Download Now!
YouTube is a great way to make money, but not everyone who does it succeeds in doing so. Why? Because there are some not-so-obvious mistakes that people make when setting up their YouTube videos and channel. In today’s episode, Nate’s going to cover all the mistakes that new YouTubers make and how you can avoid falling into the same pit. Listen on to learn more!
As a new YouTuber, it’s easy to make mistakes. In fact, I’ve got a list of 10 mistakes that all new YouTubers seem to make. So by me sharing them to you, I’m hoping that you’ll have a shortcut and you’ll skip past these mistakes. The first mistake that new YouTubers make is that they’re actually afraid of making mistakes. They want it to be perfect. They want episode 1 to be as good as episode 500. Now, I love the way that my friend Chris Kitz almost said it. He said, “Start ugly. Just don’t stay ugly.” If you get started, you’re going to get results. You make an ugly video, you’re ugly video will get results and you can just go from there. But if you wait for your video to be perfect, guess what? You’re not going to get any results because that video isn’t going to go live until way in the future. It’s okay to put out content that’s a little bit embarrassing. But just be real. Put real value in your content. Put it out there and it’s okay to make mistakes. If one video flops, another one what will succeed. You know, if you make this mistake, you’ll learn from it. So, that’s the first mistake is not willing to make mistakes. The second big mistake that new YouTubers make is they create a variety channel. So, it doesn’t have a focus in one area but they want to talk about this subject and this subject and their hobby. And they also want to vlog and they just want to try it all. And you can do that once you have momentum. You can do it more experimentation especially if you have a following. If you have celebrity status, people will follow a variety channel because of the personality. They like the person and so they follow them wherever they go and whatever they talk about. Like Casey Niestat, could make a vlog about snowboarding throughout New York City and the next episode could be about a new lens that he’s giving a review. And people will just watch all of his episodes because he’s built the following that he has. They follow him as a personality. But when you’re new on YouTube, that doesn’t work so well. In fact, let me give you another example. The channel that I produce. Amazing channel, actually. Paul Jenkins, Live On Purpose TV. He’s a positivity psychologist. And we were talking about all the different areas and he wants to talk all about positivity and being happy. Wants to talk all about parenting and relationships. And how to strengthen relationships. We decided not to eliminate any of those. So, we we did an equal spread kind of covering all three different topics. And one of them has really taken off. The parenting videos have really done exceptionally well. Especially in the beginning. One video “How to get your children to listen without yelling.” That’s the video that took off the best. And so although we were covering three different areas, one of them really stood out. So, we kind of shifted our focus and did the majority of our videos on parenting. So, while we still did videos on all 3 categories, we shifted the majority of the focus towards the parenting videos to really capitalize on that. Paul created a parenting course. He created his positive parenting playlist. And it’s really worked well to grow his channel. Now that his channels got more momentum, he has started to get traction in the relationships and in the positivity categories but still parenting is the one that’s dominated. Here’s a piece of advice that I recently heard that I’m going to share back with you. If you have a hard time explaining what your channel is about, then it’s too broad. It’s too confusing. People will have a hard time subscribing. Okay, mistake number three is people aren’t willing to stick with it long enough. YouTube is definitely a long game. There’s a lot of advertising and marketing campaigns that you turn it on today. You’ll probably start getting leads and results tomorrow. Definitely within a few days, right? But YouTube is not like that. YouTube can take a year or 2 or 3 depending on the way that you’re going to monetize it. If you’re going to monetize it without revenue, it can take several years. It took four years for my ad revenue to get to five figures where it’s something really significant that I could live off of. If we’re funneling leads from YouTube into a business, it’s still going to take a year or more before you’re making enough sales that your channel is profitable. Most people quit too soon. I mean, I teach a strategy where I tell them if you follow these 4 ingredients then in 4 months, you’ll experience a spike. I’ve seen so many people quit a month 3. They create all these that so than they quit a month 3. Yeah, don’t do that. Stick with it. Mistake number 4 is very, very common. You post a video to YouTube and you’re worried about promoting it. Like, “Oh, it’s not getting any views. Can I share it on Facebook? Should I set out an email? What can I do? Is there somebody I can pay? How can I promote this? How can I get more views on this video?” When instead, if you’re to put that same energy in just making another video, that’s the mistake. Focusing on promotion rather than just making more or making better videos moving forward. Mistake number 5 is not paying enough attention to thumbnails. The thumbnails are so important on YouTube. The thumbnail is that still images that you see when you’re deciding whether you want to click on it or not, right? It’ll have the picture and then the title of the video below it. You can make subtle tweaks to the thumbnail and drastically improve your click-through rate. You might be getting three percent of people clicking on it and you change the color of something. And it will go up to 7%. And that’s just huge. Most people don’t even design custom thumbnail. So, that’s that’s a huge mistake. Now, I want to recommend a video that you watch that’s created by veritasium. He talks a lot about how to make a video go viral but he spends a good portion of this video really talking about thumbnails and how important they are. So, I wanted to have you watch that video after this one so you could learn all the ins and outs about thumbnails. Mistake number 6 is letting fear stop you from getting started. But happens all the time. People hear me speak or they take one of my courses and they know that this is the right strategy for them. They’ll tell me, “Yeah, this is the strategy I’ve been looking for.” But then months goes by and they haven’t acted on it. They think that it needs to be perfect. Right? And my recommendation is to start ugly. I learned that phrase from Chris and I love it. “Start ugly, just don’t stay ugly”. Create a video today. Post it. Your video tomorrow will be better. So, don’t let the fear keep you from getting started. Now, mistake number 7 that I think we all make, I’ve made it many times is trying to be somebody else. Now, an example would be Casey Neistat. When I first started vlogging, I don’t think it’s necessarily to get ideas from somebody like Casey or other vloggers. But I’ve seen some people take it to the extreme. They start blogging and they’re on a boosted board and they move to New York City and they start doing everything like somebody else. Personally I think that’s a mistake because you have value. People want to get to know you for you. And most of the time, when you do something exactly like somebody else, people know that somebody else. They know that you’re copying and they don’t follow you. But when you step into your own power, you step into your own uniqueness… When I found my own voice and I recognized… Like Kris Krohn, he’s real dynamic. He’s a real powerful speaker on stage. He uses a lot of body language, he’s loud, he’s quiet. He’s back loud again. And I tried to be like that but I’m not… I’m not like that. I’m not Kris. And when I get on stage, I actually use power points. I don’t read all off them but I show images of things and I really get in the zone and I get energized just by showing things and explaining things and it’s that’s just me. That’s my style. And for the longest time, I struggle because I was trying to be somebody else. So, that’s a mistake that I made then and that a lot of YouTubers make is trying to be somebody else. Mistake number 8 is not having a clear strategy. They just think, “I’m going to make videos and I’m going to post videos on YouTube.” And eventually, it’ll get results. And it doesn’t really work. There’s a lot of channels like that that have got hundreds and hundreds of videos yet, they’re only getting 10 views per video. And they’ve only got 37 subscribers. One of the best strategies you can implement is to do keyword research before you film. So, how this works is you find the questions that people are asking. So, instead of just making videos on random topics, you’re making videos that answer questions that you know people are searching for. So, you post this video and you’ve got people that are going to find your video. That’s what I mean by being strategic. Knowing how you’re going to get traffic and have that strategy before you film. Now, I made a whole video on this specific strategy. So, I put it up here it’s my Leaf Strategy video. Make sure you watch that one after this one. Because I teach you how to find those questions. I give you examples of what those questions look like and then I show you the tool you can use that just finds those questions for you. Makes this job really easy. Mistake number 9 that new YouTubers make is wearing all the hats. Now, what do I mean by that? Well, you are the videographer, you’re the editor, you’re the talent, you’re the star of the show. You’re the content writer. You know, you come up with all the ideas. You’re the thumbnail designer. You’re the YouTube manager. You do all the transcriptions and the posting and everything. Okay? You’re wearing all the hats plus you’re trying to figure out how to monetize the channel. And so, you need to create a product to sell or put on an event or know what affiliate links to put in there. Or create a patreon account. At some point, I think we do need to wear every hat. But I call it a mistake because people continue to wear all the hats for a very long time almost indefinitely. When you can very easily like I hire my editors in the Philippines. You know, it’s like to be able to create and put my ideas into something and then know that somebody else is going to edit it the way that I would. Or even if in the beginning they edit at 80% of the way. And then I just go in and tweak things here there is that frees up so much of my time. YouTube burnout is real. And when you’re wearing all the hats and you’re doing everything from filming to finish, you can get burned out really, really easy. So that’s why I call it a major mistake. Okay, a mistake number 10. I’ve actually got 11. So, there’s one more after this. Mistake number 10 is not collaborating. That’s a mistake that I’ve been thinking about a lot lately. Because that’s a mistake that I make. I’ve done a few collaborations they’ve worked well every time. So with the collaboration, you’ve got YouTuber A and you’ve got YouTuber B and they create some type of video campaign together where my channel will link to yours your channel will link to mine. And you do it in a way that makes it fun, you’re bringing in somebody else who’s creative it has a unique spin on a video that you can make on your channe.l I’ve done this a few times. It’s a lot of fun to do but for some reason I just haven’t done a lot. And that’s what I’m thinking about. I’ve actually got notes of people that I want to reach out to and collaborate with. So, that’s a mistake that hopefully I fix. I’ve actually got a bonus. So, this is mistake number 11. Mistake number 11 is trying to predict what other people want on YouTube, right? Now, why is this a mistake? Because you can’t predict. I mean you look at trends and you’re just chasing trends in often doesn’t work. But there is one exception. There’s one exception and this is something that I teach heavily and that’s to do keyword research before filming. So, in this way, you are predicting what people are searching for based on averages people search for this every single month. So, if you do keyword research before filming, you kind of can predict what other people want and that’s a huge advantage of. The YouTube search engine is such a good job. Now, I made another video on this. It’s my leaf strategy video and I explain in that video how you find the questions that people are searching for. So, I definitely recommend. You know, eliminate all these mistakes that I’ve talked about and this is something you got to start doing right. You’ll learn it in that video.