Coming up with good video ideas can make or break a YouTube channel. Choose the right ideas and your channel will grow quickly and start earning you money quickly, but choose the wrong ideas and you could potentially waste years of your time making. Underperforming videos that result in barely any channel or revenue growth.
So in this episode of the full time YouTuber podcast, I'll share some tips and strategies that new YouTubers can follow to come up with winning video ideas from day one. Hey, I'm Ben and I help YouTubers who are entrepreneurs at heart, grow their 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 this episode with a confession. As someone who is portraying themselves as an expert on YouTube and coming up with great ideas, I've come up with more bad ideas than I have good ones.
Over the years, when I look back at the history of my YouTube channel, especially way back when, in 2017 and beyond, some of those ideas are so cringeworthy, I'm tempted to delete them and strict them from the record. In fact, I'd even say, when you look at my YouTube channel as a whole, More than 70 percent of my videos are bad ideas.
And this is what also makes me an expert on the topic, because I've made every mistake in the book when it comes to video ideas. Every time you decide on a new video idea and you go ahead and make it, you're essentially rolling the dice. That dice has an equal chance of landing on a 1 as it does a 6. A 1 being an absolute And I'm not saying those two things are equal because more often than not, you're going to roll a one than a six.
In fact, you may only roll one six per few hundred videos, but once you do roll that six with it, comes a very big clue about your channel direction. And what people are responding really, really well to. So I'm going to give you a bunch of tips that can get you to the six roll as quickly as possible.
Don't expect this to be an overnight thing because it absolutely doesn't work that way. However, if you follow strategies for success and don't keep making the same types of underperforming videos time after time, you're much more likely to get there sooner. Now, the first thing I'd say when it comes to rolling this six, is not to make videos purely for entertainment.
Generally, people come to YouTube for one of three reasons. They want to be entertained, educated, or inspired. And if you can do multiple, if not all three of those things in a single video, you are much more likely to roll that six. Of the three, however, the lowest value one is entertainment, especially when it comes to monetization.
Because even though some channels do go super viral with Dance videos and gaming content. These channels are the hardest to make money with because people aren't really willing to pay for anything beyond the free cost. It took them to watch an ad to see the content, which for you is 0. 0001 of a cent per view per video.
And that's going to make making money on YouTube a really hard. task. So where I would start your idea direction is more towards the inspiration and especially education. So in order, education comes first, inspiration second, and entertainment third. The main reason for this Is with education comes problem solving.
And problem solving is the number one reason people come to YouTube. If you don't know how to tie a tie, you'll come to YouTube and watch a two minute tutorial. If you don't know how to use your Wi Fi modem, instead of spending days and days figuring it out yourself, You'll probably just head on to YouTube to find a solution.
If you're not sure which exercises to do in the gym, you have a problem and you go to YouTube for a solution. The YouTube platform is all about problems and solutions, and the better you can provide solutions for people, the more successful your channel is going to be. Especially if you can provide high level solutions that give people a lot of value.
Now the number one Audience, I'd recommend you target as a beginner on YouTube to provide those solutions are exactly you beginners trying to figure things out because with most topics, I think we would all consider ourselves a beginner at 99 percent of things. While we all have our core skills that we might've learned over the years.
If I want to go and start learning how to play piano, I'm not going to look for intermediate or advanced tutorials. I'm absolutely a beginner, or if I want to learn a new computer program, I'm a beginner and I need the absolute most basic beginner's tutorial to start understanding what it is, how it works, and hopefully evolving my skills beyond beginner level.
But I've found over the years from targeting Every skill level out there that beginners generally forms at least 75 percent of people searching on YouTube. So as a beginner make videos for beginners. Firstly, they'll be easy to make and you won't be overwhelming yourself going into too much detail that people don't need to know.
And you'll also be targeting the largest cross section of viewers. So beginners videos can be things like a beginner's guide to. X topic. It can be a complete overview beginners tutorial of say a software or a musical technique. There really are so many different beginners guides that can be made because generally beginners don't know that new topic that they're trying to learn from a bar of soap and there's going to be many different aspects they need to know that they don't even know.
That they need to know that you can probably teach them. Now, what should that exact topic be? Well, my advice would be choose the thing that is your number one skill in life. What are you the number one expert in, in your world, your immediate circle? Because that's usually a really strong clue about what you should be teaching others.
For example, I've been making videos literally since I was 13 years old. That is like two thirds of my life, and I know video creation backwards, forwards, with my eyes closed, while I'm sleeping I can teach it, and therefore I'm able to provide really good explanations, and be really passionate about it as well, because I know every last thing you need to know about video creation, especially for YouTube.
So what would you say your number one thing is? Have you got it yet? What I'd add to that is to also not make the mistake of choosing a secondary or third thing. I see this all too often where a creator does have a core skillset, say they are a dentist, but they're thinking about making a YouTube channel about tourism in their local area, which they know a little bit about, but not that much.
But they think that that secondary thing is going to become their primary YouTube topic. And while you can do that and you. Definitely can run a YouTube channel out of passion. It's important to keep in mind that generally audiences go to YouTube because they want to find world experts at topics. If I want to learn how to tie a tie, I want to learn from someone who's tied a tie 6, 000 times before.
Not the person who watched another YouTube tutorial the day before and learned literally 24 hours before making their own tutorial video. Likewise, if I'm learning video editing, I want to learn from a world expert video editor, not a complete beginner who is likely to teach me a lesson filled with mistakes.
So when you think about that, and maybe you can reflect on this from your own perspective of using YouTube as a problem solving tool. Generally, you want someone who knows their stuff. Therefore, as a YouTuber, you need to be that person who also knows their stuff. So unless you really hate your career and the key body of work you've done across your life, chances are this would be the ideal topic for you to make a YouTube channel about.
And the way to go about that would be creating how to style videos, how to bake bread. How to play guitar, how quantum physics works. People always want to learn how to do things. And this is really a great place to start. If you're a complete beginner making your first few videos. Now, if you want to get a sense of how to get started with these types of videos, I've got a free PDF download called 100 viral video ideas.
And I think it's a great place to start because I really filled it with a whole bunch of great templates where you can just copy and paste your specific information into the gaps. And the very start of the guide starts with these types of how to guides. So the first one in the guide is how to achieve specific outcome in year.
This could be something like. How to shoot cinematic smartphone videos in 2025, because even if someone made the exact same video last year, for every year that passes, the previous videos become outdated and people want the latest tips and tricks because things truly do change from year to year. You could make the ultimate beginner's guide to your subject.
For example, the ultimate beginner's guide to crochet. Example number five, software or tool, complete beginner's tutorial followed by the year. And this format is the exact format I used to create my most successful video ever. And that was my DaVinci Resolve Beginner's Tutorial that I made nearly a year ago now, and it's now passed 1.
2 million views from using a very simple how to style like this one. I won't go on and on with all of these ideas, but if you would like To check them out and download this guide completely for free. You can do so on my website, benclaymont. com slash ideas, or follow the link below. The main takeaway here is that I want you to think of what the big few ideas might be and not small ones.
What do I mean by that? Well, a small view idea is something that is a little bit too specific that only a few people might be searching for. For example, how to use the timeline zoom tool like a pro inside CapCut. While it sounds good and everything, so few people would be looking for something that specific, since that's a tool most people won't even bother using.
Whereas if you thought of the Big view idea version of that, where you could still incorporate that specific tip. It would sound something more like top 10 must try features of CapCut in 2025. This is a video idea that is way more universally appealing and won't instantly disqualify everyone who doesn't care less about the timeline zoom tool.
And if you do want to make a video about something specific, I would just say, make sure it's one of the. Biggest questions that people ask and in your niche, I'm sure you know what these questions are. If you work a job in the same industry, what are the main questions people ask you in your day to day life?
Because chances are, if you've heard that question a thousand times over, people are going to have that same question on YouTube. Thousands and thousands more times. A great way to research this is on YouTube itself by typing in a word or two and seeing what auto complete suggests. So I've just tested and typed in yoga and underneath it's come up with a whole bunch of the most common search queries, some of them being yoga for kids.
Yoga for beginners, Yoga Nidra, Yoga transparent stretch, whatever that is. These are all clues about what the topics and questions are in your niche that people are most asking. So what I then do from there is dive down the yoga rabbit hole on YouTube and see what the most popular videos are and what the most searched questions are.
You can usually tell by the top performing videos. What those really big pain points are and what people are really searching for solutions for. Because again, the better you can provide those solutions, the faster you're going to grow your channel. I'd recommend keeping your video ideas simple and literal to the question or problem you're solving.
So instead of something more ambiguous, like amazing Germany travel hacks, you must try. Make them more literal and questions that people might be searching. If they wanted to travel Germany, what would they be typing in? Well, chances are it's something like, which cities should you visit in Germany? How to see Germany in seven days or top 10 things to do in Germany.
All of these titles are simple and literal and stand no chance of misinterpretation. Therefore they could become. It's a really good question, and it's a really good question, and it's a really good question, that I use, sometimes you might have an inkling or you do this research and you've got a rough idea of what you wanna do, but you still need a second or even a third opinion.
Well, that's when I'd head on to ChatGPT, which is the free AI tool from OpenAI, and I'd workshop it a bit. So I'd tell it what my niche is and I'd ask it to identify what the top five problems are that people have in that niche and what are the top five video ideas that I could make that would solve those problems.
I use AI for problem solving literally every single day. Both with my YouTube channel and my personal life, whenever I need to figure something out, like what exercises to do at the gym, instead of spending hours and hours researching various websites, ChatGPT can generally give you the answers you're seeking in just a couple of minutes.
Okay, so you found your first big video idea. It's a beginner's guide to your topic of expertise. What I'd then do after making that first video is move on to the next topic that people are asking. Generally, there's more than one question being asked in any given field. So answer the next most popular question or solve the next biggest problem.
Then rinse and repeat with the third, fourth, fifth, and so on. Now I do want to throw a bit of a curveball in here that counters the whole This is a really cool evergreen strategy that I just outlined, and that is that sometimes more trending topics come and go, and they provide a really good opportunity to get a lot of views and attention to your channel in a short period of time.
I'll give you an example. Two weeks ago, CapCut and TikTok were banned and a lot of people online were freaking out and not sure what to do next, especially when they had already paid for a CapCut subscription. So what did I do? As someone who has already made a bunch of tutorials on CapCut, I made a video called CapCut banned, now what?
Where I shared some. Thoughts and solutions about what might happen next and how these users in distress can navigate this situation with as minimal damage as possible. And lo and behold, in one single day, that video accumulated 30, 000 views purely because of the fact that this was a trending topic that had only just happened within the 24 hours that I made and launched it.
But if I were to wait a whole week to release that video, chances are I'd only get a tenth of the views. Because trending topics really are trending for a short period because things move fast, solutions and resolutions come with these big topics and the hype usually fades out after a couple of weeks.
However, if you did know of one of these trending topics that was directly in line with the niche of your channel, that could also be a great opportunity to get your channel lots of exposure in a short period of time. I'd just say you'd want to make sure that you're obviously delivering value and that you're not just clickbaiting people in order to get a lot of views because that's going to harm your reputation more than not making the video to begin with would.
So in general I will make a video on a trending topic like that probably every 10 videos or so. Whereas right now, my current strategy is just doubling down on those evergreen videos that are those beginner's guides on the most common frequently asked questions that people ask. I will add though, that this whole process of making a YouTube channel and posting videos consistently over time is a learning process.
You're going to make a ton of mistakes and you're going to waste a lot of time making videos that go nowhere. Unfortunately, that is the cost of it. So, try not to be discouraged if you do make a couple of videos that go nowhere, it's completely fine. Just make sure you're always learning something with every new video about either what to do or what not to do.
Because generally, it takes at least 50 plus videos to get to your first 100, 000 subscribers. And of those 50 videos, Probably only going to be five of them that accumulated the bulk of those numbers. So all you can do is roll the dice and hope for that big six roll, because if you stick around long enough to roll a six, it really will be a life changing moment and help you take a big leap forward in going full time with your channel, if that's your goal.
And monetizing it all while really enjoying the content making process and loving your job. That's it for the episode. If you want to subscribe to the full time YouTuber podcast, it is mostly an audio podcast, so you can find it on the various podcast platforms. I will start posting a few more episodes directly onto my YouTube channel.
So feel free to subscribe over on YouTube as well. If you want to see me in video format, if you have any requests for future episodes, please let me know in the comment section of the video and I'll definitely consider them. All right, well, best of luck with your channel and don't forget, you're just one video away.
