How to Grow Subscribers and Revenue on YouTube Channel

YouTube, a video streaming platform has recently proven to be a useful means of sharing and generating content in today’s world.

With over 122 million users daily, and more than 2.6 billion monthly active users, over 1 billion hours of content are watched on the platform across the world every single day. This means that more than 500 hours of new content are uploaded daily on YouTube.

India has the highest number of YouTube users summing up to 467 million while the U.S. comes in second place with 240 million users. Some of these users are creators, producing various means of content from entertainment to life hacks to educational and more.

Still, there are millions of creators struggling to properly gain subscribers to their channels as there is little or no maximization of YouTube’s management of their channel. Some of the reasons for this could be because there is no proper description, poor video quality, undervalued content and many more.

So if you’re a YouTube creator with the key intent to grow your channel into a fortress of subscribers and get privileged access to the monetization and revenue offer from YouTube, then this article is for you.

For those intending to venture into creating and distributing content on YouTube, you will also learn how to make your YouTube channel gain more traction than others.

1. Work On Your Channel Art and Icon

The first thing when launching into YouTube is to work on your channel art and icon. This is the first rite of passage as it is quite essential to your growth as a creator. The channel art is the banner while the icon is the logo is the signature image or logo representing your channel to users. This is very important to bear in mind as both offer the “pull” force attracting users to your channel.

When creating a channel art and icon, it is important to make sure that it is presentable to the eye, different from others and can be easily identified by your subscribers. Also, its outlook is expected to be moderately fit for big and small screens, to not stay consciously hidden from your viewers.

Furthermore, it is important that YouTube is a part of the branding process of the creator and also, and it has both website and social media links in the “About” section, at the bottom when subscribers click on it.

2. Create a Channel Trailer/Featured Video

It is very important to always create a channel trailer/featured video. This way, it gives an insight into what your channel is about, preparing the readiness of your viewers and answering the building curiosity in their minds about your channel and what to expect from it.

Platforms like VEED.io offer user-friendly interfaces and different creative features to help you edit and enhance your trailer. This online video editor allows you to add logos, download Instagram clips, clean audio, translate videos, remove background noise, and more.

As it is the first thing most likely to be seen by viewers, it is important to use it as a promotional tool for your channel, getting both subscribers and non-subscribers as a part of the channel. It is recommended that it itemizes the uniqueness of your channel, and your personality as the creator and provides users (or visitors) the compelled reason to return to your channel for more of your content.

3. Have a Good Branded Watermark

As essential as channel art and icon is, a well-branded watermark is also important for your YouTube channel. This watermark is an embedded logo that, when enabled, appears at the bottom right corner of your videos, allowing users to directly subscribe to your channel.

It is essential because utilizing a branded watermark on all videos helps to encourage viewers to subscribe and engage further with your channel. Following YouTube’s redesign, a branded watermark will appear on blogs and websites while watching embedded videos.

4. Create a Rich SEO Channel Description

A channel description is very important and having one that is SEO-rich is very critical and instrumental to the growth of your channel. So, if you are having fewer views and subscribers on your channel, this is because your channel lacks the proper SEO channel description.

It is important to write a channel description that is SEO rich as it helps to inform the YouTube algorithm and establish the channel as an authority. The description should be well-written, and make use of natural language and SEO keywords that represent your channel. These words should be short as 130 characters are what are displayed in the search result.

Also, a call to action is important to be written in the description as well as the addition of a website and social media links at the bottom of the “About” tab as it appears below the channel description.

5. Use Good Channel Keywords

Good channel keywords are beneficial to your growth. It is vital to have the proper keywords when uploading a video and curating its description and video titling.

The proper use of keywords is SEO optimized, and makes use of 10-15 keywords or multi-word tags that best reflect your channel; too many keywords can dilute search ranking. Also, it is key to reinforce these important keywords that were included in the channel description to merge both under YouTube’s algorithm. The employable use of quotation marks to separate multi-word tags when entering is important.

For users and subscribers struggling with creating these keywords, I recommend the use of vidIQ or TubeBuddy – a software browser extension to find out the most used keywords on similar channels.

6. Have a Workable Release Schedule

A workable release schedule is a hack to properly maximize YouTube. This schedule notifies viewers when your next video is scheduled to be released. A regular and consistent release schedule is the most important factor in cultivating a successful and engaging channel.

In creating a YouTube release schedule, it is important to frequently upload in conjunction with other platforms (community posts, live streams, comments and playlist creation) to help keep your channel active within the YouTube algorithm. Also, publishing at intervals (such as weekly and on certain days, for example, Fridays) shows a structure which audiences like.

It is important to have the right release schedule and also let your viewers know when to expect a video from you especially if your content revolves around podcasting and vlogging; this can be done either via your released video, video description, channel trailer or the “About” section.

7. Have A Playlist

Playlists are important as it properly gives the aesthetics and careful separation of your videos. It gives potential room for growth as it optimizes with already existing curated playlists.

Playlists are an important part of any YouTube strategy to grow as they help to increase watch time and also, create another asset that appears in search results of videos.

In creating a playlist for your channel, it is important to focus on optimizing titles and descriptions which would inform the YouTube algorithm about what the playlist is. Also, the use of natural language and much relevant high SEO helps your playlists surface in searches and other related spots across the service.

The final strategy for optimizing your playlists is by using end screens to show the next playlist and current ones.

8. Employ the Use of Info Cards and End Screens

Very few videos on YouTube use info cards and quite a handful make use of end screens and both simultaneously. Info cards are pre-information that can boost views on a YouTube video while end screens combine graphic elements at the end of videos. Both are as important as every tool used in maximizing/optimizing the growth of a creator on YouTube.

It is important to have it in view whenever you are publishing a video on YouTube as they both have a powerful sense of “pull” towards the videos on YouTube.

Info cards can be anything of choice to the creator, from the website, links to audio contents, polls, etc and in creating it, an important recommendation would be to have at least 4 info cards properly spaced out. For end screens, the employable fix of subscription icons, playlists, important videos, and any vital piece of information required is employable.

To note errors and check the performance of both info cards and end screens, it is important to check the analytics to know which performance is above the rest and what can be properly corrected.

9. Optimize other YouTube Features

Features such as community, stories and shorts are often overlooked and they are very vital to the promotion of any YouTube channel.

The community feature allows creators to interact with their audience by posting up pictures and infographics related to their content, while Shorts, which surpassed 50 billion daily views in February 2023, can be used to post snippets and short clips. The story feature allows creators to interact with their audience - and unlike the story features on other apps like Instagram, Facebook and Snapchat, it lasts longer, with an average of 7 days.

These features can be used to hint at new videos, engineered towards community building and boost YouTube channels.

Conclusion

All of these suggestions must be looked into and carefully implemented if you want to achieve growth and success as a YouTube creator.

So, beyond the usual slang, “Like and subscribe to my channel”, it is my hope that this article would help creators to grow and monetize their YouTube revenues.

What better time to do this than now as YouTube is rewarding creators with 45% of the revenue generated from YouTube Shorts.