinion as a professional on a topic that requires technical knowledge. They are generally monetized with affiliation, although their true potential is seen in the subscription if we offer exclusive paid content for our audience.

Monetization

Finally, there is the issue of monetization. You must take into account certain aspects. First of all the requirements to monetize a channel; have more than 1,000 subs and 4,000 hours of viewing in the last 12 months. The second thing to consider is what you need to monetize a channel.

Generally people tend to make an average of x dollars per 1000 views, and this is a bad practice. YouTube pays absolutely nothing for views of your channel, he does it for the views of the ads that are seen from your channel.

A few years ago a group of analysts did a study indicating that only 18% of your audience watches the ads that appear in your videos. Based on this, they averaged how much a channel can earn per 1,000 views, but this is not a definitive and exact figure since if less than 18% of your audience watches the ads you will end up earning much less.

Another thing you should keep in mind is the origin of your subscriber. YouTube pays more or less money depending on where the person watching the ad is located. This is due to the fact that a US citizen, for example, has much more purchasing potential than one in Venezuela, Colombia and other LATAM countries and even Europe. Currently the regions that pay the most are; Spain, Mexico, USA, Japan, China and UK. These zones may vary as each year the platform adjusts the CPC for each region.

Finally, it is important that you know and keep in mind that it is not necessary for a user to watch an ad completely from your channel, if you keep looking for only 30 seconds it will be enough for them to give you money for the visualization.

Copyright on YouTube Everything you need to know about it to prevent your channel from being demonetized!

Copyrighting is a subject for which we could have written an entire article. The reality is that it is one of the most important aspects of the platform because it will define if your videos can be monetized and even if they expel you from the platform without further ado.

Without sticking to technicalities that may confuse you, copyrights are those that the law attributes to the creators of 100% original content. These rights allow the author to define whether or not he allows others to use his content to create their own works.

Copyright is something that all content creators have on the platform, and we can define a video of ours as protected so that no one else on the platform can monetize it without your authorization. However What happens if I use a copyright protected video? Is it impossible to use content created by others inside or outside of YT?

If for some reason we use protected content in our videos, two things can happen; that the owner of the content reports the video to us and asks that the video no longer be published, or decides to report you and let you have the video online but with the condition that all the income generated by this content will be for himand therefore nothing for you.

Now, does this mean that I cannot use content that is not recorded or produced by me? Well, this is not so structured. On YouTube we can grant licenses to the contents, in such a way that we can allow other users to use our videos and be able to monetize them freely without fear of being penalized. This type of license is known as CC0 or Creative Commons.

So, when you are looking for content to add to your videos as a complement, what you should do is simply look at the license of the same, in such a way so you can use it without limitations and monetize it at will.

Is it true that children’s channels where youtubers are children are in danger?

In the last two years, a huge number of children’s channels have been born, either with children’s songs or even with children as influencers. In January 2018, several complaints were made to the FBI that claimed that many parents were exploiting their children to obtain profits from the platform. This radically changed things and the United States Government decided to put an end to everything with a law at the beginning of November 2019; the Coppa Law.

As YouTube is a US company, it must adhere to these regulations, which is why it made an update to its terms and conditions on the same day that the aforementioned law was approved. Since then children’s channels, whether with children as youtubers or with content intended for children, will no longer be monetizable from that precise moment.

This does not mean that you cannot create a children’s channel on the platform, you can do it with total freedom. The only detail is that you will not be able to monetize them with Google Adsso you will have to resort to membership or even paid subscription to get money with them.

Steps to create a YouTube channel from scratch and get it ready to post my first video

Now it is possible that you are much clearer about how this world of YouTube works, so we are going to explain the first steps you must take; create your YT channel and get it ready to post:

Create Google account

YouTube is one of the many Google platforms, so to use it we simply have to have one Google account. In case you still do not have it, the steps you must follow are the following:

• Go to Gmail.com and click on the section “To create new account”.
• In the registration form that appears, complete all the fields with the corresponding information.

That’s it, with this you can now log in to YouTube.

create channel

The next is create a YouTube channel. To do this, you simply have to log in with the Google account that you just created. All Google accounts automatically have a YouTube channel already created, but if you want to make a new one with an original name you must do the following:

• After logging in with your account go to “Setting”.

• Once there go down to the section “Your channel” and select “Add either manage your channels.

• You will then be redirected to a page with your current channel and the option “Create new channel”.

• Now you simply have to choose both the theme and the name of the channel and that’s it, it will be 100% created.

Customize channel

Now you have to complete your YT channel profile. To do this, there are three key elements to start with: the profile photo, the banner and the presentation or welcome video.

To add your banner and profile picture you must go to “Your channel” and at the top of it click on “customize channel”. Once there you will see a pencil icon both on the space where the profile picture goes and where the banner goes. You must select each one and upload the corresponding photo.

Finally, you must create a presentation video for your channel, they are those that when someone enters it, they are played automatically. Try to make it a style video “On me”, in which explain who are, what do you do and why should they see your channel. It is an excellent opportunity to generate empathy with your future subscribers.

How to upload a video to YouTube from scratch and get millions of views?

This is undoubtedly the most important point of the entire tutorial, since when you are uploading each video you will have to optimize it for SEO on the platform, which will define how well it will be positioned among the thousands of results within the platform.

Take good note of the following:

video format

The first step starts outside of the platform, when you are editing the video. At this time you will have to choose a suitable format for your rendering. YouTube accepts many formats, but without a doubt the most recommended are AVI and MP4, since they are the least heavy. Once you have this you can proceed to publish.

On the other hand, there is the issue of video quality. Although the platform has support for 4K playback, this is still not a quality that is not widely used mainly because there are few 4K monitors on the market. For this reason, it is best to render your videos in 1080p quality, which would be HD.

Upload a video

Once the content is created and ready to be published, we simply have to go to our YouTube channel and click on “Upload a video”. Once there we will have to select the video in question from our gallery. After that we will have to wait for the video to finish loading, which depending on its weight and your Internet speed could take a while.

Optimize the video

Now comes the complicated part; content optimization. For this we must take into account four very important factors; featured image or thumbnail, title, description and tags. These four elements will be our best friends when optimizing our content.

For each of them you must take into account the following:

• Title: It must be eye-catching since its objective is to draw the user’s attention so that they choose your video over the competition. Ideally, you should make clear the content that is exposed in the video. For example, if your video is about what a running shoe is, the ideal is that you specify the most important points that you will touch on about them. For example if you put “Running shoes; definition, characteristics, types and main brands” a person who wants to know what types of shoes there are and what are the main sellers or manufacturers, will undoubtedly be attracted to see a video with that title.
• Description: The description is a fairly technical SEO element, in it we must explain in detail and briefly what our video is about, leaving its intention as clear as possible. Following the example above, an ideal description would be “In this video you will learn everything about running shoes, so that you know their main types, the most important manufacturers and all the aspects that you must take into account before buying a pair for yourself…”. Ideally, it should be a little longer, but surely this example will serve as a guide.
• Miniature: The thumbnail is another important element for the external seo of the channel, since it is proven that users tend to click on results with personalized and eye-catching thumbnails. The more people click on your result, the better its engagement will be, which will make the platform give more and more relevance to your channel.
• Tags: this is without a doubt the most important element of SEO. Tags are used to tell YouTube what our video is about without her having to read it. In addition to this, these also serve to tell the platform what topics our video is related to, even if it does not specifically talk about it.
  • What is this for? Well, when a person is watching a video about #running, they may see our video about running shoes because the platform understands that if someone is interested in running, they will also be interested in the shoes used for it. That’s why in our video we have to use the #running tag even though our video doesn’t talk directly about it.

Once these aspects have been optimized, it is time for you to get down to work and click on “Post video” so that it can be shared in the immense community of users of the platform.

Steps to get your first 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 hours of viewing and start your youtuber career

It is possible that you have already uploaded several videos to the platform but you have not yet achieved those 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 hours of reproduction. It’s frustrating we know but we can assure you that you will be successful if you apply the advice that we give you below:

Use long-tail keywords

As with websites, YouTube channels have their own authority and relevance within the platform. For this reason, if we launch a video on a super-competitive topic in which channels with thousands of subscribers and millions of views compete, it is more than likely that we will always be under him because his channel is much more important to the platform than ours.

For this reason when making our first videos we must target low competition keywordsthat little by little makes us gain subscribers and other elements that make our relevance rise considerably.

For this we must know the types of keywrods that exist:

• Short tail or generic words: These are keywords that generally encompass a niche. It is usually made up of one or two words, such as “sneakers”. In a video about this key, everything about the shoes, their usefulness and a long etcetera would have to be discussed. This gives you a very high audience, but also great competition.
• mid-tail: Mid-tail words are those that are made up of three or more words and include a more specific term within a niche, such as “Running shoes”. In this case we would also have to talk about shoes, but exclusively about those used for running.
• long tails: Finally, there are long-tail words, which are those made up of a complete sentence that include a much more specific term within a niche category, such as “Adidas blue running shoes”. This is a much more specific search with a smaller audience, but with little competition and where you will surely have more opportunities to reach the top 3.

The ideal is to start attacking long-tail keywords, those in which the searches are much lower, but the competition is not so high and you will be able to position yourself using good SEO. This technique not only applies to the theme and title of our video, but also to the tagswhich, as we have already explained, will allow our videos to be positioned among the results related to a specific niche.

Spy on your competition

Spying or copying is a bad thing. Google copied from Bing and they are loaded, Microsoft also copied from Mac and today they are loaded. Everyone who copies is covered but this does not mean that you are going to plagiarize, but you should look at what they do to replicate it your way.

Something you have to keep in mind is that your content should always be better than your direct competition. How can you know this if you don’t see beforehand what your rival channels are talking about and how they are talking about it? Without a doubt, you will have to do a bit of corporate espionage and always keep in mind that your video must mention the same thing as them and give an extra that makes YouTube put your content above the rest.

Post long videos

If your goal is to have that 4,000 hours of playback as soon as possible, then you’ll need to start creating videos like crazy.. A simple trick to get this done quickly is to simply make music mix videos about your niche, keep them long to get as much viewing time as possible.

For example, if your channel talks about gamingyou can create a video of “Music to Play Mix 2025” or something like that, so your audience when they want to play a game of whatever, will go straight to play the mix of your channel. Ideally, they should be videos of more than 30 minutes in length, so that with only 8,000 complete reproductions you already obtain those 4,000 hours of reproduction that you need to be a partner and monetize your channel.

Tips to grow my YouTube channel and prevent it from stagnating and slowly dying

If you have applied well everything we have taught you so far, it is possible that you are already monetizing and with a well-positioned channel. However, at this point you will find another problem such as the “channel death”which is a stage that all channels go through, consisting of a long period of time in which it does not grow and even video views begin to drop drastically.

This can be very frustrating because you may believe that everything you do is not working and your efforts are worthless. Well, here are some tips that will help you avoid this..

attack trends

If your channel is already monetizing possibly already have enough authority to compete with the best in your niche, so you can already afford to compete in much broader searches.

At this point when your channel is dying, the best allies you have are the trends. Trends are nothing more than topics that everyone is talking about within the platform. What you need to do is simply attack the trends in your niche and start talking about it. so that everyone who searches for it will see your channel, and possibly this will be a new one that will be attracted to all the content on your channel, creating a chain reaction that will improve the engagement of all your content.

Trends are something you should constantly check because they not only work for you when your channel stalls, but also to give you a boost when everything is going from strength to strength.

run contests

Contests are the best thing that has been increased to revive a channel and even to create it. Its operation is simple, you make a contest in which you ask the users who watch your videos to subscribe and share the content on their social networks, tagging two or three close friends, in exchange you will give the winner a sweatshirt, tracksuit or whatever you want to give them in exchange for your precious subscription and activation of the bell.

Collaborations with other youtubers

Collaborating is something that you must learn to do sooner or later in this and all social networks if you really want to grow steadily. If you notice that your channel stops growing, contact another YouTuber from a channel who, although not from the same niche, talks about related topics..

For example, if your channel is about soccer, you can do a collaboration with another youtuber who has a channel about tennis or the NBA, that will surely have subscribed to some football lovers who will undoubtedly be interested in your content.