So you've started a YouTube channel. Awesome! But after the initial excitement dies down, and the internet crickets start chirping, you may find yourself wondering, why is my channel growing so slowly? Well, chances are you're making one, or more, of the ten mistakes I'm about to talk about. So in this episode of Full Time YouTuber, I'll share the top 10 mistakes I see new YouTube creators make and how you can avoid them in order to grow your channel as quickly as possible.
Mistake number one is video intros that are too long or have no hook. YouTube right now really is a platform where people go for solutions to their problems more than anything. And when you're not able to present a solution or even Start presenting a solution to your audience's problem within the first 30 seconds.
They're simply going to click the back button and go on to the next video and find someone else who's going to get to the point faster. I really see this one all too often where I have a very specific problem I need solved, let's say with an editing software, and the person takes one to two minutes to answer.
And while that might be good for them in terms of creating longer form content that brings them more YouTube ad revenue, it's not good for the viewers of their content who have to wait and wait and wait. Which is why it's super important to get straight to the point. as quickly as possible. Forget about a long intro, keep it to 30 seconds maximum, and make sure you've at least started presenting the solution around the 30 second mark.
The best use of the first 15 to 30 seconds of a video is with a great hook, where you specifically identify the problem of your audience and present the solution in the form of what you're about to show them. I can see that a lot of new creators fall into the trap. of trying to become vloggers and start with a montage of their day, making their coffee, starting up their computer, going for a long walk on the beach, and then maybe five minutes into the video they finally address the key topic of the video.
But I'm just gonna be honest here, that is being way too self indulgent. Unless you're already very well known and people know, like, and trust you. They don't care about watching your vlog. They just want you to solve their problems as quickly as possible. Which is why that formula of starting with a hook in the 30 seconds and then getting straight into the solution around the 30 second mark, or even earlier, is the best way to get your viewers Cooked so they stay around and watch the entire video.
Mistake two relates to this and that is making videos that are way too long. You know how sometimes you want a simple solution to a problem and you go onto YouTube for a solution, and all of the tutorials are like a minimum of 10 minutes, some of them up to half an hour or more for what should seem like a very short and simple solution.
As a viewer, that is extremely frustrating when you don't necessarily have that time to hear the whole history of the topic and everything you need to know and everything you don't need to know all in one video. Your time is valuable, your audience's time is valuable, which is why you owe it to them to cut out as much waffle as possible and just get straight to the point.
Simplify things. This is how I feel like I've been able to make my YouTube channel stand out is when I approach a topic, I think about how I can teach that topic as efficiently and quickly as possible, where other people might be taking half an hour or more. I like to challenge myself to try and teach it in five to ten minutes, and that's it.
Of course, it's not going to be as in depth as those longer videos, but often when structured right, you can communicate at least 80 percent of the exact same things while also cutting out all the irrelevant stuff that your audience doesn't need to know about and get to the things that make the biggest difference in solving your audience's problem.
So I'd really encourage you to think about this with every new video you make. How can I condense all of this information that makes up the general topic into the bullet point version that still includes all the things that your audience needs to know while trimming out all the fluff in the process?
Because the better you can get at condensing information into a short amount of time, the more value you'll be able to give to your audience over time. And therefore, the faster they will know, like, and trust you because you've given them so much value and taught them so many things over the weeks, months, and years compared to other people that just waffled on and wasted their time.
The third mistake beginner YouTubers make is investing too much money in getting started. Maybe you've heard of this term, GAS, AKA Gear Acquisition Syndrome. Many of us are guilty of this, including me. And what it refers to is buying every new bit of gear and gadget that comes out so you can improve your video quality, audio quality, or editing by an extra 5%.
And often people use this as a reason not to get started because they don't have the perfect. camera, the perfect sound setup, or maybe they haven't bought an expensive high end editing software. And unfortunately, what this does is it means you've got way more skin in the game as a new creator. If this goes belly up, you've already invested quite a bit into even making your very first video.
And I'm not trying to say that it's going to go belly up, but the fact that you've already invested your money into this without any kind of content or monetization to show for it yet. It means that you have invested way more than you are getting in return, and that can make having a YouTube channel unsustainable when you're doing all that investing and you're not getting anything in return, when really the bigger factors that will contribute to the growth of your channel aren't in the gear you use, But it's more to do with your niche and how much value you can bring your audience, how creative you can be with your videos.
There are so many other factors that are more important than fancy production value. So my honest advice, if you are a brand new creator is keep your financial investments to an absolute minimum. Don't go out buying a fancy camera or fancy audio equipment. Don't even pay for a video editor until you've made your.
First few videos. So you can at least test the process and see what it's all about, whether you like it, whether you're getting any kind of traction at all. And as you do get traction, which you will with consistency, that's when you start investing small amounts over time to slowly improve your video production process until one day you're bringing in enough money to.
I'm then some at which point the investment equation switches from you doing all the investing to you getting all the returns from the minimal investments you've made. The next mistake beginners make is investing too much time into the production of every video. Now the time it takes to make a video is one of those things that It's like, how long is a piece of string?
It could either be really quick and you get a very basic result or it can take a lot longer for a much better result. And many beginners get a little bit carried away with the long approach where they want to make it the most amazing production ever. They want to film it cinematically. They want to spend weeks on editing it with flashy titles and a.
really overdoing the production to try and impress people that way and hope that that will be the magic solution to grow their channel. Now let me tell you, as someone who has been on YouTube for over eight years now, the fancier I made my production value over time, the more I got burned out as a result.
And there was also no effect on the videos.
I think the longest I ever spent on a video was 3 months, which is a crazy long time and I don't recommend anyone do it, but to this day that video sits at around 60, 000 views. Whereas another video that I made in less than a day, including filming and editing, is approaching 600, 000 views in a fraction of the time because the subject matter was much more in demand than the first video where I took three months.
So it goes to show you that What matters on YouTube is problems and solutions. If your audience have a problem and you can solve it through your video, that's what will bring people to your videos way more than flashy production value. In fact, they won't even know about your flashy production value if they don't click through to your video to begin with.
And they're not going to click through to your video unless you have a video on the right topic with the right title and thumbnail. Now to solve this as a new creator, I'm going to suggest the following solution. Whenever you make your next video, tell yourself that you're not going to spend any more than two days making it.
One day for planning and filming, and one day for editing. That's it. If it doesn't work out, that's okay, you only spent two days on it, but I want you to do this as an experiment to see if you can make it work. Because if you can, this is going to make your YouTube production so much more sustainable over the long term, and mean over the course of a year, you're able to produce Four to five times more videos than if you were spending weeks to make a single video.
Now the fifth mistake relates to this and that is over editing or under editing your videos. So as we've determined three months is extreme overkill and I would never recommend anyone spending that long editing a video. But then on the flip side as well, it's possible to spend too little time editing your video resulting in an amateur feeling and result.
While it is important not to have perfectionistic standards, You do need to have some kind of standard for your videos. And this usually comes from a bit of editing. For me on average, that means half a day to two days maximum. And in that time I can cut out all the boring bits. I can replace shots that aren't working.
I can do color grading and add sound and music and a couple of engaging titles. And often that is enough. to present a really professional looking YouTube video. So you'll just want to make sure your videos maintain a basic level of professionalism with the editing, which is why I'd recommend spending at least a few hours in the editing room, polishing your video and making it look as professional as possible while also not obsessing and trying to make every last millisecond of it perfect, which may take you weeks, months, or even years.
The next mistake new YouTubers make is not paying any attention to the audio side of their video, Resulting in extremely poor quality audio that turns viewers off immediately. I'm not kidding when I say this, but bad audio will kill your video, no matter how much time you spent on the filming or the editing of it.
If your sound is distorted and it sounds really harsh to the ear, people can't tolerate it for longer than a few seconds and they're going to click away. It really is very off putting. It's kind of like nails on a chalkboard, especially with the abundance of content there is online and the lengths people go to, to record professionally.
This means that the poorly recorded audio really stands out. Unfortunately, audiences are used to hearing proper audio. So if your video doesn't have that, they're going to click away immediately. So I'd highly recommend spending at least an hour or two learning how to record audio properly, whether it's on your phone or even if you get the most benefit from it.
Basic microphone as well as in editing. There are things you can do to fix bad audio. One that I've been using a lot lately is Adobe Podcast, which is actually a free app. Well, it's not an app, it's a software as a service. So if you go to podcast.adobe.com/enhance, you can upload up to. 30 minute audio clip, and it will fix it and make it sound like studio quality.
Well, maybe not like a really professional studio recording, but somewhat close. I'll say for sure that most audio will sound substantially better from going through that software, especially when you know you've messed up your audio already. I say this from experience. Every one of the 10 tips on this list are mistakes that I have made time and time again, including recording bad audio.
Sometimes no matter how much preparation you do, maybe your microphone runs out of battery halfway through your shoot and you don't realize, or maybe you're tapping on your Desk and the microphone is connected to the desk and it results in the audio distorting like crazy. I've had that happen to basically every kind of audio problem that can happen.
I've had it, which is why I know how important it is to fix this at all costs. Otherwise, people simply won't watch your video. The next mistake is the most impactful of the lot in terms of click throughs. What a click through is, is people see your video and they either click on it or they don't. And that's because this mistake is poor title and thumbnail choice.
I really can't stress how important this one is. Choosing the right title and thumbnail for your video is literally more important than making a good video to begin with. Because again, people won't see your great video to begin with if they don't click it in the first place. And the only way to get them to click it is to tempt them to click it through having a good video.
A curiosity invoking title and thumbnail. So please, please spend time on this. Brainstorm different ideas for video titles and thumbnails. Try a few out. I know with every video I make, I'll create a list of up to 10 different video titles and then I'll come back the next day. And see which one of them stands out the most.
More often than not, one will stand out. And if it doesn't, I'll just ask ChatGPT. Because your title and thumbnail is essentially your bait for attracting new viewers to your videos. And then your actual video is what keeps them coming back. If those two things are in place, you're giving yourself the best chance possible of getting a lot of subscribers quickly.
It's always a good idea with video thumbnails to research your niche and what other people are posting on YouTube. Because every niche is different. Is different when it comes to video thumbnails. Some of them might be more text heavy. Some of them could just be a simple image of a location. I know many of them for sure are reaction based, where you have the person in the video also appearing on the thumbnail with some kind of unique expression.
So see what resonates with you. Obviously don't copy people, but draw inspiration from what. Personally hooked you and then create your own version of a title and thumbnail that appeals to you that you would click on while also being accurate to the contents of your video. That's obviously really important as well.
You don't want to be click baity. It has to be 100 percent accurate. So when people click through, they feel like you've delivered on the value you promised in the title and thumbnail. Mistake number eight has to do with. Finding your niche on YouTube, while you may have an idea for what your niche is, and maybe you've made a couple of videos around that niche often, if your videos aren't getting any traction at all, let's say you are hearing that sound of internet crickets with zero views, or maybe I don't know, 100 views or less and no matter how many videos you post you can't get past this Really low number that you seem to be getting well The mistake here is not testing the market with different subject matters often if videos get low views It's because there's low demand for that topic and while you might be onto something with the general direction you're going in every topic has Subtopics and subtopics of those subtopics.
And often people choose a sub niche of a niche and it's a really quiet one where every single video on that super niche topic also isn't performing very well. Whereas what's really important in the early days of starting your YouTube channel is experimenting and trying different things. Especially when it comes to your niche topic and the problems you might be solving.
If people aren't resonating with one problem you're trying to solve, Try a slightly different one. For example, just recently I posted a video about lighting, how to light YouTube videos, and unfortunately it performed terribly. Compared to every other video on my channel, it was probably the worst performing video I've posted in the last five years.
So do you know what I did after that? Did I make another lighting video? No, I definitely did not. What I did from there was change the topic to something else that I suspected could get higher engagement. And for me right now, that's That seems to be in the video editing niche. Not only do my videos on this topic get a good amount of views, but they also get really high engagement and very satisfied viewers who absolutely love the content.
And this is something that's important not to do just as a beginner starting on YouTube, but at every stage of the journey, I always like to experiment a bit. And see what hits the mark because you never know, even though something might seem like it's working okay at one point in time, all it takes is a quick experiment pivoting your direction slightly to the right or left, and you can unlock a gold mine of views and engagement in a subject matter where there is way more demand, so you kind of Owe it to yourself to experiment with that, especially if you feel like you haven't quite yet drilled down your niche.
This really is an important part of the YouTube journey, and that is the market research phase. If you're not consistently getting the results you want with your channel in terms of views, you need to continually be experimenting until you. Do find a topic or a video type that resonates and keep making videos on that topic.
Now on the flip side of that, the opposite problem that I also see so many creators make in the early days that ultimately sabotages their channel completely is trying to appeal to absolutely everyone. Maybe they have interests on five completely unrelated topics. Often you'll see new creators make videos on all of them resulting in absolutely no specific niche for their channel.
And this causes it to kind of Fade into all the other channels that don't have a specific direction. I know it might seem like a good idea to go super broad, but this really is an advanced thing to do when you're a bigger channel and you've covered all the niche topics early on. That's when you start expanding into what slowly wider and wider topics, but not before that you need to start in a niche and establish yourself.
Then as your channel grows, you pivot out and grow wider because the chances of you as a beginner with no subscribers, attracting an audience who likes, Baseball, Pokemon cards, investing and video editing is such a small audience of people that even if you did find all the people in the world that has those specific hobbies, there's really not going to be that many of them, which is why it's better to focus on just one of those topics, whichever one you feel most passionate about, where you feel like you could bring the most value.
Go the most in depth and create hundreds of videos over the next few years. The final mistake I see new YouTube creators make is not monetizing early enough. Can you relate to this? You've been slogging it out for months or even years and you barely have a dollar to show for it. I know that was certainly my situation in my first few years of being on YouTube.
While I had all the glory of having a few thousand subscribers and Like 10, 20, 000 views and a bunch of likes and nice comments. Unfortunately, those things do not pay the bills and I've got bills to pay. Which is why you really need to keep monetization in mind from day one. While you don't need a complete business plan, it's a good idea to have a rough destination in mind as to how you're going to monetize your channel down the line.
That way you can start making more specific content targeted at that audience. So then When you are at that point, maybe months or even a year down the line, those people are invested in you, you've given them enough value on that specific topic that they will happily follow you towards whatever your monetization strategy is.
But this really does need to be taken seriously. If you want to sustain yourself on YouTube for a long time, you're going to need to earn money from it somehow. It's not unethical to earn money from your YouTube channel in one way or another, because you're investing your time in making videos. Money in equipment it takes to make those videos.
While it is nice to do it to help people, absolutely, you're not a charity and you can't afford to work completely for free for the rest of your life. If you want some ideas about how you can do this, I wrote a completely free ebook, which you can download below, that shares my top ten ways that I've earned money with my YouTube channel that you can also apply to yours.
Every creator does this in a slightly different way depending on your niche and your business aspirations. So it's important to choose a monetization strategy that is specific to your goals and your channel. So feel free to download the free guide down below. All right, so that's it for my top 10 mistakes beginner YouTubers make and how to avoid them.
I hope you got value from this episode and I hope you really reflect on all 10 of these things and try your best to not make these exact mistakes from day one because I can tell you firsthand that I made all of them and it slowed down the growth of my YouTube channel substantially. If you enjoyed the episode, Feel free to leave me a rating in whichever podcast app you're using.
I would really appreciate that. I wish you all the success in the world and happy creating.
