How to get your first 100 subscribers on YouTube? Understanding the noise and competition.

When it comes to starting a YouTube channel in 2016, it's definitely a daunting task. With everyone, literally, everyone, wanting to have a YouTube channel and start making profit from their videos - you don't want to be anything from the norm. Why? Because being the norm doesn't get you where you want. In this post I'll share you some of the things I've learned from posting videos on YouTube for almost practically a year. In regards to the first step...

People often overlook or are just too lazy to actually do this. For my part, it takes me a solid hour or two to properly tag and sometimes re-tag my videos. As you can see by my channel - I try to rank ALL my videos. In other words, having them searchable on YouTube. If a video doesn't rank - re-analyze and readjust my tags accordingly so. I also use other completely legal internet extensions/plugins that other big YouTubers use to reveal things such as commonly searched tags, popular tags, and etc. 

If you have a title that's labelled - 'Part 1 of 3 Ultimate Tennis Bowling Shoes Ep.6' chances are - no one is searching that - meaning you won't get views. If you have a title more along the lines of 'How to go Tennis Bowling for beginners' you might actually rank depending on the competition and search volume. It is when you rank in search + deliver value to those who are searching it = more subscribers. Or you just have a bunch of hate comments since you didn't deliver on the content but properly tagged your video (look at my infamous Asian guy videos to see good examples). 

People often forget - it took YEARS literally for example... JustKiddingFilms 10 years of making videos on YouTube to be able to cultivate not only millions of subscribers but millions of dollars as well - but the money aspect/success didn't until come way later - what most people don't see is them all cramped into someone's basement shipping out t-shirt orders or not pushing the Adsense revenue threshold so they couldn't get paid for months in their early beginnings. It's a struggle just like anything but be persistent. Even now, some of my videos even only get 10 views, or 50 views. But guess what? I don't give up, and I try again. I fall, I get back up, you know the deal. 

Yes I know there are the 'overnight sensations' on YouTube but those come and go - most notoriously known YouTubers today have grown their audience slowly and even painfully slowly and didn't ''take off'' until later (e.g. Matthew Santoro). 

It boggles my mind. If you like a person in real life and you tell them, and they don't like you back; what happens? Nothing. If you force someone to like you back, you could argue assault. But for some reason on YouTube - that logic doesn't exist. If I like your channel I will subscribe, if I don't, I won't. There's no need to bug people to subscribe, spam comments (unless you strategically comment for a thumbs up where you're comments will be shown for more exposure but that's another story). 

What I mean is that when you start out as a small YouTube channel is that no one, I repeat, NO ONE will ever reply to your messages, e-mails, or want to collaborate especially if they have a huge subscriber base and you have 0. I know, it will hurt your feelings - but use this as motivation to be better then them one day and really believe in yourself - that's essentially what it is. By not relying on another YouTuber, a special shoutout, or whatever the case may be and put in the work which alludes to my final point.

You complain about not getting exposure and views that you want but you only post 1 video a week, or even worse 1 video a month or every 2 months. Think of your videos as planting seeds. The more seeds you plant, the more people on the internet can find you. If these seeds are properly fed with love, water, and nutrients, they will be your backbone for the channel. Meaning your channel will grow even when you sleep (e.g. getting subscribers, views, on a passive basis without putting out any content).

These are my blunt tips for any beginning YouTuber, I still consider myself a beginner whose always striving but these points will definitely help anyone on their journey. If you really want to use YouTube as a platform for any business (corporate or personal brand) these basic tips will help. As I write this post I have 2,440 subscribers and a total view count of 450,000; averaging 100,000 views a month. Realistically a majority of my growth has occurred as of late due to shear volume of content (three videos a week), understanding SEO, and jumping on trends. I'm not bragging and these numbers could be a lot better. I'm still learning and being open-minded and always figuring out new ways on how I better myself, stand out, and crush it (insert Gary Vee motivational speech here). I'm going for it, so why don't you?