Hey there everyone reading this post!~

So today im gonna do a small talk on something that has been running through my mind lately and its starting to bug me to the point that im willing to make a blog post about it!

Today I will be talking about Youtube and the way to get exposure, mainly focused around the "Asking for subscribers" practice. Lets dive into this very devided and pretty tough subject.

So, you have a youtube channel?.. Thats great! You made a cool name, have some decent looking channel art and you have just uploaded your first video about squirrels dancing at a techno rave party. Thats good fun. But the video only has 1 view (Your odd friend at school decided to watch your video) and you look at that subscriber count every minute of the day to see if its at 5 or 10 or already at a 100 subcribers. After a couple of days you are tired of the waiting, because your original expectation is that you would gain subscribers easily and that you would get famous (This is how in my opinion 90% of the people think when they start a youtube channel). Sadly enough this is not the case and let me tell you why.

A youtube channel requires a tremendous amount of work to even get off the ground to begin with. You have to have more than just decent channel art. You need to have good equipement(e.g. Microphone, computer etc.) and you need to have eyecatching titles and thumbnails. These are a must if you want to stand a small chance towards getting on your way to fame and fortune on youtube.

And I can hear all of you shouting at me right now, saying that the only thing you need is a lot of motivation and drive towards making videos on youtube. That was true 10 years ago when youtube was taking its first baby steps. 10 years ago a channel that had 10,000 subscribers was a big channel. Today the biggest channel counts 47,000,000 (47 million) subcribers. A lot has changed over the past 10 years and almost all the big youtube channels that exist today (There are exceptions) have been around for at least 4 to 5 years, slowly building up their brand.

So now I can see you looking at me with the question, but how do you get big on youtube then? and my answer to that is, I dont know. There is no formula to becoming a succesfull youtuber. Being a youtuber is like making art, there are so many ways of performing it. However I do have some very clear tips and tricks as to how you can increase your chances.

So my first tip is, please.. please have some sort of speaking skill level. This is so incredibly important. The one thing that turns most people away from a channel is a shy youtuber. Someone that mostly has their video fillew with awkward silences. There are some good ways to improve this speaking skill, but I will talk about that in a different post if this one is recieved well.

My second tip to all of you is, Make sure you have a good microphone(DOESNT HAVE TO BE EXPENSIVE!!!) and make sure you have a somewhat decent pc/laptop (AGAIN, DOESNT HAVE TO BE EXPENSIVE!!!). These 2 are so incredibly important. It is horrible to watch laggy content, because the sudden frame changes messes with the viewers concentration. So try to avoid this.

My third tip is (And this one is mainly for growing your youtube channel), grow a image for your channel. Show things you are interested in, let your viewers get to know you, the real you. Give the viewers a window into your life, because we all know how curious we all are in the way someone else lives. After all we do it with celebrities all the time by following their twitter/instagram or facebook. So give your viewers information about yourself (NO personal information, duh) but things like your favorite colour, animal, anime, car, whatever you think is fun for your viewers to know.

My next tip on how to grow is to do collaborations. There are many good websites to find fellow youtubers (Planetminecraft for example) that are willing to do collaborations. Through a collaboration you can connect your own audience with the audience of another youtuber. You will gain new subscribers and maybe even some more number 1 fans. (I am also open to collaborations!)

My final tip, and this is gonna be a long one, ask people to checkout your channel. Now before you want to burn this blog post with fire because you are getting horrible flashbacks of that time you were on minecraft and the chat was filled with lines like "hEy every1, i have a utube channel and I mak minecraft lets playz. pls check it out and forget to subcrib pls, thx". I will make sure to show you the proper way of asking people to checkout your channel.

So the main criteria for you to be able to ask people for subscribers is to make sure that you have a somewhat decent channel. Because it is these small, unfinished not working channels that ruin it for the people who are actually trying (So stop following that). As soon as you are sure that you have a channel you are proud of (Checking off at least the criteria for eye catching titles and thumbnails) then you can start asking people to check out your channel and to ask them to recommend your channel to their friends if they like it.

So if the above paragraph applies to you, how or where do you ask for subscribers. Lets eliminate 1 way right now. Do not go onto a minecraft server, or a chatroom and instantly say "Hey guys I have a youtube channel", because this will not work. People will most likely not even respond. Well maybe you get one respond from that one user called "xXTeddybearzXx" saying "Who cares". So in my opinion the right way to ask for subscribers is the following.

When you go onto a new server/chatroom, connect with people. Ask them how their day is going, introduce yourself (Let them get to know you!). Talk about what they are saying, talk about them, show them that you are another normal person on the internet. If the subject of hobbies or daily activities, its a great time to let people know that you do youtube (Dont say "I do youtube"). Just tell them that you are currently editing a video or that you are looking for people to collaborate with, something along those lines. Then people will get interested and ask you if you do youtube. And that is really the key point here, people need to show interest by asking you the question of "Are you a youtuber?" or "So you make youtube videos then?". From there its pretty obvious what to do, nicely tell them about what you do on youtube. Do not spam them with information, just answer one question at a time and see where it goes from there. This way you eliminate the whole "9 year old mincraft vanila letz playerz" thought whenever someone says that they are a youtuber.

And that is really the key point in this whole blog post that has been going on for way to long now. Whenever someone says that they do youtube, we instantly, without even thinking, gather memories from the horrible channels that we have seen over the years, that include bad audio, people recording their voice through a microwave and so forth. Make sure to put time and energy into your work so people at least get something that they can appreciate when they click on the next youtube link.

This concludes my post, so now im going to do exactly the one thing that I hope I tought you all...

How was your day?
Thats good to hear! What are you upto?
Awesome! I am just making a giant blog post on doing what im doing to you.
No, not you giving me your credit card information. I am teaching people how to grow their channel!
As a matter of fact yes I am a youtuber!
Oh well then my channel is just for you if you like those games!
Yea ofcourse you can have a link! It's www.youtube.com/user/Bandoroplays


Thank you all for reading this and have a good day!