YouTube Secrets: The Ultimate Guide to Growing Your Following and Making Money as a Video Influencer

by Sean Cannell

After uploading content on YouTube, the best way to build your community is asking people to subscribe. Always remind your viewers to subscribe to your channel.

The creators who ask people to subscribe in every video tend to have larger audiences.

A second way to build community is by encouraging people to leave comments on your videos. When they do leave a comment, always take the time to respond, especially when you’re just getting started.

Conversation sets YouTube apart from traditional media like television or movies. Viewers can provide direct feedback and opinions about every video. They can critique, compliment, and criticize—that’s the beauty of it. Respond to everything the community throws at you, so you can build your tribe.

you should never be too busy for your fans.

Creating a community name allows fans and superfans to affiliate, self-declare, and self-align with their community and tribe.

If you want to connect with viewers at a deeper level, you can message them directly or reply to them in a video.

A great example of someone who makes deep connections with his fans is Justin Khoe from the channel ThatChristianVlogger. His mission is to help people on their journey of faith and understanding the Bible.

Depth matters. Always look for ways you can create meaningful connections with your community. It always pays off in the long run. When you create and nurture your community, you build trust. That trust and engagement will enable you to create consistent income through committed viewers.

she valued her viewers as much as, if not more than, her own content.

You don’t need a large audience to build a full-time business or personal brand on YouTube; you just need an engaged audience of true fans.

‘The size of the community doesn’t matter as much as the depth of the connections with them.’

you only need a thousand true fans.’

it’s always easier to give existing fans more content than to find new fans. Create a direct relationship with them, so that they are paying you directly.

Gaining a thousand true fans is much easier than aiming for a million, especially when you’re just starting out. If you can add just one new fan a day, you can get to a thousand in a few years.

“Chase the vision, not the money, and the money will end up following you.” Tony Hsieh, Zappos CEO

money follows and fuels mission.

With money, you have more freedom with your content and production quality. You can hire a team and support others, whether employees, assistants, or a charity you love. With money, you can maximize your effectiveness in the world.

chase the money. That’s a recipe for frustration. Chase your focus, your mission, your passion, and your purpose, and allow money and income to stem from that.

As a typical rule of thumb, creators in the US are paid an average of two dollars per one thousand views.

AdSense is our least favorite monetization strategy.

Affiliate marketing is relevant for any type of YouTube channel, but it works especially well for beauty, tech, and review channels.

Another way to monetize your YouTube channel is to create a product or service. The benefit of selling your own product is that you don’t make only a small percentage of the revenue. Instead, the full profit belongs to you.

You can turn any knowledge you have into a digital product and offer it to your audience. You can even offer consulting or coaching, especially if it’s relevant for your niche and vision.

when it comes to monetization, YouTube is primarily a means of communication.

Crowdfunding disrupts the typical model of how things are done. In the past, people depended on the approval and support of the higher-ups and gatekeepers, yet crowdfunding empowers creators to support their vision and mission directly from the people who benefit from it the most.

When it comes to monetization, the biggest mistake we see creators make is focusing on income first instead of influence. Influence must always come first, and it’s impossible to build influence without building trust, adding value, and creating a connection and relationship with people.

we don’t recommend starting on YouTube out of desperation.

Focus on building your influence, stay patient and persistent, and income will follow. Remember, money follows mission.

A second mistake we see creators make is letting the monetization opportunity overshadow what’s good for the audience.

As social media expert and New York Times bestselling author Gary Vaynerchuk says, ‘Doing the right thing is always the right thing.’ When monetization opportunities come your way, always put your audience first.

Figuring out your role in regard to your viewers helps you determine which monetization strategies work best for you.

Just as financial advisors recommend diversifying your portfolio, we recommend you diversify your income streams.

It always takes time to build something great.

The key to consistency on YouTube is to just show up.

Dale Carnegie said, ‘Learning is an active process. We learn by doing. Only knowledge that is used sticks in your mind.’

Creating a schedule is imperative. That way people know when to expect your videos.

You never know which video might become the video that opens up the door to success.

While you can’t control which video will be the one that does it for you, commitment to consistency creates the best chance to make it happen.

Our strategy is composed of two essential things: Scheduling in advance Producing in batches

Prior planning prevents poor performance.

Batch producing has been the essential element for creating a lot of content and being consistent in a minimal amount of time.

keeping it simple is better than nothing at all. When we’re going through a busy time in our lives, we prefer to create simple, valuable videos that don’t require a lot of extra production.

If you have the knowledge or expertise to talk about your channel’s niche off the cuff, going live is an easy way to get content out there without the need for heavy editing.

Scale back the complexity. That doesn’t mean your content will suffer.

YouTube prefers creators who post two to three videos per week.

It’s better to upload one video a week for fifty-two weeks and stay consistent throughout the whole year than to upload fifty-two videos in the first month and only upload sporadically afterward.

Posting more than once a week will grow your influence faster.

social media sometimes influences your YouTube success more than the best practices on the platform itself because that exterior influence hacks the algorithm.

If you’re not involved regularly on social media platforms, you’re missing out, and so is your YouTube channel.