Avoid This COMMON Mistake When Starting A YouTube Channel

It’s always exciting when you start a new YouTube channel

It’s the beginning of your quest to:

• Build a tribe

• Share your expertise

• Create a new stream of income

What you may not know is that the start of your channel is also a make or break moment

Start the right channel and you will enjoy:

• Endless views

• Numerous monetization options

• An enjoyable and sustainable online business

Start the wrong channel and you will face:

• Slow growth

• Low monetization

• Lackluster audience connection

As you already know, there are strategies you can use to help you make this decision

For instance, as I talk about in Tube Freedom, you can use Google Trends to find topics to base your channel around

Another approach that can work well is to emulate larger channels

Logically speaking this makes a ton of sense and I’ve definitely used this approach in the past

However, old strategies don’t always last and relying on the statistics of larger channels when deciding on your own can land you in deep trouble

If you follow any other YouTube educators online you’ve likely been exposed to the site SocialBlade

Socialblade allows you to see the analytics of any channel on YouTube

Many educators will share example of channels and their income figures based on SocialBlade data

Here’s an example:

While it’s great to see some stats on potential channels you can start these figures don’t tell the full story…

Why is that?

1. Ad revenue estimated is inaccurate from my past experiences

2. These statistics do not display non-ad revenue income

Plus Socialblade has no way of distinguishing YouTube Shorts views with long-form views

Why is that a problem?

Because you have a better chance making a modest income begging on the street than making money through YouTube Shorts

Don’t believe me?

Here’s a screenshot of VIDIQ’s earnings from a Short they posted that generated almost 500,000 views

Yes, you’re reading that right

They earned just $16.61 for almost half a million views

As long-form views this could easily have amounted to $1,000s

So here’s where many people are going wrong when starting channels based on numbers they see on SocialBlade (or any other analytics website)

They see the estimated income and assume the earnings are being generated from long-form, highly monetizable views

When in reality this is far from the case…

Here’s an example channel that one of my students almost started (but thankfully didn’t after my word of caution)

Stellar Sagas is a channel focused on sharing history lessons in combination with cutting AI video content

From an uneducated perspective you would think that starting this type of channel for yourself would be a goldmine

Here are the SocialBlade stats:

Up to $310,000 a month in ad revenue. Not too shabby, right?

If only that were the case…

When I was sent this channel, I did some snooping

Not to my surprise this channel had just two long-form videos

The rest of its views came from posting viral YouTube Shorts

So as we can see the views indicated on SocialBlade are clearly coming from Shorts

This means those ad revenue figures are far from being true to form

But maybe the views will still allow this channel to bring in the big bucks?

Let’s find out…

Assuming the same RPM as VIDIQ’s video of $0.04 per 1,000 views

With 61 million monthly views, Stellar Sagas would be generating

Wait for it…

$2,440

No, not $244,400

Not $24,440

I mean just over $2,000

What’s worse is that monetizing this type of channel would be extremely limited

It would be hard to sell a product or service around AI history content

And this is why the start of your channel is so important

Imagine spending months or years trying to grow a channel like this one

Only to eventually realize it would never make you the money that the analytics purported?

As my grandfather always said, “measure twice, cut once”

This saying should be taken to heart when starting any future channel

Until next week,

Adam

When you’re ready, there are 3 ways I can help you:

1. If you want to learn how to grow and monetize your own faceless YouTube channel, check out Tube Automate and Tube Freedom

2. If you want a personalized review of your YouTube channel, sign up for a YouTube Channel Review

3. If you want to work with me one-on-one to build a faceless channel, check out Tube Launch