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How to: YouTube success

Hey guys,

This thread is a guide compiled by my knowledge of YouTube and methods that has been proven to work for other users of the YouTube community, earning them a lot of video views, comments and subscribers.

I will try to go through each piece of advice as precisely as possible; however, if you need further assistance feel free to contact me through posting on this thread.

[multipage=1. Starting up]
1. Starting up

When you are starting your channel, you must determine what type of videos you will post on YouTube. Will they be home-made comedies? Or will they be gameplay commentaries? Once you have decided on what you will post on your YouTube account, you will stick to it. You will not simply get 1,000 random subscribers, however you may get 1,000 people who are avid fans of what you are posting.

You will then want to settle on the quality of your videos. Standard definition is now low definition. If you don’t have the right equipment to record in HD, it’s time that you made an investment. No-one wants to watch a bad quality video, and with HQ becoming the normal all-of-a-sudden, you will have to keep up.

Another good idea is to set dates that you will upload certain videos on. For example, you could make a promise to your subscribers that there will be a new video posted every Saturday and Sunday. This will mean your community will know when to expect videos and so you are more likely to get views on those videos; rather than them checking their subscription box every day. When setting this promise, you have to be realistic. If you don’t have the time to make three videos a week, every week, then don’t promise it. You will end up letting your community down and you will drop in popularity.

[multipage=2. Goal setting]
2. Goal setting

When taking on almost any big task, goal setting is a key aspect. It helps keep you on track, meet deadlines and give you the right state of mind to achieve goals that you have set.

The first thing you must do is remember to be realistic, not dramatic. Don’t set goals that are unrealistic, for example 20,000 subscribers in the first month of your channel being established. Be realistic, and set a goal that is fairly accurate. You can always do some research by looking up a similar channel to what yours will be (make sure the channel is not super famous), and note the subscribers they have. In one week, return to their page and note the subscribers they have now. It will more than likely be an increase, and this can be used to gauge what you should aim for. So if they have managed to get 100 subscribers in a week, try aiming for half of that.

Another thing you must set is short-term goals and long-term goals. Short-term goals can be targets you want to reach within 2 months, whereas long-term goals will be targets you want to reach after 12 months. Having plenty of short-term goals will keep you motivated and will keep your eye on the ball, and more than likely it will help you achieve your long-term goals.


[multipage=3. Cheat (Sort of)]
3. Cheat (Sort of)

If you’re viewing this, you are on the NGU forums, which is a good thing. NGU being NGU, there are little ways that you can increase how popular your channel and its videos are.

There are a lot of people that will sell subscriptions to you, sometimes for as little as 1,000 vBux per subscription. Of course, there are also threads on the forums that will be along the lines of subscribe for subscribe, which means if you subscribe to them, they will subscribe to you.

If you are interested in purchasing subscribers, view the following section: You must login or register to view this content.

These methods will get you some subscribers that are not genuine, but a larger amount of subscribers may tempt genuine viewers to subscribe to your channel.

[multipage=4. Friends]
4. Friends

Adding someone to your friends list is often overlooked in YouTube. Most of the time, video producers want to earn subscribers and not video views – but they have missed out on a great opportunity.
To get the word out there for your videos, you will simply add as many people you can find on YouTube to your friends list. 90% of the time, those that receive a friend request will accept it, which is good.

Now, with a substantial amount of friends you can send a mass message to them with a link to your newly uploaded video. Something along the lines of ‘Hey, I have just uploaded a new video to my channel about ____, please could you help me out by viewing it and commenting with your feedback so that I can improve’
Not everyone will click the link, but a lot of people will. This generates more video views for you, and your channel in turn will become more visited; and, if you continue to post videos that have a high-ish view count, you will earn subscribers.
What’s more is that these ‘friends’ will give you feedback (if you ask them to) on how to improve your videos. With the advice given, you can change aspects that are mainly disliked which will help you to become loved among all of the YouTube users.

How to mass mail:

Step 1 -
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Go to the top right of your screen and click the dropdown bar where your YouTube username is. Then click 'Inbox' as illustrated in the above image

Step 2 -
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On the bottom left hand side of your screen, select the 'Address book' link.

Step 3 -
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Cick the ticky box at the top of the collumn in grey. This will select all of your contacts (Friends and subscribers).
Then click compose which will take you to a screen where you can write a message to everyone you have selected.

Step 4 -
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Select your message title and the text that will be in your message, and select if you want to attach a video with your message. When you are done, simply click 'send message' and everyone selected will be messaged.

[/INDENT]
[multipage=5. Encourage activity on your videos]
5. Encourage activity on your videos

As your view count increases, you will start to rise on the ‘Most viewed’ lists. The ‘Most viewed’ list is harder to compete in with the likes of other YouTube members who have 500,000 + subscribers. So instead of competing on this list, try to compete on a list such as ‘Most discussed’, ‘Most responded’ or ‘Top rated’.

You can increase your ‘Most discussed’ rating by asking viewers a question, asking for their opinion is the best bet, and ask for them to respond in the comments section. By doing this you are reminding those people who are watching your video to comment, and they don’t feel like they are doing a task or helping you, they are simply stating their opinion.

You can increase your ‘Most responded’ rating by doing things like asking users to post a video response to a question or by asking them to respond with a video showing crazy picture of them, the craziest picture gets a shout-out in your next video. In today’s world, all phones are fitted with a camera and the capabilities to move the file to their computer, so your viewers should not have a hard time doing this.

The ‘Top rated’ ranking really only has one method to increasing it. At the end of each video you make, remind your viewers to thumbs up/thumbs down the video. You will get the occasional few that thumbs down, but most of the time you will receive thumbs up.

[multipage=6. Get involved]
6. Get involved

There are usually quite a few people that have already made it big on YouTube who may do similar things to you, and you can take advantage of their success and use it for your own good.

Simply try to get involved with them. If you were, for example, doing a Modern Warefare 2 commentary, ask the famous YouTube user if they would be kind enough to join you in a dual-commentary. At the end, make sure there is a link to both of your channels, and allow the famous user to post it on their channel too. This means that all of their viewer base will see the video, but they will also be linked to your YouTube channel at the end of the video, which will generate traffic to your videos and channel.

Sometimes it can be even easier than that, but it may cost you. If the YouTube users are from the 100,000 + subscribers, they may be tempted to charge you for a shout-out in their video. This requires less work for you, but it will cost you the price that the YouTube video producer charges for a shout-out.

[multipage=7. Create a Catchphrase]
7. Create a Catchphrase

With the exception of your username, there is few ways for you to be identified by the community. One way that you can get yourself remembered by viewers is by using a catchphrase.
To show the effect, try guessing the name of the YouTube users by their catchphrase.
1) Tejb
2) Shaycarl
3) OpTic_Hecz

The chances are, if you watch their videos you will realise that they use their catchphrase in every video. The reason being is that their YouTube username isn’t the most catch thing, and most people will associate a phrase with a person rather than someone to theirself.

If I was to say ‘Jello pudding’, yeah that’s right, Bill Cosby. If I was to say ‘Eh, what’s up doc’, yet again, you know it’s Bugs Bunny.
Really, it’s another way for you to bring attention, and curious viewers to your channel and videos. This is what you want, and you should create a catchphrase of your own to capitalise on this.

Make sure it’s short and snappy. A good guide is to make sure that it’s no longer than 6 letters, as this will give you the short factor. To make it snappy and to the point, make sure it relates to your content. For example, COD videos -> ‘FRRAAAGGGG’, but a bad example would be COD videos -> ‘Pretty colours’.



[multipage=8. Tagging your videos]
8. Tagging your videos

When a user searches something in YouTube, it uses key words to show the most appropriate video. So if someone searched Next Gen Update, YouTube would search for videos with the tags of Next Gen Update. The videos will then be sorted in terms of relevance. At the top will be videos with matches on all of your keywords, in the middle would be videos tagged with around half you’re your search keywords and videos listed at the bottom will be videos with the least matches to your keywords.

Try not to stray away from what your video is about. If you were doing a karate demonstration, it would be rather pointless tagging it with something like ‘cheese’.

YouTube does have a tool where it will come up with some tags for your video. If you run out of space, simply post them in your description of the video, and it will still work.

YouTube keyword tool: You must login or register to view this content.

[multipage=9. Social networking]
9. Social networking

Offer more ways of your community to stay connected to you and your channel.
You can do this by making an official Facebook page or a Twitter account. By doing this and posting the links to them in the description of your video and channel, you will be able to update people when new videos are uploaded in more than one way, and you will be able to update them with updates to the channel such as a new series of shows.

[multipage=10. Promotion]
10. Promotion

It’s a good idea to also show your video to those of other communities. For example, if you were doing a PS3 Modern Warefare 2 commentary, you could post a thread on NGU, post a thread on the Playstation forums, post a thread on the Modern Warefare 2 forums and it goes from there. Remember not to spam the forums or your promotion will not have the intended effect.

You may also want to include links to your video in forum signatures or e-mail signatures, which means every post you make essentially advertises your video, and every e-mail you send will advertise your video.

Another good idea to get your channel seen is to get your channel listed in other users 'Other channels' lists. Make sure the users channel you are listed on does similar things to your channels content.
To get listed on a users channel, you may need to win competitions or simply become friends with them and ask. By far, the fastest and easiest way to get listed on someone's channel is to pay them a fee. The more popular the user is, the more you are expected to pay, but you can generally expect more people to come to your channel if they are more popular.

[multipage=11. Make a toolbar]
11. Make a toolbar

Although you don’t receive the funds from adverts that may be placed on your video by YouTube, there is a way that you can earn a small amount of money through your viewers help.

Simply make a toolbar.

The most popular choice by YouTuber's is to make a toolbar at the following website:
You must login or register to view this content.

This website will allow you to create a toolbar of your own and will let you customize it a lot. You can add features to it such as a feed of your video uploads and tweets or a direct link to your channel homepage. The best thing is, you get paid for each download.

[multipage=12. Become a YouTube partner]
12. Become a YouTube partner

If you have managed to get a good amount of subscribers, video uploads, views and high quality videos, you may be eligible to become a YouTube partner.

Becoming a YouTube partner means that you can start making a bit of money from posting videos on YouTube through video advertising. These adverts will usually be during the video at the bottom of the screen or to the right of the video in a square format.

Becoming a partner also has other benefits, such as an insight to your views and the demographics they come from, copyright protection and higher quality broadcasting.

[multipage=13. Methods to make money from YouTube now you are famous]
13. Methods to make money from YouTube now you are famous

When you are a famous YouTube users, people posting similar content to yourself will aspire to be just like you. In doing this, they will want to advertise videos on your videos, advertise links on your description, pay for a week/monthly subscription to be posted on your 'Other channels' list, or even more. Below are how to generate money from these methods.

Before you start offer users to pay for a link in your video, you will want to give them a general idea of the average amount of views your videos get at the moment. An accurate calculation of this would be add all of your views for the videos posted in the last month together, and divide that number of views by the amount of videos you added together. So if 15 videos got a total of 1,000,000 views, you would divide 1,000,000 by 15. The number you come out with gives you the average amount of views.
After telling the user this, you can start to entice them to advertise with you. Something along the lines of 'A simple look at the amount of views my video takes gives you an idea of how many views your video will get, and more. You also have a fan base which means your video can actually generate more views than my video!' would do great.

Selling a link to a users channel is a much easier method than the above. There is a way to track how many clicks that link gets, by registering on a website such as You must login or register to view this content.. This website registers how many people have visited the shortened URL, and in turn you can charge people advertising with you for each view that URL gets. Google adwords charge around £0.10 / $0.15 for a click, so a price around that would be decent.
You could of course simply give the advertisers a general charge, where they pay you to have their link in your description for (x) amount of videos or (x) weeks/months.

Your 'Other channels' list can also fetch some money for you to power your YouTube. Charging users would be easiest done by charging them for the time they are in your 'Other channels' list. This can be paid by day, week or month. Make sure to make it work out slightly cheaper for each method.
For example, if it's £1.00/$1.50 for each day, make it £5.50/$8.50 for a week and £20.00/$30.00. This will encourage users to pay you a bigger sum of money, for doing nothing except putting a link in your channel.

A few things to remember are:

• Remember to have them send you the money FIRST. Money can be refunded, views cannot.
  
• Try your best to help their advertising campaign work. The better it works for them, the more likely they will advertise with you again or reccommend you to other YouTubers.
  
• Don't flood your videos, description and other videos box with other users. You must keep the community you already have happy.
  

[multipage=Ending note(s)]
Ending notes

This thread, or guide if you may, is completely typed by myself and myself only.

Not one part is copied and pasted (except the hyperlink) - and I'm sure for that you can appritiate how much work has gone into this.

Thank you for reading my guide, and I hope it proves useful.

Nice Guide!!

I can tell you took a ton of time writing this. And really, it is a very good post.

nice thread n message me how to use table of contents plz

This is a very nice guide my man.
STUCK.

Not into making videos, but damn! GREAT GUIDE.

Great thread mate, I can see this thread took you a while to make. Keep it up

Great job again :y:

Catch Phrases?

Good idea!
I'll get writing a page on that right now and add it as soon as possible.

/AC

awesome guide it must of taken you ages