Is starting a YouTube channel easy or difficult? The short answer is both, depending on how you look at it. In this video we will answer several questions, the main one being “How to get started with YouTube”, along with some practical tips and advice on HOW to get started, and some more philosophical questions you need to address if this is a road you plan to go down. Why get started? What do you make videos about? Is this a hobby or a business? What’s the goal here?

Just Get Started

These are all very important questions we will get to, but first let’s answer this question: is it easy to get started? Yes. If you have a smartphone or any kind of video recording equipment at your disposal, just start. Don’t even worry about a channel name or niche or artwork or description. If you have a simple video idea, just record it on your phone and post it. Rip off the bandaid. If you don’t have a video idea or aren’t sure what to post, just make a video saying:

“Hello world, my name is so and so and I’m thinking of starting a YouTube channel. I haven’t really dialed in what we’ll be all about just yet, but I wanted to share something with the world and see what happens. If you would like to follow our journey from the ground up, please consider subscribing to the channel! Thanks for watching my first video. More to come soon!”

Make that video, whether your face is in it or not (huge shout out to you if you put yourself on camera on the first go around!) and post it to your youtube channel. The title can be “My First Video” and the description can literally just be the script or transcription of what you actually said in the video, copied and pasted into the description. You can leave the tags blank and the video category set to the default, which is probably “People and Blogs”. You don’t even have to create a thumbnail if you don’t mind youtube choosing a frame from the video as the thumbnail. You can always update ALL of these things later if you really want to, but the whole point of this exercise is to NOT OVERTHINK IT!

Now I just used a key word in that last sentence which was “Exercise” and that’s the exact metaphor I would like to focus on. Making YouTube videos is just like performing an exercise, one which contains many micro-movements or micro-exercises, which together make up the larger exercise of creating and publishing one video. The first time you tried to do a pull-up, you probably weren’t very good at it. Personally, I suck at pull-ups so I’m not judging. The point is, getting good requires doing the exercise, which builds the muscles that make it easier to do more repetitions in the future.

If you just made your first video, then you just jumped up on the bar and squeaked out your first pull-up. Or maybe it’s your first one in a long time. Either way, you just found out how out of shape you are, and you need to make a decision. You’re probably thinking that the decision you need to make is, “Do I keep doing this forever or not??” and if THAT is what’s going through your head, you’ll definitely just quit right now. But that isn’t the question! The REAL question you need to ask yourself is, “can I make one or two more videos, and try to make something about them just a little bit better than the last one?” And if the answer to that can be YES, then I think you owe it to yourself to make that much smaller, much more achievable commitment.

The first step in that journey is simply to finish watching this video (or reading this blog post if you found me at The Woodshed), because I actually have many useful tips and insights to share with you.

The second step is getting something to take notes with while you go.

Now if you haven’t already asked yourself this question, now is a good time to consider it:

What is your reason for wanting to start youtube?

• Creative Outlet?
• Generate Income?
• Side-hustle?
• Quit your 9-5 day job and go full-time?
• Want to Work from Anywhere?
• Travel More?
• Help People?
• Teach People?
• Grow a Business?
• Grow a Brand?
• Entertain?

Any and all of these reasons are valid reasons to start a channel, and there are other reasons I maybe didn’t mention that are also valid. Some are more nobel than others, but that doesn’t diminish their validity. Maybe you hadn’t thought of some of them, or maybe you considered all of them. What are your top reasons? What would you hope to accomplish?

You don’t need to have the answer cemented in stone now, although it’s great if you do. It’s also perfectly fine if you decide to add or change your reasons in the future. People change and so do their goals. Making money from youtube may not be your primary motivator now, but it could become important to you later in your journey. Maybe your channel is really your mission, and you need money for that mission, so there is no reason to be bashful about wanting your videos to help you generate income.

The third step is finding some resources to help you expedite your learning process to get ahead of the curve. One example is the book YouTube Secrets by Sean Cannel.

Stay tuned for Part 2 for more on what resources may help you (spoiler: most of them are FREE) and how you can apply what you learn along the way.

-woodrow