 Hey guys, it's Allison. Welcome back to the tiny herd where we talk about everyday pet care for guinea pigs, rabbits, and other small pets. Today's video is going to be a little bit different because thanks to you guys being awesome. We recently hit 1000 subscribers and my channel is now fully monetized, which is amazing. So in today's video, I'm going to be sharing my top five tips for starting and growing a pet YouTube channel so that you can grow from zero to 1000 subscribers with your pet channel as well. Let's get started. I do want to say again, thank you guys so, so, so much for 1000 subscribers. I was working really hard for that. That was the one milestone that I really wanted to hit. And now I can just focus on creating some great content, keeping my channel going and giving you guys what you want to see so that one day hopefully I can do the things I need to do to get my animal shelter animal rescue going. So again, really thank you guys so much. I'm super excited that we're at this point and I really hope these tips help you guys as well if you are trying to start a pet channel. So before I get into the tips, I did want to talk a little bit about my background in history with YouTube so that I can explain a little better on why I have these tips and why I was able to grow a little bit more quickly. So I actually have monetized two channels on YouTube, The Tiny Heard being the second one. And my first channel actually currently has about 4,500 subscribers. I don't post on it anymore and I really lost interest in the topic, but in growing and creating that whole brand and growing that channel, I did learn a lot about how YouTube works and it helped me go from zero to a thousand subscribers on this channel as well. But I do want to mention if you are new to my channel, I actually started this channel back in 2017. I posted probably like 10 or 15 videos and then I didn't touch it again until November of 2020. So I did actually grow 500 subscribers in the time from 2017 to 2020 without really touching my channel. So when I started back on this channel in 2020, I actually had 500 subscribers as of November 1st. And that's really when I posted my first video back on YouTube with The Tiny Heard. So from November 1st to February 14th, I was able to grow my channel by 500 subscribers and get the 4,000 watch hours that I needed to get my channel monetized. And it is fully monetized now. So that is really exciting. A lot of people have asked me how I was able to grow my channel so quickly because I have grown pretty quickly compared to a lot of channels that are just starting out. And again, that is because I do have experience doing this. And these tips are really going to tell you the things that I did to grow my channel from that 500 to the 1000 subscribers and got the watch time I needed. So let's go ahead and just get right into these tips. And if you guys have any questions, feel free to leave them down below. Okay, so tip number one is to make sure you actually understand how the YouTube algorithm works. I see a lot of people start channels and they just post whatever content they want. They don't think about their titles. They don't pay that much attention to their thumbnails. And you really need to understand how YouTube chooses which videos to push out, how your videos can rank in search, what kind of keywords you need, how to make good titles. All of that stuff is very important if you are wanting to actually grow a channel in a faster manner. If you want to get subscribers quickly, if you want to get views quickly and get your channel monetized. So there are a ton of great channels out there that will teach you how the YouTube algorithm works, how to get views. I will link some of my favorites down below and put them around on the screen. But there are so many ways you can do research, just watch a bunch of videos, figure out how the YouTube algorithm works, and figure out how you can put your specific unique content into YouTube in a way that will work with the algorithm. If I had done this sooner back in 2017, I probably wouldn't have quit YouTube because I just wasn't seeing growth and I was making stuff that I like to watch, but I didn't know anything about tags or titles or your thumbnail needs to look good. Engagement, I didn't know about any of that stuff. And if I did, I probably would have, you know, three, four years on YouTube at this point with the tiny herd. So understand the algorithm. Definitely. That would be my biggest piece of advice. Don't try to just put whatever up there and not know anything about what you are doing. Do at least bare minimum research to understand how to grow and why you're not growing. Tip number two is work on constantly leveling up your content. So there is nothing wrong with filming on your phone. Smartphones have fantastic cameras now. There are plenty of apps to edit with. So this tip is not about equipment, even though that can really help as you do make money and level up. I bought a really nice camera. I have a microphone, but I did that stuff very recently. So that definitely didn't have a huge impact on getting my channel from the 500 to a thousand subscribers. So definitely you can use your phone. You can get a really cheap lavalier microphone off of Amazon. Again, there's plenty of YouTube channels that tell you how you can get started with the not super fancy equipment. So that's not what this tip is about. When I say leveling up content, I mean making yourself personable on camera, being engaging, making sure that your videos have good lighting. We can see what's going on. Things aren't shaky. I love to watch vlogs, especially pet vlogs. And it's so hard to get through a video that's really dark or the person's just shaking their phone around and it just gives me a headache and I really can't tell what's going on. Make sure you shoot your videos horizontally, not vertically. I'm not going to watch a video on YouTube that is shot vertically. I'm just not. Most people are not because that's there's plenty of other high quality content out there to watch. So why would they watch that? So you just have to give yourself a little bit of tough love and work on speaking to the camera, work on your filming abilities, work on your editing skills, do research on editing. I use a free program for a long time to edit my videos. You can use iMovie. If you have Apple products, there are plenty of free phone apps to edit your videos. You don't have to pay for stuff. So you just really need to do research overall into what you're doing if you're wanting to grow. I would say the biggest tip and this is coming from other channels that I watch on YouTube because there are plenty of up and coming channels that I love to watch, especially as a new up and coming channel myself. Make sure that when you're speaking, you don't sound like you're reading from a script. So you can see here, I have my notes for the video, but I don't have a script that I'm just reading off of. Sometimes I do make a full script, but I always put kind of a spin on it and put it in my own words so that I'm not just reading something. I don't sound like I'm just reading something and I don't sound like a robot. So think about leveling up. Think about how you're speaking. Make sure you seem personable, engaging. Nobody wants you to film a video and just sit here and talk to the camera like this because this is not fun at all. You want to make your videos fun and engaging and enjoyable to watch and leveling up your videos could be any of those things. So if there are things about your videos that you think could be improved upon or that people are giving you feedback to improve upon, take those to heart because it really will help your channel grow that much faster. Tip number three is make videos that people actually want to watch. This one can also be a little bit of tough love because we all want to make content that we also enjoy creating, but if you're wanting to make a channel that is going to grow, get picked up by the YouTube algorithm so that you can get monetized quickly, vlogs are probably not the way to go. I'm just going to say now unless you're good at keywords and good at titles. To be perfectly honest, nobody cares what you do in a day. Even if you have a pet channel and you're sharing your cleaning and stuff, if you just film a vlog that has no like overreaching purpose and doesn't really have a point and it's kind of all over the place and then you title it something like daily pet vlog, that's not going to get found by anyone except for your existing subscribers. So when I say make videos, people actually want to watch. You want to be solving a problem. You want to be answering a question or you want to be providing entertainment value. It could be any of those things. So let's say let's go back to the pet care vlog idea. Let's say you want to make a video which I make plenty of videos where I just clean my cages and that's the video because those are really popular but I don't just start the video, clean the cages and that's it. Like I always try to make the videos more interesting by either adding music or talking through them or talking about my guinea pigs, talking about the rabbits and then again understanding the YouTube algorithm. You need to make sure that you're making videos that people want to watch that they're going to be searching for. So that is a big thing. You need to understand back to tip number one how the YouTube algorithm works because you want to be making content people actually want to see that they're actively searching for. Cleaning guinea pig cages is something that people are searching for. It's one of the most popular niches of guinea pig videos is cleaning cages. But if you just call it daily pet vlog and don't put anything about cleaning guinea pig cages that video is not going to come up in search and people aren't going to find it. So this tip really does kind of mesh with tip number one that you want to make content people actually want to watch and then you want to optimize your video by understanding the algorithm and doing the things that you need to do so that your great content that people want to watch actually gets found. This next tip is actually kind of a personal pet peeve of mine but if you're going to be making a pet YouTube channel and talking about animal care make sure you actually know what you're talking about. And I don't mean this as everyone has to have the same pet care. Obviously everybody has their own differences, their own ways of taking care of their own pets and that is perfectly fine if people can do things a million different ways as long as their pets end up happy and healthy. That is the goal happy and healthy pets. But if you're going to make a pet YouTube channel let's say for example that you're going to make a channel and talk about your guinea pigs. Nobody is going to watch a channel that talks about how to take care of guinea pigs but then has a tiny pet store cage and has like bare minimum of everything or even not if your guinea pigs are in a pet store cage that's not bare minimum size. So that's my point if you are going to make a channel about your animals make sure you're giving your animals at least the bare minimum care. Make sure that you actually understand the things that you're talking about make sure they're backed up by sources make sure they're backed up by experience. Don't just be like oh I have these guinea pigs that I got two years ago as a Christmas gift and I keep them in this pet store cage but I want to have a pet channel so I'm just going to show them to people and that's it. I just it's one of my personal pet peeves when people try to start a pet channel and it's pretty clear pretty quickly that they haven't really done any research on the animals that they have and your channel is not going to grow if that's the case because there's it's way too easy to go on youtube and search basic guinea pig care and see that your care is not up to basic standards and that's not a channel people are going to want to watch because it's not going to be teaching them anything if they already know that that's not the bare minimum. So just make sure that you have support for what you're talking about even if there's something that you differ from a lot of people like you have a different opinion on something or you have a differing experience on something that is fine again as long as you have a reason for that opinion don't just decide that lettuce is bad for guinea pigs and tell people that lettuce is bad for guinea pigs because that's just not true. Yes it's bad in excess but don't just say oh lettuce is bad for guinea pigs. So just keep that in mind make sure that you're giving the best information that you have at the time don't just give whatever information you found on the first page of google and then my last tip is just to keep in mind throughout this journey why you actually started a pet channel don't get caught up in the comparison on how fast you're growing don't get caught up in views or subscriber count really remember why you started a pet channel which is to share your love of pets and to improve education and share knowledge about proper care and proper technique for taking care of these animals so that is one thing that really drives me that's why i'm doing this channel as opposed to my first channel that i really just lost interest in to be honest is because i know i'm never going to lose interest in my animals my animals are pretty much my entire life outside of my actual job so i wanted to start my youtube channel because all of the stuff i show on my channel i already do i already think about i already have knowledge on and that's something that's made this channel so much more fun and enjoyable and easier to engage with you guys because this is something that i really love and passionate about so really just keep that in mind if you're trying to do youtube just to get a hundred thousand subscribers or make a bunch of money or something like that you're gonna get tired of it really fast because you don't have an end goal in mind which for me is to just educate people on proper care for getting pigs and rabbits and other pets just keep that in mind don't get caught up in the comparison i know it's so easy in today's social media world but really just remind yourself whenever you get discouraged that even if you're helping one guinea pig or two guinea pigs or one owner that should be a win that should be a success because that is the ultimate real goal of a pet channel at least in my eyes thank you guys so much for watching i hope you enjoyed this video and got some good value out of these tips let me know if you have your own tips down below in the comments or if you have any questions on anything that i talked about here today thank you guys so much for watching i will have a new video later on this week and i will see you guys then bye