How to get more subscribers to your YouTube channel in 2024

YouTube can generate a consistently high income. However, to create a channel that attracts advertisers, you don’t necessarily need to be an experienced marketing specialist. It’s enough to know certain tricks and follow them for quick subscriber growth and channel development. And anyone willing can truly achieve this!

Where to Start

Many mistakenly begin with choosing the niche in which they will operate in the future. And this is a mistake. It is necessary to start with creating and optimizing the channel. All of this is done in YouTube Studio, the tool through which you can customize your channel, upload and edit new videos, and interact with your audience. The main things to do are:

1. Add a profile picture for your channel. There are 2 options: either the author’s face (suitable for individual blogs) or the logo of your company/brand (for its popularization and increased recognition). It’s highly desirable for a professional designer to create the profile picture. Of course, you can change the channel logo at any time, but it’s not advisable to abuse this.
2. Enhance it with a detailed description, links to social networks or the official website, contacts for advertising and collaboration inquiries. The more information provided about yourself (without disclosing confidential data), the better.
3. Add a call to action, encouraging viewers to subscribe to the channel and receive notifications about new videos. You can also attach a quick link for sharing here.
4. Add a channel trailer. All of this is done in the video editor. There are 2 options: a regular short trailer or a featured video (choose the one that has garnered the most views in a short period). You can also create a welcome video in which the author briefly and point by point explains what the channel is about, what viewers can expect in the future, and definitely includes a call to subscribe.
5. Edit the “Featured Sections” section. This is what the viewer will see when they visit the author’s channel page. By default, it displays a list of the latest videos, playlists with featured videos, and a list of the latest live streams. It is recommended to include the most popular videos on the channel in the “recommendations” list, as well as the last 3-5 created videos and a couple of recent live streams (if they are popular among ordinary viewers).

As for the “Recommendations” section, you can experiment with layouts. Be sure to track the reaction of potential subscribers. Analysis is something that needs to be done frequently, and ignoring it is not acceptable in any case.

About Choosing a Niche

Practically all guides on promoting your own YouTube channel recommend first determining a specific niche in which the author will operate in the future. This is also a misleading advice. There are already hundreds of cases where the author launched a channel dedicated to a specific topic but later radically changed the main theme. This often turns out to be a valid decision!

So the advice is extremely simple: experiment until the main niche is found. It may take a lot of time. And this is the most challenging part of creating a successful YouTube channel. But today’s audience is somewhat “spoiled.” There are no new, innovative niches. But which one the author will be skilled enough to create top-notch content in cannot be known in advance until tried.

A very good practical example is a blogger who initially created generalized videos related to personal growth and motivation. Then, she switched to NFT, which led to a rapid increase in the number of subscribers. Later, her video blog was transformed into the theme of YouTube blogging. Now, she provides free advice to aspiring authors. In each of these themes, the author managed to achieve excellent channel development results. And all of this is thanks to experiments.

SEO Optimization

YouTube is owned by Google, a company specializing in internet advertising. It provides an unlimited number of tools for advertising promotion. SEO is the simplest option, and most importantly, it does not require substantial financial investment.

You need to do the following:

• For every video published on the channel, include a detailed description with keywords (which can be obtained through Google ADS).
• Add tags for each video, describing the topics covered in it (recommended not less than 10 and not more than 40 tags for each channel publication).
• Pay more attention to the title of each video (to include popular SEO queries).

Services like Google Trends can be very helpful in all of this, as it literally tracks everything potential YouTube viewers are interested in in real-time. It is recommended to consult this service as often as possible to “keep your finger on the pulse of trends.”

Create Thumbnails

Many inexplicably avoid creating thumbnails for published content. Instead, a default image representing a random frame from the video is displayed.

A thumbnail is a kind of trailer. It’s exactly what a potential viewer first notices while scrolling through the recommendations feed. It needs to be attention-grabbing.

It’s advisable to use the services of professional designers for thumbnails as well. And it’s essential to consider that thumbnails are small. They can be viewed on both PC and mobile devices, so the image should remain easily readable and engaging everywhere.

If there is no possibility to finance a designer, then it’s recommended to try mastering Canva – a simple program with hundreds of templates for quick thumbnail generation. Just take a photo, connect a template, and edit the inscriptions.

Advertisement

It’s quite challenging to promote a channel independently without advertising. However, investing a bit in content promotion is worth it. The author has several options:

1. Buying contextual advertising on Google. It’s straightforward: people interested in the channel’s topic will see the ad when they enter a search query.
2. Purchasing ads from other creators. For beginners, it’s recommended to focus on those who already have 10 thousand subscribers or more.
3. Advertising through social networks. This is an option for gaining the very first audience.

However, there’s a nuance: promoting a channel through advertising should primarily be done when the author has already fully defined the niche and topic they will focus on. All of this should be done as the very last step when the channel is fully designed, optimized, and its basic SEO promotion is completed.

Additional Tips

Additional tips that will help attract subscribers to the channel:

1. Maintain Consistency: Upload new videos with a certain frequency, whether it’s once a week, twice a month, etc. The frequency is determined by the author based on their capabilities and the effort they put into creating each new publication.
2. Timestamp Every Video: For each video, provide timestamps. If some videos were uploaded without them, add and edit. This is also one of the SEO optimization measures.
3. Use Pop-up Tips: Recommend watching previously published videos on the channel through pop-up tips. This way, the author can create a “funnel” to attract an interested audience.
4. Suggest Subscription: At least once in the video, encourage viewers to subscribe to the channel, like, and activate notifications for new video releases. Don’t repeat this too often in videos, and don’t overly emphasize it. The final decision should always be made by the viewer.
5. Improve Audio and Video Quality: If there is technical capability. When exporting videos from a video editor (if using a third-party one), always choose the maximum quality, regardless of file size, bitrate, or resolution. YouTube converts each video anyway.
6. Take Courses at the Creator Academy: This is a kind of “school” from YouTube. It’s entirely free but provides detailed explanations of all the essential criteria for working with a channel, the service’s capabilities, and YouTube Studio. For beginner authors, it’s difficult to understand without this.
7. Engage with the Audience: The simplest option is to create a channel on Telegram or Facebook. Communicate periodically with viewers, inquire about their interests, conduct polls, and so on.

By following the presented recommendations diligently, it’s possible to quickly build a new audience for the channel. Most importantly, this will ensure continuous organic growth in views and subscribers. This might be sufficient for YouTube to periodically include videos from the author’s channel in the “Recommendations” section.