Skip to content

My Top 10 Tips for Aspiring YouTubers

2021-01-17 · Long video (solo, talking head or whiteboard) · Ali · recording, 17:36 · watch on YouTube

Topic: YouTube, writing online and creators · mode: List of tips or lessons · tags: His own numbers, Lesson from a book, His medical past

Ali counts down ten tips for starting a YouTube channel: ignore what others think, start with your phone and upgrade audio first, make 152 videos before judging the numbers, stack the deck with time or money, use your unfair advantages, favour quantity over quality, let your niche emerge, be patient and consistent, think in systems, and just film a first video now.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — Starting this channel is the best thing he has ever done

  • ★★ Ali calls starting his YouTube channel hands down the single best thing he has ever done in his life. — 00:00:00
  • ★★ When Ali asks about fears of starting on YouTube, the number one answer is worry about what friends and family will think; his Part-Time YouTuber Academy students, aged 18 to 55, all share it. — 00:00:00 · Part-Time YouTuber Academy

00:00:10 — Number 10: don't worry about what other people will say

  • ★★★ Once you upload your first YouTube video, Ali says, the fear of what friends and family will think goes away, because you realise no one actually cares. — 00:00:40
  • ★★ Ali cites the spotlight effect: we walk through life as if a spotlight were on us, not realising everyone else is absorbed in their own lives and we are only supporting cast in their stories. — 00:01:12
  • ★★ Ali started his channel filming on his iPhone with no microphone, lying in bed and saying he was thinking of starting some kind of vlog; he learned editing from free YouTube tutorials. — 00:01:41 · iPhone

00:01:49 — Number 9: gear doesn't matter at the start

  • ★★★ To get started on YouTube, Ali says, forget about gear and do not wait for a fancy camera: start with whatever you have, such as your phone, and upgrade later. — 00:02:25
  • ★★★ If you want to upgrade any YouTube gear, Ali says, upgrade audio quality first, because people will sit through bad video quality but no one will sit through bad audio. — 00:02:54
  • ★★ Ali says the mistake every new YouTuber makes is focusing too much on analytics: at the start you only have to keep producing more videos and not worry that no one is watching. — 00:03:23
  • ★★★ According to TubeBuddy, Ali says, the average channel with 1,000 to 10,000 subscribers has made 152 videos, so until you have made 152 videos you have no right to complain that you are not growing. — 00:03:23

00:03:34 — Number 8: don't worry about the numbers

  • ★★ It took Ali 52 videos in six months, two a week, to reach 1,000 subscribers, while he was a full-time medical student at Cambridge preparing for his final-year exams. — 00:04:04 · University of Cambridge
  • ★★ Ali says that if you have made fewer than 52 YouTube videos, you should not worry about your subscriber count. — 00:04:04
  • ★★ To succeed on YouTube, Ali says, think in terms of stacking the deck in your favour; how far to stack it depends on how you think about YouTube. — 00:04:33

00:04:38 — Number 7: stack the deck in your favour

  • ★★ Stacking the deck with time, Ali says, means putting in the time to get better on camera and at editing, which happens as you make more and more videos. — 00:05:32
  • ★★ Ali's friend James Jani has grown from zero to more than 500,000 subscribers with about 10 or 12 videos, spending hundreds of hours editing each into a Netflix-documentary-style video. (hedged) — 00:05:32
  • ★★ Stacking the deck with money, Ali says, means investing in gear or in hiring your own team, which he has now done. — 00:06:01
  • ★★★ Many people do not realise that video editing can be outsourced cheaply very early on, Ali says: if your time is worth more than about $10 an hour, you can easily outsource it. — 00:06:01
  • ★★★ Ali says there are no guaranteed formulae for success on YouTube: it is all about stacking the deck in your favour in whatever way you can, depending on your goals for YouTube. — 00:06:30

00:06:58 — Number 6: use your unfair advantages

  • ★★★ Ali's formula for success on YouTube and in anything in life: success equals work multiplied by luck multiplied by unfair advantages. — 00:06:59 · first in: 2020-12-28 (said on 2020-12-15, implied), How Much Money I Earn as a Doctor + YouTuber

    “success equals work, multiplied by luck, multiplied by unfair advantages”

  • ★★ The good thing about luck, Ali says, is that the more videos you put out, the higher the odds one is picked up by the algorithm and goes viral; only two or three of his videos in three and a half years went really viral. — 00:06:59

  • ★★ Ali's unfair advantages were being a medical student at Cambridge University, since his niche was people applying to study medicine at Cambridge. — 00:07:48 · University of Cambridge
  • ★★★ Ali says everyone has unfair advantages; you just have to figure out what they are and lean into them. — 00:08:17
  • ★ For anyone who feels they have no unfair advantages, Ali points to his Book Club episode on The Unfair Advantage, in which he talks with Hasan, one of its authors, about the five types of unfair advantage. — 00:08:17 · Book Club

00:08:51 — Number 5: focus on quantity rather than quality

  • ★★ In the parable of the pottery class that Ali tells, every prize-winning pot came from the quantity group rather than the quality group. — 00:09:37
  • ★★★ Ali's theory: make at least a hundred YouTube videos before worrying about their quality, because making a hundred videos naturally improves them. — 00:10:10
  • ★★★ Ali says it is totally fine for a channel's niche to emerge over time; rather than plotting it in advance, he recommends making videos about whatever you enjoy. — 00:10:10

00:10:29 — Number 4: don't worry about your niche yet

  • ★★ Ali never thought he would become a productivity YouTuber; that niche emerged over time and was not planned in advance. — 00:11:28
  • ★★ Ali says your niche will change over time: he started off making videos for medical school applicants. — 00:11:28
  • ★★★ Ali names consistency and patience as the only two things needed for success on YouTube: publishing at least one video a week, and not worrying about getting no traction for a long time. — 00:11:57
  • ★★ Ali made no money from his first 80 or so YouTube videos before he started making a few dollars here and there. — 00:11:57

00:12:06 — Number 3: be patient and consistent

  • ★★ YouTube growth follows a compounding returns curve, Ali says: no traction at the start, but after publishing two videos a week for three and a half years, as he has, the first 100 videos look like getting the flywheel to turn. — 00:12:34

00:13:17 — Number 2: think about it in terms of systems

  • ★★★ Because growing on YouTube means being consistent for a very long time, Ali says, it is all about building a system for making videos. — 00:13:17
  • ★★ Ali's questions for building a YouTube system: how to generate as many content ideas as possible, refine them into titles, thumbnails and hooks, make videos in parallel, and plan videos in pockets of time such as a break at work. — 00:13:48
  • ★★ Ali suggests planning a content calendar so you film only once, batch-filming maybe five videos in a row instead of setting up the lights and camera each time. — 00:14:17
  • ★★★ Ali recommends Michael Gerber's The E-Myth Revisited, which he recommends to all his course students, as a great way to change your mindset to thinking in terms of systems. — 00:14:17
  • ★★ Ali says The E-Myth Revisited made publishing on YouTube a lot easier for him: instead of one video at a time, he now thinks of it as a holistic, coherent system. — 00:14:46
  • ★★★ Ali's number one tip for anyone thinking of starting on YouTube: just do it. — 00:14:46

00:14:57 — Number 1: just do it

  • ★★★ Ali says no one will watch your first YouTube video: if the average channel takes 152 videos to go from 1,000 to 10,000 subscribers, video number one is completely inconsequential. — 00:15:27
  • ★ Ali likes the saying that the best time to plant a tree was 10 years ago and the second best time is now. — 00:15:56
  • ★★ Ali asks viewers who film their first YouTube video after this one to link it in the comments, and says he will subscribe to their channel. — 00:15:56
  • ★★★ Ali says you do not need a course to succeed on YouTube: it is about publishing content consistently, and nothing he teaches on his course cannot be found on the internet. — 00:16:26 · Part-Time YouTuber Academy
  • ★★ As free resources on YouTube, Ali recommends the Video Creators Podcast, the Video Creators YouTube channel and Think Media's YouTube channel. — 00:16:26

00:16:30 — Do you need a course to succeed on YouTube; free resources and sign-off

Threads in this video

Mentioned

Central: stacking the deck · unfair advantage

Also: People: Hasan Kubba · James Jani · Michael Gerber

Projects: Book Club · Part-Time YouTuber Academy

Works: The E-Myth · The Unfair Advantage · Video Creators Podcast

Organizations: Think Media · University of Cambridge · Video Creators

Concepts: compounding · flywheel · parable of the pottery class · spotlight effect

Products: iPhone · TubeBuddy

Also centred on unfair advantage: What Makes People Successful? · My BIGGEST Rejections in Life · How Much Money I Earn as a Doctor + YouTuber

Replies to

Replied to by

← Previous: My Productivity Desk Setup · Next → A RIDICULOUSLY Productive Day in my Life