YouTube is wildly popular and a lucrative place to showcase your business or passion. Billions of people spend hours watching videos on YouTube on a daily basis. YouTube is now the 2nd most visited website and 2nd biggest search engine after Google. With so much to gain and nothing to lose just by sharing your videos with the world on YouTube, why not start now? But first, let’s discuss everything you need to start your YouTube empire.

1. Know your channel’s purpose.

First, you need to know your YouTube channel’s purpose. Do you want to share your passion with the world? Is YouTube part of your video content marketing strategy to promote your business? defining a purpose will help guide you while you start creating content. Find your niche and stick to it.

Discover the area/subject matter/topic you want to speak about. Your channel should be about one specific topic, especially at the start, because you need to appeal to a specific audience. Be it beauty, traveling, or food, build as much as you can with your specific niche.

2. Be consistent

If you want to get into YouTube you need to have a goal. That may be uploading 1 video a month or publishing 2 videos a week. Set a goal that you know you’ll be able to accomplish, and do your best to stick to it. you might not be entirely satisfied with your work but it’s important to get your work out there and start on your next project.

3. Create a banner

We all know how important first impressions are. They can set the tone for your entire interaction with any given person in any given circumstance. Your YouTube channel banner will likely be the first thing your viewers and possible subscribers will see when visiting your channel. Canva is one easy-to-use graphic design platform with several YouTube channel art templates that can help you get a jump start on designing your own banner. some rules to keep in mind before you start designing are:
• Minimum size for the banner is 2048 x 1152 pixels.
• Maximum file size is 6MB
• Place your logo and critical text in the center 1540 x 427 area of the banner to minimize the
risk of getting content cut off. This area is considered the ‘safe zone’.

4. Camera and audio

It’s not about the camera you have, it’s about what you do with your camera to project your content. That being said, two main considerations when choosing a camcorder or camera should be audio and image stabilization. Audio is really important because you want your viewers to be able to hear what you’re saying clearly rather than picking up ruffled background noises.

Some suggested camcorders to start with are Panasonic HC X920, Canon VIXIA HF, etc. but honestly, it just depends on your filming style and the kind of result you want.

5. Make a template.

Videos need structure. With your next project, think of how you will develop a show formula that
becomes a template for all your videos. You’ll introduce yourself to everyone who’s new to your
channel. You also need a call to action that encourages people to subscribe. take time to figure
out the structure of the video as you have to stick to it for as long as possible.

6. Use simple editing software.

At the beginning with no prior experience, I’m going to say choose a simple editing software. plenty of free but quality video editing apps are available, some of them being VITA, VIVA videocut, INshot, etc. Even Windows Movie Maker will do the job just fine. You may move to a more advanced software once you’ve gained experience.

7. Understand YouTube analytics.

Certain metrics are crucial to keep an eye on, and the first is click-through rate.This represents how enticing your titles are and how clickable your thumbnails are. Check the click-through rate for your channel as a whole and on individual videos.

Try to improve that by two to three percent this year. It will bring in more views. The other metric is Watch Time. Generally speaking, the more Watch Time you get, the more YouTube is going to promote your content. Looking at your video’s audience retention. How does it stack up to similar videos, in terms of whether people are still watching or not? Try and improve this metric. Having said that, if your average view duration is 60%, 70%, or 80%, you’re doing really well.

8. Share and collaborate.

Don’t forget to share your videos. If you hit the share tab underneath a video, you’ll notice that it
can be shared across 13 different social platforms, so share as much as you can for maximum
views.

Lastly, this is a community where people love to collaborate, so if you find a channel that has a
similar niche, you could potentially reach out and see if you can work on a video together and
cross-promote each other. Help out or work for a comparatively popular YouTuber for free to
pull some of their audience to your channel. This will help you get more views, subscribers, and
popularity.

9. Verify your YouTube channel.

Have you verified your YouTube account yet? Doing this will give you

access to the most important tool on YouTube, which is custom thumbnails.

10. Don’t let negative comments affect you.

Creating videos and sharing them with the world puts you in a vulnerable position. You are
basically opening yourself up to an audience of complete strangers and giving them a glimpse
of your life. It can be a bit scary because you never know who’s watching or what their reactions
are going to be, but that’s a chance you take when creating videos. All you can do is create
content you are proud of, focus on the positive words you get from viewers, and ignore anything
that isn’t constructive.

This was all you need to know to become the next YouTube sensation. Now pick up your favourite camera and get shooting!