How To Start a YouTube Channel from Nothing
Hi everyone & welcome to my blog! If you’re new here, hi I’m Nena :) Today I’m sharing my tips and advice for starting a YouTube channel from the ground up with the bare minimum of equipment & editing & much more. It is very intimidating to start a YouTube channel, and I just wanted to share my experience with how I started out on YouTube & how I was able to grow my channel without any fancy or expensive equipment! Hope this helps :)
Just Get Started
I think the most important piece of advice that I can give you is to just do it. Dive into it head first because if you never take the first step, you are going to be telling yourself every day that you are going to do it tomorrow. You’re going to do it once you get a camera or a light or editing software. Nope, you just need to get started with whatever you have. When I started, all I had was my iPhone 7 & iMovie to edit. Almost every YouTuber will tell you that you use what you have until you can upgrade. I made videos for 2 years without a real camera.
Setting Up Your Account
I won’t go too into depth about the logistics of setting up your account because it’s fairly easy to figure it out. As long as you have a gmail account, you have a channel on YouTube. So, here are the basics. In order to create your channel & make it look somewhat profession or legit you need some kind of theme, and a good high quality profile picture & home page banner. You can create a custom channel banner on a website on Canva.com for free (that’s what I use) and it’s super easy. This step is all about establishing your channel, but also your brand. You are making sure everything is cohesive & clean cut. There is also an option to add a logo subscribe button in the right bottom corner of your videos, which you can also create on Canva.com. Another element that is often overlooked is the about tab on your channel home page. You can write a brief intro about who you are and what your channel is all about. This just helps tie your channel together and if your subscribers want they can learn a little more about you.
Dimensions for Canva:
banner: 1920 x 1080
end card & thumbnail: 1280 x 720
subscribe logo: 150 x 150
Establishing Your Brand & Your Niche
When you start your channel the first questions you want to ask yourself are: what is your channel going to be about, and what is the niche that you are going to focus on? If you are a small, aspiring YouTuber like myself, and you don’t already follow Cathrin Manning, you need to. Her videos are great for people trying to navigate the logistics of this platform, and she has a very inspiring attitude toward content creation. The knowledge I gained from her channel is invaluable, truly. She always says that the best way to grow your subscribers organically, is to find a niche and focus on a few types of videos rather that a bunch of random ideas that don’t really relate to each other. For example, if you are making workout, health, fitness type videos, the people searching for your content are going to have several videos they are interested in, therefore, you will not just get one initial view, you have the potential to get more than one view per visitor to your channel. This means they are more likely to subscribe to you. If you want your channel to be about health and fitness, but then you throw in hair tutorials and music covers, it might hurt your audience retention rate, or people might unsubscribe because they came there for workout videos not how to french braid lol. At the beginning, I kind of just did whatever, and I was losing views and subscribers. When you have a video that is doing well, listen to that response. Now, I focus on guitar tutorials as one of my video types, because they were performing very well, and I enjoyed making them. I also make sit-down advice videos like these and travel vlogs. Right now, I am mostly focusing on those 3 areas.
Filming, Content & Equipment Set Up
As far as actually creating your videos, like I said before, use what you have. Before you start filming, it’s good to plan your videos and what you are going to say. For me, I don’t write out full scripts, but I like to write down some bullet points, so that I remember everything I want to include in the video (or else I forget lol). I recommend keeping a constant list of video ideas so that you can always have something to refer to if you are ever having trouble coming up with a new idea. I always keep a running list of at least 10 ideas. When I first started, I didn’t even intend on being a real YouTuber, and I wasn’t posting regularly. I didn’t have time to make videos, and I was stuck in a very narrow niche of travel/semester at sea videos. Once I decided that I wanted to rebrand, and pursue my channel for real, it was almost like I was going through the beginning process again. For my first 2 years, I made my videos strictly with my iPhone 7 camera & iMovie editing, then I upgraded to my iPhone 11 a year ago. As far as editing, there are so many great tutorials on YouTube that can teach you the ins and outs of iMovie, and honestly, I just recently switched over to Final Cut Pro a few weeks ago. There is definitely a bit of a learning curve but trust me you can do it. Another pro tip: USE NATURAL LIGHTING. Natural lighting is one of the best tools because almost 100% of the time it shows up great on camera. I still use natural lighting because I like the way it looks. It’s not too staged, and plus my ring light feels really blinding some times lol. In my early videos, I usually just set up a chair and propped up my phone with some books. I literally just stacked up books until I liked the angle. Make sure the phone is horizontal because when you edit it the dimensions will be all messed up if its vertical. ALSO, copyright free music was another road block I ran into. I like to use music in my videos for b-roll clips, but I was having issues finding music that wouldn’t get my videos demonetized. But I recently just found a website called Thematic Music. You can make a free account and use thousands of songs for free, just as long as you link them in the description box of your videos. I would compare this website to Epidemic Sound, except this one is free, there is no monthly fee to use it.
Here are some helpful iMovie editing tutorials:
Camera Confidence
This is a huge deterrent for people. You ask yourself, how am i supposed to talk to a camera? How am i supposed to act? It was super weird at first I’m not going to lie. I totally had to hype myself up, and if you go watch my earliest videos you can tell how far I’ve come. It’s actually hilarious, I was watching some of them the other day with my friend, and we were dying laughing. I have no personality and my voice is absolutely monotone. I suggest setting up your camera and just practice, not for a video, but to just get comfortable. Eventually, I just got to the point where I treat it like I’m talking to my friends, which essentially I am haha. Even now sometimes I don’t feel like talking to the camera, but the hardest part is starting. After a few minutes you get into it, and soon enough you’ve talked for 45 minutes and hate yourself because you have to edit all of it down to 15 haha :’)
Stay Consistent and Persistent
I will say, as soon as I set an uploading schedule and committed to it, my growth started to steadily increase. Holding yourself accountable is important because as a content creator, you are in charge of how much work you put in and that ultimately determines your growth and results. I’ve been uploading twice a week for 3 months and i’ve gained almost 2k subscribers and with time my growth has been slightly scaling. Trust me it is hard frickin’ work. I am up til like 2am editing some nights, and I am constantly researching & learning new ways to improve my channel.
Be Patient
Success doesn’t come right away. If you’re thinking all you need is one viral video, i will tell you that is not the case. About a year ago, my first video blew up. It got over 200k views in 2 days and that caused many of my other videos to also gain a substantial amount of views. I thought that I made it, that I was going to keep getting view like this. I gained 3k subscribers very quickly but soon after, my views were falling, and I was gaining less and less subscribers every day. I tried to ride the viral wave but i ended up crashing and I didn’t know which direction i needed to take. Six months later is when I started to rebrand and revamp my channel and in only 3 months I have completely transformed my channel into something that I am so proud of. But it was NOT without hard work and hour and hours of dedication and determination. It’s always hard to not compare your growth with other people, and if you are a YouTuber just starting out, please do not compare your first couple months with my 2 years. Growth takes time, and everyone’s journey is different! I have a quote on my vision board that says “be proud of how hard you are working now”. Be proud that you are taking this step towards something you want to pursue. Be proud that you are taking the risk and putting yourself out there. I am proud of myself, and I am proud of you for going after what you want!
Thank you so much for all the support & I wish you all the best in your YouTube endeavors! Don’t forget to create your own happiness :)
xoxo
Nena
