- The Sunday Strategist
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- My 3-step YouTube survival plan
YouTube is a game of survival.
When you start a channel, you are thrown into an arena with thousands of other creators.
All of you are fighting for one thing:
The viewer's attention.
Those who win can climb out of the arena and continue their journey in the YouTube world.
But those who can't will fall in the arena, and their YouTube channel won't get off the ground.
The void of YouTube swallows them up.
(I've just finished a book called Red Rising, which is why this analogy came to mind. I highly recommend it).
According to Google, 99.75% of YouTube channels fail.
That might scare some of you.
But there are ways we can guarantee we are that 0.25%.
That's what I'm going to teach you today.
Let's do this.
1. Be consistent
I know you've already heard this hundreds of times before.
But if you've heard it so many times, why do you keep ignoring it?
It's the #1 killer of all YouTube channels.
Why?
Because it requires you to be consistent when no one is watching.
And that's the toughest thing in the world. It makes you believe you are wasting your time because you can't see any progress in your metrics.
But progress on YouTube isn't linear. It compounds.
You are making progress. You just don't realise it.
Why consistency is so important
Imagine you have a friend called Bob.
You arrange to meet up with Bob for coffee every Tuesday.
The first week you meet up on time, but the next week you're a bit late.
The week after that, you miss the day altogether.
If this keeps happening, Bob will start to get annoyed.
He thinks you're untrustworthy and unreliable.
Eventually, Bob won't turn up for coffee with you.
Instead, he'll go for coffee with someone who is reliable and will turn up on time every Tuesday.
It's the exact same with your content creation.
If you post sporadically, your audience will have no idea when your videos come out.
They'll begin to lose interest.
Instead, they’ll watch someone who they know posts consistently and on time, every week.
You need to build a relationship with the viewer.
They need to be able to trust you.
Remember, these are real people on the other end of the screen.
One other thing:
Being inconsistent also signals to YouTube that you are unreliable, and they won't want to push your videos out to people.
This is because they'd earn more money with ads from a creator that posts consistently every week.
So, get into the routine of posting consistently.
Make it a non-negotiable that you post every week, no matter what.
If you can do this for a year, there's a good chance you're on the road to success.
But only if you can do tips #2 and #3 as well.
2. Pick a direction
YouTube is amazing.
There's no one telling you what you can and cannot post.
You can pick whatever direction you want.
You could upload a video on fitness today and a video on politics tomorrow.
That's the beauty of YouTube.
But it's also what's holding you back.
When you have unlimited directions, it means you have no direction.
Without a focus, your channel is going nowhere.
This is one of the things I teach in the YouTube Alchemist program.
I work 1-on-1 with you to help find a clear direction for your channel.
You can learn more by filling out this questionnaire:
The traffic lights analogy
I want you to imagine you're at a set of traffic lights.
There are countless roads ahead.
Every road looks appealing to you, but none truly stand out.
Picking one road and constantly turning back leads you nowhere.
You end up right where you started.
Changing your channel's focus means restarting from scratch every time, which prevents meaningful growth.
Narrow your focus, choose a direction, and commit fully. If it doesn't work, it's ok to turn back, but know you will be starting over.
While having options is great, it can also paralyse progress if you don't commit to your path.
3. Improve on every video
The truth is, when you start out on YouTube, your videos will suck.
I'm sorry if that offended some of you.
But at the moment, you have no idea what you're doing.
My first video sucked.
Don't believe me? Watch it for yourself:
Awful, right?
(Cut me some slack, I was 10 years old)
But after posting hundreds of videos, I have improved. See for yourself:
And still, I've got a lot to improve.
The day you stop improving is the day your channel dies.
Even MrBeast is analysing his mistakes and trying to improve on every video.
So here's what I want you to do:
Find a big YouTuber in your niche and find one outside your niche.
Every time you click publish, I want you to compare your video to theirs and write down three things they're doing better in the idea, packaging, and editing.
Implement those three things into your next video.
Do this for every single upload.
When you become a YouTuber, you become a student for the rest of your life.
This may scare some of you because you're thinking back to your days as a student in school and how much you hated it.
But the student we are referring to is very different from the student you're imagining.
This time you get to choose what you learn.
Nobody is forcing you to read a textbook.
If you did tip #2 correctly, you have picked a direction that interests and inspires you.
So you should enjoy learning.
Now, get creating.
See you next Sunday,
Rory