5 Things To Know Before You Start A YouTube Channel- How To YouTube 101

Currently, on my channel, I have a video series going on called How To YouTube 101. In this series I talk about the things that I have learned over my past 2 years being on YouTube, and hopefully I'll end up helping someone out there to achieve their dreams! 

I thought it would be cool to just make a blog post using the notes I wrote out for this series. This is from the 1st video in the series and if you want to check it out click this link: https://youtu.be/tbhljbb3t5w

From here on out (the 2 videos left in this series, I mean) I will post the blog post on the same day the video goes up on my channel. 

So if you're a small YouTuber and need some incite, inspiration, motivation, or just are interested then here we go: 

1. What is your niche? Your niche can be absolutely anything! Beauty, Fashion, Hacks, DIY’s Travel, Outdoors, Adventures, Pranks, etc. My niche, I would have to say, is Lifestyle, which is mostly things that spark joy and inspiration in my life personally, like self-care, yoga, my dog, life stuff, you know? So pick you niche and go from there.    
2. What is your brand? Your brand is yourself, but this goes hand in hand with finding your niche. Branding your self-entails of color schemes, for all of your social medias, its how you want your channel to come across, do you want to be edgy or soft or a mixture of both? Branding is mostly the visual aspect of your channel. One thing I love is synergy throughout my thumbnails, and cover art… I also try and use the same color scheme on Instagram that way they play off of each other.
3.  Pick a name… do you want to use your own name, or a nickname, or maybe even a brand name… When I first started YouTube I used embeccaaa with 3 a’s and I went through so much trying to decide if I wanted to change it to my name or keep it as my Instagram/twitter handle (I thought this would be easier for people to find me on all social channels but alas the 3 a's were confusing) I obviously decided to change it and I’m so happy about it! But that’s just my personal preference, if you like cupcakemonster334 as your channel name go for it! If you like Cup Cake Monster Inc. go for it! You get it, if you resonate with your name more then go for it. Just be sure to pick it before you start posting to YouTube. You can always change it, but from experience this may just confuse your subscribers or even non-subscribers who enjoy your content. 
4. Study! Study the crap out of your niche, one of the best things I ever did was start subscribing to people in my own niche, like of course, Kalyn Nicholson Lyss Ryann, Majelle, Lindsay Marie, Lavendaire, I don’t  just mindlessly watch their videos, I actually draw inspiration from the wonderful ladies for my own videos. Another thing you can do is look for more videos like this one informative videos to help you start your channel. A couple of my favorites are channelnotes and sunny Lenarduzzi. 
5. This is a big one; don’t go into making videos with the sole intention of making money. Yes, I say that my ultimate goal on YouTube is to make this my career, but I’m not super bummed that my channel isn’t making a bit of money for me because that’s not my intention with my channel. And I’m not saying don’t think you’re ever going to make money doing this, cause you definitely can just don’t make that your only motivation. My motivation for doing YouTube is that it gives me a creative outlet where I can produce content that will help people to live a happier healthier life, to spread joy and love all around and hopefully impact someone’s life, like the channels I mentioned before have impacted mine. It's like with anything you do, if you're only doing it for money it's never going to bring you joy... but if you're doing it because you love it, then you're doing it for the right reasons and the universe is going to reward you & your soul for that. 

YouTube is such a cool platform, and there are billions of creators out there, it’s so cool to just be stepping into this world and seeing what it’s all about and how it’s changed, and is changing. Just remember this, always be true to yourself, and be yourself. It’s challenging I know, get comfortable talking to a camera, get comfortable editing out the uhm’s and uh’s don’t put too much pressure on yourself. A good practice on YouTube is to have an uploading schedule, but if you miss a day don’t sweat it! Just go with the YouTube flow.

Until next time,

-Em