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How to Start and Grow a YouTube Channel in 2026

2025-11-18 · Long video (solo, talking head or whiteboard) · Ali · recording, 31:32 · 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

Ali says growing a YouTube channel comes down to getting viewers to click, watch and like you, over many videos that make a bingeable library, and argues that anyone treating YouTube as a business needs a niche, a target audience and a value proposition chosen with supply and demand in mind.

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: what the video covers, Ali's journey and the Part-Time YouTuber Academy

  • ★★★ Ali says growing a YouTube channel comes down to three things: getting viewers to click, getting them to watch and getting them to like you. — 00:00:29 · YouTube
  • ★★ Getting people to hit the subscribe button matters a lot less than getting them to like you, Ali says, though people who like you are more likely to subscribe. — 00:00:29

00:00:46 — The three core principles: get viewers to click, to watch and to like you

  • ★★ YouTube is a click-and-watch platform, Ali says, so creators must be fairly good at titles and thumbnails that are not clickbait but are intriguing enough to click. — 00:01:45 · YouTube
  • ★★ To get viewers to watch, Ali says, a video needs a hook, its first 30 to 60 seconds, and must give a good amount of value. — 00:01:45
  • ★★ For most YouTube channels, Ali says, retention curves show 30 to 50% of viewers dropping off by the 30-second mark. — 00:02:15 · YouTube
  • ★★ Viewers pay for videos with their time and attention, arguably worth more than money, Ali says, so creators should make videos or a content library with enough value that people keep watching. — 00:03:00
  • ★★ The longer people watch a video, Ali says, the more YouTube's algorithm sees that it keeps people on the platform and pushes it out to similar people. — 00:03:47 · YouTube
  • ★★ Giving value makes viewers more likely to like a creator, Ali says, and the other key factor that makes them like you is personality and vibes. — 00:04:16
  • ★★ Faceless channels have a harder time growing than channels that show a face, Ali says, because it is very difficult to channel personality and vibes without one. — 00:04:16
  • ★★ Ali says Kurzgesagt has an enormous team of 50-plus full-time animators making its videos, a massive operation that is really hard for a solo creator or a small team. — 00:05:05
  • ★★★ Ali generally recommends against faceless YouTube channels: making money without showing your face is really hard, since YouTube is about the audience's connection with the creator. — 00:05:05 · YouTube
  • ★★ Ali advises bringing your authentic self into your content: not everyone will like you, but the people who vibe with your unique personality will be more likely to. — 00:05:34

00:05:38 — Sponsor read for ManyChat

00:07:11 — The complete video package, the lottery ticket theory and a bingeable content library

  • ★★★ Consistency is one of the biggest factors in a channel's growth, Ali says, but no upload frequency makes the algorithm promote you: the more videos you make, the more likely people discover your content. — 00:07:47
  • ★★ Ali compares every YouTube video to a lottery ticket: you never know which of your videos will suddenly take off. — 00:08:46 · YouTube
  • ★★ Even very big, famous YouTubers whose teams spend a lot of money on growth, Ali says, find it very difficult to predict which videos will do well. — 00:09:08
  • ★★ To raise a video's chances, Ali suggests taking a concept or title that did well on someone else's channel and making your own version, which he calls viral replication. — 00:09:37
  • ★★ A channel with four videos has played only four lottery tickets or planted four seeds, Ali says, while 400 videos over two to five years means hundreds of seeds planted. — 00:09:37
  • ★★★ YouTube suggests more of a creator's videos to viewers who have given that creator a lot of watch time, Ali says, so to grow, think about building a bingeable content library. — 00:10:42 · YouTube
  • ★★ Being consistent and making lots of videos makes you better at the craft, Ali says: at getting people to click and watch and at letting your authentic personality shine through. — 00:11:38

00:12:23 — Choosing the right videos: how the algorithm matches a video to similar viewers

  • ★★ Ali, who attended a talk by YouTube at which the man who runs its algorithm spoke about this, says the YouTube algorithm looks at somewhere between 50 and 100 factors to judge who is vibing with a video. — 00:12:51 · YouTube
  • ★★ When someone vibes with a video, Ali says, YouTube's algorithm tries to promote it to other people with similar viewing habits. — 00:14:01 · YouTube
  • ★★★ A channel making videos about cooking, knitting, books and tech, Ali says, finds it very hard to become bingeable and grow: single videos get views, but the audiences are quite different. — 00:15:10

00:15:39 — Finding your niche: hobby or business, supply and demand, and the London lifestyle vlogger

  • ★★★ To grow a YouTube channel, Ali says, you need to find a niche, which he defines as a target audience and a value proposition. — 00:15:43 · YouTube
  • ★★ Ali's original niche in 2017 was helping UK medical applicants get into medical school, and in particular into Oxford, Cambridge, Imperial or UCL. — 00:15:43 · University of Oxford, University of Cambridge
  • ★★ Ali's early target market of medicine applicants had only a few tens of thousands of people, and he thinks almost all of them saw his videos because they were so targeted and valuable. (hedged) — 00:16:21
  • ★★ Amazon now sells everything, Ali says, but it is very difficult to start any business or YouTube channel by trying to do everything. — 00:16:45 · Amazon, YouTube
  • ★★ Serving your own interests rather than what other people want makes it very hard to grow a channel, Ali says, just as a business built on what you want rather than what customers want struggles. — 00:16:45
  • ★★★ Treating YouTube as a hobby while expecting a business goal of growth and money, Ali says, leaves a gap between the goal and the plan, and that gap is where misery is. — 00:18:00 · YouTube
  • ★ Ali plays the guitar as a hobby: he is not particularly good, practises inconsistently, has no teacher and has taken a couple of online courses. — 00:18:29
  • ★★★ If you care about treating YouTube like a business, Ali thinks you have to have a niche: a particular target audience and a particular value proposition. — 00:19:08 · YouTube
  • ★★★ With a huge supply of fitness content, Ali says, a beginner making generic weight-loss videos finds it harder to stand out: the hard part in a saturated niche is getting people to click and watch. — 00:20:03
  • ★★ In a saturated field such as weight loss, Ali advises going even more niche, for example a channel that helps entrepreneurs get fit. — 00:20:32
  • ★★ Ali and his friend Dan Go connected over Twitter through Dan's fitness tips for entrepreneurs; Dan was his coach for a while, Ali helped him with YouTube, and Dan's channel is blowing up. — 00:20:32 · Twitter, YouTube
  • ★★ For a newcomer, Ali says, even fitness for entrepreneurial men is now too broad and very hard to succeed in, because a lot of people are doing it. — 00:21:40
  • ★★★ A YouTuber is at the mercy of supply and demand depending on their niche, Ali says: a channel that helps anyone with anything will basically never grow. — 00:21:40 · YouTube
  • ★★ A Part-Time YouTuber Academy student who asked Ali for growth tips had made about 300 lifestyle vlogs about life in London over two or three years, with 700 subscribers and about 100 views each, and wanted to make a million dollars. — 00:22:42 · Part-Time YouTuber Academy, London
  • ★★★ When you have made 300 videos and have only 700 subscribers, Ali says, the market is telling you it does not want what you are offering. — 00:24:02
  • ★★ Lifestyle content by young women living in London is so saturated, Ali says, that it is very hard to stand out in it. — 00:24:28 · London
  • ★★★ Viewers do not care about the creator, Ali says, but about the value they get from the channel, and a channel that adds no value will find it very hard to stand out. — 00:25:10
  • ★★ Basically all the successful students of the Part-Time YouTuber Academy, Ali says, have found a niche. — 00:25:10 · Part-Time YouTuber Academy

00:25:30 — Successful niche examples, Azul Wells and How To Write Songs, and why people do not care about you

  • ★★ One of the Part-Time YouTuber Academy's success stories, Ali says, is Azul Wells, an older man who gives financial planning advice to older people. — 00:25:38 · Part-Time YouTuber Academy
  • ★★ In Azul Wells's niche of helping older people retire early there is little content on YouTube, Ali says: the 19-year-olds making money online do not target 55-year-olds. — 00:26:07 · YouTube
  • ★★★ In a niche like Azul Wells's, Ali says, you need not fuss over titles, thumbnails, a scripted hook or retention editing, nor do insane things for attention like Logan Paul or MrBeast: helpful videos filmed on a phone without editing still work. — 00:26:50
  • ★★ Azul Wells has hundreds of thousands of subscribers and makes a lot of money from YouTube, Ali says, by providing a very specific value to a very specific person. — 00:26:50 · YouTube
  • ★★ Kepi and Ben's channel How To Write Songs, which helps people write better songs, has 170,000 subscribers; they are students of the Part-Time YouTuber Academy. — 00:26:50 · Part-Time YouTuber Academy
  • ★★ Facing more competition than Azul Wells, Ali says, How To Write Songs has pretty good titles and thumbnails and very good production value. — 00:27:39
  • ★★★ With a specific educational niche helping a target audience that has some money, Ali says, you can probably sell it a product later, such as a course, coaching or a book. (hedged) — 00:28:08
  • ★★ Creators with no niche or a very broad one find it hard to sell a sensible product, Ali says, so they make money through brand deals and influencer partnerships, and most he knows are having a less good time. — 00:28:08
  • ★★ Short of celebrity levels like Logan Paul and KSI with their own drink, Ali says, reaching success or financial freedom through YouTube without a sensible niche is vanishingly unlikely. — 00:28:50 · work optional, YouTube
  • ★★★ Against the idea that the creator is the niche, Ali says people are fundamentally selfish and care about themselves, not about the creator. — 00:29:26
  • ★★ Ali's occasional vlogs get basically no views compared with his educational videos; he guesses 20,000 to 50,000 of his roughly 8 million followers would watch one. (hedged) — 00:29:26
  • ★★ The videos that do best on his channel, Ali says, give lots of tangible value to a specific target audience. — 00:29:26
  • ★★★ Caring about fun rather than growth is fine, Ali says, but if you care about growth, sit down and work out your niche: your target audience, your value proposition and why people should watch. — 00:30:14

00:30:56 — Final thoughts: the Academy and advice for beginners who have not started

  • ★★ For someone who has not yet started on YouTube and is still worrying about a niche, Ali's advice is different: do not overthink your niche. — 00:31:04 · YouTube

Threads in this video

Mentioned

Central: value proposition · YouTube

Also: People: Azul (youtuber, mentioned from 2024) · Dan Go · KSI · Logan Paul · MrBeast

Projects: Part-Time YouTuber Academy

Works: Feel-Good Productivity (book)

Organizations: Amazon · How To Write Songs · Imperial College London · Kurzgesagt · University College London · University of Cambridge · University of Oxford

Concepts: audience retention · hook · stacking the deck · viral replication · watch time

Places: London

Also centred on value proposition: 5 Things I Wish I'd Done Sooner On YouTube · Honest YouTube Advice for 45 Minutes Straight (2026)

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