How To Start A YouTube Channel & Make Money Out Of It
By: Kuheli Biswas
Tags: YouTube, Guides And Tutorials, Influencer Marketing, Influencers, YouTuber

YouTube has been around for over a decade but recently the influencer business model has piqued public interest. Whether it’s AIB, BB Ki Vines, Carry Minati in India, or globally acknowledged comedians Lilly Singh and PewDiePie all found their stardom and riches through YouTube. If done right, even you can become a YouTuber and earn money from it. But starting a channel can seem daunting and sitting in front of a camera and opening oneself up for public scrutiny can truly be intimidating. Most people end up getting confused about how to start a YouTube channel and make money from it? Or what content will attract and engage audiences?

The main question for them is perhaps how to create a YouTube channel and make money from it? To help you walk through these uncharted territories, we have compiled a list of solutions to help make your journey to stardom through YouTube easier.

How to start a YouTube channel?

Before creating any channel, aspiring YouTubers should concentrate on planning two main things, YouTube channel ideas and YouTube channel name ideas.

Sometimes people already know what they want to talk about to their audiences and some people often find themselves at a loss of topic. If you want to start a channel but aren’t sure about the content then you can look up the trending topics across YouTube and follow YouTubers that create contents that appeal to you. However, navigating through the large list of trending topics found online can be hectic. To get you started, here is a list of YouTube video ideas for beginners:

Fashion/beauty tutorials- Beauty and fashion tutorials have always been a trending topic and perhaps the least riskiest YouTube channel venture. But be aware, as fashion and beauty channels have reached their point of saturation and may take a long time to attract a large number of subscribers.

Sports and Fitness- As covid-19 rampaged across the globe, a new demand for online workout videos grew exponentially. Most audiences found exercising videos a solution to cope with their isolation blues and audience reach of fitness videos peaked in 2020.

Travel Vlogs- If you have some spare pictures or video clips from your last couple of vacations then you can spread your travel joys to your audiences. Everyone loves a good travel video, it gives audiences a cultural sense of the destination as well as assists them in research. You can create a video that shows the best part of your vacations, talk about your overall expenditure to help your audiences create a budget or share advice that would help them make their vacation easier.

Technology Reviews- Gadgets never go out of style. With every new launch of an Apple, android product, gadgets or game console, possible look for user experience and reviews from tech wiz or existing users. For YouTubers with tech knowledge, content on novel technology and products can be a gateway to stardom.

Interviews/response/Q&A- As any upcoming YouTuber, you can pick up any trending hashtags from social media to create a response video. Other popular categories include bringing in experts to address specific topics or concerns of the audiences. If you are not sure about whom to interview, you can do a preliminary search on LinkedIn to find people with the designation best suitable to address your concerns.

Mainstream News- Believe it or not, news has become a major trending topic in 2020 all over the globe. People in India are turning to independent journalists such as Faye D’Souza, Newslaundry and comedians like East India Comedy and Kunal Kamra on YouTube to get a brief sense of what is going on in the country. But, you don’t have to be a journalist to talk about the news that makes the national headline. Even better, you can create a local news platform. The idea still remains novel and has the potential to grow in the next few years. It can be a great opportunity to attract a large number of local audiences to build a steady subscriber base.

If you can’t decide on a single idea then you can create several trial videos on various topics and upload them online to check, which video content gets the most views. A more professional approach would be to create a focus group consisting of people with diverse opinions. It can be your friend and colleagues, who you can trust to give you objective opinions about your content.

The next step is to create a unique brand name. You do not want to be a synonym in a crowd of influencers. Try thinking of names that match your brand or content idea. For instance, channels such as Movieclips, Honest Reviews and 5-minute Crafts.

Design a content strategy:

Now to create a successful channel you have to create a content strategy to achieve your goals. First, you need to decide on what type of audience you want to target and research that demography. It is important to keep your viewers’ attention to your content. Studies show that a viewer spends a maximum of 30 seconds to judge if the video they are watching is worthwhile of their time or not. As a YouTuber, you have to grab your audiences’ attention during this period. Secondly, you have to understand your competition and their approach, which makes them stand out of the herd. Third, you need to plan your video content. Editing is the most important aspect of any video. It can either make or break your content’s success. Fourth, concentrate on the development stage. As a beginner, you need to concentrate on your video and audio quality as well as background aesthetics. Overcomplicated and crowded texts, loud music and shabby images or video clips can turn-off your viewers and reduce audience interaction. As a beginner, you can learn about filming techniques from famous channels or take up affordable online courses on filming for a few weeks.

Step-by-step guide on how to create a YouTube Channel and make money:

Create a Google Account. Log into YouTube using your designated Google email id. Click on the video camera icon with the plus sign on the left side of your screen to upload your video. List your video as public under the visibility section. Head to your profile icon and click on the ‘your channel’ button. On ‘your channel’ click on the ‘customize your channel’ button to get an overview of your channel’s or video’s viewership through ‘Analytics’. To monetize your content you need to be eligible to join the ‘YouTube Partner Programme’. After becoming a member of the ‘YouTube Partner Programme’, you can monetize your content through:

Ad revenue

YouTube Premium revenue

Channel membership

Merchandise shelf

Super Chat payments

Criteria for joining the YouTube Partner Program:

Your channel needs at least 1000 subscribers.

Your channel needs to have at least 4,000 valid public watch hours over 12 months.

An account with Google AdSense

Look for free tools to manage your channel:

Studio YouTube has one of the best in-built analytics systems. However, you can use free tools such as Google analytics, TubeBuddy, Social Blade and Tubics.

Finally, you need to do cross-platform promotion of your content. Sharing your video on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram can boost your audience reach as well as bring in new viewers or potential subscribers.

As the world has moved indoors, the need for new content has increased exponentially. It is the best time to find your adventurous side and show it to the world.