How to Start and Monetize a YouTube Channel in 9 months!

Photo by Christian Wiediger on Unsplash

Introduction

December 4th, 2021, I decided that after years of wanting to start a YouTube channel, I would finally do it. But before I tell you how I built and monetized my channel in 9 months, let me take you back a few years.

The earliest memory I have of wanting to start a channel dates back to 2014. For years, I flirted with the idea, but never actually did anything. I guess, like many others, I had ideas, but just never knew where to start. I spent years researching (more on that in the next section). Just when I thought I researched enough and was ready to start, I delayed getting started. Then, in 2020, a global pandemic encouraged Pat Flynn to start a show called the Income Stream. This was a daily livestream where he helped people that had lost their jobs because of the pandemic start a new career on the Internet. Pat Flynn live streamed consecutively for 365 days. I watched every single episode and 1 year later. . . you probably guessed it. I still had not done anything.

But this time, I was more ready than ever. In a leap of faith, I decided to quit my job and figure out how to pursue this YouTube thing full-time. For those keeping track at home, this was now April 2021. But April isn’t quite December just yet, so I still had a few more months of self discovery before finally going all in. During the months between April and December, I invested some time and money into learning about Think Media’s YouTube program. I took their course, bought one of their packages and figured now would be the time.

Spoiler for those looking to go down this path, don’t pay for how to get started with YouTube guides unless you are the type of person that needs to spend money in order to gain accountability. Everything they teach is available for FREE! But, when things are free, we tend to not take serious action. It cost me 20 dollars to finally take it serious. Then, on December 4th, I published my first video. Let’s get into the specifics. I’m hoping that my story will encourage you to finally hit record.

Research (Procrastinating)

From March 2020 through December 2021, there was a lot of time spent researching. Don’t get me wrong, starting a YouTube channel is not as simple as it sounds. Actually starting a channel is trivial. You sign up, name your channel and post videos. Sounds simple right? It is, except it isn’t. You see, having a career on YouTube, at least one that pays is very hard work. I haven’t mentioned it yet, but I actually did have a YouTube channel that my wife and I had started back in January of 2020. So, I already had some experience in starting a channel, but after months and months of trying different things, the channel never took off.

To this date, that channel hasn’t monetized, but this article isn’t about that channel, it’s about my Apetech Tech Tutorials channel that I decided to start with a clean slate and actually managed to monetize in just 9 months.

Tips to researching effective topics

You could spend years researching how to grow a YouTube channel that will bring you in thousands of dollars. Or you could just get lucky and get there just as quickly. But, for everyone else, this is something you have to take very serious. As you can probably tell by now, I spent a great deal of time researching so let me tell you things you absolutely need to lock down if you want to do this correctly. From everything I learned, you really only need to lock down four things to get this thing going correctly. Let’s explore each one in more detail.

1. Titles and Thumbnails.
2. What people are searching for in your topic
3. Building Community
4. A Content Plan

Titles and Thumbnails — Getting Started

If you have ever wanted to start a channel, I know you’ve heard that titles and thumbnails are important. Let me tell you, they are not lying. My videos get thousands of impressions. Impressions are the number of times that someone actually saw my video’s thumbnail somewhere on the internet. But, seeing the video at the thumbnail level doesn’t do anyone any good. A viewer actually has to click on that video. And the two biggest factors that are going to draw someone to click on that video is the title and the thumbnail. This is what I have found to be effective.

From a title perspective, I answer a question. This will go hand in hand with the next topic, but I have found two strategies that have worked well for me. Since my content is very technical, the videos where I answer how to do something do very well. This answers a specific question that someone is asking on the Internet and the Internet recommends my video as it *should* answer the question.

The second thing I learned with respect to titles, is that a little clickbaity isn’t a bad thing IF you actually deliver value. This is marketing 101. The video title should entice the user to click on it. They have to be searching for the title or stumble upon a title that makes them stop. This is more of an art than actual science, so my only recommendation is to play around with the titles. Have 3–5 different titles for each video and see how they perform.

Finally, on the topic of thumbnails, you have some valuable space that can really help hook a viewer. What I like to do is keep a simple, how to do X in Jira title and then put some text in the thumbnail that is a little more clickbait. This lets me hit the search algorithm, but also gives me a little creative freedom to make things interesting for the viewer.

The Act of Being Viral — Know What People Are Searching For

This is probably the hardest thing to do but can be done if you spend some time to really figure it out. I have three tips that I’ll share here. I’ll be honest, I’m still trying to figure this part out, but I know that if you can figure this out, you have the highest chance of growing your channel. Being able to serve your audience is key to creating great content. If you can answer questions specific to your topic that people are researching, they are going to be inclined to click on your video. As long as you deliver on that promise, people will come back.

Answerthepublic.com

This website is very interesting. You put in some keywords and click on that search button. It will then go out and find all the different things that people are researching on the internet based on the words you put in. You only get a couple searches a day, so make sure you use them wisely. After you hit search, you’ll get this cool graphic with some potential video ideas that I recommend you get started with right away. Use this list to start figuring out what kind of content you should create. Because if you blindly make YouTube videos on topics that no one is searching for, you are at the mercy of creating something very intriguing. But, that is more of an art than a science. Knowing what people are searching for makes this part of the journey more scientific as you can literally see what people are looking for in your niche. The results from this page should influence your titles and thumbnails from the previous section.

Google Trends

This next one is something I use to just double check interest. Google Trends will give you some insight into the frequency and popularity of your title/keyword.

As you can see, this will give me some title/topic ideas because I would not have thought about making a video called Practical Jira Administration. But guess what, now I know that folks are searching for this, so I should make a video related to this content.

After you hit search, Google will return a graph along with some other geographical data to help you analyze your topic.

Like I said, I’m still trying to figure this out, but what I can tell you is that I use this data to help me determine if my topic/title idea is worth the squeeze. If not enough people are searching for this topic, then there is no point in spending calories making the video. The secret to growing the channel is to create content folks are actually looking for. This makes the journey into becoming a YouTuber a lot easier because you aren’t trying to find a needle in a haystack anymore. You literally have the answer in front of you.

Listen to Internet

Finally, my last tip here is to listen to the Internet. In my specific niche, this is not too hard because I have a place where people are posting questions about my niche all the time. The trick is figuring out what is good and what isn’t.

Finding topic ideas on here is very easy for me because I get inspiration for my next video, make a video that answers a specific question, and also help contribute to my community which we’ll discuss in the next section. If you can find a forum, Reddit, or Facebook Group in your specific niche, then I recommend you leverage that to gain a ton of insight into what kind of videos and topics you should be creating for your YouTube channel.

The Secret Sauce — Build Community

This next part is probably the trickiest to do, but if you invest your energy into this section, your chances of successfully growing a channel increase exponentially. To think that you can simply publish videos and that the world will see them is silly. You have to build a community. You have to invest your time to be with your people. You have to create content for your fans. You have to nurture your community, being there for them. Because if you do this, they will reward you. Organic growth through word of mouth is a very powerful thing. Having your Superfans spread the good word about your channel is the easiest, most effective way to grow.

You want your fans and community talking about you wherever they go. You want them spreading your videos, recommending them to their coworkers, friends, and family. When they feel a connection with you, they tend to do this because they feel that you care about them. I’ve been able to achieve this in one of two ways.

Host a livestream

This can be very scary at first, but going live on YouTube is a great way to reach out to your community, but also really helps with obtaining the magical 4000 watch hours you need to monetize. I recommend you have a topic ready and some questions. Make it fun, entertaining, but also deliver value. I utilize my livestreams to teach something for about an hour. I treat it like a class where I teach, but also ask my audience members questions that they then answer in the chat. I acknowledge their questions during the stream, give out a quick shout out to them and they love it. I should be honest with you, it will take a while before you get to this level. I hosted about seven livestreams before I finally got people to show up. Most of the time, it was just me talking by myself. And that’s okay at the beginning, so don’t give up. Eventually, people will show up and then more and then more. Don’t give up on your first try because no one showed up to the party.

Answer Community Questions

This next part can also be very scary. Mainly because it will push you to new levels that you didn’t know you could do before. Most importantly, it will question your skills in your niche. If you suffer from Imposter Syndrome, be careful with this one. For me, doing this was actually hard, but it eliminated my imposter syndrome. I got really good at Jira (my niche) and after four months of using the tool every day, I felt like I could answer just about any question. Then I went to the community and realized I was a hack. These questions are hard and that’s okay. I took this as learning opportunity and answered the questions by replicating the question and then figuring out the answer. This not only helped me increase my personal skills, but also gave me content that for my channel. Again, it’s very scary at first, but if you put yourself out there, this is the fastest way to grow your skills and overcome imposter syndrome.

The Master Plan — Create a Content Plan

Finally, the last tip I’ll give you if you want to monetize your channel quickly is to have a plan. Have a plan up front where you call out your future videos. Between the period of December and February, I knew every video that was going to be published because I had recorded 5 hours worth of content one day and just edited things down to smaller videos that would be published over the next few weeks. This was a terrible idea because this technique did not take into consideration all the tips I just shared. As a result, the videos didn’t do too well as they weren’t videos that people were searching for. Between February and May, I got a little smarter. I discovered my techniques that I just shared and developed the Summer of Jira. A 100 day plan where I would post 60 videos between Memorial Day and Labor Day. I researched topic ideas using the techniques I just shared, scheduled livestreams, and pretty much knew what the titles of the next 60 videos were going to be and when they were going to be published.

This is very important to the overall success because during those 100 days, there were days where I simply didn’t want to record or publish a video. Having my plan helped me get out of my rut and just hit record. I didn’t have to procrastinate to become “inspired” because I already knew what I needed to do for that video. All I needed to do was hit record and 10 minutes later, I would be done. This worked so well, I decided to do it again for the next four months of videos in what I’m calling the Fall of Atlassian.

What I Learned

Growing a channel is not for the faint of heart. But out of all the things I’ve done in my career, this is the most rewarding. I wake up every day, excited to see what kind of content I can create that day for my community. I’m excited that I get to learn new things, and simply share my learnings with my community. I’m excited that I get to create content that helps people make major life decisions as shown below from a comment I receive on one my videos.

I’m excited to make money 24 hours a day. I can control almost every aspect of the success of my channel. Everything is on me and this is a wonderful feeling. I am rewarded proportional to the time and effort that I put into my channel. This is a beautiful thing because for my entire career, my compensation was determined by someone else. If I worked hard or didn’t, I’d get paid according to what some person in HR thought I should be paid. Let me tell you, if you have ever experienced a performance review where you know you crushed it and you tangibly saw how much benefit your company got from your hard work, sweat and tears but only to receive a 3% raise because the 5% raises were given to a different team that had it “harder”, that can be demoralizing. I’m just glad I don’t have to worry about that anymore. My YouTube channel is finally monetize. I’m not making much, about 10 dollars a day, but if I keep it up, I know that I’ll be able to 10x if not 100x that number in all due time.

Next Steps

If you’ve made it this far, thank you! By now, I’m hoping you probably want to go subscribe to my channel so here are the links to where you can find me online. I appreciate your support!

apetech | Twitter, YouTube, TikTok | Linktree

As far as my YouTube career goes, I plan on doing three things.

1. Continue with my Fall of Atlassian videos. I’m going to be publishing three videos a week between now and the end of the year. My goal is to get to 2,500 subscribers by end of year and hopefully earn a consistent 1k per month from ad revenue.
2. Introducing Atlassian Courses. I’m currently developing some On Demand and Zoom based courses around my niche. I’m hoping this unlocks a substantial new revenue stream for me.
3. Growing my brand. This part is going to be a little harder and more time consuming, but since YouTube is making me a few bucks, it’s time to venture into other platforms and get them going as well. I stayed hyper focused on YouTube during the Summer because I didn’t want to drop that ball. But now that I’ve established a good rhythm for YouTube, it’s time to hit other major social media platforms and try to grow an audience there. Links to everything I’m doing are on my Linktree link above.

Thank you all for your support and I hope you follow along as I’ll be making more posts like this on as I continue to grow.