SOURCE: u/tlo_oly
This is a case study documenting the progress and what I did to grow a channel from 0 subscribers to over 90,000 subscribers in 3 months. Below are a series of articles and notes I put together to document my thoughts, process, and strategy on how to accomplish this. YouTube is the second most trafficked website on the planet, next to Google, and there is massive opportunity waiting for those that can crack the system of ranking into the algorithm and create content that a massive amount of people want to consume. I wish you all the best and hope this adds value to you and your journey.

Grow Your YouTube Channel From Zero With The Right Strategy And Not Just “GETTING LUCKY”

Aside from luck, I think there needs to be strategy as well. YouTube won’t help you grow at all from my experience until you prove your audience and trust as a channel. YouTube has to know it wants to promote your content as a suggested video to an audience it can find key interests in.

I tried to figure out the best way to show YouTube what audience WANTS to see my content. So, quality counts there. You need to make content people actually want to see. The key metrics in that measurement is: 1. Click Through Rate and 2. Audience Retention (Watch Time). If you have a decent CTR which I believe is above 8% and a watch time of 5:00+ minutes per video, you are good from my communication with other larger channels.

Ok, so YouTube now knows you have good content that people want to see. Now they need to know you are a channel that it trusts with content. This just takes time and consistency. I recommend daily uploads, bi weekly uploads, weekly uploads, monthly uploads. This depends on the type of audience you have. Example, most gaming channels need to pop out daily videos to be competitive in the market with an audience that demands daily binge worthy content. A review channel or a channel that does comedy sketches that takes time to make, may be a bit more forgiving and come flood your video with views when it releases every month or two. So, that quantity and consistency really relies on what other popular channels are doing and what the audience expects for your type of content.

So, now you have a consistent upload schedule that YouTube can trust, you have a high audience retention rate showing YouTube you have binge worthy content that people want to see, now who is your audience YouTube needs to suggest your videos to?

You have to actively work to promote your content off of YouTube alongside utilizing YouTube’s features for your video to help target an audience naturally.

There are three ways I have come to find that work so far:

1. Social Media
2. YouTube Ads (Video Promotion Option)
3. Keywords in: Description, Thumbnail title, Video title, Tags, About section

When it comes to Social Media:

Facebook

• I have come to learn that Facebook is completely dead unless you have a group. But a Facebook page is useless these days unless you pay for it and with paid sources there are much better places to put your money.

Instagram

• Instagram is dying as well, but not as bad as Facebook pages. Facebook has literally made decisions to stunt organic growth as a means to boost the need for you to spend money on ads to grow your presence online with their platforms. There are some strategies to grow on Instagram without spending money, but they have proven to not be as effective as other sources.
• Instagram also goes out of its way to ban you for trying to build your profile too fast with follows, likes, comments, essentially anything the platform was originally intended for. Too many Bots and third party software took advantage of growth strategies and automated it to a point where Instagram got fed up with the spam and pretty bans you as a human for producing bot like results with Shadow Bans, cool down periods of Action Blocks, and flat out account Bans.
• So, if you are willing to put up with it, try going on Instagram and find relevant account profiles to what kind of content you make, or go to popular YouTube creators Instagram profiles that fall in your category for content and do the following:
  • Look through their posts and start looking for a post that has less than average likes. This shows that the users the liked the content are really active and engaged in the content. Then go follow those accounts. This is done in hopes they will see your follow or follow request and either follow back or go look at your profile at least and then decide they may be a fan in the future of your content.
  • Make sure to go and like posts of the accounts that follow you back and take some time every now and then to go on your explorer page and like posts from people you follow. This shows people that you are real and not some spam account that just followed them to unfollow them later. You’d be amazed at how happy people get when they follow you and you go and like their posts. They usually return the favor and this looks good for your account and you can build some loyal fans that way.
  • Watch the stories of the people you follow. A lot of people go into their stories and see who watched their story posts and get excited when they see you watched theirs all the way through.
  • Do a search for hashtags or searches for keywords that are relevant to your type of content or audience and then go on a liking spree. Go like posts. This will give your account a possibility of being discovered by other people that look at who liked the post. It will also show smaller profiles that you liked their stuff and they may go check out your profile and follow you.
  • Don’t expect hashtags to do much. Instagram literally only shows about 30% of all content to people that follow you. In other words, even if people follow you, there is a good chance they won’t even see your posts because Instagram doesn’t push it into the explorer feed.
  • Eventually after your account ages well, and you start to get engagement on posts and people start following you, Instagram will trust your account more and then you will slowly start getting the original perks of being able to get discovered through hashtags and posts. Just don’t expect a lot of organic growth. Those days are over, it’s pay to play now.

As you can see, Instagram takes a lot of work, but if you are serious about it, put in the time and you will see returns on your effort. Of course you need to post to your account as well. Make posts about thanking them for follower goals, post clips of your videos, make announcements of your newly released videos. Your entire goal should be to push traffic to your YouTube channel in hopes of gaining new Subscribers and getting dedicated fans to view your content with high retention. Let the ego go of not trying to interact with people because you are a “big YouTuber to be”. Stay humble and interact with people and talk with them to build a bond with your fans. It goes a long way. You should always interact with your fans by responding to comments on posts and videos for as long as you can until your channel is so big that you physically can’t anymore. So, until that day comes, put in the effort to respond and thank people for everything.

Twitter

• Twitter has proven to be pretty useless as well. Twitter is good for announcements and communicating quick thoughts to your audience. Just don’t expect to grow a Twitter account without having people actively searching to follow you. Hashtags just don’t work like they used to and you won’t build a large Twitter following more than likely posting away with hashtags or not.
• Twitter is great for networking as the engagement on the platform is so terribly low that you can be seen by users that are otherwise usually hard to get ahold of. Ever seen an account with tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, or even millions of followers that literally gets like 5-100 likes per tweet? Yeah, all the time. Don’t expect twitter to get much out of posting. It’s good to have so people can go follow you there and interact with you. But overall, it’s a lot better for networking and connecting with other users.
• P.S. Yes I know that there are examples of accounts that get excellent engagement on their posts, but this is rarely the case.

TikTok

• TikTok is fresh and hasn’t stunted organic growth opportunities yet. Of course it still requires you to post content people want to see and engage in, but you CAN actually grow on the platform. My anecdotal example would be: I posted three days ago clips of my YouTube videos and I have gained over 4,000 followers and 72,000 profile likes on all the videos combined. I have also grown my YouTube channel by over 700 new Subscribers and 23,000 minutes of watch time. All within a 72hr period.
• My strategy that I believe you should implement is to take your best clips out of your YouTube video and make it into a TikTok upload (I do this by exporting the clips to my Desktop > Upload to Google Drive > Download from Google Drive onto my Phone > Upload from my Phone to TikTok). And try to upload as much as possible. Utilize hashtags, and relevant keywords in your post, and ALWAYS put a call to action with “Full Video on YouTube Link in Bio” or something along those lines telling them where to go to find more if they like what they are seeing. Keep clips between 7-17 seconds ideally and leave them with a coherent point from the video that will make them want to check your profile and maybe go Sub to your YouTube channel.
• Relevant factors I have noticed with TikTok to get views:
  • Likes – you want to try and maintain a good view to like ratio. I have noticed 10% is decent enough to have the video keep getting pushed into impressions.
  • Follows – if your video starts getting a lot of follows as a result, expect your video to go viral or semi viral. This is probably the most important factor I have noticed as a metric for virality: get follows from the video.
  • Profile Visits – people go check your profile. TikTok knows they found the right audience when people want to go see what else you have to offer.
  • Shares/Duets – when people share your content or duet it, it also shows TikTok that your video is socially worthy of this audience and trusts that the law of averages will play out and you will get impressions as a result.
  • Comments – comments show interest, but ultimately you want people to comment @ their friends. This garnishes more views and social proof of worthy content. It’s like a share within another form of engagement (comment).

YouTube Ads

• If you have trouble figuring out what is trending or how to take advantage of new search traffic that enters the platform, then I recommend the YouTube Thumbnail Ad video promotion strategy. You can target anything on YouTube to have your ad as an impression on: Channels, Specific Videos, Audience Demographics from: Age, Location, Language, Household Income, etc.. If you hone in and target your audience well then you should have no problem getting views down to $0.01-$0.02 per view and you’ll be able to get a lot of views and engagement fairly quickly.
• Just remember, with the YouTube thumbnail ads, you will usually get a lot of dislikes just because there is a social stigma around using “ads” to garnish views and grow your channel. But there’s nothing wrong with an ad, you are simply paying to get your content shown to people that otherwise would not know you exist as people are either not searching for your keywords or YouTube just simply doesn’t promote your channel or video beyond a few impressions. It’s a known fact that the top 3% of channels get 90% all of the views and less than 1% of videos get over 1 million views. So, to compete and grow an audience, YouTube ad promotions really work in my experience. You just have to target the right audience.
• Though the dislikes may suck, the subs you get and positive engagement in the comments will help grow your channel and let YouTube know what kinds of people enjoy watching your content and it will eventually get recommended to the right people. YouTube’s algorithm needs to know who to show your content to and that the platform can trust your channel to put out good content that people want to watch. This is why CTR and Audience Retention is incredibly important. Boost CTR with good thumbnails and titles, boost viewer retention with great content that hooks for first 1 minute and then retains minutes 1-5 are critical.

Keywords

• The first minute is the most important and the minutes from 1-5 are crucial to have the most captivating content in order to get the highest retention possible.
• Create content around what keywords are being searched for. If you spend a lot of time making a great video, you want to get it seen. The best way to do that is to post content that people will search for.
• Really use your description as an opportunity to get your keywords in your upload. Keywords are key to ranking and you can get all your relevant searching keywords and long tail searches in the description. This will help YouTube rank your video as people click on it, stay and watch, and interact with your content.
• Thumbnail and Title:
  • YouTube wants a good CTR (Click Through Rate)
    • You get this by having a captivating thumbnail that makes people want to click when there is an impression. Avoid small text and a lot of complexities going on. Make it simple, easy to read text, and not have a lot going on. Also, make sure to leave the viewer wanting more. Don’t answer what happens in the video in the thumbnail, build suspense and desire with the thumbnail.
    • Make sure the title is captivating as well and generates interest. It needs to be relevant to the video and style of content your viewer base is looking for. Also use the Title as a way to capitalize on major keywords for search results most relevant to your content and the audience you are targeting.
• Make sure to title your thumbnails and video with relevant keywords within and also add tags (meta data) within the image and video file.
• Links in Description: If you want to guide people off your YouTube page and follow you on other social media, make the links clickable. They should be able to just click the link and go straight to your profile. People will rarely see your username and actively go search for you.
• End Cards: make sure you have end cards at the ends of your videos (this one did – so that’s good). This allows viewers to continue to binge your content and get to know you better as a creator and want to keep coming back for more.

This is my two cents on the subject. Hope it helps. This is all my opinion and is subject to be completely wrong. I just simply believe these to be the reasons for my stunted growth or growth in general.

How To Get Monetized On YouTube In 33 Days [A Case Study]

The main things I learned:

1. High CTR (Click Through Rate)
2. High Audience Retention

You need to focus on making sure a relevant audience is targeted by YouTube for your channel overall. Once YouTube sees a high CTR and high audience retention, it starts to look for an audience. Once it figures out what kind of audience watches your content, it pushes your vids like crazy and the channel sees real growth.

I would say high CTR is over 10% and videos 10-15 minutes get over 5 min watch time averages for high audience retention.

Search results don’t seem to matter as much as they would seem. With traditional SEO for things like blogs and branded sites, it matters so much and I recommend tools like SEMrush to help with research. But for YouTube, videos seem to be hardly found through search when comparing the results of successful videos to the impressions YouTube just hands out to your video if the algorithm likes you content. And YouTube likes your content when you can keep people on their platform and engaged in their brand. This is done by getting people to see the impression of the Thumbnail and Title, clicking on it, and then staying for a long time and engaging with the content through liking, commenting, subscribing, clicking an end card, watching another video of yours or watching another recommended video (therefore not leaving the website). This keeps YouTube a dominate website and makes their bounce rate stats insane compared to other websites on the internet. This generates trust from companies to know they can feel comfortable dedicating massive amounts of money from marketing budgets towards this arm of their strategy. Therefore, the channel wins, YouTube wins, and advertisers win.

Results (Proof of Concept)

When I originally posted this Post I was at:

731/1000 Subscribers and 476/4000 hrs watch time (Requirements for Monetization)

Currently the channel is at 53,000 Subscribers and 479,000 hrs of watch time

I was able to post my first video on October 24, 2019 and got the official “Congratulations” email from YouTube on November 25, 2019 to be approved for the YouTube Partner Program.

Summary

Ideally you want your CTR to be as high as possible when the video first comes out (24-48hrs) this is critical as the higher the CTR and the higher the AR (audience retention) the more impressions you’ll get. If you get a 15-20% CTR that’s amazing, which is why I recommend trying to get over 15%. The more YouTube pushes the video with impressions, it’s natural for the CTR to drop. YouTube wants to push good videos as long as it can until the CTR gets burned down to low conversions. This is why videos get pushed for many months and sometimes even years.

The key is to make a Thumbnail that captivates the viewer and use a title that compliments the thumbnail, but try not to reuse text in the thumbnail in the description. Also, make sure you focus on keeping your audience retention as high as possible. I try to aim for 10+ minute videos and anything under 5 minutes for me is not good retention. My videos average around 6:30-7:30 minutes retention.

The key to high retention is making sure people click and don’t leave within 10 seconds because they see the video is really off from their expectation or there is not captivating reason to stay. Next, focus on first 69 seconds of the video. Your best stuff should be packed into the first minute of the video. If you have a decent intro that is good energy and captivating, you can use the rest of the first minute to put in the best content available for the video. Don’t be afraid to mix the video up, even out of original recorded order, to fit in the best stuff. Next, focus on keeping people from minute 1 through minute 5. Do this with keeping up with you audience expectations for your niche. What is it that other massively successful channels are doing? Take notes and study their content. Understand what they are doing and implement similar strategies and styles to make sure you are aligning with what has already been proven in the market to succeed for that targeted audience.

From there is just a game of uploading consistently and waiting on YouTube to kick in it’s magic and boost your channel. There’s 4 phases to YouTube’s algorithm:

1. Identify channel uploads (consistency) and CTR/AR (Click Through Rate/ Audience Retention)
2. Video Suggestions
3. Audience Identifying
4. Channel Growth

YouTube sees your uploads are consistent and that the CTR and AR is high. Once this occurs, you will start to see YouTube views coming from Suggested. Once suggested happens, YouTube then sees if it can identify an audience that shares similar interests and if those suggested views garner the same CTR and AR. If the CTR and AR are good on the suggested views, YouTube then takes the audience it has identified to want to consume your content and the channel takes off pretty fast because you will start getting a ton of Browse Feature views. Once you get the Browse Feature views going, you are locked into the algorithm.

And from there is just posting consistently and keeping your CTR and AR high. The main thing I learned as well is that because YouTube needs to identify an audience, it’s important to make sure the content or niche you are targeting with your content stays very very similar in each video. Don’t get too much variety for the channel. Keep the theme and subject matter consistent. The moment you want to veer off into another area of interest or focus, it’s better to start another channel just for that.

Side Notes

I.

I believe it takes about 30-90 days to get a channel from zero to favored in the algorithm.

Basically the name of the game is:

1. Pick a niche and stick to it without changing up. This allows YouTube the opportunity to discover your best audience. You won’t get recommended (impressions) if YouTube isn’t confident it knows your audience. YouTube loses as a platform if it recommends the wrong content to the wrong people and the UX side of the equation is hurt. So audience identification is a major factor.
2. YouTube won’t look for an audience if your content isn’t something that people want. How do you prove this? CTR AVD and total watch time. YouTube sees a high CTR 10%+ ideally (Click Through Rate) and High Average View Duration (aim for 50%+) and minutes watched. A 10 minute video with 30% AVD (3:00 minutes) is better than a 2 minute video with 80% AVD (1:36 minutes).
3. YouTube sees you have good CTR and AVD, you’ll start to see suggested views as the source. Once this occurs, you’re looking good. Now it’s just about consistently uploading and keeping your KPIs high (Key Performance Indicators).
4. Once YouTube identifies your audience with suggested views and the algorithm likes your channel and is confident you put out stuff people care about and want to watch, you will get Browse Feature views. That’s the big wave you ride and comes the “YouTube Success” people seek. Basically this is where YouTube builds your channel for you as long as you keep putting out good content that’s relevant to your audience.

The name of the game is to help YouTube make as much money as possible. This is done by keeping people on the platform for as long as possible to expose them to more opportunities to see ads. You do this and YouTube will reward you with tons of traffic and impressions.

II.

This is all you need to worry about:

1. CTR
2. AVD
3. Total Watch Time Accumulated
4. YouTube targets the right audience
5. Consistent Uploads
6. CTR – Relevant content your viewers want to watch with a Thumbnail that is captivating and evokes an emotional response and a NEED to click.
7. AVD – Content that is entertaining for the targeted audience. Does your audience like High Energy? Calm Energy? Detailed Descriptions and lots of Talking? Raging at the Game? Long Drawn Out Intros? To The Point Videos? etc.
8. How much watch time does your AVD add up to? Are you gaining a ton of watch time for the videos and channel overall? YouTube needs people to stay on the platform for as long as possible, the more you are able to keep people on the platform, the happier YouTube is.
9. Is YouTube targeting the right audience? Look at your Suggested View Sources. Are these videos relevant to your content? What are the CTRs and AVDs of the videos being suggested? Did you do anything to potential make YouTube identify the wrong audience? Sub4Sub? Post on Reddit or Facebook Groups? etc. If YouTube suggests your videos to 100 people across 100 different videos and out of that you get a few to click and Watch a lot of the video, YouTube will know there is an audience out there and that IT was at fault and your content doesn’t suck. If you get suggested and no one is clicking or watching a lot of the video at all, YouTube will think your content sucks and move on.
10. Are you uploading consistently? How often are other channels in your niche uploading? 2xs a day? 1x a day? 2xs a week? 1x a week? You should be pumping out content at the same rate as the other big channels in your niche.

III.

You want to help YouTube identify your audience, so here are some tricks:

In your description:

Put – “Inspired by [channel names of VERY VERY similar channels]”

Also add something like:

Check Out More Videos or More Awesome Videos

1. [Channel Name| Video Title | {Video Link} ]
2. [Channel Name| Video Title | {Video Link} ]
3. [Channel Name| Video Title | {Video Link} ]

This will let YouTube know who your audience is related to, and if people click on these links it will show a common interest from the viewers and associate your content with these other videos and channels

Next, make a playlist:

Hot COD Vids [Or whatever you like lol]

Add Your Videos and Other Videos from channels you are trying to gain an audience from or have an audience identified from for your channel.

Put this playlist as an End Card in all your videos. People that click on these will see your video, another channel video, your video, another channel video (mix it up). And this will also tell YouTube that these viewers that watch your content want to see more of your content AND like other channels like yours. Over time YouTube will recognize this and start suggesting your videos to the right audience (the channels you are associating with).

Once you do this, if your content is good with high CTR and high AVD, YouTube will now know your audience (because you helped it figure it out) and you are in business.

IV.

You can grow with only YouTube. There is no need to post videos anywhere else. However, I have noticed that TikTok does not stunt organic reach like other platforms like Facebook and Instagram. So, the best thing that I’ve found is to grow organically on YouTube by understanding how the platform works and if you want, you can post clips on TikTok and get a lot of traffic and potentially subscribers.

However, YouTube is very particular about identifying audiences. So, if you are posting videos online and it’s driving traffic to your videos but the audiences are not right for the content and/or people are leaving very quick and the watch time is low, it will affect your channel overall and you will see slower growth and potentially even hurt the channel from growing at all.

Basically, ideally you want your CTR to be as high as possible when the video first comes out (24-48hrs) this is critical as the higher the CTR and the higher the AR (audience retention) the more impressions you’ll get. If you get a 15-20% CTR that’s amazing, which is why I recommend trying to get over 15%. The more YouTube pushes the video with impressions, it’s natural for the CTR to drop. YouTube wants to push good videos as long as it can until the CTR gets burned down to low conversions. This is why videos get pushed for many months and sometimes even years.

The key is to make a Thumbnail that captivates the viewer and use a title that compliments the thumbnail, but try not to reuse text in the thumbnail in the description. Also, make sure you focus on keeping your audience retention as high as possible. I try to aim for 10+ minute videos and anything under 5 minutes for me is not good retention. My videos average around 6:30-7:30 minutes retention.

The key to high retention is making sure people click and don’t leave within 10 seconds because they see the video is really off from their expectations or there is not captivating reason to stay. Next, focus on the first 60 seconds of the video. Your best stuff should be packed into the first minute of the video. If you have a decent intro that is good energy and captivating, you can use the rest of the first minute to put in the best content available for the video. Don’t be afraid to mix the video up, even out of original recorded order, to fit in the best stuff. Next, focus on keeping people from minute 1 through minute 5. Do this with keeping up with you audience expectations for your niche. What is it that other massively successful channels are doing? Take notes and study their content. Understand what they are doing and implement similar strategies and styles to make sure you are aligning with what has already been proven in the market to succeed for that targeted audience.

From there is just a game of uploading consistently and waiting on YouTube to kick in it’s magic and boost your channel. There’s 4 phases to YouTubes algorithm:

1. Identify channel uploads (consistency) and CTR/AR (Click Through Rate/ Audience Retention)
2. Video Suggestions
3. Audience Identifying
4. Channel Growth

YouTube sees your uploads are consistent and that the CTR and AR is high. Once this occurs, you will start to see YouTube views coming from Suggested. Once suggested happens, YouTube then sees if it can identify an audience that shares similar interests and if those suggested views garner the same CTR and AR. If the CTR and AR are good on the suggested views, YouTube then takes the audience it has identified to want to consume your content and the channel takes off pretty fast because you will start getting a ton of Browse Feature views. Once you get the Browse Feature views going, you are locked into the algorithm.

And from there is just posting consistently and keeping your CTR and AR high. The main thing I learned as well is that because YouTube needs to identify an audience, it’s important to make sure the content or niche you are targeting with your content stays very very similar in each video. Don’t get too much variety for the channel. Keep the theme and subject matter consistent. The moment you want to veer off into another area of interest or focus, it’s better to start another channel just for that.

V.

Watch hours usually happen very quickly once things pick up. If you have a 5+ min AVD on a video and it gets thrown into the algorithm you need about 48,000 views. This can be accomplished with one video alone in a day or across a few decent videos that take in 10,000-20,000 views.

Focus on getting CTR and AVD as high as possible and keep an eye on if YouTube is trying to find you an audience. YouTube is looking for your audience with Suggested Views. The more content you give it, the more it will test audience groups. This is why uploading content a lot is good for growing quickly. You give YouTube more opportunities to search for your audience. This is also why you should stick with your niche and don’t switch up your content . You want YouTube to identify your audience and consistently get it right.

Create content for niches that get tons of traffic and that people want to consume. Get your CTR and AVD high. Pump out content as much as you can. Become a content creating machine. Watch your KPIs and see where you can improve. Watch for YouTube suggesting your content and where they are suggesting and what the results are. Then be patient and upload consistently if everything is looking good.

If your CTR and AVD are not good, youtube won’t even try to find you an audience because it has no incentive to. YouTube makes money when people stay on the website for as long as possible. If your content can’t keep people on the platform, youtube has no interest in helping your channel grow.

If you can keep people on the platform with great content, youtube has a massive incentive to find your content a home with the proper audience and it will continually reward you as long as you feed the system what it needs to make its platform the best experience as possible for its user base and make the platform a ton of money by keeping people on the website.

VI.

You do not need to post anywhere else to grow on YouTube. YouTube has an algorithm that works and if you hit your KPIs, the system will reward you. YouTube is designed to take underrated content and blow it up, along with promoting already proven content.

In fact, promoting on other platforms may or may not hurt your growth. YouTube builds a profile to figure out your audience. If you promote on say a Reddit forum and people go watch it, YouTube will build a profile around those viewers and try to recommend your content to what THOSE viewers are interested in. If they are irrelevant to your niche, YouTube will then have the wrong data to work with because you fed the algorithm bad information by bringing in irrelevant traffic to your channel/videos.