Do you ever feel like your YouTube niche is just too crowded to break through? Like no matter what you do, the big channels already own the space. Well, you're not alone. This is something that every small creator struggles with when first starting out. But what if I told you that competition doesn't actually matter, and you can in fact have success Even in the most crowded niche out there.
So in today's episode of Full Time YouTuber, I'm going to show you exactly how to take your rightful place within your YouTube niche, even if you're a small channel starting from scratch. I'll share strategies that don't rely on fancy equipment or big budgets. Just smart moves to get noticed, build your brand and connect with your audience like never before.
Hey, I'm Ben and I help video creators who are entrepreneurs at heart grow their YouTube channels into profitable businesses. This podcast is for creators who want to help their audiences through informational content. Not to chase fame or subscribers, even though that may come, but rather to build a business that generates revenue while you sleep.
So you can live your dream lifestyle. And I'm going to start by making a big statement here. No niche is overcrowded. Let me repeat that. No niche is overcrowded. Even the most popular niches out there on YouTube are popular for a reason. And that reason is there is extremely high audience demand. And therefore, so many creators trying to capture that audience's attention that this results in lots of other channels.
However, it's not a sign that it's overcrowded, it's just crowded, aka popular. I know this is weird to say, but there truly can't be enough information about popular topics, since with those popular topics, people are constantly hungry for new information. Or maybe they just want to hear the best information, but repackaged in a new way.
And therefore, when they see a headline or a YouTube thumbnail that piques their attention, they're going to click it no matter who the creator is. And the beauty of YouTube really is that small channels can compete with bigger channels with the right title and thumbnail combination. This really does make it a level playing field, while those bigger channels will automatically get higher viewership after posting a video, purely because they already have the audience.
I've got a newsflash here. The majority of viewers on any new YouTube video are not subscribers. It's like 80 to 90 percent of people that watch a video are not people that are actively subscribed to the channel. Therefore the creator that can capture the attention to begin with, even if it's a niche with lots of creators, then that video and that creator is going to win.
You want to know how I know this? Because I'm a big channel, I've got around 200, 000 subscribers, yet some of my videos, when I post them, can still completely bomb. While other channels with just hundreds of subscribers have posted videos on the exact same topic that far outperform mine. So take this from me, that it really is a level playing field on YouTube.
Yes, bigger channels get a slight head start, but in the long run, YouTube is smart enough to figure out truly what the best content is and put it in front of the right audience. Here's an example for you. The start of this year, I posted a video about DaVinci Resolve. It was a 12 minute beginner's guide.
The very first DaVinci Resolve video I had ever posted on my channel. Previous to that, every other video was about 360 cameras in some way, shape, or form. And this one video about DaVinci Resolve was the only one I'd posted, and very few people who are my existing subscribers were actually interested in DaVinci Resolve.
Yet now, 10 months later, That video is quickly on its way to a million views and on a daily basis far outperforms every other video on my channel. Yet, this is literally the only video on my entire channel about DaVinci Resolve. There are other channels out there that are 100 percent dedicated to DaVinci Resolve and every single video they post is about that software.
Yet here's little old me with no credibility whatsoever in this niche, yet now my video is the number one search result when you type in DaVinci Resolve into the YouTube search bar. This is because YouTube figured out over time that my video was a good video based on the click through rate and interactions it created.
And it went ahead and recommended my video to a DaVinci Resolve based audience. And I really have done this on multiple topics that weren't my original topic. For example, once I posted a video comparing two action cameras, which I had never done before, And people in the action camera niche don't know me from a bar of soap.
Yet that video got well over half a million views. So, any niches that Currently have videos in the hundreds of thousands to millions of views are possible to replicate if you make a video good enough to compete in that space, it doesn't matter how big or small your channel is. Your video will either be a success or failure based on the actual content of the video.
Not whether you're a highly followed YouTuber and a niche expert, but rather it really is about the quality of your video. So if you are in a niche where you're seeing videos with these really high view counts, pat yourself on the back. Because it means that you made a great decision in choosing a market that is highly engaged.
Now I want to move on to eight different ways that you can stand out in your niche, no matter how small you are, and no matter how big the other channels in your niche are. The first way is to be a little bit more specific with your focus. For example, if you're in the cooking niche, instead of covering cooking as a whole, niched down just a bit to, say, vegetarian cooking.
Personally, I'm a vegetarian myself, and finding new recipes can be kinda hard. You might find some in the odd cookbook, but whenever you can get a really good, reliable source of information on something slightly niche like this, that's a really fast way to become the go to source of information.
Therefore, a good vegetarian cooking channel could become the Go to for vegetarians around the world and they would also stand out from all the competition because they focus solely on vegetarian cooking and not cooking as a whole. Now don't take this too extreme and say you're going to make a vegetarian cooking channel where you focus only on desserts made of tofu because that's way too niche and you're going to run out of ideas so fast.
So instead start with the broader niche and then hone yourself in a little bit. Where, you know, you can connect with a specific audience that is still really big. The second way to stand out is to be shorter and more concise than the other channels. This is something I know that is one of my strengths and coming from the background of 360 cameras, I know there were other channels out there that were making videos that were half an hour to an hour long about a new camera and going into way too much information, over explaining stuff and making really long, boring, unnecessary videos.
Whereas my mindset was always, how can I take this entire hour's worth of information and condense it down to five to ten minutes? There is always a way to condense information. So if you have an information dense niche, try to condense it down to the core components that are the most important and leave out all the fluff.
Because your audience's time is valuable and they will appreciate you getting straight to the point and taking five minutes instead of an hour. Personally, I think the sweet spot for most videos is between five 5 to 15 minutes. So if you can cram a whole lot of valuable information in those 5 to 15 minutes, then that's a really good way for you to stand out in your niche.
The next way to stand out is showing your personality. Have you ever come across a YouTube channel where the person talking to you sounded a bit like a robot? Or a news presenter. I see this far too often and nothing turns me off faster than that. It feels like that person is void of any personality whatsoever and therefore nothing real that you can connect to.
Whereas when you can show your personality and use everyday words like you would use in real life, maybe make some jokes, or present things in your video in the non expected way, this is really one of the. fastest ways to connect with your audience and build trust because people connect to real relatable human beings.
And if people can see you acting naturally, like you would in real life on camera, they're going to connect to you that much faster and therefore subscribe to you that much faster. This is one of, if not the biggest reason I was able to rise to the top of the 360 camera niche. And that's because here's a humble brag incoming.
That's because I was one of the most natural on camera that wasn't afraid to speak my mind and be honest. If something was crap, I was gonna call it crap, and I was gonna use the specific words I would use in real life to call it crap. I also throw in jokes in my videos and try to inject them with as much of my personality as possible.
Of course, you won't want to go too far with this because some personalities can be polarizing. And you don't want to be immature either by making really inappropriate jokes. But the more entertaining and fun aspects of your personality you can show in your videos, the faster you're going to rise up within your niche because your audience thinks of you like a friend.
The next way to stand out is delivering 10 times more value. Now, if you think about it, as a viewer on YouTube, let's say you have a new interest and that interest is going to the gym. If you were to seek some quote unquote gurus on YouTube to learn about weightlifting, you're probably going to pick the best two or three people.
You'll binge watch their videos, subscribe to their channel, maybe even join their email list. And that's it. You're not going to subscribe to a hundred different people. You're probably going to pick the best three. And as a YouTuber, to become one of those best three, you need to deliver the most value.
This comes from getting straight to the point and not wasting people's time. It comes from articulating your points extremely well. It comes from personality, and it comes from trust. Therefore, your goal as a YouTuber should be to become one of these top two or three channels that are the go to channels on the topic.
Because if you can deliver more value than other people in your niche, it's kind of like a totem pole. People will happily knock the top heads off the totem pole and replace them with a new one if YouTuber who can deliver better information in a better way. And again, this is something that even a small YouTuber can do.
With a better and more interesting presentation of information. The fifth way you can stand out in your niche on YouTube is presenting the concepts of your videos differently to how other people are. For example, if others are posting videos along the lines of how to do a bench press, maybe you want to think about another presentation of the same concept that is more experiment based.
For example, I tried bench pressing for 30 days straight. Here's what happened. Every topic has so many different angles you can approach it from. Kind of like when filming, you can use so many different kinds of cameras to film the exact same thing shot from so many different angles with different settings and so on.
Well, it's the same with topics that you cover in your videos. So I'd encourage you to think about ways that you could present the same evergreen topics that might be really popular already. But just add a fresh spin on it somehow, because that's going to stand out much faster than doing the same thing everyone else is doing.
The next way you can stand out is making an honest review of the things in your niche. So every niche, or at least most niches have products of some kind and something that is extremely popular and sought out in today's day and age is real, authentic. Honest reviews. If you make a great honest review about a product that people might be skeptical about and you do a good job at it, again, being really honest and pointing out both the pros and the cons, this is such a fast way to stand out in a niche because society is very consumer based.
We're all buying things constantly and we want to know in advance. Whether the thing we're about to buy is any good. And ironically, the quote unquote celebrities in this kind of niche are the everyday person making a review in their bedroom on their phone, speaking their honest truth and evaluating the product.
Like they've got absolutely nothing to lose. Again, I grew my channel off of these types of videos. I became really good at making super honest, authentic reviews, and this was one of the biggest reasons my channel stood out in the 360 camera niche. The seventh way of standing out follows on from this, and that is comparing two things in your niche that haven't been compared before.
For example, the two most popular cameras that were just released. Two different kinds of protein powder. Two different holiday booking apps. Generally, when people buy products, especially higher ticket products, they know that they're potentially entering into a long term consumer behavior pattern.
Because if you buy one certain kind of thing, you're so much more likely to buy it again and again in the future. Therefore, they want to get that decision right from day one. And if you can do a really Thorough comparison between the two or three or four most popular products. People will click your video, regardless of how many subscribers you have.
Because again, they want that honest, authentic perspective of the person who bought it themselves with their own money and is just giving their honest review to try and help someone else. So with these types of videos, try to compare the two things on the top five or even top ten points that people need to know.
Maybe give them a point or no point if they pass one of these things, and tally them up at the end, presenting a clear methodical winner between the two. The final way to stand out in a crowded niche, even if you're a small channel starting from scratch, is making really good definitive guides to the key topics in your niche.
For example, how to boil an egg. While you might think this has been covered to death already, and yes, you'd be right, if you can do a great job of explaining this topic, and maybe you do it in a slightly different way, perhaps your video is shorter and more concise, Maybe it has more personality or maybe just the concept is a bit different.
Like top 10 things you need to know about egg boiling. Definitive guides generally do quite well and have the potential to reach millions of views over time. So you think about your niche, what would the Definitive guides be in terms of the key questions people are asking. I know in the YouTube niche one of the most popular definitive guides is how to start a YouTube channel in Insert year.
If your niche is swimming, that could be how to swim freestyle. If it's music, that could be how to play bass guitar in five minutes. The big popular questions are popular for a reason and no matter how many videos were previously made on that topic, keep in mind that the older a video is, generally the more people will think that it's outdated and therefore look for more recent content.
Just like on Google, how often will you read an article that was 10 years old? I bet that if you saw that exact article you were googling from 10 years ago and someone remade it today. You would click on the new one, not the old one, because the old one is likely to have outdated information and not be as good as the new one.
Therefore, there are some videos you can keep making over and over and over, including ones on your own channel. And I know this because I've remade the exact same videos multiple times, since they were proven to be extremely good performers for me, and I can admit that the information genuinely was outdated on those videos, therefore a newer version was needed.
So now at this point, I hope you understand a bit more what I mean. When I say no niche is overcrowded, because of all the eight factors I just mentioned, you can still stand out in the most crowded niche by purely doing things differently to what everyone else is doing. Believe me, crowded niches are a very, very good thing because they're a sign of high demand and with that high demand comes high monetization potential.
And that's something that is extremely important if you want to play this game for the long haul. Speaking of that, I'm working on something super exciting right now that I'll be announcing next month that is going to help YouTube creators grow their channel and revenue through working side by side with yours truly.
That's all I'm going to say for now, so definitely stay tuned for more. If you enjoyed this episode, I would love it if you could leave me a review podcasts. Maybe with a very short sentence about why you like the podcast, or why you hate the podcast. Hopefully it's not that, but anyway, if you can leave me a review, it would be much appreciated.
Finally, if you have any requests for future episodes, feel free to send me an email. I'd love to hear what's on your mind, and definitely consider it for an upcoming episode. My email is ben at benclaremont. com, which is my name, B E N C L A R E M O N T. And that's it for today's episode. Hope you enjoyed it.
I wish you all the success in the world. And Hey, don't forget you're just one video away.
