13 Tips on How to be Successful on Youtube

According to Tubics, there are 51 million active YouTube channels in 2022, and the number is growing.

This means that in this day and age, in every industry, in every niche, and at every turn, there is a YouTube channel based around it.

But, how many of those YouTube channels are actually successful?

Take it that the definition of “success” on YouTube is to have more than 1,000 subscribers (because that’s one of the requirements for a channel to be monetized).

Here are the numbers:

• Channels between 10 to 100 subscribers: 25 Million Channels
• Channels between 101 to 1,000 subscribers: 17 Million Channels

In other words, 42 million out of the 51 million channels (82% of Active YouTube Channels) are failing!

And out of those “successful” channels, not many are making a lot of money.

So, in this article, we will share with you 13 tips on how to be successful on YouTube in 2022 and beyond.

Disclaimer: If you are looking for “How to become famous on YouTube overnight”, this article is not for you.

Enter a Competitive Niche with a Unique Angle

To start a successful YouTube Channel, it is never advisable to enter into a non-competitive niche because there is a limit to growth but isn’t it harder to succeed in a competitive niche?

Yes! When the competition is high, you will hardly get noticed. That’s why many people fail in growing their channels.

If you try to “copy” what others are doing, for example:

• Targeting the same topics
• Talking about the same things

Thinking that if others find success on YouTube, you can too if you follow their path.

Well, if you thought this way, there are hundreds or thousands more hungry novice YouTubers thinking the same.

That’s why you need an angle to penetrate a competitive niche!

Let us give you a real-life example.

How we found a unique angle in a competitive niche

We started a YouTube channel in a highly competitive niche, WordPress niche. Everyone is talking about Elementor and promoting page builders at that time. Almost all new YouTubers were doing the same thing.

But for us, as bloggers, we knew that Elementor will slow down a site and future SEO problems may rise, so we refuse to use them. We believe many WordPress users will agree with it.

That’s where we found the angle!

• We will create a YouTube Channel about WordPress with the angle to help others speed up and design their sites without using Page Builders.

It is a strong unique perspective that allowed us to penetrate the competitive niche. All of a sudden, we have created a community of like-minded individuals who enjoys our content.

So, if you have experience or great insights about your niche, find an angle, determine your target audience, and create content for them. You can leverage the following to find a unique angle:

• A growing trend
• A dire problem that no one is answering
• Lacking proof and statistics (be the source by doing real investigative work)

Anyway, if you have more ideas on how to find a unique angle for YouTube, do share them with us in the comments, and we will include them in this list. Thank you!

If you still have trouble identifying your niche, then maybe this list of profitable YouTube Niches will help.

Explore Different Topics to Discover the Trending Ones

Now, it’s great to have a clear unique angle, but sometimes it’s hard to identify an angle at all. If that’s the case, let YouTube tell you what they are looking for.

We are pretty sure when you publish your video, you will be watching your analytics in YouTube Studio like a hawk.

Imagine this…

All the analytics data are similar for almost every video you publish and it doesn’t seem like there is any sign of growth, but one fateful day…

You published a video and the traffic for that video sky-rocketed!

The “Reach”, “Engagement”, and “Audience Retention” from YouTube Analytics are incredible.

What does this tell you?

YouTube wants more content like this!

The mistake many new YouTubers make is to stubbornly create content based on their limited belief and ignore what the stats and numbers are telling.

Real-life example

The WordPress channel we mentioned earlier didn’t start as a WordPress channel. It started as a channel that teaches affiliate marketing because we thought that was the only thing we knew.

All the “Affiliate Marketing Tutorial” videos we’ve created had horrible view count.

It is only when we published a “WordPress Tutorial” teaching people how to build a landing page for affiliate marketing that led to the switch in focus.

At that time, YouTube is telling us (through the stat), “We want more WordPress Tutorials from you”. So, we took the advice and started to create WordPress content. Our channel took off from there.

So, the lesson here is, don’t ignore the stats from the Analytics. Always try to figure out what YouTube is telling you! Read between the lines!

Leverage Comments To Know What Your Audience Wants

You are creating content for people to watch, not for yourself. Remember that!

Lol!

It sounds so basic, but a lot of new YouTubers neglect something this fundamental. They carry the “my way or the highway” mentality when picking topics for their videos. Don’t be like those content creators!

Be open-minded and listen to your audience, they are the best source for topic research.

Why?

Because chances are, they know more than you! They may be exploring stuff that you have not thought of or heard about.

If you dismiss their content request thinking that you know it all, you will be missing out!

Believe it or not, your audience is the best indicator and resource to find interesting topics before they get popular and become mainstream.

Who knows, new audience groups might be attracted to your unconventional content.

Improve Your Craft Based on Negative Comments

It is common to rant and react to negative comments, but they exist for a reason.

If it is a personal attack, take it as an opportunity to learn from it, because if one person felt that way and took the time to write a comment, there is a group of people who felt the same.

If you took it personally and let it affect you, you will feel depressed and you will never learn and grow.

It is only when you start opening up your mind and take every negativity pointing toward you as a lesson, that’s when great things will start happening for you.

Of course, there are exceptions. If a negative comment is not constructive, for example, it is a one-word comment like “f*&# you” or “you s*$k, then just take it as a pinch of salt and move on.

But, if the negative comment is constructive, like

• “I don’t agree with you because … [reason]”;
• “Your lighting/audio/video quality is bad”;
• “You don’t know what you are talking about … [justification];

Try to understand the reasons they’ve pointed out. Engage in a conversation with the negative commentor with an open mind, as though you are a total beginner trying to learn something from them.

Honestly, this is one of the best tips to constantly grow and evolve as a YouTuber.

Do Not be Swayed by Money

It’s counter-intuitive! Aren’t we creating a YouTube channel for the money?

Yes! But what if it goes against your principles?

Real-Life Example

Referring to the WordPress channel we mentioned above.

The unique angle for our YouTube Channel was to focus on things that could speed up a WordPress website.

But, along the way, there are many sponsors and monetization opportunities that may make you sway.

We didn’t like “Elementor”, but they approached us for sponsorship.

Based on our research, we find that Web Hosting A is the slowest, but they came to us with a great offer.

And if we let “money” get the best of us, our audience will think less of us and may unsubscribe from our channel altogether. In their minds, they’ll perceive us as “we are in it for the money”.

Luckily, we stuck to our principle, and our audience always trust what we say because they know we meant it!

The lesson here is to only recommend and promote products you strongly believe in.

If there is a sponsor who came with an attractive offer, but you have no experience with the product, then go have hands-on experience with the product.

And if the product does not align with your belief, don’t work with them.

Again, stand behind the product you believe in, and don’t be swayed by money!

If the sponsor happens to be a product that you can stand behind, by all means!

Target Searchable Topics

YouTube is a blend between a social media platform and a search engine.

In terms of social elements, just like other social media platforms, YouTube will recommend videos they think are interesting to YouTube viewers.

And on the backend, if somebody wants to learn or get information on something, YouTube acts as a powerful search engine.

So, it would make sense to create videos that are searchable.

To clear any doubt, here are some examples of searchable content vs. content with social value:

Searchable Content	Social Value
How to speed up a website	This New Law changes Everything!
How to create a magazine website	I made $5,000 in 10 days! Here’s how you can too!
Adobe Premier Pro Tutorial for Beginners	I went back to 1st Grade for a day
Tips to write a Sales copy	3 things I learned as a Google Engineer
How to start a Successful YouTube Channel	I Quit my Six-figure Job after learning about these

So, searchable content is content that serves a perpetual need, while contents with social value are just interesting and clickbaity.

We are not saying you should focus on one or the other, we are saying you should have a good mix of both type of videos.

If possible, you could try to blend both kind of content into one. For example:

• No one knows this! Speed Up My Website using these simple tricks!
• WordPress SEO Tips no one is talking about!
• Ex-YouTube Employee reveals how to grow your YouTube Channel
• Avoid these costly mistakes if you want to have confidence in Public Speaking
• Incredibly easy way to become a data scientist

The focus keyphrase for each of these blended topics are:

• Speed Up Website
• WordPress SEO Tips
• Grow Your YouTube Channel
• Confidence in Public Speaking
• Become a data scientist

With a clear idea of what searchable topics are, let us share some YouTube SEO basics and best practices with you.

YouTube SEO basics

To appear on the search results on YouTube, here’s a list of things you need to do for every video you publish.

• Add a target keyword / keyphrase to the YouTube video title
• Rename your video file with a targeted keyphrase before uploading it to YouTube
• Add focus keyphrase and other related keyphrases in the video description
• Add subtitles for your video (because auto-generated close captions from YouTube may not be accurate, and your focus keywords/keyphrases may not be included)
• Add a custom eye-catchy thumbnail image for your video (do not rely on YouTube’s auto-generated thumbnail. This will increase clicks!)

If you want to learn more about optimizing your video content for YouTube search, read this.

How to find searchable keywords?

Heard of the term keyword research? That’s exactly what we will be sharing with you.

Keyword research for a blog post is very much similar to keyword research for video content.

If you are writing a blog post, you should target keywords that are high in search volume but low in competition.

It is the same with video content. However, the tools we use are a little different.

For starters, we can use freemium tools like:

Ahrefs’ YouTube Keyword Tool (visit)

Select the “YouTube” option and add your topic idea. You can be as vague as possible.

As you hit “Find Keywords”, it will display a list of related keywords with their respective search volume. The “Volume” indicates the approximate number of searches for that keyword every month on YouTube.

Keywordtool.io’s YouTube Research Tool (visit)

Similar to what Ahrefs has, all you need is just to add a vague idea in the search bar.

And, it will display a list of related keywords. However, it will only display the first intricate data. You’ll need the “Pro” version to unlock the rest of the data.

Tubebuddy

Alternatively, the best way to discover keywords with high search volume and low competition is to install a chrome extension called “Tubebuddy”.

As you install Tubebuddy and connect your YouTube Channel to it, you can launch the “Keyword Explorer Tool”.

As you enter a relevant keyphrase, it will give you all the data you need.

The data includes information to decide if the keyphrase you have entered has a good search volume and low competition.

In our opinion, you should install Tubebuddy as it is a must-have to grow a successful YouTube Channel.

Be Focused on the Topic at Hand

The worst thing your audience experience is when they click on your video that promises one thing, but you deliver a bunch of stuff that is totally unrelated.

Imagine this, if you searched for “Canon EOS 90D” on YouTube, and the moment you clicked on an attractive thumbnail that promises you information, this happened…

• 00:00 to 01:00 (1 minute): B-Roll of the product
• 01:00 to 01:30 (30 seconds): Introduction to why the person bought the camera
• 01:30 to 02:30 (1 minute): The talking head talks about his experiences with other cameras
• 02:30 to 03:30 (1 minute): Shares his experience in photography and why you should trust him
• 03:30 to 04:00 (30 seconds): Unboxing the “Canon EOS 90D”
• 04:00 to 06:30 (2½ minutes): Giving a lecture on Camera basics (for example depth of field, aperture, etc)
• 06:30 to 07:30 (1 minute): Shows you what he has captured using the camera without telling you the settings he used. It is just a bunch of footage.

Wait! Shouldn’t this video be about “Canon EOS 90D”? At the 7-minute mark, little was discussed about the product.

I kid you not, this scenario is adapted from a real YouTube video.

So, the lesson is, when you have a topic at hand like the “Canon EOS 90D Review”, you need to identify why somebody would want to watch that video. If we were to create the video, we will be talking about:

• Is Canon EOS 90D more suitable for indoor or outdoor settings?
• How good is the in-built microphone and is it better with an external microphone?
• The things that Canon EOS 90D has but other Canon cameras don’t.
• Compare Canon EOS 90D to similar-tier cameras from other brands.
• Is it worth the price?

All these will be answered in the first 7 minutes (to keep your audience engaged – More on that below), and following that we will put the camera into action.

The key is to stay on topic throughout the entire video. Think about what your audience wants to see and deliver it early rather than showing things that “look cool”.

If you stick with this mindset when creating YouTube videos, there’s no reason you can’t find YouTube success.

Keep Your Audience Engaged

The YouTube Algorithm favors channels that can keep their audience engaged, because the longer people stay on YouTube, the more ads they can display.

So, the watch time of your video content is paramount to your journey as a successful YouTuber.

However, it is easier said than done because there are a lot of variables to keep audiences engaged.

Different types of content serve different people and there is no one-size-fits-all solution.

But the key element to keeping your YouTube audience engaged is again…

Audiences’ Intention!

Why did your audience choose to watch your video? What is the perceived value of your video?

There must be something your audience gains out of watching your video. It could be:

• Entertainment value
• Educational Value
• Informational Value
• Spiritual & Inspirational Value

That’s basically it! You’ve got to identify what value(s) your channel can provide. And in every video you make, you’ve got to understand why your audience clicked through to watch your video.

Once you’ve nailed the audience’s intention, you can structure your content in a way that leads them to find the value they are looking for.

It is like getting into your audience’s head and studying their thoughts every minute they are watching your video. Your video needs to satisfy those thoughts whenever they pop up.

What we can learn from Mr. Beast about Audience Attention

We are pretty sure you have watched one of Mr. Beast’s videos, and if you have not realized, he always paints the outcome of the video right at the beginning.

I remember there was this video where he locks a person in a room in solitude for a hundred days and with each passing day, that person makes $10,000. And to make things interesting, Mr. Beast wouldn’t remove items from the room till there is no way the person can entertain himself. Oh, this is the video, but please study how he keeps you engaged:

That’s a great video, isn’t it? But, did you notice these things:

• Every few seconds the camera angle changes
• Every minute that passes, there is something interesting happening
• There’s always something you never imagine will happen, but it did

And finally, at the back of everything, you really want to know if that person wins $1,000,000 or he gives up.

So, there are a few things we can learn from here, even if you are creating a tutorial. If you are teaching people how to design a website:

• You’ve got to show an enticing final product, right at the start;
• And to not make the tutorial boring, you should flip between you talking in front of the camera, and going back onto the screen;
• Whenever possible, you want to add unexpected things like a joke or a skit that relates to the topic.

Changing camera angles help in keeping the audience’s attention, and the underlying element that keeps someone engaged throughout the video is the outcome you’ve painted right at the start of the video.

So, the outcome has to be really enticing otherwise no switching of camera angles will help.

Keep that in mind when crafting the script or synopsis of your video, and see your watch time improves.

Stick With What You Are Known For

There must be a reason why people decide to subscribe to you.

• We subscribed to “Mr. Beast” because I want to be entertained by the crazy stuff he does with his entourage.
• We subscribed to “Think Media” because I want to learn how to grow a YouTube Channel.
• Stasher’s wife subscribed to “Cooking Tree” because she wants to learn how to bake.

The point is, there is definitely a reason why people want to subscribe to you, and that’s because you are known to do that one or two things well.

People subscribed to our WordPress channel because they want credible information as to the fastest WordPress Hosting, Theme, and plugins.

On our channel, we do lots of testing openly, meaning people can actually see the test we conduct. We don’t hide or alter the results of the test, and we do it in a methodological way. That’s why people trust us, and that’s what we are known for.

So, as you progress with your channel, you’ll probably get the feel of why people subscribed to you, and that’s where you should keep doing what you are known for.

Give people a reason to want to come back to your channel.

Never Compare Yourself To Other Successful YouTube Channels

• “When will I ever get to 10K subscribers like so and so”;
• “So and so look so confident and speak so well on camera, but why can’t I”;
• “We are talking about the same topic but why so and so got so much more views than me?”;
• “Wow, this YouTuber publishes 10 videos in a week, why can’t I do it?”

We are pretty sure some or all of these doubts will come across your mind at some point in your YouTube journey.

It’s fine to compare yourself to other successful YouTubers for a while, but if you let your doubts linger in your thoughts for a long time, you will start feeling depressed, demoralized, demotivated, and you will start procrastinating.

We were guilty of this too, and that’s why we understand the emotions. So, whenever you have a “self-doubt” moment when visiting channels of other successful YouTubers, here’s our advice…

Think less, buckle down, focus on your strength, improve on your weaknesses, and stop comparing!

The only person you should be comparing is yourself (a week or a month ago). Are you better off now (mentally and skills-wise) than when you were a week ago or a month ago?

Learn (Not Copy) from Other Successful YouTubers

Don’t be a parrot! Google favors unique content and perspectives, not content that is curated and paraphrased by other successful YouTubers.

You can learn how other YouTubers present, the background settings they choose, how they engage the audience, and the channel art and end screens they use, but NEVER copy or rephrase their content.

To stand out from the others, you’ve got to truly understand the ins and outs of the niche you are in.

For Total Beginners in the niche

So, you have picked a niche, but you are not savvy in it. Can you still make a YouTube channel out of it?

Yes! But, don’t try to portray yourself as an expert. The worst thing you could do as a beginner is to target topics that other successful YouTubers are targeting. Then, you use some paraphrasing tools to create a video script out of it and act as though you are an expert.

“Fake it till you make it”, right? But, it is a double-edged sword. You might get exposed one way or the other.

Stay true to who you really are by mentioning that you are a total beginner trying to learn the trade. Start a vlog or something to document your journey, and reform your channel when you have more experience.

Don’t expect to have much success at this stage because who wants to watch a beginner rant, right? That’s unless you are funny and interesting. Maybe some blunders and jokes while you are learning might help.

For Experts in the niche

Well, you should have some true insights that other popular YouTubers don’t, which puts you at an advantage.

The best way to get to the top is to think differently from others. If a successful YouTube claimed that something works, and you believe otherwise, create a video justifying why the thing “everyone thought will work” doesn’t.

Go against the norm. After a while, you will create a trustworthy persona that will attract lots of interviews, collaboration, etc, and that’s where you will expedite your YouTube success.

Be unique! Stay true to your thoughts and beliefs! Do not deceive your audience!

Just Start!

Stop giving yourself excuses!

• You don’t need high-end cameras to create high-quality videos;
• You don’t need expensive microphones to have good audio quality;
• You don’t need professional lighting equipment to improve the video quality (you have sunlight for that);
• You don’t need to go for public speaking classes to do YouTube videos;
• You don’t need to have an awesome studio; and
• You definitely do not need to invest in anything else that you don’t already have.

Nowadays, the smartphone we own has a good camera and an acceptable in-built microphone. That’s all that you need.

All you need is START!

Your first YouTube video is going to suck! Not many people are going to watch it! So, just do it!

The more you do, the lesser you suck, and if you keep doing it over and over again, you will suck so little that you become good.

You’ll be surprised how far you have come when comparing your better videos to your first video.

Be Consistent with Your Publication Schedule

YouTube favors consistency, so even if you have created 10 videos this week, you should publish them conservatively so you won’t feel stressed about not having videos to publish for the following week(s).

The Publishing frequency we recommend is between one to three new videos every week with a break of one to two days between each publication.

Conclusion: How To Be Successful on YouTube

To be successful on YouTube is all about mindset and mentality. Hard work is inevitable, but you have to play smart by thinking outside of the box.

In every niche, there are big fishes and small fishes, and to beat the big fishes while you are still small, is to learn how to swim beside the big fishes by finding a unique angle.

Be a thought leader and not a follower. Anyway, we hope these 13 tips will shape you into a successful YouTuber.

How to start a new YouTube channel?

Easy! All you need is a Google account.

Go to YouTube and log in with your Google account.

That YouTube account will now be associated with your Google Account. Click on your profile in the top right-hand corner, and select “Create a channel”.

And that’s basically it!

Need more knowledge on YouTube basics, you can subscribe to the YouTube Creators channel (Created by YouTube).

Also, we will be publishing tips on how to:

• Create and optimize end screens
• Brainstorm a great Channel name
• Create an eye-catchy Channel art

We look forward to seeing you back on our site.