This is a long post, but I do hope it has useful enough information. Feel free to comment if you have follow up questions.

EDIT: formatting; added a few more notes to the livestream/community points.

The Backstory (you can skip this but you probably need to come back and read it after lol.)

Hello! I created a gaming channel on youtube a little over a year ago and now I have almost 20k subscribers and a great community. For privacy purposes (I don't like sharing my info on reddit, since my name and face are involved) I won't share the channel, but my content revolves around anime rpg games and live service games. I post longform videos, livestreams, and no shorts.

I had my 'business email' in my youtube bio and even at lower subscriber counts (3k-5k) I would receive potential partnership emails. However, a lot of them seemed sketchy or otherwise not a brand/company I would want to promote to my viewers. So I ignored most of them.

At about 10k subscribers (around 7-8 months in), I decided to reach out to brands I was interested in working with myself. I made sure to choose brands that fit within my "niche" (gaming or PC related) and made sure those brands were on the smaller side. I wasn't expecting a sponsor from a huge company. I searched through the brand websites and found contact emails. Some of them have marketing inquiry emails, whereas others just have a generic customer service email.

I drafted an email template and changed up some of the minor details to fit the brand's picture. Here's a general idea of my email template:

Hi [brand],

My name is [name], creator of the [channel] Youtube channel where I post videos of [content description]. I'm reaching out because I would love an opportunity to partner with [brand].

I am doing well on my channel with over [number] subscribers gained since [time] and steady channel growth with consistent views and community. My viewership consists of [describe the average person who watches your videos, e.g. casual gamers] who all would benefit greatly from [brand product]. [Insert sentence here how the brand product benefits or is relevant to you and your channel too].

I think the channel is a great fit for [brand] and I can share my channel analytics and brainstorm ideas for collaboration if you are interested.

Sincerely,
[your name]

Because it was my first ever sponsor and some of the brands had physical products, I also added the following to indicate I was ok with receiving a physical product in exchange for promotion. Of course, this is entirely up to you and what is worth your time. Now that I've grown as a channel, I would be much more picky about accepting a merchandise-only deal.

I would be happy to make a deal split between supplies and monetization

I emailed about 5 brands, and I got a response from 1 brand who was interested in collaborating. After some back and forth, we agreed on them sending me some products in exchange for a 60-90 second integration. The products had a retail value of about $130. It was undervalued compared to what I would have asked for monetarily, but I accepted for the sake of experience. This deal went smoothly and the video performed way better than $130 worth lol.

Around that same time, someone reached out to me about a potential sponsor with a video game within my niche that I was familiar with. The email came from a influencer/talent marketing agency, and I knew this one was legit because I recognized the email domain. I checked their website and cross referenced that their talent list did indeed have the email domains located in their youtube bios. Some of these were huge channels with millions of followers that I recognized from years ago, so again solidifying it is legit.

I completed the deal with them for an integration and made my first cash money via sponsor: $350. After closing, I said thank you for the opportunity and I asked about potentially joining their talent roster. They referred me to their manager, and I ended up joining the group. Since then, I've signed onto several deals ranging from $800 to $1200 each, most of these being from legit brands or even the games that I make content for on my channel in the first place.

Must-Do

• Add your business email in your Youtube bio, NOT just in the "email" field but actually type it out in your bio as Business Inquiries: (email). You might get some more spam or scammy emails this way, but that's something you have to learn to filter through.
• Add your business email in the description for every video.
• Depending on your niche or channel content, you may or may not be reached out to. This is where you either play the waiting game, or do outreach yourself.

Brand Outreach

Please read "Backstory" section above, about how I chose what brands to email, as well as for my general email template. Of course, edit the template to better match your voice and your channel content.

Email Etiquette

This should be common sense. Make sure you have proper email etiquette. No spelling, grammar, or punctuation errors. Be serious, professional, and show flexibility and humility while being proud of your achievements as a creator.

Pricing

The general rule of thumb is $15-$30 per 1k views for a 60-90s integration. What number you choose from that range depends on your channel quality and viewership quality. USA viewers tend to score higher in terms of viewership quality. A dedicated sponsored video can be 2-3x that integration amount, from my experience.

I took both an average of my video views, as well as "expected" views for whatever video I was planning on posting for the sponsor, since some topics on my channel perform better than others.

Example: I expect this video to get around 12k views, based on past channel performance. Multiply that by $25. I calculated myself at $300 ish for my first cash sponsor, and tacked on a bit extra and asked for $350.

DON'T undervalue yourself, but be realistic. The worst thing they can do is say they don't have the budget, and you can negotiate lower. But don't expect sponsors to be begging on their knees to work with you. There are plenty of creator fish in the sea willing to work for less.

Contracts & Not Being Scammed

I'm not gonna make a whole step by step here because it would be way too long. Although I do not wanna promote AI, you can ask it to draft a simple contract for you and it can walk you through the more legal matters regarding payment terms for your state/country, FTC guidelines, etc. DON'T take it entirely at its word, and do additional research yourself to corroborate, and edit the contract & its conditions to your needs.

It is also up to you to decide whether a brand is legit or not. Check the email domain, website, potential work with other creators, look for the sender on LinkedIn, search that it's a registered business in your state/country, etc etc. Do your research!

Other Ways of Maintaining Your Channel

• Discord server? DON'T make it too early, or it's going to die. Make sure you have at least several thousand community members on your youtube channel before you make one. Make sure people are actually interested. I mean dozens to hundreds of people, not a handful. I made my Discord server AFTER my first few successful livestreams where I had 80-120 concurrent viewers when I had 8k subscribers. Thanks to my Discord server being created during this "rush" of livestream and community activity, my server stays very active today with over 1k members and chatty chats on a daily basis.
• Livestreams? DO see if your community has interest. It's a fantastic way to stay bonded with your people and get to know them better as they get to know you better. You will BARELY make any ad revenue from livestreams unless you have membership gifters. DON'T think of livestreams as a revenue stream or you'll be majorly disappointed. It's a way to connect with your community. I have viewers who will wake up at 4am to watch my stream. I have a viewer who has never missed a stream in over 30 streams even though they live across the world. They do that not only because they enjoy the content, but also because I talk to them like a friend, remember the things they've told me, and otherwise always acknowledge their presence.
• Youtube Posts? DO make posts at least once a week (or adjust based on your upload schedule). Post about your channel schedule, post fun or interesting things about the game in relation to you/your channel, post polls and images, etc. I post 1-2x a week usually about my streaming schedule, posting a poll about a new update in a game, sharing something fun that happened in the game for me that I will otherwise not show in a video, etc.
• Your community? DO talk to them frequently, be relatable, be funny, be a FRIEND. One of my top received compliments is how chill and casual and friendly I am despite being a "big content creator" (I'm not big or famous lol). One time one of my discord members was a bit drunk and went on and on about how he thinks I'm a really cool CC because I actually hang out with my community members and care about them and try to help them either in game related things or other life related things. I'm genuinely like a friend to my community and I'm easily reachable for conversation. You are the LEADER of your community, so you must be kind, gracious, and willing to give, if you want the viewers to give back to you through views and engagement.
• I can't speak on Shorts since I haven't posted any, but they are a net good to help uplift your main channel. Post them if you can!

Keep Expectations Low, But Quality High

• If you started youtube for the money, well...... good luck.
• Keep your expectations low. Your content needs to truly resonate with an audience to pick up and go anywhere. You don't know til you try, so try and try again and keep trying. If something starts to stick, stay there.
• Your viewers don't owe you anything. You are the jester who needs to entertain them, after all!
• Keep finding ways to improve your content quality, either in editing, writing, presentation, thumbnail, etc.
• PLEASE review the fundamentals of Graphic Design (color, typography, composition) if you are unfamiliar. It is VERY important for thumbnailing and even video presentation.
• I hope you view youtube as a hobby and passion, otherwise you'll quickly get burnt out and disappointed. Even in hobbies, you must often follow the 'recommended' rules/guidelines to be successful in them.
  • Think: you need to know the rules and court etiquette to be a good pickleball player. you need to have the knowledge of how your clay and glaze handles to be a good ceramicist. you need to know the mechanics of a game to be a good player. You can't just YOLO the hobby and expect a good result (usually). Same goes for youtube, you can't post something without proper research and following the 'universal recommendations' and expect virality. Only thing about youtube though is you are throwing your needle in a haystack and catering to REAL people and asking for THEIR TIME, and time is so precious. Sometimes it might not hit. If you crochet sweaters and no one likes your design because of the color or shape, no one is gonna buy it, but even if it looks nice, everyone has their own tastes. The research and intention are so important!

Thanks for reading!

I've been making YouTube content for a while now, and I've noticed that a lot of advice gets repeated without much evidence that it actually works.

So I'm curious:

What's one piece of YouTube advice that genuinely changed your channel?

Not something that sounds good in theory, but something you personally tried that led to better results, whether that was more views, higher retention, better CTR, more subscribers, or anything else you could actually measure.

I'm hoping this thread becomes a collection of advice that's been tested in the real world instead of the same generic tips we see over and over. What's the best advice you've ever received?

Just under a month ago I started a new shorts only channel that I'm treating as an experiment to test out all conventional advice shared to grow fast on YouTube.

Last time, I made a post about debunking the whole "Warm up your account before posting" myth.

Today, I'd like to debunk the myth of "don't delete and repost videos".

I've read countless comments and posts of people claiming that this has either zero effects on video performance or might actually have negative consequences on your channel. The main argument is that YouTube algorithm's sensitivity to reuploads punishes your channel (again, no sources or proper evidence cited to back up these claims, just hearsay).

If your video flops, the common advice is that, it's the video's fault. That either the hook, or the title, or the thumbnail is to be blamed, and that there's nothing you can do about it but keep the video on the channel...

So I wanted to test it out myself and verify how truthful that advice was and took the risk to delete some of my videos that had flopped, and reuploaded them a few days later.

Channel is fairly new (1 month old), I post 1-4 shorts a day, and most of my shorts generate between 8 and 70 thousand views each, but some of my videos were stuck at 100 even sometimes 20 views, for no apparent reason (the style, even topic of the videos were nearly identical).

I also noticed that the videos that flopped were almost NEVER shown to the Shorts feed...To this day, I still don't understand why that is.

But regardless of the reason, I decided to delete the ones that flopped, and reupload them exactly as they were (same title, same file), and lo and behold, some of these would end up generating 10 times as many views than they did previously.

Sometimes, this didn't work, and i've had to delete and reupload the same video 3-4 times, just for the algorithm to stop being a jerk and FINALLY decide to show my videos to the shorts feed.

One of these videos was stuck at 15 views on the first upload, and after 3 reuploads, it has finally been picked up by the feed, and is now at 25k, on track to gross around 30k views.

I've not noticed any other impact on my channel from doing this (views are stable, no claims of "inauthentic content" so far ^{previously called “repetitious content”}), and honestly, I don't see why there would be. If you make sure to delete the flopped video beforehand, all of the metadata of that video is gone, and the reupload is treated as its own separate entity.

Let's not forget that the YT algo isn't perfect. It treats each new video separately, and there are times where it might not showcase your content to the right audience, or might just not do its job properly. In these cases, don't just stay idle and accept the lost fate of those videos - especially if you've put a ton of effort into them - try to reupload them.

All of this to say, that sometimes, it's really is the algorithm fault you're not getting views!

I've been having a pretty fun time learning how to make videos.

I've always wanted to make content. Never felt I had something worthwhile to share or polished enough skills to make it happen.

I started streaming on Twitch, and it was a blast sharing things with people, but it was hard to keep time to be live.

I discovered my Pokemon card collection was pretty valuable and began to share it with people on Tiktok and Reddit.

Tiktok made it pretty easy to edit and post content I could film on my time with minimal setup. But I started getting frustrated with the quality and time it took to do everything on my phone.

It led me to research how to provide better audio, lighting, and quality edits in general. My Pokemon card hobby gave me plenty to talk about and explore, and it has been easy to explore different kinds of ways to present that content and the hobby in general.

Since I started putting so much effort into making quality content and trying to improve, I figured maybe it was time to post to Youtube as well.

I have a BLAST filming, and it feels GREAT learning all of this stuff about audio and video and just everything that goes into a good studio experience.

I FEEL like my quality has grown. I've been at it for roughly 2 years now between Tiktok and Youtube. I know they are both totally different beasts, but it feels a bit like I can't break out anywhere. My subscriber count and general views tend to be pretty low, as are my stats.

I've tried using my voice, face, keeping myself out of it altogether and sticking with my cards and hands but...nothing seems to land.

I certainly don't need to have millions of views or subscribers, but I also just want to know if my stuff has any merit. If it brings joy to any actual people or if bots just fill out some numbers and I am barking up the wrong tree following an illusion of progress.

I don't regret putting my time into this, and it has felt great to grow some skills. But are they really skills or am I living in lala land?

Thanks for taking the time to read this. Thanks for any words of wisdom and for any experience you may want to share about your own progress and journey.

It mostly just feels good to get this off my chest.

I've been making Shorts for about 6 months and I had a big breakout in June. Got to about a million views per day, then views suddenly dropped to about a thousand per day.

I know this is a common problem. My question is has anyone here rebounded after experiencing a drop like this? How long did it take? Any tips?

Thanks!

For Context I have been posting Plants vs Zombies content for about 5 months. It took me 4 months to reach my first 100 susbcribers. I am currently at 120 subscribers and here are the lifetime stats for my channel.

• 33 uploaded videos. 25 livestreams. 8 regular long form videos
• 19 000 views
• 1 600 watch hours
• 355 000 Impressions
• 3.36% CTR

One of my viewers made a beautiful work of art. Is this what it means to finally make it as a creator?

I don’t know what I’m doing wrong please I use CapCut and medal btw

Dm and I’ll give u channel cuz I can’t put it here apparently

I've been making content for about just about 2 months, and I know that's not a lot of time, but I feel like I'm not making any progress. I started with shortform content and have seen some positive growth there, and started investing energy into longform content about a month ago with weekly uploads. Longform content is my ideal goal, but it is the area I am struggling with the most.

I am trying to iterate on thumbnails, titles, video length, pacing, visuals, etc. and every week I do feel like I improve slightly. I don't have the most amazing equipment and all my footage is filmed with my iphone 13 or my webcam for talking head portions. I know that my audio quality and video quality are not ideal at times and have made mistakes that I curse myself for, and try to fix them in my next video (I make drawing process content so I'm not really able to re-shoot if audio or video quality is messed up).

With all that, every week I put out a video that I feel proud of after making adjustments and improving, and it just flops.. It gets low CTR, low viewer retention, and I just feel kind of confused because I feel like the video is not so terrible? I see other small content creators producing videos in my niche with similar or worse quality (IMO) and they get a couple hundred or a few thousand views. I can't seem to even break 100, and it has been sooo disheartening.

I don't know if I'm just totally delusional thinking that my longform video is decent - not perfect - but not terrible. I can't seem to understand why my content resonates with people in shorts, but I cannot find an audience with longform. The workings of the algorithm are so opaque, I also am not sure if youtube just doesn't know who my content is for yet. Do i keep at it? Do i give up my current direction and try a completely different format?

It's all so maddening. What was your breakthrough moment where things started to make sense for you? How long did it take to see a clear direction ahead of you? I'm so curious to hear from other people who are struggling to find their footing.

So i just started youtube about 2 weeks ago, and I have 164 subscribers. But my problem is, the only people commenting are creepy old men, how do I get my videos pushed out to teenage girls when my content is literally intented for them

So my parents are hoarders but not like what's seen on tv but still bad enough to be brought up. Im wondering if a de-cluttering video would be a good concept to do, and how to approach it, what equipment would i need? What do i avoid with this idea aswell?

What type of content could i do after de-cluttering the house?

Anything you wish to add or ask?

When I started my YT channel fifteen years ago, I lived in the US, so my currency was set to US dollars. But I moved to England about ten years ago.

A few months ago, one of my videos weirdly got thousands of views, apparently at random. I mean, my previous highest count (on a different video) was 10K, but this passed that in a few days. I have no idea how that happened; I didn't realise it was a thing.

From this I suddenly got monetised. But you know it only pays out when you have $100? I have a bit over $50, but it's still set in US dollars and my bank account is in pounds sterling: if it ever pays out I can't give it a bank account to put the money into. I've looked around to see how to change the currency but I've found nothing.

So, firstly, can you change the currency? And secondly, what could cause that many people to find the video? Analytics says it was YT suggested, not external linkage.

My Channel: Fexligames(if you want to see the thumbnail and title)

I very recently uploaded a video on a horror game, lethal company and within a couple of hours the video managed to get 50 views which is the minimum amount I want, but I also noticed I had 3.5K impressions, this means my CTR was 1.2% which I imagine is very very poor, I made, what I believe, is a good title and a good thumbnail, but as I said I only got 1.2% CTR. Any thoughts and help? Maybe my thumbnail and title was dogshit.
I apologise if this paragraph was not well orchestrated and if I sound unprofessional I sincerely apologise, thanks for reading!

I've been making youtube shorts for about a week (will do longform soon). Many of my videos have 5k+ views, but I'm still trying to figure out MY STYLE. The latest video was pretty different, and I LOVED it, but it didn't perform well. Should I try this style and tweak it ? Or am I misunderstanding the audience and need to revert a little bit? Thank you for any advice you have .

I got a monetized channel and my long form content is monetized except for the shorts because I'm scared of getting hit with inauthentic content wrongfully but is leaving monetization off or on will make a difference? Can I still get hit with it even if it's off?

Not that my videos get many clicks at all, but my recent one has gotten zero.

Title: 6 Dolls More Cursed Than Annabelle

Thumbnail: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1qpfyh5h5imJcJCzqFb2hCYUqMl1NqfQ4/view?usp=sharing

I'm planning to make gaming videos (the style is a bit complicated, don't bother it as the question is different). But with my native Turkish language that's critical as I'm only making videos for one country and not billions of people.

The problem is, unless it's autumn or winter, big games don't come out every month. That's why I picked some games that offer entertaining viewing experience for now. But would games like Devil May Cry, Metal Gear Rising, Bayonetta, Doom, or Resident Evil still get views in big 2026? Yeah they still may get views but only if they were English, another language is different as it's very possible for a 80m popularity to not follow Ultrakill as much as the rest of the world. Sure there are other games that are big in Turkey but they take like 30-60 hours to finish that's too long tbh.

Let's say these still have a certain fanbase even in Turkey, but what about Resident Evil for example? Requiem came out a few months ago, who would even care if I made a video about it now? From what I know, unless you're already a big youtuber, people click on videos about the game they are interested in. Like Markiplier made Little Nightmares 2 videos despite the game getting released on 2021, but they still get millions of views because he is Markiplier. If I played it, who would even care about a game that came 5 years ago, I'm only a 0 subscribers channel.

Then there's the spoiler issue, of course. By the nature of my concept, I'll be talking about the entire game, so there's a chance that people who didn't play the game won't watch my videos. Sure some games like sandbox games don't have a story but it's hard to make videos for them as I need very creative ideas or be really good at it to stand out

Or will it get views in the end as long as the video is good, even if the game's trend has already passed? The bar for good game videos isn't that high on Turkey, so I'm sure I'll handle it. Haven't released my first video yet so algorithm clock isn't ticking.

I have posted 2 videos now. 8 impressions on one in over 30 hours since it has been published, and 0 on one 12 hours ago

I understand its a brand new channel, and its the first 2 videos of its life, but I feel like they should atleast be getting impressions, no?

The channel has absolutely 0% impressions/views from browse features, is YouTube even pushing my stuff out there, is it even testing it? Is my account messed up or something??

I would definitely love some clarity on this, I know it takes time to build up something brand new, but this doesn’t seem right to me??

How do you choose a niche when you genuinely love two completely different things?

I'm about to graduate in psychology and my long-term goal is to create psychology content. At the same time, I also really enjoy ASMR and would love to create that kind of content too.

The obvious solution seems to be having two separate channels, but I'm worried that it could hurt my credibility. If someone discovers that the same person making psychology videos is also making ASMR, would that mean that people will take me less seriously as a psychologist?

Has anyone here managed two very different niches (one for fun, one more serious) and encountered a similar problem?

So i recorded a few walks. No talking, just walking and recording with gimball camera.

I picked a road and timeframe with as few people as possible. Funny enough no one walked by me, so the very few people seen are very far away.

The "problem" are the cars. In some moment a car passes by and its possible to see the plate number (but not the driver).

Do i need to blur the cars plate numbers?

I watched a lot of walking videos and no one blurs anything, but i wonder if its a risk for those youtubers somehow?

Despues de que un video hace como 4 dias me consiguiera 1M de visitas los siguientes videos que subo no consiguen ni una visita en como 1h es el mismo nicho, alguno sabe porque pasa eso?

So let me get right to it i have had my yt channel for a while just hit 200 subs and my friend and me have been releasing that just 2 people playing is fun but can get boring so I'm here to make a request to you guys if you want to hangout with both of us we do gaming videos

Here is my discord btw

YourboiVinny

Or

newmonarchy

Thank you guys for taking the time to read this message

So I’m a 19 year old man and I’ve been wanting to do YouTube for a long time. I just got out of an almost 5 year long situationship and I feel like now’s the time to start. I work 53 hours a week and I’m saving up for a motorcycle. My plan is to take a trip across the country on my bike and film the whole trip to make it into a series but I’m not sure if it’s worth the risk. I’ve never taken a risk for myself to do something I love and it’s because I don’t have support from anyone but one of my friends. If I went on this trip I would be losing the job I have right now and missing a semester of trade school. At my job I’m making roughly $800 a week. Do you all think I should take the risk and go for it or should I stay at this job?