 So today we're going to be talking about how to get your YouTube channel to 1000 subscribers. And just a little bit of background on my YouTube journey, I didn't take YouTube more seriously until June of 2020 and by January of 2021 I was able to hit 1000 subscribers. Now there's a little bit more to this journey than what I've just mentioned and if you're interested to learn about the full journey of my YouTube, there's a link in the description that leads to a full article that you can click and read and it will tell you about the full detail of my YouTube journey. But right now we'll just skip right into the first tip on how to get your YouTube channel to 1000 subscribers. So the first tip is to choose a niche with low competition and high search volumes. And the reason is because if you have less competitors and high search volumes, people are going to search and find your YouTube channel. But since there's not a lot of competition, it will be easier to find your channel and I think that might be pretty self explanatory. But for me, I chose mining engineering because it was a niche that didn't have a lot of content out there. It was an underserved market and that my content would serve this even though it wasn't a super big audience, I felt that I wanted to contribute to this topic. It turns out that mining engineering is to niche with low competition and average search volume. And I think that this combination led me to a decent amount of growth. As you can see, just even throughout December of 2020, I didn't put any videos up. Actually, December of 2020 to roughly right now, which is the middle of January 2021, I didn't put a single video up. Yeah, I was about to grow around 140 subscribers just on its own passively and also found that actually, when I was doing my YouTube channel, I've actually searched switch between different niches. So I switched between travel and gaming and motivation. And as I went through these different niches, my channel wasn't able to grow at the rate that it is now when I'm doing mining engineering. And I think that it's because these niches of travel, gaming and motivation, these are highly competitive niches. And it's a lot harder for my content to be discovered out there. And so if it's possible, I highly recommend that you choose the niche that has as low competition as possible and as high search volume as possible. The second tip is to pick and emphasize the right keywords. And so the reason why I want to do this is so that you let the YouTube algorithm know what your channel is all about. So for my channel, for example, my keywords are mining engineering or mining, you want to make sure that your keywords are listed in your video title, your video description, your tags, your channel description. And most importantly, the last one that few as people know about is your channel settings. And once you have your keywords listed in all of these areas, then YouTube will know what your channel is about and will be able to push your content to the audience that are searching for these keywords. The third tip is to discover high growth video ideas. And so once you have your keyword figured out, next, you want to find these high growth video ideas. And one of the ways you do that is by searching up your keywords on YouTube. And once you type in those words, you'll be able to see a list of other similar content ideas that people are already searching for. And the higher up in the search results, the more in demand that it is. And so for me, not only did I do that, but I since I wanted to create videos on mining engineering because I felt that it was a niche that was underserved, I already have a little bit of idea of what I wanted to see. And also in my example, I didn't only look up the word mining engineering, but I also look up another similar keyword, which is mechanical engineering. And then I could see that people are looking up for videos on a day in the life of a mechanical engineers, how much do mechanical engineers make, and what do mechanical engineers study? And then as you can see, these are all videos that I have on my channel. And most of them are doing quite well on my channel. And this just shows that you don't have to think about all these high growth video ideas yourself. You can always just see what other people are doing and copy from them. The fourth tip is to utilize cards and screens and playlists. And the reason why you want to do all of this is because all of these are designed to retain your audience in your channel for longer. And so let's go through them one by one for what they're for. So cards are clickable links that appear on top of your video, such as this one right here. So cards are clickable links that pop up in the middle of your video and you can insert them anywhere and link your audience directly to another video topic that you are referencing to. And these are super handy because the audience won't have to get interrupted and look for the video on the sidebar of your channel. They can just click into the link directly and lead them to another video. Next is end cards. So end cards typically appear near at the end of the video. And let's just say it's a video ascending. The audience are not sure what they want to do. They're not sure if they want to stay on YouTube a little bit longer to watch more videos or if they want to go do something else. These clickable videos at the end of the video would entice them to stay a little bit longer and watch similar content that, you know, or at least the YouTube algorithm knows that they're already interested in. And so if you have those clickable videos at the end of your video, it will make it easier for the audience to stay within your channel and consume more of your contents. And lastly is playlists. So what playlists does is it characterizes in groups a bunch of videos together. So make it easier for the audience to find what they're looking for. And let's just say the audience is looking for videos on mining engineering. And so if I have a playlist on mining engineering, they can just click into that playlist and then they can just automatically watch one video to the next about mining engineering without having to leave my channel or be interrupted. So that's one benefit of playlists. The second benefit of playlists is its segments or videos into different categories or groupings that your channel may be talking about. So right away, the audience will be able to see, OK, when you click into my channel, you're going to see it's about mining engineering and it's about the same call mining to me. And within each of those playlists, I put a short description of what the videos are about. So it makes it easier for the audience to right away understand what this channel is about and what they can expect from this channel when they click on this playlist or when they subscribe to the channel. And all of these things will help your audience watch more of your videos or even subscribe to your channel because they know what your channel is about. The fifth tip is to choose I engaging thumbnails. And so even if you have the best video content out there, you upload it on YouTube, it doesn't matter because if you don't have an engaging thumbnail, it's going to be lost in the crowd of other video content and nobody's going to click and watch your video. So it's very important that you have a good eye catching thumbnail. Personally, I like to use the color yellow and red. I found that they perform the best and I also try to show a human face whenever possible. And the reason for this is because us as humans were naturally attracted to the human eye. And so if you have a human face and it needs to show the eye, then you're going to attract more people and people are going to be more drawn into those thumbnails. And the great thing about thumbnails is that you can always change them if you think they're underperforming. And so what I recommend is try out different thumbnails for your videos if you have time and see which one of her thumbnails performed the best. Also my article in the description below, I've included more research about the science of creating a really good eye catching thumbnail. So if you want to learn more about making good thumbnails and the science behind it, click into the link in the description below and I'll have an article explaining all that. The sixth tip is external marketing on other social media platforms. And so now you've done all the work of researching the right niche. You've found a high growth content ideas. You've created really good engaging thumbnails and you've made playlist cards and end screens for your video. The next step is getting more eyes into watching your video. Personally, what I do is I use Facebook. I promote my YouTube videos on mining and engineering groups on Facebook. And I found that it works pretty well. But the key is that you don't want to be super spammy with your link posting. Just post every once in a while and don't post your link more than once within the same group. And so I'm going to show a screenshot here. And as you can see, over 50% of my views for this video came from Facebook and this video got about 1000 views in just 2.5 weeks. For me, at least posting on Facebook is a pretty good advertising tactic. Another alternative is to post on Reddit, but be aware that there may be some restrictions on self promotion within Reddit. And it's actually very easy to get banned if you start spamming on Reddit. So make sure you read the subreddit rules. Understand what you are allowed and not allowed to post and follow those rules accordingly. Now, regardless of where you post on Facebook, whether it's on Reddit, the key thing is to make sure that you're posting as soon as your video goes live. And the reason is because YouTube like to promote fresh new content and push that to their audience. And so you want to take advantage of this part of the algorithm and make sure you get as many eyes watching your video as soon as your video goes live. The seventh tip is to collaborate with other people. It doesn't matter if it's YouTubers or just other individuals. And so as small YouTubers, we typically have a small budget for advertising or maybe we don't even have any budget. And so it's important to leverage other people's networks by making collaboration with them. So for me, one of the most highly requested topics is about Mining Engineering in Canada or Mining Engineering in India. And so I've done two collaboration videos on those topics. And both of those videos have been doing well. And typically people get excited when you feature them or when you collaborate with them. And it's a great way to tap into other people's network and deliver value for their network or their audience as well. The eighth tip is to interact with your audience. As YouTubers, it might be very easy to get caught up in those numbers of views and subscriber count. It's also important to remember that behind each video view, there's an individual living person watching those videos. And perhaps more importantly is that you can even get video ideas from them. And so you know exactly what they want and you can make a video on that and you're beginning to get some views on those videos. So there you have it, eight tips to grow your YouTube channel to 1000 subscribers. And now I'm going to give you one more bonus tip about the one thing that you should never do when growing your YouTube channel. And that is so compare yourself to other YouTube channels. And the reason why you shouldn't compare yourself to other YouTubers is because it will lead to you to become demotivated. And also, you don't know exactly what sort of time and effort or perhaps other external factors out of your or his or her control that has led to their success. It's a lot more behind their YouTube channel that you don't see and that perhaps you can even duplicate yourself. And so the times that I felt I was growing the fastest was actually times when I was not checking the subscribers or view counts. And if you just focus on the variables that are within your control, such as making good quality content, making good thumbnails and advertising your videos without spamming them. And you just really try to engage and improve the process of creating YouTube videos. Then I think that's when you will have the most fun and you feel like you're growing the fastest. So thanks again for watching this video. I will have an article version of this that summarizes all the key points that you can read or just keep handy for references for when you're making your next YouTube video.