Friday, January 15, 2016

6 Things to do Before Starting a YouTube Channel

YouTube receives more than a billion page views per month and you want to grab a share of that pie. So, you thought about it and are ready to start your YouTube channel now.

Starting a YouTube channel is just a matter of few minutes. However, it would be a much better idea to get into the game with full preparation. So, here is a list of essential things that you should do to before starting your own YouTube channel.

1- Design a Channel logo and a Cover Picture

The one thing that best defines your channel as a brand is the logo. Another thing that describes your channel and its content is your cover picture. So, it is always better to create the Channel Logo and cover picture in advance so that you can establish your identity as soon as you start the channel starts.

starting youtube channel

It does not matter whether you want to create a personal brand or a professional one.  If relevant, you can use your own  picture as the channel logo as well.

2- Learn basics and Practice Video editing

Video editing skills are very required to make high quality videos. These skills are polished with every video that you make. However, there is still a threshold of skills where you will need to start off. Learning video editing will also help you get to a certain depth of video creation before you start.

Learning video editing beforehand will also help you get an idea of what will you be working on in the future. It will help you familiarize with the interface and functions of the program that you are going to use later on.

3- Buy the required Equipment

The need of equipment for your video channel depends largely on the kind of videos you are going to make. Depending on your niche and scale, you might need plethora of expensive equipments or you may not need to buy single equipment at all.

If you literally do not have an essential requirement of any equipment and the channel can run for a while without any equipment then it is fine. But if your channel demands some equipments and you will have to get it in a while anyway then buying the equipments beforehand would be a much better idea. The equipments that you buy do not have to be the top of the class but just the basic ones that will help you get the ball rolling.

Investment made on equipments, no matter how small  will also act as a motivation factor in your consistency.

4- Get some videos ready

It probably is a good idea to get 2 -3 or (even more depending on your niche) videos ready to give you a head start. As soon as you start the channel, first few weeks are going to be a learning process for you. So, it is better to have some videos in the reserve so that you are provided with some time to manage other things while maintaining the consistent flow of videos. Also, those videos will act as lab rats for experimentation in video editing.

Hence, it is a good idea to keep some videos ready before you start the channel.

5- Learn YouTube SEO already

We all wish it were as easy as just uploading a video and waiting for the views to come by. But as you must already know YouTube search is the second biggest search engine after Google and there is a lot of content and competition to rank better on YouTube Search just as Google search itself. For that you will need to optimize your channel to gain better results in YouTube search as well as other search engines.

So, you are better off learning some basic SEO beforehand in order to carry out the optimization right from the first video..

6- Observe other Channels in your niche

You probably have been watching videos on YouTube for some time if you want to create your own channel. But now is the time now for you to observe them closely and figure out their intricate working format. Looking at other channels from critical perspective and get various ideas for what you are going to do on our own channel.

Observing the other channels will help you attain ideas and concepts to use in your own channels while helping you with various whats and what-nots to do on your channel.


Learning these things before starting your YouTube channel will help you release pressure when you start your channel and will help you focus more on just video creation later on while maintaining a stable schedule.