How to become a YouTuber — The Ultimate Guide

Being a YouTuber seems like a fun and fruitful profession. You just have to make videos on topics that you like and money from them, right? However, becoming an established YouTuber is not an easy job.

Behind every successful journey of a YouTuber is a long journey of struggle and hard work. There are investments you need to make, processes that you have to follow, and more before you even create your first video.

With so much that needs to be done, it’s difficult to stay organized and on track with your efforts to become a YouTuber. This post will provide you with all the information that you require for becoming a YouTuber.

1. Decide your niche

The first you need to do is decide on a niche. Have a clear idea of which industries you’ll be focusing on in your videos. It’s easy for your mind to go all over the place when you’re trying to cover too many topics and niches.

So choose a couple of related niches based on your interests and expertise. For instance, fitness YouTubers could create content about workouts and healthy eating.

This is a great way to stay organized, stay strong, maintain consistency, and attract a relevant audience. When you start out with a clear focus on specific niches and become an expert. Plus, consistently producing content in those niches will definitely make it easier to attract viewers to your content.

If you want, you can further broaden your audience base by diversifying your niche. For example, YouTuber, 8bit Mamba, started creating gaming videos and live streams. Now that he has gained subscribers, he is focusing on a broader range of niches and started making vlogging videos.

2. Outline Your Channel Goal

What do you want to achieve through your channel? Do you want to keep helping people by creating informative videos? Do you want to show people how to do things? Or perhaps you just want to share stories and entertain people.

Outline the goal you want to achieve through your channel so you have some direction for your videos. It will also help you have a strong and consistent start instead of trying to cover everything and anything.

For example — YouTube channels like Gaurav Chaudhary of Technical Guruji mainly focus on unboxing videos to review product features and tech-related news. The goal is to provide his audience with a realistic and unbiased opinion to guide their purchases. No wonder he has gained 19.2 million subscribers to his channel.

Of course, some of you might want to be a YouTuber just for fame and money. While it’s perfectly acceptable to focus on this goal, you still want to make you’re providing content that has value to the audience. Otherwise, you won’t be able to attract an audience, grow your community, and monetize your channel.

3. Brainstorm Content Ideas

The next step is to come up with video ideas — the most important step that you should take even before you create your YouTube channel. This step will ensure that you don’t run out of ideas after creating only a few videos.

Look at the content other YouTubers in your niche are creating. Can you create something similar but different? Can you create something better? Or consider the main points and interests of your target audience? Come up with topic ideas to address them in a way that would.

The options are virtually endless as long as you’re constantly looking for ways to provide value to your audience.

4. Develop a Content Schedule

Having a consistent schedule will help you maintain consistency. It gives your subscribers the assurance that they can count on you for new videos at the scheduled time. It also gives you a proper timeline so you can organize your efforts and stay on track.

So before you even start creating a channel, you should make a publishing schedule that is manageable for you. Daily content may be a great way for attracting an audience, but it can become overwhelming for the one-person team.

The best way to start is with a weekly schedule, and once you get familiar with the schedule, you can start increasing your output. For instance, you should publish two videos every other week while maintaining your weekly schedule.

Gaurav Taneja, of Flying Beast, publishes content every day at 1:00 AM IST. Since he started his YouTube channel, he has been publishing his videos at the same time, so his audience knows when to expect new videos.

5. Assess Your Equipment

The equipment you use determines the quality of content you can produce. So it’s important to have a clear idea of what equipment, you need to create the kind of content you plan on creating. While in the starting phase, you don’t need to invest in expensive equipment, you do need to have a few essentials.

You’ll need a computer with decent speed and specifications that will meet your needs. You definitely need to invest in decent video editing software. While you don’t need to spend thousands of rupees on it, just make sure you have all the basic equipment to do what you want to do.

Video editing software like- Windows Movie Maker and I Movie would be great to start with. You can also go for other inexpensive options like Filmora and Corel VideoStudio.

If you’re going to be on camera or videos beyond screen recording, you’ll also need a camera. You could definitely start with your smartphone camera if you’re using a high—end camera phone.

6. Create and Optimize your YouTube Channel

Now that you have done all the above-mentioned things, you can finally create your YouTube channel. If you already have one, you can still follow to optimize it.

Choose a channel name that is unique yet catchy. You can also use your own name if that’s preferable for you.

In your “About” section, make sure you thoroughly describe what your channel is all about. But prioritize readability by breaking up blocks of text into paragraphs.

For example — take a look at the Hydra Flick channel description. It’s descriptive yet straight to the point. He has broken up the text into short paragraphs so it’s easier to read.

You could include keywords within the description in a way that’s natural. It will make it easier for people to find you when they search for said keywords.

It is also important to maintain consistency and welcoming for your channel to leave a good impression on the audience. So your channel artwork also plays an important role in establishing yourself as a credible YouTuber.

Your Food lab, for instance, has a very simple channel icon with its channel name written in red color.

His channel banner features many food items on a table, which is very relevant to channels that focus on various food dishes.

Work with a freelance graphic artist to create a channel icon and a banner that visually aligns with your voice, you can also use tools like Snappa to easily create your channel art.

While it is not necessary that your channel needs to be fancy, it should be recognizable. Keep it simple, but unique, while using a consistent color scheme and typography. Use this art consistently on your channel’s social media profiles so people can instantly recognize you.

7. Upload and Learn from the first YouTube video

Once you have set up and optimized your YouTube channel, you can start creating and uploading your first video. Choose from your content ideas and create a video that will instantly capture the audience's attention.

It’s also important to note that no matter how much time and effort you put into your first video, it won’t be perfect. That’s the challenge that every aspiring YouTuber experiences when they start their YouTube journey. The best way to overcome this challenge is to learn this.

Observe how people are responding to your video. What do they like and what are they complaining about? Do they have any valuable feedback on how to improve your videos?

You could even use YouTube Analytics to understand how your video managed to retain the audience. All of these observations will help you create even better videos that will appeal to your target audience.

CONCLUSION

These are the initial steps you’ll need to take before starting your journey as a Youtuber. You also need to build your social media presence so you attract an even bigger audience. Social media will help you promote your videos and distribute them to people who aren’t your subscribers to your channel.

Use this Ultimate Guide to build a strong foundation and become a successful YouTuber.