"EVERYONE WANT'S A VOICE, BUT VERY FEW PEOPLE HAVE SOMETHING TO SAY".

"Please find something that you really want to say..."

*IF YOU ARE ONLY READING THIS BECAUSE YOU WANT TO GROW ON YOUTUBE SKIP A FEW PARAGRAPHS... BUT I RECOMMEND YOU READ THE WHOLE THING.

Today if this article is out, then it is the first day of VIDCON 2018, the biggest YouTube conference of the year. I'll be speaking this week during 3 sessions, 2 on the creator track and 1 for the industry track. Right now as I write this I'm thinking about the past present and future of the YouTube platform.

Do you know what nearly every YouTuber I've ever talked to whether they have 10,000 subscribers or 2 Million Subscribers says they are afraid of?

Being Irrelevant.
Being forced out of the Algorithm.
People not liking their content.

The thing is, it is very hard to counter those fears because none of those things are in your control, and those fears are not something that I spend a lot of time worrying about for that very reason.

If you're an aspiring YouTuber, if you're trying to "make it", being "RELEVANT" especially if you're young, probably means everything to you.

The problem is that means you are giving your whole sense of value and identity over to supply and demand of an audience of strangers... and you do that, do they care about the real you? Or only if you perform for them and make them feel good?

 There are a few things I want people to understand about the 1200 or so videos I've made on YouTube since July 2013...

SECRETS OF MY YOUTUBE SUCCESS HAD LITTLE TO DO WITH YOUTUBE

My intention was never to become a big YouTuber or to set a specific subscriber goal, because I came to YouTube just to make content around things I was good at to possibly help me grow my freelance business while also teaching people who maybe couldn't afford to go to college how to gain my skills, and I wanted to do that because I didn't grow up in a family with a lot of money and I had to pay for community college cash.

I want you to think about that, I had something to say because there was a painful experience in my life and there was something I was passionate about I wanted to share.

If it wasn't Photoshop and video editing, I would have eventually probably just talked about my favorite shows and movies, and it's not like people haven't grown an audience around being fans of the same things before.

What I didn't do, was make being a YouTuber my identity and didn't let YouTube take over my life even when I did daily content for over 2 years. 

HERE ARE THINGS YOU SHOULD DO TODAY TO BE SUCCESSFUL REGARDLESS OF GENRE ON YOUTUBE.

• Fill up a whole 1 Subject Notebook with Notes by studying 10 channels doing what you want to do, study every part of their videos, thumbnails, and backstory
• If you don't know what you want to do on YouTube yet, get on Instagram and build up a personal profile taking selfies and doing Instagram stories about your day and get used to talking on camera first
• Learn to get good at editing, video production, and photography
• Start having conversations with people on Twitter and build a following there
• Find people in your niche that are big in the Reddit community, befriend them and ask them to share your content every now and again.
• Produce content with PLAYLIST in mind, and make sure you are filling the playlist with 6-10 videos that will be similar enough to convert a viewer to a subscriber
• Tap into awareness and trends, but don't try to go big on every single video with something that is hot right now.
• Plan a production schedule for making content, without killing yourself to put out quality and quantity
• Be willing to commit to making a minimum of 50-100 videos before worrying about growth
• Produce high-quality thumbnails to increase your overall click-thru rates.
• DO NOT SET SUBSCRIBER GOALS OR VIEW GOALS
• Use Tubebuddy to Optimize Your Videos and Productivity 

STOP JUDGING YOURSELF AGAINST BIG YOUTUBERS OR ANYONE ELSE

Let me be very real with you for a second. Stop judging yourself by other people or by your view or subscriber count. Please just stop. If you do this, if you set view and subscriber goals, you're just going to frustrate yourself and you won't make content you love. You'll just pander to people or to the algorithm.

Do not make YouTube success your overarching goal, and do not let it consume your life. Set out to make the best content you can make while pleasing yourself, or sharing your voice or your vision or your skills. Yes, you need to work hard at it. Yes, you need to be consistent, but you also have to be very aware that you will not see results in a year. Yeah, there are people who blew up in a year, you're not them.

That is going to sound harsh or condescending or harsh. But I want you to look in the mirror and be honest with yourself, you know that you're not them, you are you, so stop grafting expectations on to yourself based in someone else's success.

Views and subscribers are not an evaluation of quality, they are an evaluation of supply and demand, nothing more, nothing less. Also, they don't necessarily matter in the algorithm either, but you should be making content for yourself, your audience, and then make the algorithm an afterthought.