How to Get 50K Subs on YouTube On Your First Year

Over the past 365 days, we’ve gotten over 1.8 million views and more than 50,000 new subscribers.

This puts us at 60,500 subscribers at the time that we’re writing this. 

But we’ll bet we’ve got more now at the time that you’re reading this.

That’s because the rate we’re growing has been insane, seeing more than 725% more subs than we did the year before. 

So if you want your first 50K subs on YouTube, keep reading. 

Because today, we’re going to show you the exact steps we took to go from zero subscribers to over 60 thousand.

But first, here’s a little background on our channel.

About Our YouTube Channel

Our YouTube channel is about 6 years old, but we didn’t really start posting regularly or with any clear plan in place until about a year ago.

Our first few videos were random case studies, service videos, and snippets of us from the news or TV shows like CNBC’s The Profit.

It wasn’t until about a year ago that we started posting regular videos with a strategy behind each one, which is when we started seeing our subs skyrocket.

So whether you have a similar story with your channel or whether your channel is brand new…

…either way, you can follow the steps we’re going to share today to see the same results for your YouTube channel.

Steps On How To Get 50K Subs On YouTube

Step 1: Identify your target audience
Step 2: Research your competitors’ channels
Step 3: Orient everything around your keyword research
Step 4: Do what you can to increase engagement
Step 5: Start making playlists
Step 6: Post regularly
Step 7: Continuously test different features

Step 1: Identify your target audience.

We’re not going to spend a lot of time on this step.

That’s because if you’ve seen our other blogs, you know we talk about this all the time when it comes to digital marketing, 

But if you don’t have a clear vision of who your audience is, what they care about, and why they would purchase your product or service…

…then all of your marketing efforts- not just YouTube- are going to be fruitless.

You have to make content for them.

And you can’t do that until you know who they are and what they care about as it relates to your product or service. 

So if you need help nailing down your audience or pinpointing their goals and pain points, check out our target marketing example post next. 

Step 2: Research your competitors’ channels.

The next step in getting 50K subs on YouTube involves researching.

While nailing down your target market will give you some good content ideas in and of itself…

…looking at what your competitors are doing will give you even more topic ideas. 

You can look at their engagement to see which video topics seem to be resonating better or worse with your shared target market…

…then follow the skyscraper technique. 

The skyscraper technique in short means you’re finding the best piece of content out there on a particular subject.

And then making your own content about the same subject bigger and better than theirs. 

This means you want your YouTube video to include all the value your competitors provide and then some.

This will often mean your videos are a little bit longer in length than your competitors as well which is another plus.

That’s because YouTube wants to keep users on its platform for as long as possible.

So if your videos are helping them do that, you’ve got YouTube on your side.

Now, we know most of you reading are small business owners.

So some of you may be thinking of super direct competitors and are like, “My competitors don’t have YouTube channels!”

And that’s okay! These don’t have to be your exact, direct competitors, they just need to be related accounts where you share a target audience. 

So for example, let’s say you sell yarn and knitting supplies…

…and you can’t find any other businesses that also sell yarn and have a YouTube channel for you to look at. 

You might find that someone who just does knitting tutorials might be a good channel to research as an alternative. 

Even though they’re not rivaling your business with yarn sales, it’s a channel your target market audience is likely to be interested in.

Now there is one other component you need to consider when choosing YouTube video topics…

…which brings us to the next step to get 50K subs on YouTube.

Step 3: Orient everything around your keyword research.

When someone types in a word or a phrase into the YouTube search bar, that is considered a keyword. 

You need to know what your specific target audience is searching for on YouTube…

…so that you can make videos around those keywords. 

This will help you get more views, subscribers, and ultimately business. 

And we’re speaking from experience, we’re showing you the exact same things we did to hit our first 50K subs on YouTube.

If you look at our analytics, over 40% of all of our YouTube channel traffic comes from YouTube searches. 

So that’s how important it is to generate the traffic you’re looking for. 

So how do you conduct YouTube keyword research? Well, we have an entire post on it here.

Be sure to read it because that gives you very simple, step-by-step instructions on how to find the right keywords for your business. 

Once you have a keyword you want to run with, let’s continue with our yarn example and say “how to knit for beginners”…

…you want everything in that video to be oriented around that keyword. 

So beyond just making a video on how to knit for beginners, that whole phrase needs to be in your:

• thumbnail,
• title,
• description, and
• tags.

And again, we talk about all of this in more detail in the other post we just mentioned so we’re not going to spend much more time talking about it today.

But you should just know that every ounce of your YouTube video page is precious real estate to use to your advantage.

Don’t just make up a description or title willy-nilly because you think it’s funny or you like it.

You need to be purposeful and strategic with absolutely everything on your video based on research and data in order to see success on YouTube.

So we’re going to leave it at that but again if you want more on that subject, check out our other video. 

Step 4: Do what you can to increase engagement.

If you want to get 50K subs on YouTube, engagement is the key.

The more engagement you receive, the more that tells YouTube that your video is resonating…

…and therefore, should be promoted organically more by the algorithm. 

Specifically, it’s been said that the engagement you receive within the first hour of the video’s release is crucial. 

So here’s what you can do to increase engagement. 

1, Get your friends and family to all like the video within the first hour of posting.

This isn’t a long-term strategy, but when you’re a small business owner starting out, sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do.

We’ve been there! 

When we first started posting? We’d get everyone at our company to go like and comment on our videos just to get the engagement rolling. 

We don’t do that anymore because we don’t need to.

But it’s a quick, easy, free way to get some attention from YouTube’s algorithm within that first hour. 

2. Post community polls.

This is something we do regularly on our channel because people love polls. Always have, always will. 

So that’s a good way to get engagement while simultaneously drawing attention to your channel and videos.

3. Share the video everywhere you have an audience.

On Facebook, Instagram, anywhere. Even if it’s your own personal LinkedIn page or something. 

The goal in the early stages is just to get as many eyeballs as you can on your videos…

…before the YouTube SEO work you’ve put in with the keyword research starts kicking in.

Because once your video starts appearing in the top results for a keyword?

That’s when you’ll really start seeing a snowball effect of views and engagement. 

Step 5: Start making playlists.

The next step in getting 50K subs on YouTube is to create your own playlists.

Once you’ve got a few videos posted on your channel, you’ll want to organize them into playlists by category. 

Now again, you want to keep YouTube SEO in mind here. 

Put yourself in your customers’ shoes, and say…

“Okay if they clicked on this video, what other videos would they likely be interested in watching.”

We group our videos together by platforms like Instagram marketing, and YouTube marketing.

And we also have a few that are grouped in a way to be the most helpful to our target audience like Digital Marketing Basics for example.

The goal of making playlists is to encourage binge-watching on your channel.

So if you need help getting those setup, you can read our tutorial on how to create a YouTube playlist.

Step 6: Post regularly

You can’t post once every 2 weeks and hope to grow on YouTube. 

We think we started out posting maybe 2 or 3 times a week? 

Now we post every weekday because we’ve gotten to a point where we can do that steadily.

But if you’re just starting out, we would suggest posting no less than twice a week.

So you may want to do what we did and spend some time ramping up and creating a ton of YouTube videos all at once…

…that you can slowly release them 2 at a time each week, giving you a little bit of cushion.

Step 7: Continuously test different features

One thing we’ve tested out pretty consistently on our channel is different posting styles. 

We’ve tried lecture-style videos vs debate videos vs live videos vs YouTube Shorts.

And we’ll continue to try out new things as they come along!

In sales they say “always be closing,” but in marketing, we say “always be testing.” 

We know we’re talking about YouTube today, but for example on Instagram, when Instagram Reels come out…

…that changed our Instagram strategy entirely and skyrocketed our growth by the thousands. 

So you never know what the YouTube equivalent of that could be for you. 

So far, what has worked best for us has been posting these style videos around keywords we know you guys are searching for. 

But even when you find something that works well for you, never stop learning.

And never stop trying to optimize things to the best of your ability.

And the last thing we’ll say while we’re talking about optimization is to optimize your channel bio, keywords, and homepage video. 

Our About section is about us but more importantly, is filled with strategic keywords to help our channel get found…

…as is our channel keywords which you can change under Settings > Channel > Basic Info.

We also have a different video that appears on our homepage for subscribers than what appears for non-subscribers.

This is something you can set up Customization > Layout > Video Spotlight.

So as you can see there are always tiny little changes you can make and test out on YouTube.

So be sure to stay on top of that to keep your YouTube channel growing.

And that is everything we did to get over 50K subs on YouTube in one year.

If you need the help of the experts for your YouTube marketing, check out our YouTube promotion services today!

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