Learn to make a Living Off YouTube by growing your subscriber numbers
Trying to build a viable business on YouTube is all about generating a sustainable viewership on your channel. For those content creators who are striving to make a Living Off YouTube, increasing your subscriber base can only be achieved by producing videos that are conducive to high view counts. In this article I’m going to share with you five important tips to driving more traffic to your channel and therefore increase your YouTube subscriber numbers.
1. Improve the Quality of Your Videos
YouTube has moved on from the days of crappy pixelated webcam videos with poor lighting and bad sound. The expectations of audiences have evolved and if you’re going to make a living off YouTube, you need to understand that. Make sure that your videos look great. Appearances are everything when it comes to online media. It’s time for you to purchase a decent DSLR or prosumer camcorder, these can range in price from a few hundred dollars to a few thousand. You don’t have to spend a lot, in fact some point and shoot cameras can provide excellent video recording capabilities and make for great vlogging cameras. In order to be as subscribable as possible, you must produce videos with aesthetically pleasing visuals, in focus, that are well lit and and have good sounding audio. If your DSLR camera doesn’t record good quality audio, consider purchasing an external microphone to mount on the hot shoe such as the Rode VideoMic Pro.
2. Use Facebook & Google+
Facebook and Google+ are the world’s biggest social media networks and therefore, they are the most influential. Your YouTube channel should have a number of social media sites connected to it in order to help encourage further discussion on your videos and get to know your audience, Facebook and Google+ are just two of them. You can also consider Tumblr, Instagram, LinkedIn, Vine, Pinterest, and Glipho, among others. Create fan pages for your social networks and let your subscribers know about them in your videos and on your website. The use of these websites is also about reaching your subscribers when they’re not on YouTube and posting your videos there as embedded posts to generate more views. Never spam your content all over them, you need to use them sparingly, but keep them fun and interesting. Your main goal is to try to continue the conversation that you start on your YouTube channel and build a large community following. In addition you should use Twitter and employ relevant hashtags in your tweets along with links to your videos.
3. Support Your Channel With a Blog
These days it is essential that all YouTubers have their own online space outside of their channel that they control. Because of the precarious nature of YouTube in which arbitrary changes to the site by Google can result in a sudden and dramatic declines in view counts, it’s important to have your own place on the web that you are in full control of. Your goal here is to produce a supporting blog post for each video you upload. Blog posts that are written with good SEO can be a great way for your videos to be discovered through organic search on Google. To make a living off YouTube, you must create your own online brand through your website that nicely compliments the content you produce on your channel.
4. Engage & Keep Active
As with any business, you must stay up to date with what your counterparts and competitors in your niche are doing. With respect to YouTube, never consider those people who make similar videos to yourself as competitors. They are all your colleagues and fellow YouTubers, they are people you can work with, learn from, teach, help and be helped by. As a YouTuber, it is important for you to not only create videos, but to watch them also. Keep an eye on the content being produced by YouTubers who operate in the same content niche that you do. Engage with their content. Like, share and comment on their videos, be positive, constructive and never be spiteful or begrudging or jealous of the success of others. It never gets you anywhere.
Build relationships and reach out to them, you’ll notice that all of these successful YouTube celebrities who are making a living off YouTube have one thing in common, they aren’t alone. They didn’t make it all by themselves, they had help, they worked with other people in their specific area of expertise. As in life and other aspects of your professional career, making a living off YouTube is dependant on being able to network and work well with others. Try to become a frequent commenter on the channel’s of your favourite YouTubers and eventually a relationship can develop.
YouTube is a collaborative medium, we’re all in this together and those YouTuber’s who work together, succeed. Collaborations are a great way to generate cross pollination of subscribers and grow your channel. Reach out to YouTubers you become friendly with and ask if they’d like to work with you on a YouTube video or series of videos. Refer your subscribers to their channel and vice versa. This is especially effective if the people you collaborate with make videos in the same genre as you do.
Incidentally, you should never engage in sub for sub activity. Asking someone to subscribe to your channel and in return you’ll subscribe to theirs simply doesn’t help you. These people aren’t subscribing to your channel because they like your content.
For more information on growing your audience and making money from YouTube, download the Kindle eBook version of my book: Living Off YouTube: A Complete Guide To Turning Your YouTube Channel into a Full-Time Job. The paperback edition can be purchased here.
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