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How To Start a YouTube Channel - Beginner’s Guide to YouTube

2022-03-03 · Long video (solo, talking head or whiteboard) · Ali · recording, 31:41 · watch on YouTube

Topic: YouTube, writing online and creators · mode: Explanation and tutorial · tags: His own products discussed, His own numbers, Lesson from a book

Ali lays out his three-level framework for YouTube (get going, get good, get smart) with two choices between the levels (break up, casual or serious; hobby or business): upload anything to beat the fear, make many videos with small improvements until they pass the cringe test, then treat the channel as a business with a strategy (goals, niche, competitors as colleagues, unfair advantage, planning) and systems from business books.

What is said

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

00:00:00 — Intro: 2.7 million subscribers and the three-level framework

  • ★★ Ali started making YouTube videos in 2017 with no idea what he was doing; his channel has recently hit 2.7 million subscribers. — 00:00:00 · YouTube

00:00:29 — Level one, get going: upload a first video, unlisted if you like; no need to show your face; easy first videos

  • ★★★ Ali's framework for succeeding on YouTube has three levels (get going, get good, get smart) with a choice to make between each pair of levels. — 00:00:29
  • ★★★ At level one of a YouTube channel the only objective is to start: the first videos will be awful, you will hate your voice and freeze on camera, and there is no way around it but to get going. — 00:00:58
  • ★★ As a first step, Ali suggests filming a phone video on why you are starting a YouTube channel and uploading it as unlisted, which shows that uploading to YouTube is not hard. — 00:01:27
  • ★★ Ali says Part-Time YouTuber Academy students find that 99% of the fear of starting a channel comes before publishing the first video and then disappears. — 00:02:26 · Part-Time YouTuber Academy
  • ★★ Asked often whether YouTube videos must show your face, Ali answers that you don't really have to, if you are shy on camera or unsure of your public speaking. — 00:02:26
  • ★★ Ali's friend Arun Maini, whose channel Mr Who's the Boss has about 10 million subscribers, spent his first three years on YouTube without showing his face, afraid of being bullied at school. — 00:02:55
  • ★★ For a beginner, what the videos are about does not matter yet: easy first videos are why you are starting a YouTube channel, a favourite thing of yours (assignment one at the Part-Time YouTuber Academy), what's in your bag or your skincare routine. — 00:03:24 · Part-Time YouTuber Academy
  • ★★ At level one Ali advises documenting rather than creating, since original content is hard and feels like a heavy lift. — 00:03:53 · show your work

00:04:22 — Choice one: break up with YouTube, or a casual or a serious relationship

  • ★★ Ali reckons a beginner makes about 10 to 20 videos at the get-going level, a ballpark that varies; he made 30 before moving to level two. (hedged) — 00:04:22
  • ★★ After trying YouTube, breaking up with it is fine: YouTube is not for everyone, and having tried it you will not regret on your deathbed never starting a channel. — 00:04:52
  • ★★★ In a casual relationship with YouTube, uploading only when you feel like it, you cannot expect your channel to grow; Ali sees people who upload three random videos in six months expect growth. — 00:05:50
  • ★★★ A serious relationship with YouTube, the step to the get-good level, means committing five to 15 hours a week and publishing consistently. — 00:05:50

00:06:38 — Level two, get good: quantity before quality, the parable of the pottery class, 1% improvements

  • ★★★ At level two most people should start with quantity rather than quality: the more videos you make, the better you naturally get at making them. — 00:07:20
  • ★★ In the parable of the pottery class, all the best pots came from the group making one pot a day for 30 days, none from the group spending 30 days on one pot; Ali says YouTube videos are the same. — 00:08:10
  • ★ Citing a graph in Atomic Habits, Ali says that improving 1% every day for a year compounds to a 37-fold improvement. — 00:08:39 · Atomic Habits
  • ★★ Ali advises improving one small thing in each video (an editing trick, a title, using your hands, voice pitch) rather than trying to change everything at once. — 00:09:09

00:09:43 — What makes a good video: the elements, the cringe test, clicks and watch time

  • ★★ Ali made about 30 videos at the get-going level and 50 at the get-good level, and by video 80 he was able to make good videos. — 00:09:43
  • ★★ Ali lists what makes a good video: title, thumbnail, hook, personality, camera presence, editing, music, sound design, writing, structure and branding; whole degrees teach each, and YouTubers must layer them all. — 00:09:43
  • ★★ The mistake Ali sees beginner and even intermediate YouTubers make is trying to do everything at once, not seeing that it takes a lot of quantity to reach quality. — 00:10:44
  • ★★ Getting good at making videos gives you many skills that make you more marketable in the job world. — 00:10:44
  • ★★ Ali was probably on around 2,000 subscribers by his 80th video, when he first thought his videos were pretty good. (hedged) — 00:11:22
  • ★★★ Ali's cringe test of whether your videos are intrinsically good: if you would cringe when a friend, relative or stranger says they watched one, they are probably not good yet. — 00:11:52
  • ★★ Ali guesses, admitting he made the number up, that 95% of people who start YouTube never think their videos are good enough, probably because they skip quantity and small improvements. (speculative) — 00:12:21
  • ★★★ Extrinsically, a good video is one people click on and then watch, measured by thumbnail click-through rate, watch time and retention. — 00:12:50
  • ★★ When a channel is small there is not much to do with its analytics data, because the numbers are too small to be meaningful. — 00:12:50
  • ★★ Ali would not focus much on extrinsic metrics at this stage: maybe 5% of your time on strategy, titles, thumbnails and market research, the rest on making lots of videos. (hedged) — 00:14:03
  • ★★ Ali committed to one or two videos a week, which worked for him; schedules may differ, but a serious relationship with YouTube needs some consistency. — 00:14:03

00:15:03 — Choice two: hobby or business

  • ★★★ Ali's second choice is whether YouTube is a hobby or a business, a spectrum: treating it as a business means trying to make money from it, as a hobby trying to have fun. — 00:15:35
  • ★★ Ali treats YouTube very much like a business, though still a little like a hobby because he wants to have fun with it. — 00:15:35
  • ★★ Ali plays the guitar and the piano as hobbies for himself and does not want to monetise his passion for the guitar. — 00:16:23
  • ★★ YouTube was Ali's escape while he worked as a doctor; now that it is his job, he sometimes wakes up not wanting to make a video, then gets into it and it becomes fun. — 00:17:22
  • ★★★ Turning YouTube into a business has made it more fun for Ali overall, but having to make money from it takes a little of the joy out of the craft. — 00:17:47
  • ★★ Ali says there is nothing wrong with YouTube as a hobby, but be honest with yourself: a hobby needs no growth goals, while the get-smart level is only for treating it as a business. — 00:17:47

00:18:17 — Level three, get smart: serving an audience, the niche overlap, workflow, cashflow and outflow

  • ★★★ Like a shopkeeper, a YouTuber who treats the channel as a business will not succeed without caring about the audience, the market and what people want; a hobby can be about yourself. — 00:19:34
  • ★★★ Ideally a channel's niche is the overlap of a Venn diagram of things you love, things your audience wants and things you can make money from. — 00:20:03
  • ★★★ Ali's get-smart level has three parts (workflow, cashflow and outflow), the model of the Part-Time Creatorpreneur online course he is working on, with details in a few weeks or months. — 00:20:26

00:20:56 — Workflow: strategise (goals, niche, target audience, competitors, unfair advantage, planning, pivoting) and systemise

  • ★★ YouTubers need not read business books, but if you consciously treat your creative side hustle as a business, Ali says business books such as The Great CEO Within, The Millionaire Fastlane and Traction are a solid library to learn from. — 00:21:36
  • ★★ Strategising a channel covers goals, niche, target audience, competitor analysis, competitive advantage, planning and pivoting, the syllabus of Ali's coming Creatorpreneur course. — 00:22:05
  • ★★ For a channel's goals, Ali asks what your dream channel looks like one and three years from now, citing the phrase that plans are useless but planning is indispensable. — 00:22:31
  • ★★ Ali's goals for his channel three years earlier differed from what it became, but planning ahead let him evolve his content, knowing he would age out of the student market after graduating. — 00:23:01
  • ★★★ To find a niche, Ali asks what you like, what you are good at and where you have an unfair advantage, then which audience to target and what problems they have. — 00:23:59 · unfair advantage
  • ★★ Viewers can tell which of Ali's videos he is excited about and which he is not, and making videos you don't like is not nice. — 00:24:28
  • ★★ Competitor analysis means becoming an expert in your space: for personal development, watching hundreds of hours of the channels in it and working out how they grew. — 00:24:52
  • ★★ Ali calls The Almanack of Naval Ravikant an amazing book and cites Naval Ravikant: you can escape competition through authenticity. — 00:24:52 · Naval Ravikant
  • ★★★ Ali sees fellow YouTubers as colleagues rather than competitors: on YouTube the rising tide lifts all the boats. — 00:25:22
  • ★★ Ali compares his channel with productivity YouTubers (Matt D'Avella, Thomas Frank, Nathaniel Drew, Joey Schweitzer, Elizabeth Filips) and adjacent podcasts (School of Greatness, Impact Theory, The Diary of a CEO, The Tim Ferriss Show, Lex Fridman). — 00:25:22 · Matt D'Avella, Thomas Frank, The Tim Ferriss Show
  • ★★ Ali is not a fan of competition: rather than trying to be better than other creators, he asks how his channel can be different and authentically his own. — 00:25:50
  • ★★ When Ali started his channel, his unfair advantage was being a Cambridge medical student making videos for people who wanted to become Cambridge medical students; he skipped makeup, music and tech, where he had none. — 00:26:20 · unfair advantage, University of Cambridge
  • ★★ Be honest about why your channel will stand out: putting in more hours than anyone else is fair enough as an edge, but other unfair advantages make a growth strategy much easier. — 00:26:49 · unfair advantage
  • ★★ For a channel run as a business Ali recommends quarterly and yearly planning, and calls Traction by Gino Wickman absolutely fantastic for it. — 00:27:10
  • ★★ A few years earlier a business coach who recognised Ali from his videos made a quarterly plan with him, his first, and it completely changed the game for his channel. — 00:27:10
  • ★★ To know when to pivot a channel, Ali advises trying new content ideas and deciding the direction from the data, the response and how you feel about the videos. — 00:27:39
  • ★★★ The E-Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber, which changed Ali's life when he read it in 2019, is in his view required reading for anyone at level three of a YouTube channel who wants to systemise it. — 00:27:39 · The E-Myth
  • ★ Ali says he will make more videos on his channel about systemising a creative business, the material of the Creatorpreneur course. — 00:28:08

00:28:37 — Recap of the levels with his Skillshare class, Part-Time YouTuber Academy and Creatorpreneur course

  • ★★ Most YouTubers are not at level three: it took Ali 80 to 100 videos to get there, and systemising, hiring and managing a team take time to matter. — 00:28:37
  • ★★ Ali's Skillshare class YouTube for Beginners is now out, free through a link in the description: creating the channel, the first video, the fear of posting, being on camera, thumbnails, titles and market research. — 00:29:07 · Skillshare, Skillshare classes
  • ★★ Getting going on YouTube is not that hard: you just make videos, and many channels give great free advice on growing in the early days. — 00:29:36
  • ★★ The Part-Time YouTuber Academy, which Ali suggests for the get-good stage, runs a live cohort three times a year. — 00:30:05 · Part-Time YouTuber Academy
  • ★★ Ali's Creatorpreneur course, for creators at the get-smart stage, is not out yet; a waiting list will give a discount. — 00:30:05

00:30:37 — Sign-off and the new Part-Time Creator Academy channel

  • ★★ Ali's team has a brand-new YouTube channel, the Part-Time Creator Academy, with free videos on growing a sustainable creative business part-time. — 00:31:06

Threads in this video

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

Central: cringe test · get going, get good, get smart · workflow, cashflow, outflow

Also: People: Arun Maini · Elizabeth Filips · Gino Wickman · Joey Schweitzer · Lex Fridman · Matt D'Avella · Michael Gerber · Nathaniel Drew · Naval Ravikant · Peter McKinnon · Thomas Frank

Projects: Creatorpreneur · Part-Time Creator Academy · Part-Time YouTuber Academy · Skillshare classes

Works: Atomic Habits · Impact Theory · School of Greatness · The Almanack of Naval Ravikant · The Diary of a CEO · The E-Myth · The Great CEO Within · The Millionaire Fastlane · The Tim Ferriss Show · Traction

Organizations: IKEA · Skillshare · University of Cambridge

Concepts: audience retention · parable of the pottery class · show your work · unfair advantage

Also centred on cringe test: How to Grow on YouTube - Live Stream with Ali Abdaal

Also centred on get going, get good, get smart: How to Grow on YouTube - Live Stream with Ali Abdaal · How I Make $4 Million Per Year - The CBM Framework · If I Started a YouTube Channel in 2026, I'd Do This

Also centred on workflow, cashflow, outflow: How I Make $4 Million Per Year - The CBM Framework

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