It is no secret that successful YouTubers make a lot of money. Being a YouTuber is known to be among the highest-paying jobs without a college degree.
On the surface, it seems like it is a mixture of dumb luck and good looks that gives YouTubers such success, however, if it were only up to luck, there would not be so many people reaching new levels of success every day.
When you look behind the curtain, you will find that being successful on YouTube takes a lot more than just dumb luck. It takes high levels of organization, practice, and dedication.
There are 5 main phases for how to become successful on this platform, and if you’ve got the willpower, you too can potentially become a successful YouTuber.
Step 1: Barrier Break
In this step, you want to get right into it. Sit down and record a handful of videos (between 12 and 20), even if you don’t know what you are doing exactly.
Don’t do research, don’t overthink, just start recording.
Then, create the thumbnails, produce them, and publish them on your new channel immediately. The point of this exercise is to get out of your comfort zone and start filming.
Lots of people get caught up in “not being good enough” to publish a video. They get stuck in a rut and never take their channel anywhere.
Step 2: Idea Direction
Now that you have a few videos published, you want to start brainstorming on the idea for your channel.
You want to make sure that your idea actually has space on the platform. Get in there and test the industry, find out what other channels are out there.
How much interest is out there, how large are these channels, how many subscribers do they get on average, how many views, what factors are leading to success versus failed channels.
If you find dead channels, find out why they failed.
It is important while you’re doing all of their research to keep in mind that this is your channel, it has to work for you. You want to create a space you enjoy and want to keep growing.
Once you know that you’ve figured it out, you want to get really good at knowing your “space” on YouTube.
At this stage, you are forming a framework based on what audiences like and don’t like so you could “hack” the algorithm so it connects your channel to the best-fit audience as fast as possible.
I’m addition to all of the research, you also want to create a system for generating ideas that are successful and that you know will work both for you and your audience.
Step 3: Core Skill Set
This phase sets the foundation that is going to play through the rest of the phases.
It is paramount that you get your core skill set right, otherwise, you will be struggling throughout the rest of your time building your channel.
It is important to remember that while you are working on figuring out your channel, you don’t forget to publish videos.
You need to ask yourself, what is your work style, and stick to a routine that is both attainable and works for you.
So while you are developing your core skill set, keep publishing a handful of videos on a weekly basis.
In phase three what you are aiming towards is trying to get really good at understanding how the YouTube algorithm works.
You want to find out how YouTube associates audiences to channels, how they decide to show videos to an audience in comparison to what they decide not to show, as well as figuring out where the algorithm is placing your specific audience so you could generate content that gets right to them as efficiently as possible.
A crucial part of your core skill set is to become comfortable in front of a camera. Make sure you are comfortable, present natural body language, and have a good on-camera presence.
You want to feel confident and own your space when you are in front of a camera, that will make people want to keep watching.
In this phase, you want to completely immerse yourself in your industry. Get good at living and breathing your content and generate creative video ideas and titles for future content.
Step 4: Transition
For success to happen on a YouTube channel at some point you have to make something that is helpful, interesting, appealing, or entertaining to people.
The transition happens when the audience starts coming to you. You want to make content that is appealing to others and be able to spread it as far as it can go.
You have to apply your previous skillset and ideas to this transition, and remember, the algorithm has to like you.
You can achieve this in a few ways; keeping people on YouTube for as long as you can, getting good at telling stories so you can lead your audience from video to video, perfecting thumbnails, and being proficient at engaging with your audience (whether that’s being in the comments, or on social media).
Step 5: Replicate Formula
After phase four, you have a working model of what a potentially successful YouTube channel looks like.
From now on, it’s all about fine-tuning and evolving your channel so your audience keeps growing and engaging.
This is the phase where “monetization” comes into play. This is the phase where you get to grow your channel because the baseline has been met.
You have a working formula, you’re using the algorithm in your favor, and most importantly, you have an audience that trusts and likes you.
In this phase, you really get into YouTube analytics. You can now start making data-based decisions for what you’re going to do with your channel.
In this stage, you also want to try to learn how to create “viral videos”, or videos that really take off and get featured on YouTube’s homepage.
These five phases contain a lot of information, however, if you want to make your dreams come true and reach YouTube fame, following these steps will bring you that much closer to achieving that goal.
