04:38Beyond Upload · Talking Head
How to Survive as a Small YouTuber (The TRUTH About Growth)
A YouTuber with 600+ videos and 6 million views explains why 10-view uploads aren't proof you should quit.
October 3rdThe argument in one line.
A new channel grows fastest by going to where an engaged audience already is and leaving genuine comments, because nobody is searching for you yet and early social proof makes the algorithm's job easier.
Read if. Skip if.
READ IF YOU ARE…
- A small YouTuber who has posted consistently for months, followed the usual advice, and still sees only 100 to 200 impressions per video.
- A new creator with under 1,000 subscribers who wants specific, low-cost actions to take this week instead of 'just start'.
- A creator with a day job or other obligations who needs a sustainable weekly output system rather than a burnout schedule.
SKIP IF…
- You already have a stable audience and are looking for advanced analytics or monetization tactics.
- You want a fast-money plan. The video says outright that AdSense is the wrong goal for the first 50 videos.
The full version, fast.
The creator reached 1,000 subscribers in nine months without a viral video. Her biggest lever was leaving genuine, personal comments on new videos from large creators in her niche, which won top-comment spots and sent warm viewers to her channel, building social proof and teaching the algorithm who her audience is. Behind that sit simple thumbnails with a face and two or three words, a batching workflow that buys three weeks of content in a four to five day sprint, honest self-critique paired with analytics, and a personal mission that carries her through the slow months.
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00:00 – 01:15
01 · Why your channel isn't growing
Nine months to 1,000 subscribers with no viral video, and the promise of a ranked list.
01:15 – 04:27
02 · The one thing that grew the channel fastest
Genuine top comments on Ali Abdaal and other bigger creators' videos drove traffic and about 200 subscribers in a month.
04:27 – 06:12
03 · Getting noticed without asking for subscribers
Finding existing audiences in your niche and spending an hour a week on thoughtful engagement.
06:12 – 07:33
04 · Social proof
Why crossing 1,000 subscribers raises conversion on every later visit.
07:33 – 08:42
05 · Efficient packaging
Copy what favorite creators do: a clear image with a face and two or three non-repeating words.
08:42 – 09:45
06 · Building a realistic system
Batch script, film and edit to buy about three weeks of scheduled videos.
09:45 – 10:49
07 · Self-critiquing strategies
Watch your own videos as a stranger and pair that with click-through rate and watch time.
10:49 – 12:53
08 · Surviving the psychological dip
Separate joy from metrics and anchor yourself to a mission.
12:53 – 14:06
09 · A hard but important truth
Fast money is the wrong goal, and output must fit your real life.
14:06 – 15:11
10 · What's next
Short-form experiment announced and a call for comment feedback.
Lines worth screenshotting.
- Nobody knows you exist when you start, so waiting to be found is a losing plan. Go to the audiences that already exist.
- A top comment on a big creator's fresh video puts your name in front of thousands of people already primed for your kind of content.
- Comment within the first hours of a niche creator's upload, when the comment section is still small and top spots are winnable.
- Genuine comments beat 'check out my channel'. Begging for engagement says less about you than sharing a real experience.
- Her channel's views came mostly from direct channel visits, yet the algorithm later tested her videos more in browse and suggested.
- Under 1,000 subscribers, strangers hesitate to subscribe. Crossing that line is social proof that makes every later video convert better.
- Her content barely improved after 1,000 subscribers, but views and engagement rose daily because the social proof was there.
- Copying the packaging of your favorite creators is a valid starting point: a clear image of you or the topic plus two or three words that don't repeat the title.
- Put your face on thumbnails early. It's how strangers who liked one video recognize you in the next.
- 'Just start' fails because it gives you motivation but no repeatable system, so you quit when the energy runs out.
- Script three videos, film them the next day, edit and schedule them a week apart. A four to five day sprint buys about three weeks of content.
- If you get bored watching your own video, a stranger will be far more bored.
- Pair self-critique with click-through rate, average watch duration and engagement to turn a vague feeling into actionable next steps.
- Separate your joy in making things from views and subscribers, because milestones stop feeling exciting quickly.
- If your goal is fast money, YouTube is the wrong platform. Big creators mostly earn from products and courses, not AdSense.
- Set your output to your real life. A job and obligations mean a lower upload cadence, or burnout follows.
Go to the audience before it finds you
WHAT TO LEARN
A new channel has no demand yet, so the fastest growth comes from showing up where your niche's audience already gathers, then backing it with clear packaging and a sustainable routine.
- Leave genuine, personal comments on new videos from bigger creators in your niche. A top comment sends warm viewers to your channel and teaches the algorithm who likes your work.
- Do not ask for subscribers in comments. Share a real experience or thank the creator, and let curiosity do the work. An hour a week is enough.
- Under 1,000 subscribers strangers hesitate. Getting past that mark adds social proof that lifts views and subscriptions even when content quality has barely changed.
- Study your favorite creators' thumbnails and copy their simplicity: a clear image of you or the topic and two or three words that do not repeat the title.
- Keep your face in thumbnails early on, so someone who liked one video can recognize you on the next.
- Replace 'just start' with a repeatable system: script three videos, film them next day, edit, then schedule a week apart to bank about three weeks of content.
- Watch your old videos as a stranger would, then check click-through rate, average view duration and engagement to decide what to change.
- Anchor yourself to a mission beyond the numbers, since milestones stop feeling special fast and the early months feel empty.
- Treat fast AdSense money as a wrong expectation. Big creators mostly earn from products or courses, so plan YouTube as a funnel or a long game.
- Match your upload cadence to your actual life. A job or obligations call for a lower output, or burnout is likely.
Terms worth knowing.
- Impressions
- The number of times YouTube shows your thumbnail to viewers. Low impressions mean few people had the chance to click.
- Social proof
- The trust a visitor gets from seeing that other people already follow a channel, which makes them more likely to subscribe.
- Browse and suggested
- YouTube traffic sources where the algorithm recommends your video on the home feed or beside other videos, as opposed to search or direct visits.
- Packaging
- The title and thumbnail together, which decide whether someone clicks a video at all.
- Batching
- Doing the same stage of work for several videos in a row, such as scripting three, then filming three, then editing three.
Things they pointed at.
01:30channelAli Abdaal
Lines you could clip.
03:25
“Nobody knows you exist and therefore nobody is looking for you.”
08:50
“Just start throws you in at the deep end, and when your motivational energy runs out you give up.”
10:40
“If you get bored watching your own content, a stranger is going to be way more bored.”
Word for word.
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i got to a thousand subscribers on youtube in nine months and for the first few of those i was following all the standard advice and getting basically nowhere i'd see those videos from other youtubers saying oh yeah after my fourth video i got like 10 000 subscribers overnight or i'd see basic advice like just start or stay consistent and i'd roll my eyes and be like yeah i'm doing that and nothing is happening in fact over the course of my entire journey i didn't have a single viral breakout video most people don't also low -key side note i've now decided that i'm really glad it took me this long to grow because imagine if your first video went viral and 20 000 people were watching you learn how to be a youtuber like i didn't even realize this but for my first 10 videos i wasn't even filming in 4k i didn't know that i wasn't filming in 4k anyway my life -changing moment happened when i realized about halfway through my journey that one thing I was doing was speeding up my growth far more than anything else.
And that's what actually built the little pocket of loyal viewers that improved my initial video engagement and led to my first real breakout video just a couple weeks ago. So in this video, I'm gonna take you through all the things that got me to this point, ordered by the most impactful, in the hopes that no matter where you are in your journey, you can walk away with some tangible next steps by the end of it.
Let's get into it. If I had to pick one thing that brought the most eyes to my channel, It wasn't a video.
It was a comment. For the first few months, I was getting nowhere. I was posting a video.
It was probably getting like 100 or 200 impressions a week, which is basically nothing. And that was converting to about 10, 20 views. After I accepted the fact that it was probably not an algorithm issue and that it was a me issue, I started to look around for guidance on how to make engaging YouTube videos.
A lot of the biggest YouTubers I've watched have at some point made a video about how to do YouTube. And Ali Abdaal was one of the first ones that I checked out. One day I was browsing through YouTube looking for something.
to watch while I was eating my lunch and I noticed that Ali posted a video roughly 20 minutes earlier about how to get started. everything he said resonated so much so that for the first time i felt compelled to leave a comment sharing my authentic experience with youtube because at that point i was feeling a little bit frustrated and i just wanted to tell the world what i'd been doing now obviously ali has millions of subscribers and as the views trickled into his video i realized that people were resonating with my comment and liking it and eventually i ended up getting top comment probably because i shared something genuine and people connected with it but then something strange started happening out of curious people started to navigate to my channel and look at some of my videos and a few of them, because they liked the content, decided to engage and some of them actually subscribed.
As Ali's video grew and gained more views, so did my comment. It kept getting more and more likes, more and more replies, and therefore more and more traffic to my channel. Over the course of that month, I gained about 200 subscribers, which is double the amount of subscribers that I'd gained the four months before.
I was over the moon because every video I made thereafter started to get a little bit more views and a little bit more engagement, and I thought nothing of it and continued making my stuff. Then another YouTuber that I follow made a video and I found it really sweet and motivational. And I left another comment basically sharing where I was in my journey.
And lo and behold, because people maybe saw something of their selves in my comment, they liked it. I got top comment and again, it resulted in a lot of traffic to my page. Over the course of the following days, the same thing happened.
i got dozens of subscribers and therefore every video i made thereafter got more views and more engagement because of that increase in viewership youtube almost had a bit of an understanding of what kind of audience liked my stuff more and therefore the impression pool started to get bigger instead of getting about 100 impressions per video over the course of a few days i was getting thousands at that point i realized something important early on in your creator journey nobody knows you exist and therefore nobody is looking for you i was no So instead of waiting to be found, I decided to take more action.
I went and found a following that already existed from creators in my niche with big engaged followings. I put the strategy to the test. I paid attention to when my favorite creators posted videos.
At the start of those days, I'd go on YouTube, refresh my subscription feed, and there were the videos. I'd go to them, watch them, and leave a genuine comment. Something that shared my real human experience and also thanked them for the work.
they were doing because honestly being a creator is hard and i'm always grateful to the bigger creators that helped inspire my journey it wouldn't always work but a lot of the time my comment would get top comment and it's usually because i was competing with people who would post things like first or bots ultimately you need to remember that people use social media for some kind of human connection they could be going there for information or entertainment but it's often nice to find like -minded people in these communities landing the top comment on a v from a creator in your niche puts your name in front of thousands of people already primed to like the exact kind of content you're making.
Early on in your journey, that audience that you're finding yourself is going to be warmer than the one the algorithm is going to be providing you. And that isn't because the algorithms crap at what it does. It just takes a little bit of time and data to understand who to show your videos to.
But what if you can give it a helping hand? If you have a cooking channel, for example, you could navigate to a larger cooking crew. and try to leave a meaningful comment, maybe sharing something like, I really love the way you make these.
I just started my channel and honestly, I've been taking these tips from you and it has helped with X, Y, Z. And maybe another small aspiring cooking creator might see that, look at your channel and think, wow, I like this and this person's closer to where I'm at. So I'm gonna follow along to see where they get to.
This isn't a foolproof strategy, but when I check my analytics, most of my views and subscribers came from people that were navigating directly to my channel rather than from browse and suggested. When this was growing my channel, I started to wonder if I was perhaps stunting the organic growth of it.
But what ended up happening was over time, the algorithm was actually testing more of my videos on browse and suggested than it ever had been. And I think it's genuinely because it understood the type of person that likes my videos. I think also this process helps with one of the biggest challenges that new creators have.
that's social proof. When you navigate to a channel and you see that they have under a thousand subscribers, you're not as likely to subscribe as when you see one that has over a thousand. And that's just because there's an inherent trust in landing on a page and seeing that other people like that creator too.
If you look at my channel today, I am getting more views, more engagement and more subscribers every single day, except my content has improved, but not that much. The biggest difference now is that I have social proof. So I think if you're going to employ this strategy, all you need to do is spend an hour a week on bigger creators in your niche, watching their content and engaging thoughtfully, leaving little breadcrumbs for your channel to be found.
Not saying things like, oh, I just started my channel, guys, check it out, because I think there's nothing worse than someone begging for engagement, but just sharing something truly authentic about your experience, like how hard it's been to start your channel or what you love about it, or just actually complimenting the creator on what they've taught you.
because I think that says more about who you are and whether or not a stranger would like your perspective than you actually begging for subscribers. It's funny because I actually saw someone navigate to one of my videos who said this.
And when I reflected on it, it proves my point. Now, the next thing that I'm confident grew my channel is packaging that doesn't waste real estate. Before anyone can watch your awesome video, they need to decide to click it.
And getting the packaging right early on is basically half the battle. I wasn't really paying attention to the specific advice that YouTuber gurus give you on this topic. I was doing something way more simple.
I went on the channels of my favorite creators and I simply emulated what they did. common denominator in every single one was simplicity and clarity. It was usually a high quality image of them or the topic in question and two or three words in the thumbnail that didn't repeat the title.
Some people tell you not to put your face on thumbnails because nobody knows who you are yet, but I completely disagree because that's how people get to know who you are. If a stranger watched something you made and liked it but didn't end up subscribing, how do you think they're going to recognise you in the next video?
with your face it's the most unique thing about you and content in general anyway over time as you make these videos your own original style is going to emerge and when you pair that with the data that you get on which ones are performing better than others you can start to make more strategic decisions the next thing that got me to this point is building systems people on youtube love to say the phrase just start and it annoyed me so much i actually made a video about it lol i think it's crappy advice because just start throws you in at the deep end you begin and then when you're motivational energy runs out or you don't have a repeatable system to do something, you give up and then you feel really bad about it.
So even before I started my YouTube journey, I built a system which has evolved over time as I've evolved as a creator, but that system has kept me showing up. every week for the last 10 months now. I have a whole dedicated video about it but to summarize I batch all my processes.
I sit down and script three videos and usually that's a cluster in terms of topic because I don't really have a singular niche since I'm documenting a transformation. Then I sit down and film three videos the next day and then I edit those videos and then I schedule them a week apart. That four to five day sprint buys me about three weeks of scheduled content.
which frees up the rest of my time to focus on my business and my book and all the other stuff that I'm getting up to. The next thing. experimenting critiquing and doubling down not every video you make is going to be a hit in fact most of them aren't but if you stop taking that personally it's actually really useful data i started going back and watching all of my videos pretending that i was a stranger and trying to understand what i could improve is the video or sound quality bad do i drone on a bit and get bored and the saddest news flash ever is if you get bored watching your own content a stranger is going to be way more bored when you pair that self -critique with your analytics, like your click -through rate, your average watch duration and your general engagement, then you have actionable next steps.
At the start of your journey, the more you take this into account and make your content with the viewer in mind first, rather than, you know, what do I want to make, the more you're likely to grow. Think about why you watch content. You want to learn something, right?
Or you want to be entertained. If you as a What do you expect?
they're not gonna stick around the final thing that's helped me grow to where i am is less a tactical thing and more a mindset people don't really like to talk about this too much but a psychological dip does tend to happen when you've been making content for a couple of months and you're not really seeing the numbers move more recently i've learned to separate views and subscribers from my joy in this because honestly like when you start hitting these milestones you do tend to just be like meh and then move on to the next one but the most important thing that kept me coming back through all of this was understanding my mission with YouTube.
And that was something I decided long before I started. I asked myself a really simple question. If money were no object, and I could be doing anything in the world, what would I be doing?
I would probably be documenting life and my thoughts and also wanting to help other people and sharing my journey. So I had a think and I realised, for me, the best way to have as much creative licence as possible while helping the most people I possibly can would be to make content. And I hate the word content because it really commodifies everything, but...
I just wanna make stuff. When I'm making things, I'm using all the skills I've ever developed and all the tiny corners of my mind to bring something into the world. And it's fun and it excites me.
And then the knowledge that you might watch this and think, wow, I feel happy or motivated or cozy or that you had a laugh, that brings me even more joy. It's like very selfish in a way, but also very selfless. I don't know, I guess the two can exist at the same time.
On the hardest days where it felt like nobody was there to watch or nobody cared, it didn't matter because I cared. So if you identify your mission, you're gonna show up because the day that you don't want to, you're gonna be like, oh, but like, this is what I wanted. And your mission doesn't have to be like.
mine it could be that you have a business you really want that business to succeed and youtube is a marketing funnel for that business which means that you have to show up if you want your business to succeed that is also a good mission and most people on youtube nowadays are using youtube to make money. But guys, on that, and this is really important, if your mission with YouTube is to make fast money, you are on the wrong platform.
If you look at some of the biggest creators, they've often openly admitted that AdSense is not the way they make the most money. It's typically a product that they've made that they're selling or a course or something, which is perfectly fine. But if you think you're going to make like, you know, 50 videos and then start making $5 ,000 a month from AdSense revenue, that's not going to happen.
Also, as soon as you start creating, you're going to realise it takes a lot time to make videos and then you're going to look at other creators and think hold on a minute how are they making weekly videos sometimes two videos a week that's crazy for me the only reason i'm able to put out a video every week and be this dedicated is because firstly i quit my corporate job last year and have a lot of savings that i'm using to build a business with which isn't making money but has given me a lot of time i manage myself and i've always wanted to start a youtube channel but back when i had a job i simply didn't have the energy and time to do it so if you currently have a job or if you've got lots of obligations in your life, you have to set your output at a reasonable level to your reality or it's probably gonna be a recipe for burnout.
So that's it. the unglamorous breakdown of how i got my first thousand subscribers they say the first thousand is the slowest and hardest to get so i'm gonna see if that's true and i will be documenting my journey as i go and will let you know when i get to different milestones what worked and what didn't i'm actually currently conducting a bit of an experiment to see whether posting short form content on instagram tiktok and youtube shorts can help grow your youtube channel and i'll be posting the results of that in a couple of weeks if you care about growing your channel make sure you're subscribed so you don't miss out on that one.
But I just wanna make this clear. I'm not like a YouTube growth guru. That's not really my jam.
I'm just somebody who is documenting their life as it's happening in terms of building something of my own. And YouTube just happens to be a part of that journey, which is why I'm making sort of this YouTube journey and learning series. Anyway, let me know in the comments how your YouTube journey is going.
And also if you're planning to try my commenting strategy. If you do, come back and let me know how it goes. I'm curious.
As always, thank you so much for watching and I will see you next week for another video. Bye. Yay.
The Hook
The bait, then the rug-pull.
She opens by rejecting the 'overnight 10,000 subscribers' stories and the 'just start' advice, then promises a ranked list of what actually moved her channel, ordered by impact.
Named ideas worth stealing.
02:30list
Warm audience commenting
- Know when favorite creators post
- Open your subscription feed at the start of those days
- Watch the video
- Leave a genuine comment about your real experience
- Thank the creator
Go to creators in your niche with engaged followings and leave a human comment early, so the top comment sends their audience to your channel.
Steal forany channel under 1,000 subscribers
08:42list
Three-day batching sprint
- Script three videos in a topic cluster
- Film all three the next day
- Edit them
- Schedule a week apart
A four to five day sprint yields about three weeks of scheduled content.
Steal forany weekly publishing schedule
How they asked for the click.
VERBAL ASK
14:20subscribe
“If you care about growing your channel make sure you're subscribed so you don't miss out on that one.”
Tied to a concrete upcoming experiment on short-form content, which gives a reason to subscribe. Also asks viewers to report back on the commenting strategy.
MENTIONED ON CAMERA
Visual structure at a glance.
