YouTube is a free video-sharing website that allows people to create, share and watch videos online.
Since its inception in 2005, YouTube has become the second most visited website on the internet after Google, with approximately 2.7 billion monthly visits.
This amount of success has benefited both YouTube as a business and YouTube content creators, many of whom have taken advantage of the growth of YouTube to increase their influence and change their lives through online videos.
Up to the early 2000s, only traditional broadcast companies and movie studios could afford to create films and videos with any level of potential for worldwide consumption.
But since the inception of YouTube, anyone can create videos and (hopefully) have a chance of reaching a worldwide audience, as well as reap the benefits that would ensue from that.
However, due to the temptation of YouTube fame and riches, millions of people (myself included) have jumped onto the bandwagon in the pursuit of success on the platform.
Unfortunately, due to the number of YouTube creators, success on the platform has become more and more difficult to achieve, as the platform gets more and more competitive year after year.
In 2024, there are over 51 million YouTube channels in the world. Out of that, less than 60,000 channels have over 1 million subscribers.
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In this post, I’ll share important lessons I’ve learnt from being a content creator on YouTube for the past 4 plus years to shed light on Youtube as a platform for content creators. Let us begin.
1. Define Your Success
As we’ve seen, the number of YouTube channels that exist on YouTube is humongous.
And as much as every YouTube creator would like to get millions of views on their videos and millions of subscribers to go with that, the chances of that level of success, though not zero, are slim.
This is not to say that if you are a content creator on YouTube you should forget about ever being successful.
No, rather, to save yourself a lot of heartbreak and disappointment, temper your expectations.
Define your success, that is to say, decide for yourself what success on YouTube will look like for you.
The numbers are no doubt important, the views and the subscribers are all external validation sources that inform the success of your YouTube channel.
But what if they don’t come as fast as you expect? Will you stop creating videos?
Find other definitions of success for your YouTube journey as you wait for the obvious ones of views and subscribers.
I’ll give you a few examples;
- For me, I consider it success that my video editing has gotten better over the years.
- I consider it success that I make videos documenting my life and share them with people on the Internet.
- I consider it success when someone says they learnt something or enjoyed a video I made.
These and many other “little” things outside the scope of views and subscribers affirm my YouTube journey.
3. Click-Through Rate And Audience Retention Determine the success of videos on YouTube
The YouTube algorithm is the AI and machine learning brains behind the YouTube recommendation system and getting discovered on YouTube.
It determines which videos get pushed out to more people on YouTube via YouTube recommendations and which videos remain at the bottom of the viewership table.
YouTube says the algorithm does this based on two feedback loops; CTR and ARR.
CTR is a video’s click-through rate; the amount of times people click on your video when they see an impression of it (It is important to have good thumbnails for this reason)
ARR stands for audience retention rate: Basically how long people stay watching your video once they click on it.
These two feedback loops inform the YouTube algorithm on which videos people are more likely to click on and watch and therefore these are the videos that get recommended more on YouTube.
It is therefore imperative to learn how to design appealing YouTube thumbnails; And more importantly, to make the first few minutes of your videos very interesting so that people keep watching.
If you master these two, you have a better than most chance of succeeding on YouTube.
3. YouTube Is A Business Owned By Google (And Therefore You Have No Control Over It)
At the end of the day, YouTube is an advertisement business owned by Google.
The core business of YouTube is advertisement: for this reason, think of YouTube as a big billboard owned by Google.
Brands and businesses pay Google cash money to display their ads on videos made by creators on the platform.
But because Google owns the business (The billboard in this case) it can do anything it wants to improve its position and increase its revenue even at the cost of YouTube creators.
And they don’t need to consult the YouTube creators on any changes to the platform.
A good example of this is the introduction of YouTube shorts.
YouTube shorts are the “Tiktok-like” videos Google and YouTube introduced to the platform to go up against the rise and rise of TikTok videos.
One day YouTube had no short vertical videos, the next, YouTube was littered with short videos.
This is just one of the many changes that have come to YouTube over the years without consultation to YouTube content creators.
Many times, these changes benefit YouTube as a business but hurt content creators. And there is absolutely nothing a content creator can do about it.
As I said, YouTube is owned by Google, and at the end of the day; Google will do what is best for Google.
All a content creator can do is button down the hatches and make hay while the sun shines. If a change comes to YouTube, do your best to roll with it and continue your content-making journey.
4. Do it for the Love of Video, Not For Anything Else
Don’t go into making YouTube content for fame or money. You will not last on the platform.
It took me 4 plus years for my YouTube channel to attain monetization status, and even now that it is monetized, I barely make anything on YouTube.
I’m not saying that your monetization journey will take as long, but it’s a very real possibility.
What happens when your YouTube channel doesn’t get monetized as fast as you thought it would? Do you stop making content? Absolutely not.
So rather than start making YouTube content to be rich and famous, make content because you like making content.
Because anything you can do without being paid for long durations of time is something that if you do get paid, will make you one of the luckiest people on earth.
Because it will mean that you are being paid to do something you truly enjoy doing. Something that doesn’t feel like work to you.
And very few people in the world ever get to experience that feeling.
5. It is the Size Of The Fight In The Dog, Not The Size Of The Dog In the fight
YouTube is a battle of attrition. It’s about who can take the most punches and keep rising up.
Just because I said it should be something you enjoy doing, and if you are lucky, it shouldn’t feel like work. It still is.
Carrying your camera around, in public, to make content is no easy task. Video editing is also no easy task. Thinking about videos to make is also no easy task.
Going for months and sometimes years without seeing the return on your investment of time and money is also just as difficult.
And so, to succeed on YouTube is to keep trying. Even when it looks like your trying isn’t being rewarded.
Ever heard of the saying “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again?” Well, on YouTube it’s “If at first you don’t succeed, if at the 100th attempt, you don’t succeed, if at the 500th attempt, you don’t succeed, keep trying.”
It’s not about the size of the dog in the fight, but the size of the fight in the dog.
6. Don’t Copy Everything, Retain Some Individuality
The temptation to copy everything from successful youtubers is great. Don’t make that mistake.
See, it is very tempting to abandon your system and your creativity to copy that of others who have already succeeded.
But if you do that, even if you succeed doing it, you will always be a copycat, and you will know it.
Now, it is actually advisable to copy some systems that are proven to work, like designing thumbnails and different types of video shooting and editing techniques.
But make sure to retain your individuality, it is the only thing you have that no other person in the entire world has. It is, in essence, your greatest strength.
No other person in the world is or can be you.
7. Views are King, Subscribers just lend credibility
At the beginning of your YouTube journey, you may be led to think that having many subscribers is the absolute standard of success on YouTube.
This is false.
The true standard of success on YouTube is having many views on your videos.
It is better to have 2,000 YouTube subscribers and 100,000 monthly views than it is to have 100,000 YouTube subscribers and 10,000 monthly views.
It is views that are monetized on YouTube, not subscribers.
It is views that determine the reach of your content on YouTube, not subscribers.
And finally, views lead to more subscribers; More subscribers, however, do not necessarily lead to more views.
Related: YouTube Monetization Secrets (How I Got Monetized On YouTube)
Summary
I have been a YouTuber for more than 4 years, in that time, I have learnt several important lessons on YouTube. Lessons I hope to keep sharing on this website.
Lessons like the ones we’ve discussed: the relation between subscribers and views, the importance of audience retention and having good CTR and many others.
I hope you learnt a thing or two, thank you for reading.
