How Dare I?! — Ignoring the Critics
The following article was written in November 2017. At the time my YouTube channel had less than 500 subscribers and I was experiencing some push back in terms of my credibility because I was sharing best practices from a small channel (The nerve and naivety). Seven months later as I sit here writing this intro, my channel has 11,658 subscribers, 426,000 views and 1.4 million watch hours.
I did the most blasphemous thing…
I started a “How To YouTube” channel from ZERO! How Dare I?
Its seems perfectly logical to me… and I am a fairly logical person.
But sometimes when conversing with larger YouTubers I feel like Jack Dawson sitting at a table of overflowing pretension aboard the Titanic.
You see, many YouTube gurus/experts (two terms I would never claim to be) did not take the approach that I have taken. They built up a following on another topic and then shifted their channel into the YouTube help space.
Me, on the other hand, started a new channel from scratch specifically focused on sharing best practices to grow a YouTube channel.
“BUT DAN, HOW CAN YOU TEACH GROWTH WHEN YOUR CHANNEL IS SO SMALL?”
People who ask this question are being pretentious and they don’t realize it. “I’ve done more of the THING than you so where do you get off teaching people to do the THING?!”
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If you have spent any time watching YouTube Growth channels you will realize that its the same material OVER AND OVER. Very few channels are introducing new groundbreaking material. Granted some are more step-by-step and there occasional golden nuggets but the vast majority of the content is all about re-packaging fundamentals in various consumable forms.
How to Grow Your YouTube Channel, How to Get More Views, Why am I Not Growing? Rank Your Videos… basically all the same material presented differently.
And there is nothing wrong with that.
The trick, the technique, the process behind a YouTube Growth channel is not about being a groundbreaking purveyor of wisdom. It’s about finding new and interesting ways to create engaging content that encourages those who need it the most to stop and consume the information.
Of course the more you do it, the better you get at it, but that doesn’t change the baseline knowledge that is so readily available that anyone can find it. The beauty is that YouTube is made up of HUMANS.
Each human learns differently. Some humans, by their own admission, are turned off by channels with 50,000 subs trying tell them how growth works when it seems they are experiencing two different planets.
Others have told me, with the audacity of a YouTube Growth channel under 500 subs, to “Get the F#ck Outta Here”. To each their own. :-) [Note: Creator Fundamentals is on pace to bypass 500 subs
OK BACK TO THE PRESENT
I think the moral of this story is never let anyone else alter your path with their negativity. Believe in it. Put in the effort and make it happen.
To learn more about the author and the YouTube channel: Creator Fundamentals, click HERE
