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What should you initially focus on when starting your YouTube Channel?

By Phil/Kords | Published 11 April 2020 | No Comments

Word Count: 1446
Time to read: Less than 6 minutes

This is important. You will be confused at first. You will also not know what you should concentrate on. Worst still, you will struggle to understand how to proceed. Yes, you will upload videos once every week or twice a week. What you should also understand and accept that quality uncertainly is natural for a newcomer. Accept it.

If you feel the above – that will go to show how unprepared or under prepared you are. I was sailing in the same boat as you. So what did I do? I focused on Consistency rather Quality. What should you do? Let me guide you.

First focus on consistency without compromising on quality. How you can go about doing that is very simple. You are just starting out and have no idea how receptive your videos are. You will know only once you have built a substantial base of video content over a period.

Keep your videos simple with little to no video editing. Yes, it may be sloppy at first. That is part of the learning process. It is very important that you do not be complacent in your approach. Remember, quality is paramount and that you have to be consistent in.

This is not considering the niche. The ‘level of quality’ as I would like to put it varies irrespective if you are a single individual managing your channel or a small studio. For a simple Vlog ranting, bantering or making comments about the world around you is different. You will not need too much of video editing. At the most, you may require some title effects, title animation or maybe adding some background music. You can achieve all of this with a good video editing app like Kine Master, Filmora or InShot.

Please, opt for the paid version – trust me it is worth the investment. So stop looking for hacks online to remove the watermark. Okay, you might say since you are just starting out, you might as well don’t invest and would prefer to do so after you get some ‘returns’. My thoughts exactly. However, I failed to realise – it does not work that way. If you are serious about YouTubing, you should also be incredibly serious about investing in some serious gear. This need not be expensive, as you should not focus on the best and pricey gear. This can come later. Focus on what you can afford at an acceptably investing amount. Measure that aspect.

What you could do is discuss this matter with a senior member of the family or your best friend or anyone who understands you. There are times when some discussion has to come out in the open. Keep it restricted to a few known circles. Now that you have that part set, you can remove your concern about not delivering consistent quality even if it means the basic.

If you plan to use your own voice for voice-overs, make sure you do not compromise on your vocal quality. This holds precedence over anything out there. There is no learning curve in this aspect – I will share how you can make your voice sounding better in future posts.

You should focus on this basic quality. It is not difficult.

Here comes the difficult part:

 The first few videos are going to be crap. No matter how many efforts you put in it. If you are doing voice overs via scripting like me, be prepared to under-deliver initially.

Two years hence, I am still doing voice-overs over a written script. Many YouTube coaches prefer that you make pointers and let those pointers guide your voice-overs. That is the way to go. However, if English is not your first language, no matter how good you speak – you will never sound as good as a native English speaker. What you can do instead is to match your level with theirs.

English is not my first language – Konkani is. However, since childhood, my Mom focused on developing my verbal skills for English. Here I am making the best use of my English speaking skills.

“But what about me? My English is not as good as yours, I did not learn to speak English since childhood, I did not attend a convent school…?” Wait! What? Okay, a little bit of back-story. In India, the best places to learn English is in convent schools. Yes, I completed my schooling from a convent school. Chances are if a person can speak good or even decent English – he or she has been educated from a convent school in India.    

Anyway, if you can even speak Basic English – go for it. No one wants you to speak a class of English no one understands. You will make a fool of yourself and sound repulsive as well. As long as you do not make any grammatical mistakes while speaking then you need not worry about anything. That is why I prefer writing my voice-overs from a script. As you can very well understand, how interconnected things are. You start with voice-overs and it ultimately boils down to your language.

When it comes to quality your order of priority should be like this:

 1. Good command of the language

2. Basic audio editing skills

3. Little to no video editing skills

You master the three points mentioned above – these will suffice for you to get going initially.

How many videos to post initially and the length of each video: 

 This is a very good question. Bluntly put, the more the better. However, since you are starting out – ask yourself a few questions:

1. Am I YouTubing as an experiment to see if it works as a career option in the future?
2. Am I planning to go full time as a YouTuber in the future once I blow up?

Let me answer the first two:

1. No. I am doing this as a hobby because I love games and blogging both.
2. Maybe. I already have a somewhat well-paying job. Five years from now, time will decide if I will be a full-time content creator. This means launching another YouTube Channel (this is already in the works).

• my plan is launching another YouTube music channel, running my existing gaming channel (I will never stop playing games. Period.) and finally this blog.

Start with posting one video every week. Fix a day and time when your videos will go live. Subsequently, announce your video-live status on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram whichever social media platform you prefer but it should at least be two platforms. See how comfortable you are with it. Although you may be able to post 2-3 videos a week – it is super important to note that you have to go with the flow and pace yourselves. Make sure your hobby does not overwhelm you.

With respect to the length – this is subjective from niche to niche. Some YouTube coaches may suggest posting 10 minute long videos as that it the apt length, while some may still advice a little above five minutes. So what do you do?

My video is around 5 minutes and that was not out of choice but a compulsion. You see, I do my recording and editing on my smartphone. It has limited space of around 5 GB free but I make sure I convey everything in those 5-minuets. If I could extend it to another 10 minutes, would I do it? No. If I could, I would extend to 2-3 minutes more depending on any additional things I would want to say. Besides, two years already into it I feel around 5 minutes still seems apt for me. You can decide on the length only after you start. Understand this aspect and you will have the right length for your videos.

Your niche and the topic will determine the length and not you. “

According to the Creator Academy of YouTube – “length of your videos does not matter. If your video is 3 minutes long then make sure you deliver quality in those three minutes”- not the exact words but you get the idea.

Length does not matter because an audience already exists for niches who want to consume content that is 1 minute, 5 minutes, 15 minutes and even 30 minutes long or more. Usually, longer videos tend to be tutorials or gaming videos.  

Observe other niches out there just to gauge how long their videos are. Can you do better in 3 minutes then there is nothing like it. If you can do best in a 15-minute video then that should not stop you.  

What should you initially focus on when starting your YouTube Channel? 

All the best!

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