Getting started with Youtube can be harder than ever especially when you are doing it all by Yourself.
That can be cool but it is usually a lonely road on a one-man journey.
That said.
Along the line, There are some minor things you overlooked that can cause a negative impact on your overall channel’s success.
You may probably not know them after all, You trying to see what works at the beginning stage of your Vlogging career.
So as a Youtube expert who has found success growing my client’s Youtube channels by 150%
Am in the best position to save you all from past and present mistakes with my personal experience
After all, you can never live long enough to figure it all out by yourself.
So I have come up with 13 of those common mistakes Amateur Youtubers make that cost them a lot and how to scale through.
If so, let’s dive right in.
No Keyword Research
Take it or leave it, if you aren’t doing your keyword research well, you are already 80% doomed for failure.
In fact, Youtube keyword research is the first approach and the most important factor that guarantees your channel success.
Why?
Because you don’t create videos that you think will go viral or make that hit.
You only make videos people are searching for on Youtube, your target audience
I can explain. Let’s say you create a channel in the Dog niche.
It would be a bad idea to start making videos about dogs that you think will go viral or looks interesting.
Instead, you create something your potential audiences are searching for.
How can you find out? The Youtube search bar.
First head over to the Youtube search bar and pop any words into it.
for the “dog niche”, I would type in words like “Dog”
And Youtube Autosuggest phrases like
- “Dog foods”
- “Dog sounds”
- “Dog recipes” and more
Youtube didn’t just suggest that right off the bat. it came as a result of what others are searching for on Youtube.
That way, if youtube suggests them to you, then you know it is legit and the right keywords for you to target.
Rinse and repeat all the processes and you get a list of keyword ideas.
Not Taking Advantage Of free tools like Tubebuddy and VidiQ
Generating Keyword research is great for making Youtube videos
But is there a way we can get the number of total searches these keywords bring every month?
That is where VidiQ,
And Tubebuddy comes in handy for you.
They determine the search volume of keywords and their competition.
I personally use vidiQ over tubebuddy, but that doesn’t mean it is better than it. both work great.
For example, the keywords forex trading strategies are searched 93,386 times per month and it is slightly competitive.
If you have a brand new channel in the trading niche, then you know you wouldn’t want to go for keywords like this due to its competitiveness.
And that is because a lot of those big channels are already ranking for it, making it harder to get a spot.
But when starting out you want to aim for very easy competitive keywords, you can easily rank for.
And when it comes to pricing, they both have free versions you can start with no money, but with limitations.
Not Optimizing Your Video For SEO
If you don’t optimize your video for SEO, then you are doing yourself more harm than good.
Youtube SEO as it may sound means optimizing your videos for search engines so they can rank your videos
Here is a practical example of how my new faceless channel with no subscribers still ranked on Youtube.
This faceless Youtube channel has just 2 videos.
And the fact that I optimized it for SEO, it now ranked in the top 4 on Youtube search results.
Now you know what am talking about.
If you don’t leverage Youtube SEO, then be ready to flood your channel with zero traffic.
Saving Your Video File Name The Wrong Way
This aspect tends to be overlooked by many YouTubers and whenever I keep telling them these tips work.
Then they make some corrections right away and this mistake is usually done by a lot of newbies.
For example.
Most Youtube content creators don’t usually save their video file name with the keywords they want to rank for.
Well, there is nothing wrong with that, but for SEO purposes it usually helps for rankings purposes.
So that is why I try as much as possible to name my video filename the keywords I want to rank for before uploading it on youtube.
And it helps my Video stay in position 1 on Youtube.
Start doing this for your video now, because it is an easy task to do.
Not Adding Keywords In Video Title & Description
I not just about the video filename alone
Remember, you want to add your video keywords in the title and description so Youtube can understand what the video is all about and rank it.
And that is the reason behind these video rankings.
Sprinkle some keywords generated from Tools like Tubebuddy or VidiQ in video descriptions & titles and thumbnails.
And let it flow naturally lastly proper tags from keyword variations generated from VidiQ.
Trying To Be Perfect Like Other Creators
Winston Churchill’s quote holds true “Perfectionism is an enemy”
Does that play a huge role in the Youtube content creation world of today?
Spoiler Alert: YES
You hear stuff like,
“Damn! I want my videos to be like this Youtuber”
“Oh! I didn’t sound nice, let’s make another one”
“It sounds way too fast, let’s try again”
There is nothing wrong with all this after all you’re trying to make things better.
Either way, it is not going to move the needle.
At the end of the day, you realized you spent so much time trying to make all these changes instead of creating content at scale.
At your early stage, this shouldn’t be your concern.
The truth of the situation is that “Youwill only get better over time”
So worry less about all those kinds of stuff and publish more.
Not Uploading A Custom Thumbnail
Have a look at this…..
And Check this out down below…
Now ask Yourself. which of those two images grabs your attention the most and Why did it grab your attention?
If yes, what does one has that makes the other look less attractive to you?
You just got an answer to one part of the problem.
In other words, the second grabs my attention. I believed that should be the same for you as well.
And that is it.
Amateur Youtubers don’t spend much weight on designing Custom thumbnails.
And it can cause a break in your video views and click-through rate.
So for every video you upload, create custom thumbnails for it.
And that is the reason why my video has a good CTR on Youtube
Because it has an attractive custom thumbnail designed on Canva
So avoid making such mistakes again.
Publish And Pray Approach
It happens to everyone.
You upload videos.
Add thumbnail tags and more on Youtube and then you Hit Publish, and it goes live.
And then it CRICKETS……
And then you come back a few days later, only to find it just “0:00” views, no one else watched it.
It can cause a Huge pain.
I understand but it never going to be way too soon, especially when starting out.
That is why you should leverage SEO for youtube or You do the second steps, which is.
Promoting Video The Right Way
A lot of YouTubers fail when it comes to cases like this.
When starting out, youtube may not show your videos on search as soon as it is published or most times your videos won’t start having that massive views yet.
And then you hear experts say, promote your videos on your social media profiles.
And that way, you can reach out to the right audience. Yeah! it works but not anymore.
Why?
Because social media algorithm is designed in a way to keep the platforms updated with fresh content.
Sooner or later, your videos get buried down the news feed, and then no one finds them again.
What should I do instead? promoting it the right way.
And the best place is Quora
or Reddit.
This can also be a marketing tactic if your plan is to get more subscribers to your channel
Joining For The Money
Now you might be wondering.
If it weren’t for the money, why should I do Youtube? I get it.
We are all there to grow our audiences and mostly make money.
But you need to understand that, having the urge to make money way sooner will enable you to quits as soon as you didn’t get the results you wanted.
Also, Youtube has also made it its partner program.
- You must have 4000 watch hours
- 1000 subscribers before you get eligible to be able to make money from them.
So it takes time to meet up this criterion and also if you quickly meet up with that.
You also need to wait till your channel completes 12 months before applying for monetization as Youtube said.
So have it in mind that you are not earning from the Youtube partner program until you meet up with that.
So at this stage, it is best to take away the mindset of making money from Youtube and be passion driven till your time comes.
Believing You Must Post Regularly
You hear this a lot.
Publish regularly and keep your channel updated with fresh content if you want to get more views on Youtube.
Many YouTubers have this mindset a lot and the truth is this approach doesn’t work anymore.
The amount of success doesn’t depend on how often your video goes live.
I can explain.
Publishing very often should be based on your schedule.
Even with less amount of videos, you can still find success like other channels.
And one of the Youtube creators who are an example of this is, brian dean.
Which has 45 published videos in the last 7 years that have generated over 498k subscribers?
In fact, the last time Brian published a video was 2 years ago and his subscribers are still increasing.
The secrets: Brian puts so much weight on producing Quality Videos over quality.
So be like brean and remove that mentality of publishing consistently.
Not Paying Attention To Video retention rate
These are mostly mistakes of amateur YouTubers and they tend to ignore this when they start seeing their channel getting a decent amount of views.
Not paying attention to your video retention.
If you are in this category, then you need to stay and also check your analytics to see if your video retention is meeting the algorithm requirements.
Youtube says it all.
If you want your Youtube to show your videos to more people, your audience retention needs to be above 70%.
Meaning people stayed on your video for a long, this is a huge ranking factor. And many YouTubers know this.
So check your youtube analytics and see those videos with low retention and see reasons why it was having that.
Am rectify those changes in your next videos.
Ignoring The Youtube Built-in Feature (Endscreens and Cards)
70% of startup YouTubers don’t always use the end screens and card features.
Are there stats to prove this too? NO.
I know because I once began that way, and so do my friends who are Youtubers as well.
Successful YouTubers know that end screens and cards are a great way to keep people subscribed and stay longer on their videos.
So at some point when your videos started having views, leverage these features (learn more)
Over To You?
Now we have come to the end of this post on mistakes amateur YouTubers make
I hope you did learn something some valuable tips.
However, did you just realize the impact of saving your video filename
Or
Promoting your channel the wrong way.
If so lemme know in the comments what mistakes you just figured out and would be happy to help.
