Getting Started with Content Creation
A work in progress: Updated 31 August 2020
I was in the process of working on a new product for Content Creation
and then the Ashes of Creation Hype Train hit and that became the
biggest avenue for my time. I did take the time to finish up this new
products playlist. I'm sharing it here, it a very rough, unpolished
state just so you can see it. In the future I hope to get back to
working on this series, or more specifically scrapping what I've done
and starting over.
Do you want to know what the magic recipe for getting more subscribers is?
There isn’t one.
Take a minute to be honest with your own question. If there was a magic recipe for getting more subscribers, would anyone share that with the new guy on the block? No, of course not. No matter what genre or niche you have, there is already someone doing it. If someone already making the content you make knew the answer for how you could get more subscribers, they would keep it to themselves. At the end of the day, every new channel that pops up on YouTube is a competition for someone. Any secrets would be kept secret, to keep those at the top on top and the people just trying to break into Content Creation at the bottom.
So is trying to start out as a YouTuber today totally pointless?
No! Absolutely not.
It is totally possible to start a channel today, yes today and if you know how to get started, you can very quickly start to find a degree of success. You have to understand what success looks like though. If I tell you that if you have 50 subscribers at the end of your first month you are successful, you have to either accept that or not. To pick up 50 subscribers in a single month is an amazing feat for any channel, especially a new one from a newtuber. It's about setting the right short, medium, and long term goals.
Now I know the very first thing you are going to ask is: Shouldn’t I be focused on my 1,000 subscribers and my 4,000 watch hours so I can get monetized?
No. No you should not. That is not a short term goal, that is at the very best a medium goal if not a long term goal. There are many miles to go before you hit that goal. In order to help you, the best thing I can do is walk you through some of my mistakes I made while going from 0 subscribers to the 12,000 I have today.
Now, I am by no means an expert, but I am someone who has made a ton of mistakes, and I’m willing to take as much time as needed to answer any and all of your questions. If you need to get in touch with me directly, you can do so via support@paradoxgaming.net, on Discord as Jahlon#0001 (no need to friend me, just send a message) or you can join my discord at https://discord.gg/S2MxYWJ where I have a channel specifically designed to help new content creators.
Things I wish I knew when I started
Do not chase subscribers
There are a ton of things I wish I knew when I first got started being a content creator. I have made tons of mistakes, as I have documented in my YouTuber Epic fail video. Like you, I started off chasing subscriber goals. First it was 100, then 500, then 1000, 2500, 5000. I literally wasted 3 years and 151 days chasing a goal of getting my first 5,000 YouTube subscribers. Looking back this was a stupid goal to chase and it probably cost me a good two or two and a half years of time I could have used growing my channel.
I spent the summer of 2019 thinking about what I was doing as a content creator. I wasn’t making a lot of content, but the content I was making was much better than my previous content. I started to really refine my recording, my scripts, my thumbnails. While it took me three years to grow my channel to 3,600 subscribers, really sitting down and thinking about what I was doing allowed me to grow my channel by an additional 1,400 subscribers in 6 months.
Let that one really sink in. It took my 3 years to get to 3,600 subscribers, roughly 1,200 per year. By making one simple change and taking my attention off my subscribers, I managed to grow by 1,400 subscribers in six months. Better than that, because my channel was doing much better at all the right things a channel needs to do to grow, and because a Window of Opportunity opened for me, I actually exploded from 5,000 subscribers to 12,000 subscribers within another 6 months.
Had I been putting all my effort into chasing subscribers, I’d still probably be at 5,000 subscribers, but since I stopped caring about subscribers and worried about the content, I had the success I wanted.
So to let you in on the first secret: Do not chase subscribers, it is a stupid goal.
Never Sub for Sub | Never Link Drop
Chase Retention! Chase Active Viewers
Now, I know you don’t want to accept the idea of not chasing subscribers. You want to fight me every step of the way, and in order for you to really believe this advice is going to help you, I have to convince you that chasing subscribers is a stupid goal.
Ok, let’s get down into the real mess of this. Let’s jump into the blood and guts of what a subscriber is, a subscriber is someone who has said they like something about you. Maybe they like one video, maybe they like one thing you said, maybe they are a really supportive person who is trying to help so they give you that subscribe click.
Sure you feel great, you log into your YouTube channel after a rough day and you see that you have gotten 5 new subscribers and you feel good. That shot of dopamine or serotonin from a happy event makes you feel great.
Your channel is sitting at 50 subscribers and you are averaging about 75 views per video. Every day for a week you get a 5 new subscribers so at the end of that week you now have 85 subscribers, and when you put out your next video you just know it’s going to break 100 views.
You upload the video, you post it, and after a week it has that same 75 views.
So what happened? How did you go up by 35 subscribers but not go up by any views? You were too concerned with chasing subscribers, and you didn’t chase any viewers.
Time to engage your imagination for a bit. I want you to imagine your YouTube Channel is a store, and what you sell at that store are videos. It doesn’t matter if they are self-help videos, or instructional videos, or DIY videos, or just straight up art, music, entertainment videos. The videos on every single channel are a product.
Think of subscribers as shoppers. They are people who are at your store (channel) who may or may not purchase something (view a video/tune into a stream/view your pictures).
Then you have buyers (viewers) these are people committed to engaging on the content you produce.
Focusing on getting a high subscriber count is like focusing on getting your store packed with shoppers. Sure, as a store owner you are going to feel great if each and every day your store is packed. Until the end of the night when you look at the register and you realize you’ve made almost no sales.
Forget trying to bump up your subscriber count; it is a meaningless number. What you really want is to fill your store with buyers.
Focus on making your product better so people will actually watch it, and watch it more than 10 seconds, 30 seconds, and 60 seconds. You don’t need click-through traffic, you need serious watchers who get to at least the 50% point of your videos, if not more. We will get into that a little later.
Ask yourself this question:
Do you want to have 100,000 subscribers on your YouTube channel and your videos get 2,000 views?
or
Do you want to have 2,000 subscribers on your YouTube channel and your videos get 100,000 views?
Personally, I want the 100,000 views, but that’s just me.
It is great to have a bunch of supporters who click that subscribe button, but where you get the disconnect is when you have 200 subscribers on your YouTube Channel but your video only gets 22 views? For Twitch this works as having 100 Twitch Followers but each time you stream you are literally talking to an empty room.
Now I’m sure some of you are going to immediately fire back with something like “Well I have 500 subscribers and my videos are getting 1,000 views, so I have my base of 500 views per video”
You maybe right, but I’m going to bet you are wrong.
Go dive into your Audience metrics in YouTube Studio. I’ll share with you mine.
In the last 28 days I’ve been rather slow. I’ve only had 25,600 views for my channel, but of that 76.5% of the views I’ve had have come from people who are not-subscribed to my channel. If I was spending all my time trying to get subscribers, worried about subscribers, chasing subscribers, my channel would be doing much worse.
Think about that for a moment. 76.5% of my views are coming from non-subscribers. I’m willing to bet that 50% or more of your views are coming from non-subscribers as well. Maybe it’s a little higher, maybe it’s a little lower.
So with that in mind, why are you chasing subscribers again?
Time for Secret #2: Chase VIEWERS not subscribers.
With that said, I’m surprised I’m going to have to even say this, but I want to throw it on as a caveat. Never sub for sub. Never. Never ever ever! Sub for sub is a bad idea all around.
First, it is a violation of the YouTube terms of service, especially if you do something silly like buy subscribers from a third party service. Secondly, believe this or not, these subscribers are actually hurting your metrics and your image.
Why does this person have 100,000 subscribers but their videos only get 1,000 views. Their videos must suck! It is perception that is easy to arrive at. Even if those people are being good “sub for sub” buddies and clicking on all your videos, they are giving you views that fall off after the 00:10 mark and this is actually hurting your channel tremendously. Let’s talk about another important topic: meaningful views.
Meaningful views
So I told you that chasing subscribers is bad and you should be chasing viewsers. Well, even though that advice is only a few minutes old, it's already bad advice. I’m sure some of you have already thought about making click-baity titles and thumbnails in order to get people to click on your videos. After all you want views right?
Wrong. You want meaningful views. Jump back into your analytics and look at your retention.
To do this pick a video, go into analytics, and then right there on the overview page is a Audience Retention graph. What I want you to do is get a good ole fashion pen and paper and write down
00:10
00:30
00:60
And the 50% mark of your video
Now, sometimes these exact time stamps aren’t shown on the graph and you need to fudge a little bit to the left or right, but try to keep the first three 30 seconds apart.
What percentage of people have you retained at the 10 second mark? The 30 second mark? The 60 second mark? What percentage of people make it halfway through your videos? Right there on that chart it will tell you the average view duration. This is the data you need to improve your videos.
Chasing views is nice, but don't’ do it by being clickbaity. Have you lost everyone by the 10 second mark? The 30 second mark? How many people actually get to see the material after your one minute mark? How many people are seeing half the video?
Now I know, this is going to be a bit depressing when you first start to process it. You are busy making content and people are watching less than a minute of it. Don’t worry about those people who clicked off. Worry about the people who stayed.
If you have retained a portion of your audience, then your stuff is clearly good enough to retain some people, now worry about working on that and making it better.
If you haven’t retained anyone, talking less than 15%, then you need to go back to the drawing board and work on the product.
Other Mistakes
I’ve made so many mistakes I wish I could go back and start over, but we can’t go back and start over can we? No, we can only move forward.
Some of this is for brand-new creators, people who haven’t even started yet, people thinking about starting, or people who have just started and it isn’t too late for them to fix some of the mistakes that I’ve made.
Other people may be too far along to totally restart, but you can switch up your future and make some much needed improvements.
I’m going to start with one of my biggest problems, and that is my name. Paradox Gaming Network. Wow that’s long. Let’s talk about:
The Importance of Your Name
Get it right the first time
Is your Content Creator name setting you up for success? Have you chosen a name that is going to be with you for a year? Two Years? Five years? Are you the next Ninja? Shroud? Dr. Disrespect? It is going to take you a long time to reach the success you want, and the very last thing you want to do is find out that to be sponsored, affiliated or monetized you will have to start over. I’ve seen some people do it and it can be done, but it is messy, and you lose all those historical views and minutes watched, the real meat of your metrics.
I am not going to lie, I wish that I hadn’t used Paradox Gaming Network as my organization and I wish I hadn’t included it in my name. There is a plan at work here with the Paradox Gaming Network, it is just taking longer than I planned. Which is ok, it's a long term plan, but now I’m stuck streaming on a Channel with a 22 character name. Sure it is great for marketing, but it is horrible for discoverability.
So the biggest problem for me, is that if you google Paradox looking for me, you don’t actually find me, you find the word Paradox and since it's an amazing word, it fills the entire first page. Luckily in recent weeks, due to lots of hustle, I’ve managed to make myself really discoverable when you search for Paradox Gaming. Unfortunately doing a google search on Jahlon is pretty disastrous, which is why I recommend you do a Google Search on your name before you decide on it and start making content, because you don’t want to redo work.
Sit down and really think about what you want your name to be. Is the name you are picking setting you up for success? Even if you are doing this for fun, even if you use a stupid, silly in-game name, you might to consider the long term ramifications of standing a brand under the name Killa97, or Prince Slap-a-hoe, or Bitchwhodontmiss. You might find it difficult to salvage results from these names and you may have to start over from scratch if you try to turn your Content Creation hobby into a career.
Remember, it's really easy to stop doing it for profit and just have fun. It is nowhere near as easy to suddenly decide you want to be a marketable brand.
You never want to have to walk backwards.
Imagine having 10,000 Subscribers or Followers and 2,000,000 views and finding out that to capitalize on it and make money you need to start over from scratch because your name is just not acceptable to sponsors or advertisers?
Most people would be devastated and they might not be willing to make the attempt. Even if they did, it would take a long time to recover, and time spent recovering is time not making profit.
Once you think you have a name, do some research to make sure someone else doesn’t have it and it is actually going to be good.
1: Check Google. What comes up when you put your new name into the search box? Is this the sort of stuff you want to be associated with? Is there already making content with that name or a close name? Do you want to be associated with them?
2: Specifically Check the following sites.
-
YouTube
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Twitch
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Twitter
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Dlive
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Mixer
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Reddit
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Steam (If a gaming channel)
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Your specific community websites.
Is your new name taken on any of them? You are going to want to have that name on all 6+ platforms. Now when it comes to Dlive and Mixer, I have both a Mixer and a DLive account, however, I only have them as reserved names. I'm completely happy being a Twitch Streamer, but on the off chance that one day I want to change, I already have my names reserved. Since it's free to register, go ahead and register and secure the name now.
I also recommend that even if you are going to Stream or YouTube with another person, create your own identity first. Even if you are doing 100% collaborations, make sure you remember anything and everything can happen. You need to be your own identity first, just in case something happens and you end up having to walk away from the other person. Success and money makes people do stupid things, the last thing you want is to be the sidekick in a partnership and the other person gets the channel and the profits.
You should have your own brand, your partner should have their own brand, and then you come together to do collaborations.
This is one of my biggest mistakes. I worried about having a community brand first before I worried about myself. Then again, I’m not in it for the money. While my personal success will help bring success to the other streamers and video makers I bring under the umbrella, if my own success was stronger before I built the new community name I might have been able to help people a little better.
Next up, should you make a brand new account for your new content creation identity?
Brand New Account
I highly recommend when you start the journey of becoming a content creator, that you create a brand new Gmail Account (you’ll need this for YouTube anyway) and only use this account for your Creator Stuff. This way you will have your YouTube, Streaming Platforms, Twitter, Discord, Paypal (if you start making money) etc all tied into one email address that’s separate from your personal identity. I’m not going to go into the fact that in the United States being a content creator is no longer a hobby (IRS rules changed in 2019) and you are in fact a business owner. That’s something you need to dig into for yourself.
Branding Across All Platforms
I know some of you think you will only want to make YouTube videos and that you are never going to stream. That’s ok. Go and get your three streaming service accounts (Twitch, DLive, Mixer) anyway. It's free, what is it going to hurt to have them?
Why? You may just end up like me, jumping on stream one night, start streaming and loving it. Why get all three? You may not want to be on anything but Twitch today, but you do not know what tomorrow will bring.
I also know that some of you want to be Streamers and you know you don’t want to make any YouTube videos. That’s ok. Go create a YouTube account that pairs up with your new name, because after a few months of slow growth on Twitch or Mixer or DLive you are going to come to the realization that you need a second source of organic promotion and a YouTube channel is going to help with that, some extra income, and more.
Oh, you swore that you’d never be on the Platform with the little blue bird? You hate Twitter that much that you won’t use it even if it will get you 50 subscribers? 100 subscribers? What about 5,000 video views? What about 100 people on your livestream? If you think Twitter isn’t a serious platform for helping direct traffic to your content you are mistaken. I’m not going to hold a gun to your head and tell you to get a Twitter Account, but I’m going to tell you that you are missing some easy opportunity for promotion if you just do a little hustle.
My primary content is Video Game work, I’ve had several Game Developers Tweet at Me or Retweet my work, that alone has been worth the daily grind of trying to remember to post something useful on Twitter. Getting a boost from a big studio often drives hundreds of people your way.
Now, with that said being successful on Twitter is a whole next level of content creation that you will have to study to get good at. It's not just a matter of using it as a hashtag billboard. One of the things we are going to talk about in the Using Platforms Properly is Twitter.
Discord
Now you will notice that I didn’t list Discord in the list above. That’s because you get to create your Discord and there is quite a bit of flexibility with Discord since people will be joining it via a custom link. Obviously if you can make your Discord Name the same as all your other names just for consistency do that, but I would not switch up my brand name just because the discord name doesn’t exactly line up.
There is a Reddit community for everything, and chances are if you are doing something Content Creation wise. It just looks nicer and neater if you have everything with the same name. Branding is everything. Reddit is another one of those places where I have my name slightly different due to being stupid when I started. Remember that 22 letter name? Yeah didn’t work with Reddit. That’s why I’m Paradox_Support at Reddit, which even that was a stupid name, but you know we live, we learn, we endure stupid names.
Steam
If you are a gamer, you will want to make your display name for Steam the same as your Channel Name because of the Guides and Videos Section. This is literally the easiest thing you can do to help drive views.
You can drop videos into their video section without any other commitments, and end up getting some traffic.
Other Platforms (Instagram, Facebook, etc)
I didn’t talk about Instagram and Facebook as platforms, but they certainly are. I’m not really qualified to talk about them as platforms but I do want to recognize them as potential sources for promotion. Again though, like Twitter, contention creation here is more than just slapping up a picture and adding links; at least if you want it to be effective.
Using Platforms Appropriately
Content creation is not equal across all platforms and a creator must learn to respect each medium for what it is.
What works on a stream won’t necessarily work on a video;
what works on Twitter won’t necessarily work on Instagram.
Each platform caters to a specific audience, and you need to learn how to deliver what those unique audiences want.
This isn't to say that you can't link between the platforms, you certainly can and should but never make the mistake of thinking that one of the platforms is secondary to your chosen platform. Just because it is secondary to YOU, doesn’t mean its secondary as a platform. If you make this mistake you will have alienated the audience you are trying to cultivate on that platform and this can hurt you in the end.
Don’t look down on Tik-Tok video creators, some of them are experiencing viral growth, because that’s what the platform does for them.
The two most accepted platforms are Video Making and Streaming, however, you can also be a very effective and profitable Twitter user, Instagram Personality, anything. If there is a way to profit from content creation you can bet that people are making content on that platform.
With that said I'm only going to discuss using Streaming and Video Making, and mainly as Twitch and YouTube. I'm going to talk about using Twitter and Instagram as secondary promotional avenues, but I am not going to go in to what it takes to be a content creator for those in your own right, mainly because I don’t make content on those platforms, I only use them as to promote my Stream and my Twitch.
YouTube
YouTube is the primary destination for Video Makers. It is possible to be on YouTube and only on YouTube, however, chances are you are going to want to use other Platforms to grow. Before we talk about those other platforms, there are some things about YouTube you want to know. In the video where I talk about not chasing subs I talk about focusing on your content, this means focusing on every step of your content from inception, through creation, to advertising and marketing.
One thing you cannot afford to do is ignore what few viewers you get early on. Those early viewers are the ones that will help you form your community.
If someone makes a comment, you answer it. If you don’t have time to answer comments, you don’t have time to build a channel. Until you are getting 500+ comments a day, you better find time to answer the ones you get. Not with just some copy and paste answer either, that’s disingenuous. Respond to everything. Thumbs up and heart good comments, even if they are negative or constructive criticism.
Even a negative comment about your content might be the feedback you really need. Read every comment, but don’t necessarily change due to one nasty comment. Keep pushing through. Sometimes those nasty comments are coming from your competitors who want to slow you down so they can catch up.
Now there is advice all over the internet about what the secret formula for a viral YouTube video is.
DO NOT CHASE THESE TRICKS
Remember what I told you at the beginning? If anyone knew the secret they would keep it to themselves, because everyone wants to have that success.
Focus on building and cultivating your audience one viewer at a time. Not one subscriber, one viewer.
One meaning viewer.
As I said before, 70-75% of my views come from non-subscribers. Do not worry about getting people to click subscribe. It will happen. Sure, you can ask them to subscribe if you are trying to reach that 1,000 number so you can get monetized, but I promise you, if you put your effort into the product, the subscribers will come.
Streaming
Streaming is an art form, and not everyone is a natural artist.
It doesn’t matter what platform you are on, the reason people tune into small streamers is basically the same. They want to watch YOU. Not the gameplay, you. The difference between good streamers and bad streamers is the engagement they do with the audience.
On a Stream you need to talk. Talk, talk, talk. Be entertaining. Genuinely entertaining.
Don’t try to force it, but don’t sit there doing nothing for hours on end either. Nobody is tuning in to watch you game, they are tuning in to watch you entertain. I don’t care if the Red Person icon reads 0 the entire time, keep talking. Keep talking until you get a viewer, and then keep talking anyway.
Obviously the best way to start off streaming is by having a few friends who are willing to dive in and occasionally make comments to you so that you have talking points.
Also, do your homework. Have a notepad next to you of 4-5 topics that you can go for 20 mins at a time for. That way if nobody is talking to you, you can just keep on talking to the camera.
Several Things I’ve learned since I got started
1: Do not call out lurkers. They haven't talked because they don’t want to. If they say something, great. If they don’t, let them be. They are supporting your channel. Thank the lurkers though. Tell them their silent support means a lot to you.
2: Chat is more important than anything else going on. If someone says something, say something back. Now, sometimes this is hard to do, you might be setting up a shot for photography, you might be playing an FPS/MOBA/BR game, you might be live reading something or having a conversation with someone, but as soon as what you are doing is done, go back and catch up on comments.
3: Gamers - do not be in discord when you are gaming. I know some games require it, but you really need to think about how you are going to present this. Again, the viewers are here for YOU not for the gameplay. They can go and watch YouTube videos for the gameplay, they want to interact with you, and if you are spending all your time talking to your team, the viewers are going to feel left out.
4: Don’t take troll bait. You will no doubt get trolled while streaming. Don’t take the bait. Just move on. Learn how to ban people, make sure you have some moderators who can help you ban people.
Stream to YouTube Content Transfer
So, you can absolutely exist as just a Streamer. You need to recognize there are some growth issues when you are just a streamer, the biggest being that it is a live platform. If people can’t catch you when you are live, they can’t see your content live and can’t engage with you. Some people will watch videos of your content, which is cool. Make sure you know how long your content is going to remain on your platform. For Twitch after 60 days even Affiliate videos are removed, that means the record of that day is gone.
So with that there are a couple of options which can help streamers grow. Make sure to download your video. After that, make sure to go through it and chop it up into a highlight reel. Did 5 amazing things happen during the stream? Make a highlight reel and put it up on YouTube. Don’t skimp on your production quality here, make sure it's outstanding. This is going to serve as an advertisement for your content, which will drive people to your Twitch the next time you are on.
You can also load the entire Stream to YouTube for the historical record. Some people advise against this, but several of mine have gotten hundreds, even thousands of views. So, you figure out what works best for you and your product.
Discord
No matter what platform you are creating content on, you will eventually want to create a Discord server for your users, especially if you run a gaming or some sort of life advice channel. Discord allows users to interact with you in real time.
Sure, you want them leaving comments on your YouTube videos, but they are often waiting for you to respond to them. When you start getting videos with 100+ comments, it does require a time investment to answer each one, and until you are getting thousands of comments a day you better be answering each and every comment you get because you are cultivating an audience.
Discord is great because not only does it get your audience talking to you in real time, it gets them talking to each other. If they are talking to each other about your content guess what they are highly likely to watch?
That’s right: Your Content.
What are they likely to share with their friends?
Your Content!
There are a bunch of tips and tricks for using a Discord to auto pull your Tweets, Streams, YouTube posts, etc. When you are first getting started only use the basic ones and dedicate your time to making better content. As your content gets better and you start growing your audience, start doing more and better things with your Discord.
There is a sub-Reddit for every topic on the planet, usually more than one. Here is the thing, you are going to be tempted to join every sub-reddit for your topic and then link bomb all of them whenever you make new content.
DO
NOT
DO
THIS
Sure, it's going to get you views, but it's going to get you 00:10 retention viewers. These are not the sort of views you want. You want views that are going to be 50% retention viewers. You want views that are from viewers who are going to leave a comment. You want views from people, who dare I say it, are going to subscribe.
If you are reading this it is because you are new and you don’t even know what you don’t know. You’ve been looking for all this advice on how to get big quick. You won’t. Grow small and stable at first. Link bombing your new video everywhere is only going to result in a horrible retention rate and then YouTube won’t push your video out there. If it’s not out there you can’t get impressions and if you get no impressions you can’t get any click-through.
What you want to use Reddit for is being known in your community. Build that relationship, that reputation first. When the sub-reddit knows you you are more likely to get people wanting to go check out your most recent work. Not showing casing a video as a main topic on the reddit will cost you some views, but the quality of the views you get will be better.
So, I made a Twitter for all the wrong reasons. I was using my Twitter as a drive by bulletin board for just pushing my content. Let me ask you, have you gone to Twitter looking for a video on any subject?
I’ve found it is better to use Twitter to engage with people on a topic, and then let them find your content naturally. I also found it is better to create a short teaser video and upload that to Twitter instead of just uploading a link to a video. It is time
Finally Instagram. I’m not going to lie to you. I’m not going to bullshit you. There is an art to using Instagram to promote content, but I’m still struggling with it. When I get this figured out, I’ll be back here to update you.
What your audience does for you
Building a community
So the big mistake I see new content creators making is that they do not engage with their audience, they do not build a community. For the four years I have been making content I have made it a commitment to answer every YouTube comment that comes in. This has not always been easy given the lack of a proper tool to check all unanswered comments, but YouTube has given us some better tools in the new Studio. I will admit it is a time commitment to answer 100+ comments in a day, but this is what has built my community, and why people come back to my videos.
Without even asking, my audience shares my content in places that I could never, and often would never, reach. I have found links to my content in reddit threads as answers to questions when my content is a good answer. I know gaming guilds that share my videos to their new members. I mean after all, why reinvent the wheel if there is a premade answer you can link to someone so they can have the answers they need? I’ve also found my Archeage videos on Russian media and gaming sites. This is exactly what you want to be happening. You are producing content so good, other people are sharing it for you.
My audience has also helped me with generating ideas for content, giving me feedback on the quality of my production (lighting, audio, intros), keeping me motivated when I wanted to throw in the towel. Cultivate your relationship with your audience. It will grow your channel more effectively than just trying to collect subscribers who never actually click or view anything.
Making Mistakes is OK
Just don't keep making the same ones
You are going to make mistakes. You are going to have screw ups. You are going to have bad streams. You are going to send bad Tweets. That’s ok. You can check the biggest content creators on any platform and find where they have made mistakes.
Don't sweat the mistakes, don’t even sweat huge mistakes, just learn from them. Don't keep making the same mistakes.
With that said, also never make rash decisions, especially those types of rash decisions that are permanent. While this is mainly about my mistakes, I feel compelled to share this one with my audience. There was a content creator on YouTube who was trying to get monetized. He had nearly 100 videos and he was rapidly approaching the 1,000,000 view mark.
Having applied for the YouTube partner program twice and being denied he decided to remove all of the content that he thought was stopping him from getting monetized. He removed 50 videos with over 600,000 views, representing 76% of his channel in an attempt to get monetized. He still hasn't monetized.
So he lost out on the little bit of YouTube money that views generate and at the same time completely gutted his channel. The bad news is that there is nothing he can do to recover those views. Once a video is deleted, it is deleted. The good news is that since he had built a channel that reached almost 1,000,000 views he has the skills to do it again, this time in a more monetized friendly format, but there were probably better ways to go about fixing that channel.
Don’t make rash decisions. Reach out to other people before you do something like that.