LAwLz's Guide to Growing Your YouTube Channel

[LAwLz]

I’ve seen a lot of people make posts about “I have a gaming channel on YouTube and want to make it my job. How do I do that?”.

I thought I’d make a post about this since it’s so common. The short answer is: You don’t. Here is the long answer:

 

How do I make money on YouTube?

If your driving force for having a YouTube channel is to make money then I seriously recommend you stop making videos. It might sound harsh, but it will save you a lot of time and disappointment. There is a 99.99% chance you will not succeed, and if you're not enjoying the process then it will be a waste of time. You might think that you're that 0.01% of people that do succeed, but you are not.

 

If the process of making videos isn’t a big enough reward in and of itself for you, then you should not make it your goal to become big on YouTube. How many football players do you think started playing not because they thought it was fun, but because their goal was to become rich and famous? Not many, I'll tell you that.

 

Or as PewDiePie puts it:

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Make YouTube with the right intention. I see so many wanting to make YouTube videos because they wanna get famous. They wanna make money. Which is all great stuff, and YouTube really is an amazing place for that but, make YouTube videos because you enjoy making them.

If you don't enjoy making them, you're not going to keep making them. You're just going to fall off at some point and you're going to get frustrated that it didn't turn out the way you wanted it to be. If you make videos that you enjoy making then you can't lose. It doesn't matter if you don't get a lot of subscribers. I was equally happy when I had a couple of hundred subscribers. I thought that was equally fun, just to have some people watching them.

If you make videos that you enjoy making, other people will enjoy watching them.

 

 

OK, I won't make any money but I want so tips regardless. What do I do?

Now, if you truly enjoy making videos and don't care about how many views you get, then here are some tips on making your videos better and maybe, just maybe, it will get you more views too. But I want to reiterate, if you aren't satisfied with spending 10 hours making a video that gets 100 views, then you should stop making videos, because that's most likely the only views you will get even if you do everything 100% right.

 

YouTube isn’t one of those things where, if you just work hard you will succeed. There is no formula to it either. If there were tips that guaranteed success then everyone would be doing it already. However, here are some tips.

 

 

How do I get enough time to make videos? Should I quit my job?

Another big point I want to drive home is that you should not quit your job or in any way reduce your income just to make gaming videos. It is and will continue to be a hobby, not a job, even if you start making some money from it. Here is a good quote from iDubbbz aimed at people who quit their jobs to make YouTube videos:

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“A lot of people, smart ones, they’ll do things part time. Why? Because there is a thing called time management. You can work for an amount of time and make money to fund your hobby/dream/passion.”

To elaborate on his point, you already have more than enough time to make YouTube videos if you just manage your time a bit.

Time for some quick math.

There are 168 hours in a week.

Let's assume that you work and sleep for a regular amount. A typical work week is considered 40 hours, and if you are in school (not counting uni) then chances are you don't even spend that amount of time on studying (I sure as hell didn't). 168 - 40 = 128.

The recommended amount of sleep is 8 hours a night. Slightly more if you're under 15 but if you are then you can't make money on YouTube anyway. That's 56 hours a week. 128 - 56 = 72 hours.

Remove let's say 16 hours for other things such as eating, socializing etc, and you end up with 56 hours a week which you can spend making your videos. If you're putting out 1 video a week then that's 56 hours you can spend on perfecting your video, while still having time over for school/work, sleep, and socializing. So with some simple time management you will have more than enough time to make YouTube videos.

 

 

What type of content should I make? Videos of <insert game here> with commentary over it seems popular.

Don’t do what everyone else is doing. Gaming videos on YouTube are a dime a dozen. Everyone and their dogs are doing it.

Here is a quote from PewDiePie about his experience growing a channel:

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When I started making videos, I did what everyone else was doing. I did Call of Duty videos because that’s what was popular at the time. […] I enjoyed making those types of videos but my channel didn’t grow from it at all. […] I also remember watching all these bigger YouTubers doing the same Call of Duty videos and I’m like “these guys are fucking terrible. I’m way better than these guys. Why is my channel not growing more? But that’s the thing. The big ones have already settled in. It’s going to be hard as hell. You have an uphill battle. It wasn’t until I started doing something different, something that hadn’t been done before like the horror videos. That’s when I started to get an audience that really cared about the content I was making.

 

What you need is to find out what type of content you want to make, and then try and add your own spin to it. Here is a list of the different type of gaming channels that exists right now.

 

• Montage channels like CrowbCat and Trolden - They rely on other peoples' content which they have curated and then add their own flare to it with editing.
• Gameplay/humor channels like PewDiePie and SeaNanners - These people are very charismatic and funny to just listen to and see them react to the game. This is probably what most people want to become but it's by far the hardest.
• Informative channels like chuggaaconroy - These channels put a lot of time and effort into being informative so that the viewers learn things about the game. A great example of this would be chuggaaconroy that I mentioned earlier. In his Pokemon let's plays he puts in a lot of details so that people who play along gets information and suggestion on which Pokemon to get, what to do against certain battles and so on.
• Review channels like AngryJoe - People watch these channels because they want to know if a game is worth getting or not. Some channels like AngryJoe adds sketches to make the videos funnier and more appealing, but at their core they are reviews nonetheless.

 

There are some other types of channels such as analysis channels (like Instig8iveJournalism before he deleted all his videos), sarcastic channels like Fitzthistlewits, or channels which are hard to classify, but I'd say these are the 4 major categories where 90% of gaming channels fits. Try and figure out what type of channel you want to make and then don't deviate from that too much. People like consistency.

 

 

What should my video be about?

No matter which one of the categories you pick, there are always going to be three aspects of your video that you need to nail.

As CaptainDisillusions' intern puts it in this fantastic presentation (please note that this presentation was for live action sketches and not game-play footage):

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P - Pacing

S - Sound

P - Picture

 

Pacing and content is the most important aspect of the video. Your video needs to have good content. Good content in this regard does not mean it looks and sounds good, that falls under sound and picture. What the pacing and content means is that the video must flow along nicely and be funny and/or informative. If you got nothing interesting to say in the video, then the video will be boring.

 

Sound is more important than the picture quality. People notices bad audio far easier, and have a much lower tolerance level than when it comes to video. The video looking a bit fussy? Not a big deal. The video contains distorted audio? People will turn it off as fast as they can to avoid the risk of a headache.

 

Picture is actually the last important of the three, but still important. You should try and get the picture quality as high as possible, within reason. Learn what the different options in your recording and editing program means. It's worth it. People might have a higher tolerance for bad video quality than they do for audio, but a bad looking video will still be a turn-off for them.

 

 

What gear should I buy? How much money do I need?

Don’t buy expensive equipment. It's not necessary.

 

Using what you already got:

If you have a computer you already play games on then chances are you can use that for recording just fine. What you need is the program called OBS (free), a powerful CPU OR a recent Nvidia GPU, OR an Intel processor with a built in GPU.

Nvidia GPU - Set OBS to use NVENC.

Intel GPU - Set it to use Intel QuickSync.

Both of these two options will have next to no performance impact and the recording will look pretty good.

 

For recording audio and/or video, your phone might be enough. It has a decent microphone, and the camera is pretty good too.

The reason why audio often sounds bad is because you're not close enough to the mic, or too close. To check how you sound, use the built in playback feature in Windows.

Right click on the audio icon in the notification area -> select recording devices -> select your microphone and open properties -> go to the Listen tab and enable "Listen to this device". Remember to turn it off once you're done listening.

 

 

It is also a good idea to record your voice into Audacity (free) rather than straight into OBS. It will be a bit more painful when editing the video since you will have to import the audio and video separately, and match it up, but the benefit is that you can easily do post-processing on your audio to make it sound more pleasant. Things like changing pitch slightly, remove background noise and many more things.

If you don't have a microphone for your computer then your phone probably has a decent mic that you can use. Just make sure it is placed an appropriate distance form your face and in the right direction. With a bit of editing in Audacity it will sound just fine.

 

The big reason why video from for example a face-cam looks bad is that there is not enough light on your face. If you sit in a basement then it might look bad because there is not enough light on you. That can be fixed by buying some cheap desk lamps on IKEA and then softening the light using one of several techniques. Try and mount your phone so that it points to your face somehow, and use that to record. Your phone probably has a pretty decent camera in it so all you need is some light. IKEA lamp + photo frame with tracing paper inside = soft, nice lighting on your face.

 

Editing is one area where I have next to no experience, but there are some programs I see recommended over and over so I'll recommend you check out those. The two most recommended ones are DaVinci Resolve and Blender. Both are non-linear video editing programs which are free. Video editing is hard though, so I would recommend you look up some tutorials on YouTube and experiment.

 

Buying a new desktop:

Don't have a desktop that can play games? Then go to logicalincrements.com and check out their builds for around 1000 dollars. That will be more than enough for gaming. Make sure to look for deals and make a thread on this forum for further advice before ordering. Be warned though, this forum is full of fanboys which will recommend you worse things just because they have a certain brand. Try and keep that in mind when someone seems to push a brand more than they push a specific part.

 

Buying a new webcam:

A good webcam will run you about 55 dollars. That's the current price for the Logitech C920 on Amazon. With proper lighting, it will look just fine. Sure a DSLR or camcorder will look better, but it is most certainly not needed.

 

Buying a new microphone:

You can get a good mic for pretty cheap these days. If you want something really good then go for the Blue Yeti (90 dollars) or Blue Snowball (48 dollars). Anything more than that is overkill.

 

 

 

Feel free to suggest things to add/edit. You can also tell me how wrong I am in the comments below if that's how you feel.

[vanished]

-moved to Guides and tutorials-

[Jacktastic-Mofo]

I've got like 2k subs & about 250k total video views, all I can say is to keep making video's.

[Guest]

21 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

Be warned though, this forum is full of fanboys which will recommend you worse things just because they have a certain brand. Try and keep that in mind when someone seems to push a brand more than they push a specific part.

Good tutorial, but those lines killed me XD. I agree that you need to have passion and not just wanting to be famous. If you can do this fulltime while being stable, then you've done enough and also love what your doing. Even if not full time, it's still worth it to make 1 person happy.

[Techicolors]

nice guide. I've been toying with an idea of a youtube channel, this is very good reference 

[Hiya!]

I stop reading after finished the first paragraph RIP