If I started a YT channel in 2024, I’d do this :

[Music]

Hi guys! Hi! So I know you have a lot of questions in your mind. Is it too late? Can I do it too? If yes, how? What do I need to know? Where do I start? What do people around me think about me?

I've been trying to become a YouTuber since 2016, and this is my fifth channel that only succeeded. I made so many mistakes along the way, but I finally know kind of what I'm doing. So I got you, and I'm going to give you the exact plan to start your journey. In a little later, we're going to talk about the worst thing to avoid if you want to monetize your channel as fast as possible. But first, you need to have the courage to be disliked.

Let's say you started posting videos, right? People are so busy with their own lives; nobody will make fun of you, right? I disagree. When I started my channel back in 2016, people were making fun of me, like saying I'll never succeed as a YouTuber. When your videos start to get traction, some people will comment heartless things, and they might even hate you just for being you.

A quote from my favorite book, "The Courage to Be Disliked," says, "Being disliked by someone shows that you are free to exercise your own choices and live according to your principles." The courage to be happy also includes the courage to be disliked. Unless you don't care about what other people think, aren't afraid of being disliked, and are willing to take the risk of never being acknowledged, you won't be able to live life on your terms. In other words, you won't be able to be free.

I don't like making excuses, and I try my best to always take action rather than complain. But we're human, and sometimes the doubts in your brain start to take control over you. In those times, I've been doing this since I was 10, and I write down every concern, every possible excuse I have on a piece of paper. I ask myself, is it in my control? And if yes, what can I do about it? If it's not in my control, why am I even worrying about it?

The goal is to do my best at that given moment, not to be perfect. With that being said, you shouldn't put all your eggs in one basket if your risk tolerance is low. If you're young, single, and don't have anyone to look after, your risk tolerance is high, meaning you can go all in to YouTube. If you're married, older, and have family to take care of, your risk tolerance is low. Rather than quitting your current job and doing YouTube full-time, start it as a side hustle. Don't quit your 9 to 5 before seeing some success and knowing what you're doing.

I know both are hard—going all in on YouTube, living off your savings, or working full-time and doing YouTube as a side hustle. I know. But if you want to have an extraordinary life, you can't live like an ordinary person. In either situation, we need to treat YouTube as a business. If you want to achieve the outcomes we would expect from a successful business rather than trade it in as a hobby, it's completely fine, by the way, if you want to do YouTube as a hobby and make money here and there—have a casual relationship with it.

But if you kind of want to retire your parents like I did and also want to reach financial freedom, treating it as a hobby might not be enough because the competition is so high. YouTube is not a get-rich-quick scheme. Yes, you can start making a lot of money quickly only if you're familiar with content creation already—like marketing, copyright writing, sales, editing, filming, and also design, which is quite rare because most of us don't know anything about those things in the beginning.

You will have a learning curve. I monetized this channel in 3 months, but I've been wanting to become a YouTuber since 2016. Because I wasn't getting any views, I started to analyze every single video I watched. I've been doing that ever since. Like, it's been 7 years, and even with years of trying to figure out what works on YouTube on my own, when I look back, I actually didn't know anything when I just started this channel. Now I know everything.

You're lucky because you can cut that time into a couple of months since there are so many videos teaching you how to do it, like this one, and also online sources, courses, podcasts—like anything. And I'm on my way to also create a YouTube course, and we'll have a link for the waiting list if you're interested. But if you can't afford a course, which is completely fine, I would do the exact thing that I've done for this channel because I also didn't have money, which is market research.

This is the most common rookie mistake I see everyone doing, including my past self. To be a good creator, you need to be a good consumer first, and Stephen King agrees with me. I'm not talking about passively scrolling and watching random videos; I want you to watch videos from a creator perspective.

Step one: open a new YouTube account. Step two: only watch videos that are similar to what you want to create. Step three: when you decide to click on a video, ask yourself, "What made me click on this video? Is it the title? Is it the thumbnail?"

Analyze. Step four: take notes. If you get bored and stop watching the video in the middle, ask yourself, "What did make me click off? What could have done better? What can I learn from this and apply to my content creation?"

Step five: think about your unfair advantages. Unfair advantages are things that cannot be easily copied or bought by your competitors. Don't say, "Oh, I don't have an unfair advantage because everyone has it." Having money can be an unfair advantage, obviously, but also not having money is an unfair advantage. It's all about whether you know how to use it or not.

I'll put some links in the case you’re interested. Step six: allow YouTube's algorithm to learn your preferences and keep doing this. The more you do this, the more you realize the patterns in good videos. Doing market research is probably one of the most valuable things you can do for your channel.

I'm creating a course, but without the market research, even the best YouTube course on the planet can't help you. Maybe I'm shooting myself in the foot and decreasing my potential sales by saying this, but before even thinking about investing in a YouTube course, do market research. Learn what a good YouTube video is.

Most people buy a very expensive YouTube course, and they think like a $1,000 course will guarantee success, but if you're not willing to grow, evolve, and improve your content with time, no course can help you, including mine in the future. Yes, a YouTube course will guide you and cut that time for you to succeed, but if you're not willing to put the work in, then unfortunately, you can't succeed in any area of life.

Nobody can succeed for you. But since the majority of the people are not willing to do market research, we can use this as our unfair advantage by being the one who wants to learn and evolve over time. So market research can be your strong unfair advantage. Even if you get the market research, it would be meaningless without taking action. Stop overthinking and just start creating.

You don't have to tell anyone that you started a YouTube channel. Don't worry; the first 20, 30, maybe 50 videos of yours are going to be bad anyway, and you can always make your old videos private in the future, like I did.

You can start investing in equipment because gear does matter. It doesn't mean that you need to spend thousands of dollars. Nowadays, phones have really good camera quality, and if you have access to sunlight, then it's perfect. I would start from investing in my audio quality. People will watch your video even if your video quality is not that good, but if your audio quality sucks, then good luck!

You can start by investing in low-budget lav mics that you can plug into your phone. That $50 investment is going to make a huge difference. After you film the video, you need to edit it. Don't be a perfectionist when editing your videos.

YouTube got popular because it was authentic, real, and raw compared to traditional media. Yes, you can go high production like Mr. Beast and succeed, but I truly believe that the essence of YouTube lies in storytelling. Humans have been connecting through stories, and storytelling is a fundamental part of being human and lets us connect with each other.

I used to think about YouTube as an algorithm, so algorithm picked up my video or algorithm doesn't like this video, blah blah. But when I shifted my mindset from algorithm to actual people, I started to think about my videos in a different way. We're not making videos for an algorithm; we are creating to build a community of like-minded people.

I’m going to be honest; I actually realized this recently. We're sharing our journey and documenting our lives and also thoughts, connecting with each other. As a Scottish Traveler's proverb says, "The story is told eye to eye, mind to mind, and heart to heart." Storytelling is about personal and human connection.

After I realized that, I started to study storytelling more because I wanted to learn more. If you can nail the storytelling, you don’t have to go crazy with your editing. An easy way to enhance your storytelling skills is picking the right music.

I'm going to be honest: in the beginning of my YouTube journey, I didn't know the importance of music. I was just slapping a random lo-fi music track to my videos. But music and sound effects play a huge role in telling the story with your video. They enhance the storytelling experience by adding depth, emotion, and also impact the visuals.

So let's do an example. I just moved to another city; I don't know anyone here. I just moved to another city; I don't know anyone here. Can you hear the difference? I hope you can.

It's important, we know, but it takes ages to find the right sound effect and music, and listening to hundreds of tracks is—I don't think it's really fun, to be honest. I've been using Epidemic Sound from the beginning of this channel to find the right sound effects and music for my videos. When they reached out to me to sponsor this video, I was so hyped up because it's definitely like a made-it moment for my YouTube career.

But anyway, the tracks are organized into different moods, genres, and also various playlists. Whether you want to make your video calm, soothing, motivational, maybe even sad, you can easily find the right music.

It's a literal tragedy when you spend 20, 30 hours working on a video just to get a copyright strike and not be able to monetize it. One of the great advantages of Epidemic Sound is that all their tracks are completely copyright-free, which means you can use them without worrying about copyright issues. So you can monetize them basically.

If you're interested, check out Epidemic Sound from my link in the description below for a 30-day free trial. The most crucial and hardest part is our next step: Kaizen. If you don't get this step right, we're going to get lost in the sea of content.

To be successful on YouTube, posting a bunch of videos makes no sense if you're not improving each time. Many people think they can succeed if they just continue. I used to think that way too, but if you're not improving your videos with each upload, it’s unrealistic that you will be successful.

With each upload, I try to improve my videos by 1%. It can be the storytelling, lighting, editing, music choice, the title, thumbnail, I don't know, or my production efficiency. Even now, with over a million of you guys, my videos are not perfect, but that's fine as long as we keep going and keep improving, because it will create a compound effect.

Don't be a perfectionist with your videos because you have many videos to practice. There is a famous quote from Reid Hoffman, the founder of LinkedIn, which really resonates with me: "If you're not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you've launched too late."

When we create content, not only our production quality but also our content itself needs to evolve. The internet constantly evolves, and YouTube back in 2013 is not even close to YouTube today. As we grow as humans, our content needs to reflect that too.

I don't know about you, but when I think about my past self, I cringe so hard. Like, I'm currently 22, but when I think about my 17-year-old self or even 21-year-old me, I want to dig a hole and bury myself there. I'm so sorry for the disturbance! I can be so annoying. Maybe I'm still annoying; who knows? And unfortunately, I'm quite sure that I will cringe at my current self a year later too.

I remember my mom saying, "If you're cringing at your past self, that means you've grown up and changed," which is a good sign. If we are growing and constantly evolving, that means that our audience, our community—people who support us—also grow and change.

So to adapt, we need to constantly analyze from a consumer and also from a creator's perspective and continue learning. I'm not only talking about doing YouTube market research but also diving deeper into your personal interests.

I used to be quite interested in time management and also productivity, but for example, I've learned that the most productive thing is not doing and completing everything on your to-do list, but prioritizing what matters and growing as a human.

Now I'm more interested in philosophy and psychiatry, and as I'm learning more about those topics, I'm going to create more about these things. Yes, learning retention hacks, editing skills, and thumbnail titles—everything is important, but in my opinion, having something you want to share with the world, having a mission with your content, and evolving as a human is as important as it is.

And don't forget, even if you do everything correct, it's going to take time for your videos to get traction. Because to get traction on YouTube, the algorithm needs to find the right audience for your videos. It's going to recommend your videos to your potential future audience, and once it finds the right match, as long as the response is good, it's going to keep recommending it to more people.

Think of one of my favorite creators, "Life of Frieza." She's been making high-quality videos for years but didn't get traction. But she kept going while improving her content, and in just a month, she gained 127k subscribers.

For years, nothing happened, but then suddenly, boom, and everyone fell in love with her content. It wasn't that her content was bad or anything, but it just needed time. You might think, "Oh then, YouTube is all about luck." Luck is treated as something we can't control, but I strongly disagree. You can increase your surface area for luck by taking action.

The person who works hard, pursues opportunities, and tries more things is more likely to stumble across a lucky break than the person who just waits. I know it sounds so obvious, but no one is going to knock on your door and say, "Oh my God, hi! You're going viral!" Right? You need to make videos.

I know it takes courage to start posting videos, I know it's hard, and I know it's scary, and it's not going to be easy either. But it is so worth it, and you got this. All you need is courage.

If you find this video helpful, you might find this video here helpful if you want to learn more about how I exactly grew my channel in 3 months.