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9 Things I Wish I Knew When I Started YouTube

2023-10-06 · Long video (solo, talking head or whiteboard) · Ali · recording, 16:53 · watch on YouTube

Topic: YouTube, writing online and creators · mode: List of tips or lessons · tags: His own products discussed, His medical past

Ali lists nine lessons he wishes he had known when starting YouTube: no one cares, be an archaeologist rather than an architect about your niche, mind supply and demand, think in systems, do titles and thumbnails first, front-load the first 30 seconds, gear matters little at first, find your unfair advantage, and outsource editing early.

What is said

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

00:00:00 — No one cares: friends and family, and the audience

  • ★★ When Ali started YouTube six years earlier he worried people would say bad things and judge him; once he started making videos he realised no one cares. — 00:00:00
  • ★★ Ali says many people are held back from YouTube by worrying what friends, family, coworkers or their boss will think, but none of them care. — 00:00:29

  • ★★★ YouTube videos are not free, Ali says: viewers pay with time and attention, so a new video with no views is not disliked by the algorithm but not worth watching. — 00:00:58

    “They're just not paying with their cash. They are paying with their time and attention.”

  • ★★ By being bad repeatedly at the start, Ali says, you eventually get good at making videos, your videos start to add value and you figure out your niche. — 00:01:56

00:02:14 — Architect vs archaeologist: finding your niche

  • ★★ In the archaeologist approach to a YouTube niche, Ali says, you explore topics until something good happens, such as one comment or a hundred views instead of three, then keep digging. — 00:02:26
  • ★★ Approaching YouTube as an architect, planning your niche in advance with no video experience, usually means taking no action, Ali says, because a niche is very hard to figure out in advance. — 00:03:24
  • ★★★ Ali recommends that most people start as archaeologists: if you cannot yet make videos, your niche is irrelevant, so focus on making videos and learn what works over time. — 00:03:24
  • ★★ Ali's early YouTube videos found no audience: singing videos, travel vlogs of his medical elective in Cambodia and Vietnam, a series on building a medical app and medical-student vlogs. — 00:03:53
  • ★★★ People started to care about Ali's channel when he made educational videos for medical school applicants six years earlier; their questions led him to study tips, then productivity videos. — 00:03:53
  • ★ Six years after starting YouTube, Ali calls himself the world's most followed productivity expert. — 00:04:23
  • ★★ Ali has written a book about productivity, Feel-Good Productivity, which is coming out in a few months. — 00:04:23 · Feel-Good Productivity (book)
  • ★★ None of Ali's path to productivity videos was intentional: he made one or two videos every week, even as a full-time medical student preparing for his final-year exams. — 00:04:23
  • ★★★ On YouTube, Ali says, supply and demand set the bar: the more supply of a type of content, the higher the bar to stand out; low supply and high demand lower it. — 00:04:52
  • ★★ Ali says YouTube is saturated with students teaching how to study for exams, so a brand-new YouTuber filming on a phone without experience is very unlikely to stand out there. — 00:04:52

00:04:57 — Supply and demand

  • ★★ To stand out in a crowded niche you generally need an unfair advantage, Ali says; the alternative is to choose not to compete in a niche that already gets a lot of attention. — 00:05:50 · unfair advantage
  • ★★ Thousands of students have taken the Part-Time YouTuber Academy, and "like 80" of them, Ali says, want to make productivity, personal development, finance or business content, which he calls very saturated niches. — 00:05:50 · Part-Time YouTuber Academy
    • a number in question (doubtful): "like 80" — check against the recording
  • ★★★ The Part-Time YouTuber Academy students who succeed, Ali says, niche further and further down to make very specific videos on a topic where they have an unfair advantage. — 00:05:50 · Part-Time YouTuber Academy, unfair advantage
  • ★★ For his first six to twelve months and first 50 to 100 videos, Ali thought one video at a time, writing, filming, editing and publishing each; he calls it exhausting. — 00:06:19

00:06:22 — Thinking in systems

  • ★★ About a year into YouTube, Ali read Michael Gerber's The E-Myth Revisited and realised that a YouTube channel is a business, and businesses grow through systems and operations. — 00:06:49 · The E-Myth
  • ★★★ If you treat YouTube as a business, Ali says, think in systems: ask what system would make every later video easier, such as an ideas database, a thumbnail house style or an analytics routine. — 00:07:18
  • ★★ Systems are a form of leverage, Ali says: the same effort gets far more output, which lets part-time YouTubers with a demanding job or studies grow without ruining their lives. — 00:07:47

00:08:16 — The YouTube Growth Scorecard quiz

00:09:02 — Titles and thumbnails

  • ★★★ Ali says it is very helpful to think about a video's title and thumbnail before even thinking about writing it; his team only outlines a video once it has a good title and thumbnail. — 00:09:15
  • ★★ Ali used to think about the title and thumbnail while uploading a video, which he calls very inefficient for videos that take 10 to 20 hours or more to make. — 00:09:15
  • ★★ Ali has interviewed dozens of successful YouTubers for the Part-Time YouTuber Academy, from several hundred thousand to over 10 million subscribers; asked what they wish they had known, they always name titles and thumbnails. — 00:09:44 · Part-Time YouTuber Academy
  • ★★ Titles and thumbnails matter, Ali says, but you need not follow the MrBeast formula: think about who you want watching and what would resonate with that target audience. — 00:10:42

00:11:03 — The first 30 seconds

  • ★★ On many channels, especially educational ones, Ali says, only half the viewers remain 30 seconds into a video, and maybe 10 or 20% by its second half. — 00:11:12
  • ★★★ Ali advises front-loading the effort of a video into its first 30 seconds or minute, rather than editing animations seven minutes in that few will see, to get viewers hooked. — 00:11:41

00:12:04 — Gear

  • ★★★ At the start of a YouTube journey, Ali says, gear does not matter: you can get lots of subscribers and views filming on your phone, and content quality matters most. — 00:12:10
  • ★★ Ali knows educational YouTubers who film only on an iPhone and have hundreds of thousands of subscribers, making at least six figures a year from YouTube. — 00:12:10 · iPhone
  • ★★★ Each type of content and audience has a sweet spot of production value, Ali says: required in tech, good for educational videos for adults, while cinema cameras make a lifestyle vlog less relatable. — 00:12:39
  • ★★ Ali has taught over 3,000 students in the Part-Time YouTuber Academy, and his team analyses their data to find what makes the most successful ones stand out. — 00:13:08 · Part-Time YouTuber Academy

00:13:23 — Unfair advantage

  • ★★ In almost every case where an academy student's channel blew up after the course, Ali says, a big part was an unfair advantage they leaned into. — 00:13:38 · unfair advantage, Part-Time YouTuber Academy

  • ★★★ Ali defines an unfair advantage as something very difficult or impossible for someone else to replicate; hard work is a fair advantage, since everyone can compete on it. — 00:13:38 · unfair advantage

    “An unfair advantage is something that would be very difficult or impossible for someone else to replicate.”

  • ★★ Starting YouTube, Ali leaned into the unfair advantage of being a Cambridge University medical student, making videos about getting into medicine at Cambridge, which few others made. — 00:13:38 · unfair advantage, University of Cambridge

  • ★★★ An unfair advantage does not matter at the start, Ali says, but once you treat a channel as a business in a saturated niche, ask what unfair advantages help you stand out. — 00:14:36 · unfair advantage
  • ★★★ Ali advises outsourcing your video editing as soon as you possibly can, which frees up time for what you do better, writing and filming; most big YouTubers he knows have done so. — 00:15:05

00:15:13 — Outsourcing video editing

  • ★★★ Ali started outsourcing his editing two years into YouTube, after a failed first try and believing he enjoyed editing, when a mentor with several multimillion-dollar businesses told him to. — 00:15:35
  • ★★ Outsourcing his editing completely changed Ali's life and made the channel skyrocket, freeing the hours he had spent editing every evening after work as a doctor. — 00:15:35

00:16:04 — The scorecard again and a pointer to his three-part method video

Threads in this video

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

Central: architect versus archaeologist · unfair advantage

Also: People: Michael Gerber · MrBeast

Projects: Part-Time YouTuber Academy

Works: Feel-Good Productivity (book) · The E-Myth

Organizations: University of Cambridge

Concepts: get going, get good, get smart · Medical elective

Places: Cambodia · Vietnam

Products: iPhone

Also centred on architect versus archaeologist: How to Make Money Online

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