13-Step Guide To Launching A YouTube Channel
Starting a YouTube channel is an exciting adventure, but it can also feel overwhelming if you’re not sure where to start. In this episode, I walk you through the essential steps to kickstart your channel and set yourself up for success.
This episode provides actionable tips and insights designed to help you navigate the early stages of your YouTube journey with confidence. Don’t miss out on the chance to transform your YouTube aspirations into reality.
What’s been the toughest part of starting or growing your YouTube channel for you? Share your challenges, and let’s find solutions together!
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Transcript
Hey, would you like to know the 13 steps for getting started on YouTube?
Speaker:This is if you are new to YouTube, if you've not got a channel, this is the
Speaker:13 steps that will help you actually get launched and grow a channel.
Speaker:Now, my name is Matt Hughes, King of Video, and this is
Speaker:the YouTube Success Podcast.
Speaker:The reason why I'm talking about the 13 steps is we've got
Speaker:a FREE guide that you can get.
Speaker:If you head to YT, as in YouTube, ytlaunchpad.co.uk,
Speaker:you can go and grab this guide.
Speaker:And I'm going to read some of the steps on the guide, give you a
Speaker:little bit more information about it.
Speaker:And then, you'll see at the end, once you've got the guide, there's also an
Speaker:option to buy the YouTube Launchpad, a course that's available that will take
Speaker:you through each of these steps in detail.
Speaker:But I'm going to give you all the steps right now.
Speaker:So, you can grab the guide, you don't have to, but if you want to, it's a beautiful
Speaker:guide, my wife makes these guides for us, they're graphically beautiful, and you
Speaker:can follow along with the steps in there.
Speaker:I'm going to give you the steps here, you can write them down if you
Speaker:want to, but I would say just go and grab the guide anyway, it's FREE.
Speaker:You don't have to do anything else to grab the guide, just put in your email address.
Speaker:So, the 13 steps, and there is 13 steps, according to Matt Hughes, King of Video,
Speaker:and I'm going to go with step 1 first.
Speaker:So step 1 is setting up your Google account.
Speaker:You know, I missed this step out.
Speaker:When we first put this course together, I didn't put this step because I thought
Speaker:everyone has a Google account, right?
Speaker:And then I had one user that came to me, one of my clients, one of my students,
Speaker:she said, I don't have a Google account.
Speaker:I don't know how to set one up.
Speaker:So I created a step by step guide on how to set up a Google account.
Speaker:So you must have a Google account.
Speaker:You head over to YouTube and it allows you to create your own channel.
Speaker:And the second step in the guide is to check out the resources page.
Speaker:Look, the reason why I added this step in, the guide was originally 10 steps
Speaker:and we wanted to make it 13 steps.
Speaker:That's the real reason that I'm a very, very big realist.
Speaker:But if you go to, you know, I've talked about the resources page on the podcast
Speaker:before, a couple of episodes ago.
Speaker:If you go to kingofvideo.co.uk/resources, you'll find a bunch of resources.
Speaker:Some of them being TubeSpanner, TubeBuddy, VidIQ, they're all great
Speaker:YouTuber tools that you can use when you're setting up your channel.
Speaker:So it's Step #2 because I say set up your Google account, get yourself
Speaker:set up in Chrome and sign into Chrome and then go and grab these tools.
Speaker:They will help you when it comes to planning and research
Speaker:and all of that kind of stuff.
Speaker:So #2 is to check out the resources section.
Speaker:#3 then is to create your channel.
Speaker:So like I said, you go over to it.
Speaker:YouTube, it asks you, do you want to create a channel and then it
Speaker:asks you the type of channel.
Speaker:I think it assumes that you're going to create a brand channel now.
Speaker:It used to say personal channel, but it says brand channel now.
Speaker:And so brand channel is what you want.
Speaker:That's kind of the standard format for most people.
Speaker:And then you are a YouTuber, you've got a channel.
Speaker:Of course, there's more to it than that.
Speaker:Step 4 is to create some channel art.
Speaker:Channel art, your banner, whatever you want to call it.
Speaker:This for me is one of those things that really kind of just sets
Speaker:your, um, sets your intentions of what you're going to do.
Speaker:And it's something that can change, so you don't have to worry about it.
Speaker:If you're not a creative, if you're not graphically talented, what I really
Speaker:want you to think about when it comes to your channel art is that you're telling
Speaker:people what your channel involves.
Speaker:So it might be that you're a vlogger and you say it's Matt's Vlog, you
Speaker:might be a web designer and you say I'm going to do how-to videos,
Speaker:tutorials, you know, whatever.
Speaker:You're putting something on there that lets people know a lot of the time
Speaker:people when they create their banner, they will put things like the frequency
Speaker:at which they upload their videos, so they might say and like for mine, for
Speaker:example, it says new videos every week.
Speaker:So it's a good indication to people.
Speaker:Hey come back here every week and you'll find new videos on there as well If you
Speaker:don't have a template for your channel art, there is some in Canva anyway.
Speaker:But I've got a nice little channel that comes as part of the YouTube Launchpad.
Speaker:Just makes it a little bit easier for you to set up.
Speaker:It's a little bit fiddly getting it working across all devices, so the channel
Speaker:art template really helps you with that.
Speaker:Step #5 then is to upload and publish that channel art.
Speaker:So you go to Customise in YouTube studio.
Speaker:You go and find the branding section and then upload your channel art.
Speaker:And once it's there and published, then you've got yourself a branded channel.
Speaker:Step #6 then is to get your first 100 subscribers.
Speaker:Now I know that getting 100 subscribers with no video seems like a strange thing.
Speaker:And really, this is a personal belief, some YouTubers are
Speaker:going to tell me it's not true.
Speaker:In fact, I've had conversations about it and they say, you shouldn't do this.
Speaker:But I think YouTube struggles to push you out until you've got
Speaker:your first thousand subscribers.
Speaker:It doesn't really know the audience that you want.
Speaker:And I think as a business, if we're a brand new business with no
Speaker:audience, this may not work as well.
Speaker:But if you're an established business with an audience of ideal clients,
Speaker:what you can do is follow the 100 subscribers video that I've got, which
Speaker:is on my YouTube channel by the way.
Speaker:You can take the steps there and you could do things like sending an email to your
Speaker:list, to your email list and say, we are starting a YouTube channel, head over here
Speaker:and subscribe and in the next few weeks, you're going to get this, this and this.
Speaker:You let them know what they're going to get, why they should
Speaker:subscribe, what's in it for them.
Speaker:Just that one action in itself is enough usually to get yourself 100 subscribers.
Speaker:If you've got goodwill out in the world.
Speaker:So one of my clients did my YouTube challenge not too long ago, well it was
Speaker:quite a while ago, maybe two years ago.
Speaker:And she went out and she said, look, I'm starting a YouTube channel, I'm
Speaker:taking part in the challenge, I want to get to my first 100 subscribers.
Speaker:I think when your first 100 subscribers opens a few features as well.
Speaker:Anyway, she put out into the world, she said, I'm starting a YouTube channel.
Speaker:I'd love you to subscribe to me.
Speaker:If you are interested in the stuff that I've been putting out into the world, come
Speaker:along to my YouTube channel and subscribe.
Speaker:And everybody that I know that's done that, that has a goodwill in the world,
Speaker:that has a list, that has people that are following them, will get to 100
Speaker:subscribers pretty much straight away.
Speaker:That particular person managed to get to something like 110, 120 subscribers in
Speaker:two days just by following that strategy.
Speaker:So you can do that.
Speaker:So that's step 6.
Speaker:Follow the tips in step 6.
Speaker:Again, it's in the launchpad and on my YouTube channel.
Speaker:Step 7 is understanding your formula for your videos.
Speaker:So I call this the perfect YouTube formula.
Speaker:The only thing in the perfect YouTube formula, I need to update
Speaker:it really, is I used to have an intro video with all my videos.
Speaker:And as you know, from the podcast, I don't have an intro.
Speaker:I don't necessarily think the intros are necessary anymore,
Speaker:or at least not long ones.
Speaker:Mine was about 10 seconds, something like that.
Speaker:And so the formula for me was always introduce what's in the
Speaker:video, have your intro, deliver the content, and summarise the video.
Speaker:And I don't necessarily see that that's the case anymore.
Speaker:But you'll see in the guide there, it tells you that very thing.
Speaker:So in this video, I'm going to show you XYZ, then deliver the main content.
Speaker:Oh, I thought we'd updated it, so no intro video now.
Speaker:Then deliver the main content, ask for a subscribe, like at
Speaker:some point during the video.
Speaker:And then you're closing remarks.
Speaker:So that's step #7.
Speaker:Step #8 then is to research your video ideas.
Speaker:So I know, again, it feels weird that we're coming up with the YouTube formula
Speaker:that we've got, the structure for our videos, but it's about us getting excited.
Speaker:So we've got ourselves 100 subscribers.
Speaker:We've already got an audience.
Speaker:So we're excited that they're waiting for us to publish video.
Speaker:We've got the structure of our videos.
Speaker:Now we're going to do the research, knowing that we've got subscribers,
Speaker:that we've got our structure.
Speaker:What videos are we going to create?
Speaker:All right.
Speaker:And if you've listened to the previous podcast episode, I do talk about
Speaker:planning and there's some great advice in there about research and planning,
Speaker:so you can take action there with that.
Speaker:Once you've done that, step #9 is to create a video plan.
Speaker:And the thing about a video plan is it's not just a list of videos.
Speaker:A list of videos is fine, you come up with that in your planning during
Speaker:your planning process, but actually it's about intention setting as well.
Speaker:In the planning episode, the podcast episode, I talked about ChatGPT and
Speaker:how you could create a YouTube plan with it, or a YouTube planner with it.
Speaker:One of the things on there that I really encourage people to do is set
Speaker:a filming date and a publishing date, and this is setting your intentions.
Speaker:So it's saying that I'm going to film this on this day, or by this date,
Speaker:and I'm going to publish by this date.
Speaker:And what I ask people to do is set their filming dates in batches of four.
Speaker:So I'd say like, today when I'm filming this it's August the 14th, so I'd say
Speaker:my filming date is August the 14th.
Speaker:My publishing date is a month later, so I've got some time to edit those videos.
Speaker:I get them, get you to do them in batches of four.
Speaker:So you've got four at a time that gives you a month's worth of content to publish
Speaker:if you're publishing one video per week.
Speaker:So creating that video plan and setting those intentions is super important.
Speaker:That's step #9.
Speaker:Step #10 then, is filming and publishing your intro video.
Speaker:Again, when I'm thinking about doing this stuff, I ask you to film the intro
Speaker:video, very little editing the first time around, and get that published.
Speaker:But now you understand who your ideal clients are, you've got some of those
Speaker:subscribers, you know the format of your videos, You've done your
Speaker:research and you've got your ideas.
Speaker:When you're creating the intro video, you can tell people, Hey, this is what
Speaker:you're going to get from this channel.
Speaker:This is the kind of videos, cause you've done your research.
Speaker:So you know, the kind of videos you're going to make.
Speaker:This is the kind of videos you're going to get.
Speaker:This is who I am.
Speaker:And that's it, you know, subscribe to the channel.
Speaker:Right, so it's a little intro video, a trailer for the channel, really,
Speaker:really gets you excited about that.
Speaker:It only needs to be sort of 2-5 minutes long.
Speaker:I've seen them as short as 2 minutes, and 5 minutes is a sort of a good amount
Speaker:of time to get everything in there.
Speaker:Step #11 then is to batch film your first four videos.
Speaker:So we talked about the plan, we've set our intentions with the date, we now need
Speaker:to go away and film those four videos.
Speaker:Step #12 is to create some attractive thumbnails.
Speaker:Now there is a conversation that people have about creating a thumbnail first in
Speaker:order to then go and create the video.
Speaker:It's very well documented that MrBeast does this, he'll create fifty versions
Speaker:of a thumbnail, Pick one of them and then it'll go and create that video.
Speaker:That is one strategy and it's okay for someone like Mr Beast to say
Speaker:that that's the strategy he chooses.
Speaker:He wants to get excited about the videos, that kind of thing.
Speaker:You don't necessarily need to do that straight away.
Speaker:You can film your videos and just remember when you're doing the batch filming
Speaker:for those four videos to go and create a thumbnail at the same time as well.
Speaker:It's always nice to have a thumbnail that has the same
Speaker:clothes on that you're wearing.
Speaker:If I've got a red top on today, I'd want a thumbnail that has the same
Speaker:sort of thing in the thumbnail.
Speaker:So it's to create the thumbnails.
Speaker:So now you've got your thumbnails, now you've got your videos,
Speaker:you've published your intro video, now we can really get cracking.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:Step #13, the last step of the whole situation is to sign up for my Launchpad.
Speaker:So if the content of what we've got in this episode, you found really
Speaker:interesting and you think, okay, I can do that Matt, but I need a step
Speaker:by step guide on how to do this.
Speaker:I want someone to show me.
Speaker:In the screen recordings, the exact steps that I need to take.
Speaker:I want to know how to film high quality videos with my mobile phone.
Speaker:I want to know how to get my first a hundred or how to get
Speaker:my first a thousand subscribers.
Speaker:All of that stuff is inside my YouTube Launch Pad.
Speaker:By signing up for the 13 steps, by going and grabbing that 13 steps guide, you'll
Speaker:be sent an offer for that launch pad.
Speaker:And I think that is a brilliant investment if you're just
Speaker:getting started with YouTube.
Speaker:You can take these 13 steps that I've given you and go and do it anyway.
Speaker:But by joining the academy and joining the YouTube Launch Pad,
Speaker:you're doing it with us, right?
Speaker:I'm there in that community helping you do this stuff.
Speaker:So take that offer up and get yourself started All right,
Speaker:that's it for this episode.
Speaker:I hope you've enjoyed the 13 steps.
Speaker:I hope it's been valuable to you, even though of course I'm
Speaker:making you an offer as well.
Speaker:There's a lot of good stuff in there for you to get cracking.
Speaker:My name is Matt Hughes, King of Video, and I'll see you in the next
Speaker:YouTube Success podcast episode.
Speaker:Bye.
Speaker:Bye
