The question of “How to become a YouTuber” is asked a lot, as becoming a YouTuber is a dream that many people have. But, sometimes, they’re not too sure how to become a YouTuber.
Behind the scenes, all of the most notable YouTubers have had their struggles trying to get to where they are now. It’s not an easy feat, but it’s certainly not impossible.
It takes a lot of creativity, motivation, consistency, and perseverance, but you can achieve this and become a YouTube stalwart. That’s why we’ve written this article to help you achieve your dreams!
This article breaks down how to become a YouTuber and the necessary checkpoints on how to become a successful YouTuber.
Are you looking to become a YouTuber? If so, let’s check the key steps on how to become a YouTuber below.
How to become a YouTuber: The steps to success
Here we will look at the steps in which you will need to take to become a YouTuber. These steps will help you build out a solid plan that will allow you to become a YouTuber and a successful one at that!
These steps are:
- Decide on the niche for your YouTube channel
- Research content ideas for your YouTube channel
- Examine your video making and video editing resources
- Create a content schedule
- Outline your overall goals for your channel
- Begin filming your content
- Optimise your YouTube channel
- Upload your first video and analyse
1. Decide on the niche for your YouTube channel
The first thing to do before you start your venture into the world of YouTube is to decide on your niche. This is incredibly important when starting your YouTube journey.
Choose your niche based on interests you have or your current expertise; this way, it will give your channel a core focus to build an audience.
This will help you stay focused on your YouTube channel and will allow you to slowly build an audience. It will keep you relevant, organised and kept you on track to grow your channel.
For example, if you decide to build a fitness channel, you will want to focus on fitness and healthy eating. An example would be to create a video on what to eat to achieve your weight goals or a fitness regime for anyone looking to get into shape.
You can then start to create “series” and target specific areas within your niche and bring out episodes of content.
Overall, you want to stay focused within your niche, and once you start to establish a following, then look to broaden the content.
2. Research content ideas for your YouTube channel
Next up is to research content ideas for your YouTube channel. This step is essential, as this will allow you to come up with multiple video ideas and stop you from running out of ideas.
There are many ways to get the content ideas flowing; one of the best methods is to look at what other YouTuber’s are creating in the niche and look at what is performing well.
You can also research trends in your niche. A great tool to use is Google Trends. You can see what people are searching for and then look into the popular themes to help you develop a new idea or series of ideas.
Look at questions on websites like Quora. It’s a great way to see what questions people are looking for answers to. This will give you enough information to see if the search volume is high enough for you to create a video based on this.
It’s worth doing the same using a keyword tool, such as Ubersuggest to look at high volume searches in your niche.
You can then create content using these as a starting point and then use the longer, more complex searches to develop a “30-day series” or “An episodic diary.”
3. Examine your video making and video editing resources
Next up on the “How to become a YouTuber: The steps to success” is collating your resources.
You are now at the point where you have your content planned, and now you’ll need to gather your equipment ready for content creation.
You will not need to invest heavily in your resources at the start, but if you do buy one item, we recommend purchasing an external microphone.
Your mobile phone camera will be more than enough to record high-quality YouTube videos in terms of cameras.
However, If you look at buying a new DSLR, read our guide on what to look for when buying a DSLR camera. This will enable you to buy the right camera for you and what you are looking to create.
Now you have the audio and video sorted, and you’ll need to get some editing software. Our preference is Adobe Premiere Pro. However, when you are starting it’s best to keep the costs down and use one of the free video editing platforms out there.
We collated a list of the best free video editing software, which you can read here. Our personal favourite out of the list is DaVinci resolve. Have a browse through and see what suits you.
The key things to remember when starting is to have a good structure for your videos, decent audio, and decent video. These can be achieved on a mobile phone, and once you build your following, it’s best to start then adding to your filmmaking kit.
4. Create a content schedule
Now you have collated your filmmaking resources, you can now move onto creating a content schedule.
You now know what videos you’ll be filming and the equipment you have at your disposal – it’s now time to create a content schedule to get the ball rolling.
Creating a content schedule will help you maintain consistency and is a crucial step to becoming a successful YouTuber. The content schedule will give you a timeline and gives your subscribers an idea of when they can expect your next YouTube video to land.
It will be best to decide whether you’ll adopt a daily, weekly, or monthly posting schedule. We’d advise taking on a weekly schedule, as this will be enough content to build an audience but won’t become overwhelming as a daily schedule would.
You can use your YouTube banner to let your audience know what day and time you will post on a regular basis, this builds trust and expectations as you grow your brand as a YouTuber.
5. Outline your overall goals for your channel
The next step is to outline your goals for your YouTube channel. Look at what you want to achieve with the channel.
What are you looking to achieve with your channel? Are you looking to provide the audience with entertainment? Or, are you looking to produce educational and informative content?
It’s worth deciding on your core focus for the channel; this will keep you focused and help you grow your channel. You can merge between the two as you grow your channel, but initially, you will want to focus on just one of these.
Another goal is to set numeric goals. How many views you want to get on average per video, the number of subscribers to your channel, average watch time, and so on.
These goals are better to set once you have released your first few videos on your YouTube channel, as you will have set a standard by then and can base this on your current averages.
We will explore this later on below in the YouTube channel optimisation section.
6. Begin filming your content
You are now ready to film your first piece of content for your YouTube channel. Filming yourself can be tough at first, but don’t worry; it takes time, but you will get used to talking to the camera.
Here are our essential tips for filming yourself:
- Stabilise your camera
- Quality lighting
- Ensure you have good audio
- Be natural
- Have fun with it
- Learn how to edit
To read more about how to film yourself, here is our in-depth guide on filming yourself: “Filming Yourself: The top tips for filming yourself.”
7. Optimize your YouTube channel
Now you’ve finished filming your first YouTube video; it’s time to optimise your YouTube channel before you post your first piece of content.
When optimising your channel, make sure you update and complete the “about” section. Make sure you include what your channel is about, but make it readable and catchy.
Include any additional links to your other social media accounts (if you have any others) to help build your brand.
Create an icon for your YouTube banner and create an enticing banner to promote your channel. By having a complete YouTube account, it builds a repertoire with your audience and potential subscribers.
At first, your channel doesn’t have to be completely professional, designed by an expensive designer – but should look relatively professional. You can achieve this for free by using the free version of Canva to create your artwork.
8. Upload your first video and analyse
Now you’ve finished filming and editing your first YouTube video you can now look to analyse the performance and optimise your channel for future content.
Once you’ve posted your first video and have shared it on the platforms of your choice, sit back and listen to what the viewers comment. Be sure to respond to them and only take advice from any constructive comments of what they like and what they don’t like.
This will help you adapt your content to be relevant to your audience and keep them coming back for more.
Have a look at your YouTube analytics to see where the traffic is coming from and if you can tweak the copy within your video or the title to help bring in more organic traffic.
Our parting thoughts
Finally, this is just the start of your YouTube journey. It will take potentially years to achieve the success of some of your favourite YouTubers.
Keep at it and listen to your audience. Make decisions based on statistics, and most importantly, have fun.
Try and grow other social channels and share snippets or trailers to your videos to entice new audiences to your channel and expand your horizons.
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We hope this article on “How to become a YouTuber: The steps to success” was helpful to you. If you are interested, check out our iFilmThings YouTube channel, click here.
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