How To Grow With 0 Views And 0 Subscribers on YouTube in 2020

Key Takeaways

so in this video I'm going to show you how to grow a YouTube channel starting with zero subscribers zero views we all start at that point but I'm gonna show you how I've grown my channel to a few hundred thousand subscribers is sitting around three hundred fifty thousand on that channel this channel that you're watching right now about four thousand and it's growing very quickly so I'm gonna show you some tips and tricks that I used to grow my channel very quickly and you know I think there's gonna be some things in here that you haven't heard from others this is what I share with with my consulting clients when they call and they want to learn about how to grow a channel I'm gonna really spill the beans here in this video so the only thing I ask is that you subscribe to the channel for more videos like this drop a like if you find any value in it and I can tell you right now that look regardless of if you have zero views and zero subscribers or maybe you already have a few hundred subscribers you're gonna find something in here that is going to be of some value and so what I really kind of preach among many people who are looking to grow their channel is that there's really three primary things that we need to take into consideration when we want to grow a channel ok and so you probably already know the things like hustle and and put out content put out good content people say that all the time in these videos that I watch about how to grow a YouTube channel right that's all obvious like no duh like we need to put out good content right but there's some really important things that we need to think about and I call them the big three okay so the one thing that we're gonna talk about is watch time watch 10 percentage how long people are watching your videos how to keep people in your videos we're going to talk about that in this video then we're to talk about click-through rate what this means is how often are people seeing your thumbnail seeing your video somewhere on the youtube homepage or on a suggestive video how often are they clicking on that video what's the click-through rate on that how do we get that up in a lot of ways we're talking about the thumbnail of a video what does it look like is it enticing doesn't incentivize people to click on it and then we're gonna talk about audience engagement and how to drive engagement drive comments and drive subscriptions and likes and and and more in this video now guys look let me just say that you know when I started my channel the first month I gained 64 subscribers I was about 2 years ago and it took a while to get the ball rolling so if you're looking for some type of quick fix to get a million subscribers by next week you know the truth is it's going to be incredibly difficult to do that it's not impossible technically it has been done but I'm going to show you some really kind of foolproof ways that you can do this and grow as fast as possible without kind of sacrificing anything like doing sub4sub for example or or comment for comment you know I I see people do that and it's they try to work around this by saying you know what if I get a hundred people random people to subscribe to my channel and they subscribe to you know my channel then we are both helping each other out but the truth is you don't want dead subscribers so don't do sub4sub if you see that or buying subscribers buying views buying likes that's just a terrible idea for the long term all of the growth that I have on YouTube it's all organic and actually just have this plaque here that YouTube sent me for getting a hundred thousand subscribers and I know a lot of people you know kind of look forward to this I think there's a chance we might get the gold play button which is kind of a bigger gold plaque for getting a million subscribers I don't know if we're gonna hit that on my primary channel but it's definitely cool and you know this is not to brag like this is just to show you guys like the physical proof of this I guess I don't know but it is nice to have and it's totally doable I remember watching a video like this two years ago and wondering you know is it possible to grow my channel so let's talk about these big three here and then we're gonna talk about some secret sauce that I really only share with a few people but I'm just gonna spill the beans here so first of all let's talk about watch time watch time percentage how do we get that up as fast as possible okay now one of the first tips that I would have for that is that in general YouTube they like longer form content today in going into 2020 here right so what this means is that if you remember back to 2006 2007 2008 on youtube if you want onto the the trending page and at one point it was constantly different than trending I can't remember what it's called like popular page or something but if you went under that page and you saw youtube videos most of them were maybe a minute long two minutes long sometimes 30-second YouTube videos about like a cat or a baby biting a finger or something right there were very short videos but today going into 20/20 here all of these videos they're much longer you'll notice that you'll see videos popping up that are an hour long they're almost like TV shows today right and that's because YouTube is favoring longer form content so just got to keep that in mind as you go forward with videos that in in my general idea the longer the video the better okay and there's really not too much of a limit there if you have a two-hour a three-hour YouTube video that's gonna get a very high watch time so one metric that you really want to think about is how long are people actually staying on your video not only in terms of the length of time so maybe they're on your video for four minutes five minutes on average YouTube's going to show you that in the analytics page but also what's the percentage there of what people are watching so if you put out a video that's twelve minutes long and the average watch time percentage is 5% or or six or seven percent that's probably not good that means that people are going on to your video and they're clicking off right away why is that you need to kind of do a little bit of digging and see well maybe it's because you are making a video that the title completely doesn't match what's the actual content you know if you clicked on a video right now about how to grow a YouTube channel and I put out a video about me riding a horse somewhere around in the woods you'd be like what the hell this is not what I signed up for so you click off instantly YouTube realizes this is not a good video so they're not going to push it out instead you want to get the higher percentage watch time okay so generally what I shoot for is if you're gonna make a video that's say 10 to 15 minutes long which I find to be the sweet spot in terms of length of videos that I always try to put out the ones that go viral for myself if you look at my main channel a lot of those ones that have over a million views are sitting anywhere between 10 and 15 minutes and that goes with a lot of my friends as well who make videos but the percentage from say a 10 to 15 minute video a good number for me to go for is around 50 percent watch time audience retention okay so that means that if 10 minutes long people are watching on average 5 minutes or 6 minutes that's a good kind of number for me to go for obviously the higher the better so just keep that in mind but that's watch time okay watch time percentage and the total length of time that people are watching ok now let's talk about click-through rate this is incredibly important to understand and this is your thumbnails ok you have to realize that you're going up against so many other channels out there and if somebody's on their YouTube page and there's 20 different videos right that are all available to them which one are they going to click on they're going to click on the most attractive most eye appealing video out there oh okay and so what this means is that you really need to focus on your thumbnail this is one of the most crucial parts because the first thing people see when they go onto YouTube is they see the thumbnail then they read the title then they watch the video and if it's a good video they'll watch it for a long time right but the thumbnail is the first thing that people see okay so that picture and the one that you clicked on here probably like me I like holding up like a zero or something right that was the first thing that you saw okay and so my strategy for this is you want to have few words on it or a few numbers but you want to have just a little bit okay so what I found that works is you know I will say generally I'll have a maximum of probably about three or four words that I allow myself to put on a thumbnail so maybe for this one I'm not sure what it's going to be you probably already have seen it but it'll probably like zero views YouTube or something or or like get views YouTube right but something very simple very large right here that you can see okay and if you try to cram too many words in there and keep on gonna be a little read it they're gonna skim over it and there I is going to catch somebody else's video they might just have like a big million dollar sign on it right so you want to think very much about your thumbnails and what I would suggest doing is branding every thumbnail sort of the same so what this what I mean by this is you know for my thumbnails I always have me in the thumbnail so that way as soon as people see me they know it's it's Nate O'Brien or they know that it's is this channel that you're watching right here I've seen people kind of mix and match their thumbnails so sometimes it's like something totally different than what the other one was and people just don't know like oh it was this Nate's video I didn't even know because I didn't see him in the thumbnail right so I've trained my subscribers to look for me in the thumbnail for that and you could do that with not just yourself but maybe just your logo for example is a great example I know that I have a lot of friends will just put their logo like up in the corner somewhere so that people are trained to recognize their thumbnails okay as far as how you're creating your thumbnails look I make mine on PowerPoint I've had videos that get two million views over two million views and I made it on PowerPoint in like you know two minutes it's super simple you don't need like some special graphic designer to do it and overtime they're just kind of learn how to kind of go about it but if you look at my thumbnails you'll see this see where I'm on one side so I don't know the camera direction right now but I'm usually on this side and then I have the writing over here okay now maybe I said that backwards I'm not sure maybe I'm on this side but I have the writing over here but you'll see a very much of a consistency with it okay so let's click through rate that's thumbnails all very important but it's something you can do in-house for yourself and let's finally talk about the next one here the next most important thing which is engagement okay so you'll notice that with my videos and there's no shame in this you ask people to subscribe you ask them to drop a like you say hey let me know your thoughts down below so actually it's a great time for this right now if you haven't subscribed yet you already watch and you're still watching the video make sure you are subscribed to this channel for more videos like this one so that you don't miss them right just saying that a few times throughout your videos it's going to drive subscriptions it doesn't matter whether you like to do it or not the truth is people they forget to subscribe you know I've noticed that sometimes all watch people's videos all the time and I won't think to hit the subscribe button until they finally say hey make sure you subscribe and then I say am i subscribed and I look down and I'm not subscribed yet so I hit the subscribe button right and as soon as you do that it tells YouTube something very very clear it says there's a lot of people subscribing to this guy's videos maybe he has a thousand views and he just got a hundred subscribers from those thousand views that means that it's a really high conversion rate people are watching his videos and they're interested in what he has to say or what she has to say and as soon as they start doing that boom YouTube's gonna push it out to more people okay so subscribers comments as well so try to drive comments obviously don't buy comments don't try to do anything that's going to be malicious YouTube knows trust me on that they're gonna know and they're gonna shut you down and that's not good it's not a long-term strategy okay but drive comments in some way just by asking people hey you know what's your favorite book right that's what I did in one of my videos on my channel on my primary channel right and I said here's my five favorite books what are your favorite books what books have influenced you the most and you can see hundreds of comments probably thousands of comments on that video by now has over hundred thousand views of just people recommending their favorite book right so something relatable people love to talk about themselves they love to talk about the books that they've read and so it was a great question to ask so I actually comment on my own videos every you probably see it in this video right here I'll leave a comment and say like hey like something something something right leave leave your thoughts below right and it's a great way to drive more comments but also more like so I even throw in like these little plugins here I'll throw one right here just so that you can see it but it's like a little like button or a little subscribe button right you can throw those in you can get them for free you can buy them for like a few dollars or you can make them with Premiere Pro or with Adobe After Effects or whatever different software you use super simple but it's gonna drive more engagement okay so those are the big three but we're really just getting into to how to grow a YouTube channel here and you know we probably go on for hours and I hope you're finding value in this I really do but I would say that the secret sauce for people who have zero subscribers and they want to get to a hundred they want to get to a thousand as fast as possible the biggest piece of advice and I'm so glad that you're still here for this part of this video because I think a lot of people clicked off and they you know they thought they got enough information but this is the most crucial part that I'm ever going to share with anybody is to use something called Fame jacking or newsjacking okay and this is how I went from sixty some subscribers to a thousand subscribers within just a few months after that and then I grew even faster and faster okay its Fame jacking and news jacking and you know I'm sure I didn't come up with these terms somebody came up with them at some point but it was when I learned this that my channel grew tenfold very very quickly and you can do this as well okay so the way that this works is you need to think of basic supply and demand right you can't even just high in economics to this that if there is something that happens very very recently say in the news right let's say that something happens to a a political figure or you crush I would recommend not talking about politics on YouTube that's a sticky spot to be in but let's say that something happens right and there's thousands or even millions of people searching for on YouTube searching for it on Google because it just happened a few hours ago right or just the other day like say a perfect example the Tesla cyber truck that came out last month okay when this cyber truck got released there were so many people interested in it searching about it but there weren't that many people putting videos out on the actual topic and so this is basic supply and demand when there are tons of people looking for it and not that many people putting out the content it doesn't matter whether you have 10 million subscribers or zero subscribers YouTube is going to show you at the top because you have a very relevant title very very relevant tags and so this is something called newsjacking by taking advantage of time-sensitive information this is how I got started with my channel I was I made a video about snapchat IPO right so snapchat was offering stock right and there were no videos there were literally no videos on this topic and so I made a video about it and I got a few thousand views with 60 or 70 subscribers at the moment okay so that's a great way to do it newsjacking but also fame jacking I see this work very very well for people be careful with this but it works so I'll give you an example here I can't member the the guy's name I think it's like Jake Tran or something I might be totally totally wrong on that but he made a video about Graham Stefon okay and Graham Steffen has over a million subscribers on YouTube but he made a video about somebody who's already big or famous think like if you made a video about Gary Vaynerchuk or if you made a video about Will Smith or somebody who's generally pretty famous like how Oprah Winfrey became a billionaire I don't know she's a billionaire yet but she's close right if you make something about somebody who's already big it's automatically gonna start recommending that video especially if it's a good one against that person's video right and so it's an easy way to kind of get yourself in there wet yourself into a topic and put yourself at the top by talking about somebody who's famous or by talking about something in the news well there's not a lot of content about it that is my biggest tip for you guys if you have very few views very few subscribers okay biggest thing I can ever say I really do mean that okay so find some time sensitive things whether that's putting in the title of your video January 2020 or putting in the the month or the date or at least of the year so it's more time-sensitive and it shows up farther at the top of that video alright so those are my best recommendations for you if you're looking to grow a channel guys thank you so much for watching the video thanks for subscribing I really wish you the best and look you can do anything on YouTube you have to do anything you put your mind to if you just put in the work behind it okay so put out 20 videos thirty videos time-sensitive newsjacking fame jacking find a way to really create something that's explosive breaking common knowledge and you know don't try to reinvent the wheel I say this a lot but I think some people go onto YouTube and they try to totally do something that's absolutely different that's okay but it has a higher risk of failure maybe there's a high reward to it but what I do in my videos is I will see videos similar to something right and then I I will make something similar to that okay so for example this video about how to get youtube subscribers with zero views and zero subscribers I actually saw a couple other people make videos similar to this they had different ideas they presented it differently they didn't talk about some things that I talked about in this video but I saw them do well I got you know they got millions of views hundreds of thousands of views and I thought you know what this is a great topic that I can make for my own channel so you don't have to reinvent the wheel you can sort of copy ideas don't copy videos don't copy what people say don't copy the way that they're saying them but it's okay to make your own spin on something it's totally okay right okay so thanks for watching and I'll see everybody in the next video [Music] [Music]