Skip to content

How to Start a YouTube Channel - Beginners Guide (2026)

2024-10-04 · Workshop, masterclass or full course · Ali · recording, 39:59 · watch on YouTube

Topic: YouTube, writing online and creators · mode: Explanation and tutorial · tags: His own products discussed, His own numbers, His medical past, Sponsor segment present

In the best clips of a talk and Q&A he gave at a Think Media event, Ali sets out his three-level YouTube framework (get going, get good, get smart), urges creators to settle title, thumbnail and hook first, outsource editing and talk from bullet points, walks through his HIVES video structure, and answers questions on positioning, why some videos get more views, hiring editors, finding a style and video length.

What is said

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

00:00:00 — Introduction: advice for beginners from a Think Media talk

  • ★★ Over seven years Ali has made over a thousand YouTube videos and grown his channel to over 5 million subscribers. — 00:00:00 · YouTube

00:00:31 — My three-part framework: get going, get good, get smart

  • ★★★ Level one of Ali's YouTube framework, get going, covers channels under 100 subscribers, roughly the first 20 videos (sometimes he says 10 or five): just start making videos without overthinking or worrying about a niche. — 00:00:54 · YouTube
  • ★★ Level two, get good, is about getting better at the craft of YouTube videos until they pass an internal quality bar, where you no longer cringe at your own videos, and an external one. — 00:01:18 · YouTube
  • ★★★ Ali says a serious relationship with YouTube means committing to a level of consistency, not necessarily weekly, and sticking to it; with a casual relationship you cannot expect any results. — 00:02:43 · YouTube
  • ★★ At level two, Ali says, decide whether to treat YouTube as a hobby, done for fun and for yourself, or as a business; there is no right or wrong answer. — 00:03:10 · YouTube
  • ★★ Ali treats YouTube as a business because he wants to make money from it and add value to other people, while having fun along the way. — 00:03:39 · YouTube
  • ★★ Once a YouTube business is off the ground, Ali says, having fun becomes the primary goal and the business gets really good; at the start you optimise for the value you give others. — 00:04:02 · YouTube
  • ★★★ Ali says to worry about your channel's niche only at a later stage: under 100 subscribers, where most beginners are, the niche does not matter. — 00:04:25
  • ★★ For video ideas on an educational channel, Ali suggests asking what you know now that you did not know two, three or five years ago. — 00:04:25

00:04:49 — Consistency and time management: the coach, title, thumbnail and hook first, outsourcing editing

  • ★★ For the first three years of his YouTube channel Ali was a full-time medical student and then a full-time doctor in the NHS, including during the pandemic. — 00:04:49 · NHS, YouTube
  • ★★ Building a business with a team of about 20 people, Ali still struggles to find time for YouTube videos, and says every full-time YouTuber he knows does too. — 00:05:45 · YouTube
  • ★★ About two and a half years into his channel, a man in his 40s who was an executive coach for GlaxoSmithKline recognised Ali in his scrubs outside the hospital. — 00:06:26
  • ★★★ Ali's main takeaway: do not think about writing a video until you know its title, thumbnail and hook (the first 30 seconds); the thumbnail need not be made yet. — 00:07:15
  • ★★★ Ali was spending about 10 hours a week on editing; his executive coach encouraged him to outsource it, and after two years of editing himself he did. — 00:08:07
  • ★★★ Ali's number one tip for YouTubers struggling with consistency or time: do not edit your own videos unless you really love it; outsourcing editing frees a huge amount of time. — 00:08:32
  • ★★ Ali says he should have outsourced his editing even before his channel made money: as a doctor earning about $15 an hour, his time was worth at least that. — 00:09:00 · money buys back time

00:10:16 — Sponsor read for Trading 212

00:11:44 — The process of creating a video: no scripting, three points, title research, the HIVES framework and hooks

  • ★★★ Ali recommends that educational YouTubers struggling to produce videos consistently stop scripting and talk through bullet points instead. — 00:11:44
  • ★★ When Ali tried word-for-word scripts alongside his day job, a script took him about 12 hours and reading it off a teleprompter went badly. — 00:12:38
  • ★★ Ali's magic number of points in a video is three, four or five at a stretch: imposter syndrome still tempts him to say more, but an audience cannot take in 17 things. — 00:12:38 · imposter syndrome
  • ★★ Ali says it is worth thinking about alternative framings of a video title rather than going with the first title that comes to mind. — 00:15:04
  • ★★★ Ali says about 80% of the value of a YouTube video lies in its concept, title, thumbnail and hook. — 00:15:04 · YouTube
  • ★★ Ali holds that competence equals confidence: he does not really believe in simply loving yourself as you are, a fine aspiration that most people find hard without evidence. — 00:16:33
  • ★ Ali thinks affirmations are great. — 00:17:00
  • ★★★ Ali's video creation framework is HIVES: hook, intro, value and an end-screen sales pitch. — 00:17:00
  • ★★ Ali advises ending a video with an end-screen sales pitch for another video rather than "like, comment, subscribe", because viewers click off as soon as they sense the end. — 00:17:28
  • ★ Ali says Think Media's YouTube channel does hooks really well. — 00:18:14 · YouTube
  • ★★ With educational content, Ali says, the hook can basically be the title of the video, with no need for anything elaborate. — 00:18:42

00:19:12 — Plug for the Part-Time YouTuber Academy

00:20:10 — The intro, credibility, guide not guru, and his level of prep

  • ★★ Ali thinks a video intro, though optional, is a good idea: it says who you are and why the audience should care. — 00:20:10
  • ★★★ Ali says it is much easier to grow an educational YouTube channel with real-world credibility for what you teach. — 00:21:00 · YouTube
  • ★★ You do not need major credentials to be credible in a video intro, Ali says: one credential is simply that you used to struggle with the thing and no longer do. — 00:22:18
  • ★★ Ali prefers being a guide to being a guru: a guru says what you should do, a guide says how he did it and that it may work for you. — 00:22:43
  • ★★ Ali avoids spending ages researching a video topic, because it takes the joy out of making the video and makes it take far too long. — 00:24:10

00:24:40 — What's your niche? The one word to be known for, and his next book

  • ★★ Ali calls habits, James Clear's word, highly lucrative to be known for, since Clear earns a lot from corporate speaking; Ryan Holiday's stoicism is pretty lucrative too. — 00:25:09 · James Clear, Ryan Holiday, stoicism
  • ★★ To position yourself as a thought leader, Ali says, figure out the one word or phrase you want to be known for. — 00:25:42
  • ★★ Ali calls productivity, the word he wants to be known for, highly lucrative and fun, and says he can redefine it beyond work as holistic time management and using time well. — 00:26:37
  • ★★ For a book after Feel-Good Productivity, Ali wants to keep productivity as his word and is considering productive relationships or how not to waste your life. (hedged) — 00:26:37 · Feel-Good Productivity (book)

00:27:22 — Why do some videos get 10k views and some 500? The concept, and the algorithm is the audience

  • ★★★ Ali's team's analyses show a video's views come down mainly to its concept, which sets the ceiling of the views a video can reasonably expect. — 00:28:28

  • ★★ Ali says YouTube algorithm engineers always say the algorithm is the audience and content is king: replace the word "algorithm" with "audience". — 00:29:15 · YouTube

    “the algorithm is the audience and content is king”

  • ★★★ Before filming every video Ali reads a mantra: he does not care how the video performs, only about sharing a message worth sharing for whoever wants to hear it. — 00:29:41 · first in: 2024-03-12, How to Grow a YouTube Channel From Nothing in 2026

00:29:57 — My filming mantra

00:31:37 — How do you outsource your editing? Trial task, where to look and what to pay

  • ★★★ To hire a video editor, Ali sets a trial task: applicants edit the first 60 seconds of your raw video in your style, so you can judge them at once. — 00:32:04
  • ★★ To find editors, Ali says to post the job to your audience if you have one; without an audience, go where video editors hang out, such as ytjobs.com or Upwork. — 00:32:04
  • ★★ Among Fiverr and People Per Hour, Ali recommends People Per Hour for finding a video editor; it is where he found his first editor. — 00:32:50
  • ★★ In Ali's experience, $50 a video gets you a really bad video editor. — 00:32:50
  • ★★ Ali puts the price of a reasonable video editor at about $100 to $150 a video, probably in a country where the US dollar is strong. — 00:33:18
  • ★★ Ali's benchmarks: about $200 to $300 a video gets a good editor, about $500 a very good one, and his team pays £1,000 ($1,300) a video for world-class editing. — 00:33:47
  • ★★ When Ali first tried outsourcing, the one editor he tried was terrible and he kept editing his own videos for ages; paying $100 to $150 a video, he found a good editor on People Per Hour. — 00:34:14
  • ★★ When Ali was working as a doctor his channel made about $3,000 a month, so he could afford $150 a video for editing. (hedged) — 00:34:37
  • ★★ Ali says the more you pay a video editor, the less time you spend finding them, dealing with them and giving feedback; paying less costs you more time. — 00:35:03
  • ★★ Ali's team pays its podcast video editor $600 to edit a whole two-hour podcast episode. — 00:35:32
  • ★★★ When he started, Ali tried to be Peter McKinnon, who is a big part of why he started his YouTube channel. — 00:35:32 · Peter McKinnon, YouTube

00:35:46 — How to find your style: trying to be Peter McKinnon, imitate then innovate

  • ★★★ Ali's advice for beginners is imitate, then innovate: start by imitating the people you admire and worry about innovation later. — 00:36:13
  • ★★ Ali says his failure to imitate Peter McKinnon produced the personality he now has on camera, which he calls basically his authentic personality. — 00:36:54 · Peter McKinnon
  • ★★★ Long videos are hard to make appealing unless really good, Ali says; starting out without much credibility, 8 to 12 minutes is a very good length, or else go hyper long form. — 00:36:54

00:37:09 — Should you make longer videos? Length, unfair advantages and sign-off

  • ★★ Ali's friend Simon Squibb's video "30 years of business knowledge in two hours and 26 minutes" went viral, with 3.9 million views a month after publishing. — 00:37:38
  • ★★★ About 5,000 people have gone through the Part-Time YouTuber Academy, and Ali's analysis finds those who succeeded broadly leaned into some unfair advantage. — 00:38:06 · Part-Time YouTuber Academy, unfair advantage
  • ★★ To find your unfair advantages, Ali suggests asking friends and family what you are good at and what they would want to learn from you. — 00:38:40 · unfair advantage

Threads in this video

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

Central: get going, get good, get smart · HIVES framework · Peter McKinnon · YouTube

Also: People: Albert Bandura · Cal Newport · James Clear · Jay Shetty · Mark Manson · Omar Elattar · Ramit Sethi · Ryan Holiday · Simon Squibb · Tim Ferriss

Projects: Part-Time YouTuber Academy

Works: Feel-Good Productivity (book) · I Will Teach You To Be Rich

Organizations: Fiverr · GlaxoSmithKline · NHS · People Per Hour · Psych2Go · Think Media · University of Cambridge · Upwork · YT Jobs

Concepts: deep work (concept) · guide, not guru · imitate then innovate · imposter syndrome · money buys back time · self-efficacy · stoicism · unfair advantage

Places: Pakistan

Products: Adobe Lightroom · Adobe Photoshop · Canva · Dropbox · Google Drive · Notion

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

← Previous: How to Get in Better Shape than 99% of People · Next → How to Study for Exams with Flashcards (Anki Masterclass)