How to Stay Motivated as a Small YouTuber

1. Introduction: In this Skillshare class, I'm going to show you how to remain motivated as a small YouTube that when you start your own YouTube channel, you are required to do everything. You have to develop a lot of skills, such as researching and writing your own scripts, learning how to use a video camera, learning different lighting techniques in audio settings. And then you also have to become confident at presenting and talking to the camera. And then after all of this, you then have to learn how to edit the video and uploaded onto YouTube. So it is very easy for new YouTube creators to become overwhelmed and being motivated due to the huge amount of tasks you have to tackle. Since starting my very first YouTube channel, I've created almost 400 YouTube videos, gained always 5 million views across all of those videos doesn't have a total of 27 thousand subscribers. During these hard process of growing my YouTube channel, I've learned a lot of techniques and strategies to cope with this feeling and I want to share them inside of this Skillshare class. If you're thinking about quitting your dream of becoming a YouTuber, watch this Skillshare class first, and by the end of it, I think you'll feel different. 2. Behind the Scenes Strategy: Sometimes a lack of motivation towards your YouTube channel can be due to a loss of vision. What is the angle and all of the hard work for when you begin your YouTube journey, you are full of energy and excitement at the very beginning of it. This results in you learning loads about the platform. You watch every single YouTube video. You tried to learn how to edit videos correctly, make thumbnails, how to use different tools to get better search engine optimization and you sustain a level of interest. Then what can happen once you are maybe 456 months into your YouTube journey as the results haven't been as significant as you might expect, your interests begins to drop. In addition, a few factors that could cause this drop of interests is a bit of overwhelm. You didn't anticipate how much work it would be to film, edit, plan, shoot all these different videos. And you just sort of losing a bit of vision because you can't really get beyond all of the work that you're currently trapped within. What happens at this point when we start to drop down our interests to feel overwhelmed with the amount of videos that we need to create and keep things on top. And we just started on this treadmill of creating content is we forget why we started in the first place, which might have been to end up here right at the top of the mountain, the 100 K Serbs or making X amount of money per month with the ads, whatever. Now in this low period that we're currently in right now, the best thing I've found to do for me personally was to focus on the strategy behind the scenes that was going to support my entire YouTube business. And this was reflected in my upload schedule for 2021. This was probably my hardest year on YouTube that I've had. As unlike the previous year, 2020, I no longer had the naivety of being a new YouTuber. And I adjusted the reality of the size of the niche that I was creating videos for. Having the realization that the niche I was creating content for couldn't even get a 100 thousand views per video. It was a little bit de-motivating as it sort of destroyed my entire plan for how my channel was going to grow in the future. If we take a look at my content calendar from 2020, you can see I didn't miss a single upload. I uploaded three videos every single week, sometimes even the daily videos on particular weeks to sort of push myself into that YouTube partner programs, get my watchtowers up as I was about to hit 1 thousand subscribers. And for the entire year, I uploaded three videos every single week and didn't fail. And this was going into 2020 when I then switched over to this content calendar. Now I continued the same amount of motivation and focus for a majority of the year, did three videos a week. Some ions tried out a few different upload days where the Monday's work better than Tuesdays, just minor details like that. And then around May time, this is where I started too. I'm struggling a bit with the music channel. And when we go into the summer period, you can see my inconsistency starts to creep in. I was uploading maybe one to two videos a week, sometimes not even getting a video out at all as you see down here. This was nowhere near the level of focus that I had in the previous year. But the key thing is it wasn't like I was not working during this entire period. There was a lot of stuff going on behind the scenes that I had to figure out mentally within my head. The key thing to bear in mind is around May was the period when I launched my second YouTube channel. As I understood the limitations that were happening on my music channel. Now with the music channel, I have worked with a huge range of brands within the music space and dans particular videos for them, as you can see here, exclusive first looks and those types of things. Now the problem is although you think working with brands is the perfect solution to your YouTube channel, it actually derailed and hijack my vision for my own personal brand that I was trying to create. I was so busy creating the content that was requested by other brands, like particular videos that they wanted me to do, that I completely forgot what the whole purpose was of my own YouTube channel. What content do I want to create? What is the purpose of these videos other than just basically helping out with the request email that I was getting. The worst part is I wasn't even getting paid by these brands to create any of this content. Let me just sending me emails going on. We've got loads of customer questions on this, what you'd like to make a video on it. And I would go yes, because I was naive and thought by doing this will help me build up a bit of a relationship with the brand and it would lead to things, but it actually led to absolutely nothing. All it resulted in was them getting free tutorial videos from me. The videos wouldn't even getting enough views for the amount of hours it was taken me to create the content I was making like five pounds per video because there just wasn't enough views for these types of tutorials. And I was constantly being led down the path of all these fake promises and opportunities coming in the future that in reality when never going to transpire. And we're being very young only 2021 at the time of going through this message with your head quite a lot because you think you're going to have all these opportunities coming in the future. So you'll keep making these videos for them when in reality they're just using an abusing you. I went through this tough motivation period during the summer. I ended a lot of the relationships with the brands that I was working with to try and refocus my head onto what was important, why I was creating this music content and these different channels. Because what had happened was I had lost my own personal vision on the YouTube channel, and instead I was fulfilling the vision of the brands, what they wanted from me rather than what I basically almost wanted from them. I decided to take a complete break from the music channel. And you can see I haven't really uploaded on here for six months. During this six-month that gave me time to completely reassess the situation, find out what was important to me for the content that I wanted to produce and also re-ignite a little bit of interest back into the to the topic. So I could actually make these videos without it being completely depressing during the six-month period is basically ending my YouTube channel. I switched my entire focus to my tech channel. And I went from uploading three videos a week on my music channel to uploading 0 videos a week, this time away, allow me to learn more about YouTube and a completely different niche and how I could take a different approach to my content. I using search versus browse and suggested views. It was a completely different way of getting views onto the tech channel because of how much larger the audience was. But during the six months I didn't completely quit and not do any work on the music channel behind the scenes. I was trying to figure out how I could position the channel better going into in 2022. Now you'd first assume because I hadn't uploaded any content that my YouTube channel had completely died. But as you can see, if we compare the views from the beginning of 2021 to the end of 2021, there was literally no difference in the views I was getting per day. I was still getting around 3.5 thousand views every single day regardless of if I was doing three videos a week versus doing 0 videos per week. This made me realize that I was putting way too much stress on myself to create three videos a week where really it didn't no impact to my overall analytics. Now the key thing is it because my channel is now established with a lot of content. If you don't have any content at all, like only about ten videos, than it will be a completely different story. But this music channel has got 261 videos. So it meant that even when I took the time off, my library of videos, because it'll search based in Evergreen content like tutorials. They just kept ticking away without me even needing to maintain it. But the key takeaway from this period off was that I no longer had to upload a crazy amount of content if I wanted to keep this YouTube channel alive by taking a step back from the situation. It now actually means I have a more effective plan going into 2022, because I only need to create one video per week now, rather than having to create three like I previously was, this now means I'll be creating around 104 videos less per year, which is a huge amount of work. And it will not make any difference to how many views this channel can get. So suddenly this music channel has become more profitable than it previously was because the workload is being reduced. So at times when you're feeling demoed, if I didn't burn out with your YouTube channel, it's important just to take that step back, reassess the situation, stopped maybe producing videos, because as you can see with my channel there, it made no impact at all. 2-bits growth and performance. It's still kept ticking away, like as if I was uploading, but it gave me that important time to basically mentally heal myself onto refocusing on what was important and the purpose of this channel. And also, it made me realize I didn't need to upload and work as hard as I was on it because it made basically 0 impact. 3. Experimenting with Something New: The first thing to try if you're feeling demotivated as a YouTube is figuring out some new content types. This may include a few different things such as branching out into different areas within the niche that you're creating content for. Try a completely different niche and rebranding a channeling case. Maybe your interests have changed, maybe started a channel a few years ago. You've matured quite a lot growing up and you're not really interested in, may be talking about gaming anymore and you want to talk more about tech or something like that. I'm probably the most simplest is to actually try and push your creativity. And let's try a different filming style. Maybe you make shorter YouTube videos, maybe slightly longer format videos, and just find a new way of editing that may be a little bit more interesting. Maybe add more B-roll, try maybe doing less payrolls and do more role unboxing videos with your first impressions like single take type things, just try different stuff that you haven't already. This is exactly what I did back in summer. Now I have two different YouTube channels, Ben Rollins music and also Ben Roland, which is my tech channel. Now my first ever YouTube channel was been rolling to music, where I was uploading three videos every single week. And these included tutorials, product reviews, product demos, and boxing videos of musical equipment. Now I grew this channel to around 10 thousand subscribers before I went ahead and started my second channel. But at this point, I began to sort of get sick of creating the exact same tutorial videos all of the time or do you in getting started guides? I was filming courses. I was doing how-to tutorials on the same products and they were from the same manufacturer. So basically every single day I was creating mentally the exact same video just on a different product number. And you can see this within my actual videos that I was uploading during this period, you can see boss are C5. How to set up an expression pedal. If we go down earlier, we had a neural code cortex how to set up an expression pedal. And if we continue, you can see repetitions like this within the videos that I was having to create for the products, there was talking about review videos, getting started guides and how to set up foot switches, expression petals and so on. And it was getting a little bit tedious. The talking about the same things all of the time, just for different products from slightly different manufacturers. This then let me to try something completely different and launched a new channel, which was my tech review channel. I had already done a few tech reviews on my music channel. If we take a look at my most popular videos, you've got this setting up a live stream which he sold a tech oriented and also using this LG TV as a computer monitor. My most viewed videos on my music channel already knew that I enjoyed making this type of content from those couple of videos that I had made. And tech was already a huge interest of mine. And there was a ton of different products from a range of different manufacturers that we're all company different. So each video was going to be way more interesting for me to create. Personally, I went ahead and launched my second channel than Roland. And the reason why I did this was because it was an experiment and I didn't want it to devalue all of the content. I denote my music channel and suddenly rebrand it completely. So that's why I launched it as a completely separate channel. And then throughout the latter stages of last year, this became a complete main focus. I no longer uploaded on music and all I did was just tech videos pretty much every single week. And a particular point I was uploading tech videos every single week day, Monday all the way through to Friday, videos coming out every single day. And although this is still making YouTube content something that I was technically sort of burned out on. It was a completely different style of making content and it was pushing me creatively and having to learn new skills, how to use my gimbal correctly, how to shoot better B-roll. So it was as good as some of the top tech YouTubers with 15 million subscribers. So my videos, because actually be competitive, how can I edit them better and change that my editing approaches sharper and more to the point, there was lots of things that I was willing personally, and it suddenly became a challenge. Again, former YouTube had became his challenge where I was developing my skills and push myself further as a video creator. So all of these different factors added together learning new skills, learning a completely new niche, and how to get the videos to perform well, created a new challenge and added way more motivation back into what I was doing. And you can see if we take a look at some of my most popular videos, this motivation has been reflected in the success of the channel with some videos having almost over 500 thousand views in a relatively short period of time. So my first piece of advice is not to go and start a second YouTube channel from the ground up because that's a lot of work in this overwhelming in its own way. Could you starting from 0 with no monetization once again, but instead, look at your channel you currently have and find a way to reignite the excitement for it, branching out into new areas of the Nicea it currently doing, change the editing style, your approach to the content, and just basically try something completely new that you haven't already. Because you may be surprised that it actually works with your audience. And you may end up getting some pretty good results. 4. Your Focus is Wrong: Another fact that for your lack of motivation could be that your focus is completely wrong when people start their YouTube channel, the two main factors that they think about, these views also subscribe as it's literally that is where it's at. They want to get a 100 thousand subscribers or the one to get a million views on a video. But they don't think about any other factor beyond that point. Now the important thing to recognize with both of these metrics is you have no control over them. Yes, you can influence them by uploading more videos, uploading better videos, but as thumbnails, titles or that type of stuff. But you still definitively don't have any personal control over them. You can't sit there and for someone to click the red subscribe button, who's watching your video in America when your channel is in the UK, just physically and not possible. Likewise, you can't control how many people I go into view your video because you might make a video that is for that niche audience. So it couldn't possibly get even 10 thousand views are a 100 thousand views are a million views like you want. And likewise, if you're in a more saturated competitive space like gaming and tech, the big guys are always going to take the huge bulk of the view. So you've got your MK PhD. He's always going to get a consistent to the 3 million views per upload video. And he reviews and iPhone, whereas nine is probably at best go in and get about 40 thousand views or a 100 thousand views in the best-case scenario because of the size of my channel and the authority and Kb PhD has overall of those keywords and also influence in the market because of how it lodges. Whereas Ben Rowling's way, these couple of thousand subscribers and it's a brand new channel with no data and proven track record to YouTube, isn't going to have his video pushed out as much because YouTube isn't going to back this host compared to one that always wins the race is instead, during your phase is a small YouTuber. You need to focus on what you can actually control. And that is how many videos you upload. You have 100% complete control over how many videos you choose to upload per day, per week, per month, and also per year when you were small YouTuber, the most important thing to do is get that content library built out and start building some authority around particular keywords because you have a lot of content that is oriented around it. This is exactly what I did with the music channel. I uploaded three videos every single week from day one, I've started that channel even though I didn't have the skill set to even edit videos that fast, I still force myself to do it and learn the skills and it took me ages to create each video individually. Now, although in the previous video we established that uploading more doesn't always yield more results. I believe in the early days, it is very important to accelerating your growth. The reason why now my YouTube channel has sort of plateaued in terms of its growth potential at this current period of time. It's because I've done pretty much every single possible tutorial video on those products that I have built authority around. There's keywords false, so they literally isn't really any more people that I can reach any faster. It's all down to them buying the product and finding the videos. Now, you almost is stuck at the pace that the brand is growing. For my brand to grow because of how much educational information I've built around these particular products exists. But let's say I started my music channel and it's something that easy, like one video a week. Instead of having 264 videos like I currently have, I would have only created around something like one hundred one hundred and four videos, give a take the weeks where I made out of uploading because it was Christmas in that same two-year period. It's a huge difference. And the difference is around 160 videos. And then if you put this into perspective with one video per week, you need to make 160 videos. That would be the equivalent to creating three years more worth of content. Because obviously if you upload one video per week, that's a total of around 52 videos per year. Whereas if you upload three videos per week, that's a total of 156 videos per year. So you have the power to accelerate your growth hugely in the first one to two years of your YouTube channel, if you focus on building out that content library in a very efficient way. Because I chose that hard option in the early days that required a lot of motivation in order to do so, it meant that the channel is now in a position where I can take time off from it because I'm almost done the work ahead of time because of how hard I worked in the previous years. So if you're currently stuck in a situation where you're not getting enough views or subscribers, probably the most likely thing is you don't have enough videos toward the traffic to come through and you're not building enough momentum on the algorithm. So the best way to motivate yourself is instead of thinking about, or I never got no subscribers today is it would be I've uploaded one video today or I've uploaded three videos this week. Instead of using goals as these sort of visualization processes where you go, I'm going to get a 100 subscribers. That's my goal and I'm going to have a Lamborghini or whatever. Instead, you should use goals is progress tracking, which is how I use them within my business. So you can have your views and subscribe a goals. And you can also have your video upload goals. But what you want to do is you want to track them across the period of the year. So you might go right, I'm going to upload one YouTube video per week, which will be 52 videos this year. And then every time you upload a video, you go 123. And then by the middle of the year, you might go right. I've uploaded 26 YouTube videos out of 52. And then this way because you're tracking your progress, increases the chance if you actually following through on it. Because across the year you have accountability for whether you are making progress on this target that you set yourself. Because if it the middle of the year, you set the goal of 52 subscribers at the start, but in the middle, you've only uploaded five YouTube videos. Then you know, you're not doing enough work and you're going to fail because you now have to upload multiple, multiple videos per week in order to achieve what you set out to do. So it gives you a accountability for your goals, which increases the likelihood of you actually uploading 52 out of 52 videos. And this is exactly what I did in 2020. I set the goal of 156 YouTube videos to upload and ended up uploading 161 YouTube videos. Basically because they got addicted to filling out the boxes and updating my track of progress all the time when I pushed out new content, it might actually exceeded my expectations than what I initially set. And then once you take control over your upload them out and know the content you're creating, making better thumbnails, adding it better, improving every single time. Suddenly now you can set views in subscribe it targets because you actually have something to measure them off. If you're uploading a 100 videos per year and maybe each video gets an average of 10 thousand views. You now have an average viewCount that you should be getting per year. Because you know, if you're going to upload 100 videos per year and each video we'll get an average of 10 thousand views a video. Well, that will be 1 million views per year. Certainly you now can start to set up, subscribe it and views goals because you actually have some form of mathematical data to figure out whether that's realistic or unrealistic for your current channel size in your niche. Then for example, if you're getting a million views per year with a 1% conversion ratio for basically subscribe as two views, which is a bit of a crude way to work it out because these could be repeat views, but just using 1% of the amount of views coming through, then that would be your sub-goal for the would be 10 thousand subscribers. The cars, you're going off a 1% conversion rate off of the amount of usually getting per video and per year. Now by focusing on the metrics that you can actually control in the early days is a small YouTuber. You can then set goals for the things that you don't have complete control over, like the views and subscribers, because you can mathematically figure out what they roughly would be based off of estimations from the amount of work you're putting into the channel. And the average is that that would sort of bring in. 5. Creating a Content Schedule: The last motivational tip I'd like to share with you is considering the fault of creating a content calendar. One of the hardest things is a YouTuber is that pressure of having to create a new video every single week and having to come up with a good idea that's better than the last one. So the video will be cooler and better than the last video that I made. Well, what I have is I have this system where I create my content calendar for almost the entire year. And I have my content planned out weeks and weeks in advance, even months in advance. And even if I don't know what the products coming out, I'll have a rough idea of going right. The new iPhones will launch around October time. So that's the iPhone week. So I have everything scheduled so far ahead that it removes that pressure and overwhelmed sensation from me. So I can just focus on the hardest task, but the simpler task of just making the video rather than coming up with the ideas. So this is an example of my older content calendar that I use. And I now have a hybrid workflow between this notion that I want to share with you. Now I have the entire year split off into individual week block. So you got January fourth, 11th, 18th, and this was the start of each week going from Monday through Sunday. And then I use little colored blocks that are color-coded, purple stuffs that reviews, and yellow stuff, a comparison videos, tutorials that orange. And then I use these color code system to just allocate videos each day. So at this point in time, I upload schedule was Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday. So I have corresponding videos with that time. And if we scroll all the way down to the last stage of this was with my tech channel when I was really going for it with daily videos, basically every single week day in this same chart as well. I also have all of my Skillshare classes that I have planned and also released. This content calendar gives you a lot of peace of mind and takes a lot of the stress and hassle away of coming up with ideas because at the moment I'm building out my content calendar plan for the next year. And I've just spent an entire day or two just sitting there coming up with ideas, ideas, watching lots of YouTube videos to see whether there's a lot of views that are out there for these particular topics or what's lacking out there in terms of information. And then I'm going away and judgment and out when and where I should upload these videos for the time of year. So for example, here's a week from my 2022 content calendar. And you can see it's much more comprehensive than the last year going into 2022, I'm going to be running for different YouTube channels. We're gonna have been Roland's, which is my tech stuff, then rolling into music, which is my music stuff. Then Rowan's media, which is going to be this style is stuff like software tutorials and the types of things that I teach here on Skillshare. Then also, the fourth channel is Ben Rollins gaming, which is something that I'm trying out where I'm uploading these gameplay clips now, although this is a huge amount of work just for one guy to attempt, I'm pretty confident that I'm going to nail it do to my efficient workflow and also this content calendar. Let me plan things ahead of time for it clear, a plan of action. I've now got this split off into each channel. We've got detect channel at the top. We've got my music channel on the second tier, all the music videos, I'm going to create the comparison videos. Then on the third row we have my general and media channel. And then on the bottom row we have my gaming channel for the gameplay clips that I'm going to upload. Then to the left-hand side of the spreadsheet, I also have key dates for when products will be arriving and I'll be receiving certain things that I've ordered, so I know right. I'm going to have to allocate this entire week to filming the course on this product. And as well at the bottom of it, I also have key dates for things like Black Fridays. If we scroll right down to the bottom, you're Black Friday leader, Black Friday itself, and Christmas week. So again, I know when key events are happening across the year, the cause my workflow has became so complex. I now use this spreadsheet in combination with Notion. Now notions, these fantastic free software that you can go ahead and plan out all of your content ideas. And it's perfect for YouTubers and Creatives. Now I actually have a full course here on Skillshare that I recommend watching next, which takes you through the basics of setting up notion as a content calendar and using it as a content creator. If we have a quick look at my Notion profile inside of here I have my home dashboard with each of my channels split off individually. And I don't have one for gaming because those videos don't really require that much preparation compared to these comparison and review videos. I do everywhere else. So for example, if we go into my music videos in here, you can see I have this entire database with each video laid out with a status and also the category of where that falls in where there's a comparison tutorial review. And then the date that I'm also going to be intend to publish this on. So currently the most important factor for the organization of this is the video titles, numbers, and also the status. This is a huge feature on notion that keeps me organized and on pace. I can go ahead and plan out the videos I wish to create. So for example, we've got this review video over here inside of this tab. I actually have the script and the notes written out that I have where I've written everything out ready to actually go film the review. I also have another class here on Skillshare that I recommend watching. Next after you've maybe watching the notion class that takes you through the process of writing the perfect script for your YouTube videos to get higher watch attention in that sort of 60 to 65% region. And this is an example of how I do that same technique. Now just inside of Notion, very nicely organized. You can see how it's just linked directly to the video title. And then over to the right we have a few other columns. Like if there's a video sponsor, don't really do too many sponsorships these days, so that's quite blank. And then we have our status. Where is it to do? Is it filmed or is it ready to film? Do I need to your planet edited, uploaded, etc. So each stage of the video releasing process, having the back-end of your YouTube channel organized like this makes it so stress-free. I mentally, I'm so much clearer because I know what content needs to be produced. Money is it going to be released? One of my behind changeable on do I need to film more of those? Plant more of those? What stage is that particular video at within its release schedule? It's so much better than just writing everything down on a piece of paper or just using Google Docs document to do that. And it definitely reduces the amount of overwhelmed that YouTube is my experience. And this in turn, helps increase your motivation because it makes creating the content significantly easier. Notion does also allow you to view all of this content inside of a calendar. We'd like a live calendar update view. So I don't even need this spreadsheet that I've created, but I just prefer this spreadsheet for the way visually displays the information for me, but the way I like to just learn then have things quite visually laid out in the style of chart. 6. Thanks for Watching!: I do hope that this Skillshare class has been a huge help and value to you. And it helps you understand how to feel more motivated as a YouTuber and some techniques that you can deploy in order to continue pushing forward with your YouTube channel. Don't forget to check out some of my other classes here on Skillshare that shows you all of the skills you need to know to create a successful YouTube channel and also run an online business. But as always, I've been Ben Roland's. Thank you so much for watching. Make sure you're following me here on Skillshare for more classes just like this coming in the future. And I'll see you in the next one.