How To Get Your First 100 Subscribers On YouTube

Today I want to talk to you about how to get your first 100 subscribers on YouTube. If you’re a small YouTuber just starting out, getting those initial subs can be a struggle.

Now before I get into how to get the first 100 subscribers, I think we have to talk about the YouTube partner program, and monetization. In 2018, YouTube updated their rules and policy, and you may not be aware of this.

Before 2018 you used to be able to monetize as a small YouTuber without having to meet any special requirements. It meant you could start making money on YouTube right away.

While it’s obvious you wouldn’t make any money when you’re just getting started and you don’t have an audience, you’re not getting views, it was an incentive that made people feel really good about starting a YouTube channel and like they could make it on YouTube.

That has since changed, the new requirement is that you have to get 1000 subscribers and you have to get 4,000 hours of watch time over the last 12 months. While that may seem intimidating, it’s not something that’s impossible for you as a small creator.

I want to concentrate this post on tips you haven’t heard before. So let’s start with some things that maybe people aren’t being honest with you about.

What’s Your YouTube Channel About

One of the most important things you can do for your YouTube channel, is have a niche. Have a clear, specific thing that your YouTube channel focuses on, and doesn’t deviate from. That is extremely important.

Just choosing a genre like gaming, isn’t necessary having a niche. You need to get even more specific than that. Is this FPS gaming? Is this, horror video games, is this dating SIMS, is this fighting games, what is it, is it gaming news, what’s your thing?

When it’s not clear what your channel is about or your channel’s all over the place and it’s not focused, when you’re doing 10 different random things at the start, it’s very hard to build momentum and to gain a following.

The days are long gone when you can just start out as a personality on YouTube, assuming you don’t have a social media following elsewhere.

It’s especially difficult if you just aren’t used to being on camera and you haven’t figured out your on camera presence and charisma yet.

These are actually the most important things that determine whether a channel is successful or not. It’s about the person and about the personality, but we need a clear focus, that we can wrap our head around and a lot of you don’t provide that.

There’s no consistency, there’s no continuity, there’s no over arching theme, there’s no storyline. Can you imagine if you did that on television, it wouldn’t work at all.

You wouldn’t get people to be able to come back every single week if they didn’t know what to expect and if those expectations weren’t being met, right.

I would encourage more of you to think like a viewer, think like a fan instead of thinking like someone who’s just trying to become a big YouTuber. I think it goes a long way.

Learn more about: Creating YouTube Videos That Get Results

Brand Your YouTube Channel

So aside from getting focused on what your niche is and figuring that out, you need to have some really good consistent visual branding.

Your YouTube thumbnails, your YouTube channel artwork, your YouTube profile pic, anything visual about your channel should be fairly consistent wherever it can be.

When you’re first getting started on YouTube far too many of people are relying on YouTube to do all the work to promote and market your channel.

It’s why so many people say that YouTube hates small YouTubers or YouTube doesn’t do anything to to help small YouTubers, and I have a counter argument.

Learn The YouTube Platform

I feel that small YouTubers don’t do enough to help themselves have an advantage or stand out in the platform. I’ve seen people rank on YouTube regardless of their subscriber count right next to videos that have a million views or a million subs.

It happens all the time if people take advantage of the tools and if they understand the system. So many of you are trying to compete with other YouTubers when you should just be competing with yourself and understanding the YouTube system.

I ended up growing on YouTube because I took advantage of the YouTube system. I read literally the YouTube creator playbook and I sat there and I studied every single menu in the YouTube dashboard and tried to figure out, what it all meant.

While I don’t think you need to go that far, per se, I think that a lot of you are jumping into YouTube with no understanding of it. Think of YouTube the same way you would think of picking up a sport or a musical instrument.

You would have no expectations of being good when you first start out but then after five or six months of effort in playing a sport you expect that you will start getting better. Even then you can’t compare to those that have been doing it for five or six years.

There’s really very few people that have the raw talent to compete in their first year with people who’ve been at it for five years or a decade. So maybe you need to temper those expectations.

Now there are people who’ve been on YouTube a long time and never broke 5,000 subscribers and it’s not always that they’re making bad content. Maybe they’re not understanding the YouTube platform as well as they could.

It also could be a matter of a certain threshold of talent. There’s a threshold of talent that might be able to get you to 1,000. There’s another threshold of talent that might get you to 10,000, 100,000, a million, 10 million, it’s about growth. It’s also about what your potential is.

You might have to accept that the niche or genre or thing that you do or your ability to do it, might have some limitations to it. That’s okay, your thumbnails and channel artwork are an opportunity for people to understand what your content is all about. Take advantage of this.

Learn more about: YouTube Channel Settings You Need To Know

Get Their Attention

You see, when you want to make good YouTube videos the first thing you have to do is get somebody to click on a video. What gets someone to click on a video?

The first thing is a good title that’s emotionally compelling and interesting and search friendly. Then a thumbnail that delivers on the promise of that title, the title and the thumbnail are a promise and then the video just has to deliver on that.

When I see a lot of small YouTubers who say they can’t make it, I go to their channel and guess what happens, I see not great thumbnails. There’s a great software called Thumbnail Blaster that makes thumbnail creation quick and easy.

I’ll click on one just to see what the video is like and I see a really good video that was packaged with a very crappy thumbnail. That thumbnail undermined the video, it threw the video completely under the bus.

Sometimes I’ve seen that the title has nothing to do with what’s in the actual video. It was someone trying to be cute or clever, instead of just giving me context, giving me something that respects my time and says, hey here’s what you’re gonna get if you click on this video.

That would have respected my time and it would have been something that gave them a much better shot at getting my view and getting my subscription.

Respect Your Subscribers

Some final thoughts on getting your first 100 subscribers. Don’t try and cheat by going out and buying subs, don’t do sub for sub, it doesn’t help you.

You need a quality community because that first 100 subscribers might feel hard to get but that core initial loyal audience are gonna be you’re ride or dies.

They’re gonna support you when things get hard and when things are feeling discouraging and when you want to quit the platform. Those 100 people will always be there.

Never cry yourself to sleep at night over the number of views that you’re getting because every single one of those is a person and those people deserve good content too and if you’re the person giving it to them, then great.

Keep engaging with those initial supporters, ask them to leave comments and specifically, go ahead and tell them that you would love for them to subscribe. Tell them what they can expect if they subscribe to you, give them a reason.

I really feel that a lot of small YouTubers can make good content and build a real community but I don’t think that many of you are giving yourself the chance. I think you have to stop relying on the YouTube platform to do everything for you.

You need to go out there and start studying the YouTube platform. Study what successful youtubers are doing with their titles, tags and descriptions. If you really want to be successful do YouTube it’s going to take dedication and consistency.

Learn more about: Best Youtube Research Tools

Starting On YouTube

My last tip for you is when you start your channel do not upload 10 videos at once in the same day. In fact, if you’re a small YouTuber never upload more than one video in the same day.

A lot of people think they can do that and it’s a good idea. It’s a horrible idea, so first of all that’s a warning. What I’m gonna recommend you do is that you maybe make 10 videos the first month in your channel, maybe 15.

You make them in advance and you release them a little bit of time apart, maybe a day or two apart and you launch your channel like that in the first 30 days. Then you promote and market it without being spammy in social media.

The reason for doing this is maybe you break it up into like a video series that has a part one, part two, part three. Then you do that again and again until you have 10 episodes of content.

The reason this is a good idea is because it actually builds something up for your audience to come back for instead of random videos or videos that they’re not interested in.

How To Get Your First 100 Subscribers On YouTube – Conclusion

I think if you put out consistent content that people want and I think if you make it something that makes sense to subscribe to because you’re getting more of what you want, then you guys have a better shot at growing your YouTube channel.

I think you can get those first 100 subscribers pretty quickly if you follow this advice. Yes, it will take work but more importantly you must have a plan of action. Figure out what your channel is going to focus on and who is going to be your audience.

I hope this post has given you a better idea of  how to get your first 100 subscribers on YouTube. Leave a comment below and let me know what you’re struggling with on YouTube and don’t forget to check out the other articles to help shorten your learning curve,