How I Got 100k Views On a Brand New YouTube Channel in 7 Steps (2022).

Introduction

If you are anything like me, you´ve probably considered starting a YouTube channel at some point in your life.

In fact, you might already have a channel with one or two uploads, but probably nothing to write home about. And that´s OK. I was there too.

During the midts of the COVID-19 pandemic I was fresh out of a job and bored out of my mind. I decided one day that I wanted to give YouTube a solid effort.

In this article i will reveal how I got 100k views on a single video, on a brand new channel.

Step 1: 📚 The research

It took me a while to decide what I wanted to make a video about.

As a PC-nerd, a book reader, a digital marketing enthusiast with a masters degree in second guessing myself, I spent an entire afternoon in my head before finally making up my mind. Gaming Tutorials.

Now there are millions of YouTubers out there who make videos about gaming, and I knew that.

It made the decision to actually do it way harder than it needed to be. And gaming tutorials? Come on, there are thousands of small YouTubers like that already who get 83 views in a lifetime.

How would I stand out?

My first instinct was to pick a game I was really good at, and to give tips & tricks as to how to improve for people who sucked. Then I realized that my skills in the games i thought I was really good at, were mediocre at best.

Sure I could blast some noobs in Fortnite, but I couldn´t really think of any useful tips outside of "keep playing the game in order to improve".

That´s just not going to click. Aside from that, my League of Legends rank was Gold IV. That means I probably shouldn´t give tips to anyone about that game.

I realized I had a problem. I was no expert in any game, really. Just some average dude playing what I enjoyed, and feeding an endless dopamine addiction.

By the time  I was about to give up the whole YouTube-thing, I looked at my Oculus Rift S headset. It was collecting dust on my shelf.

I slapped it around my head and fired it up. I opened the Steam Store and saw: The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners. A brand new VR survival horror game. Released today.

Since I didn´t know the first thing about the game, and because there were little to no tutorials yet, I knew needed to be quick and thorough.

I needed to play this game, hard. So I bought it and immediately started playing.

Step 2: 📝 Writing the script

After about three hours of playing the game I realized I was on to something. I opened up my notepad on my PC and started writing down what I learned by playing.

After spending about a hour writing I came up with seven tips. A bit long, I thought, so I narrowed them down to five.

When I had five of what I considered to be "decent tips", I started working on the details of the script. I Cut away some bullshit that didn´t need to be there, added a few jokes, and violà.

Five decent tips that beginners can benefit from. Not bad at all, I thought.

Step 3: 🎤 Recording the audio

When I felt the script was complete, I hopped in my car and drove to my office to record. I had recently bought a Blue Ember microphone, an affordable and more than good enough mic for the job (not sponsored).

With my script ready and Audacity open on my laptop, I gave the recording a shot. It didn´t take me far into the script to realize I wasn´t being very engaging or interesting to listen to.

With my Norwegian accent and dry throat, I hadn´t thought about how I was going to sound. Energetic? Relaxed? Confident? None of the above. After lots of back and forth, I decided to just go with whatever came out. And you know what? It was good enough, so I went with it.

Step 4: 📹 Recording and editing the video

Back at home, I grabbed my VR headset and opened OBS Studio, a free software for streaming and screen recording. About an hour later I had recorded all the raw footage I needed according to my script, and only half a day had passed.

I was excited.

With Adobe Premiere Pro I was able to drag all of the clips in and start editing. With my audio already recorded, it was easy finding the footage needed for the particular scenes.

This was, to my surprise, the quickest part of the project, partly because I already knew my way around video editing.

I did however not know my way around editing videos for YouTube. It had to be interesting, flashy and funny, I thought. Well, it sure was interesting, but I could have worked more in the flashy and funny bits.

Either way, I was satisfied with how it turned out. Now the hardest part remained: Getting discovered.

Step 5: 🧑🏼‍💻 Creating the channel

I had already created a YouTube account, so I could have used that. However, because that channel had my name and picture, and because I wanted to be somewhat anonymous should the video fail, I chose to make a new one: ThatHowieGuy.

I know, the name might not be the best, but I kind of liked it at the time. It was simple and easy to remember. More importantly, it wasn´t taken. I tried a couple of hundred ones (believe me), before landing on that name.

Step 6: 📈 Getting discovered

The easy part was done. The game had been found, the script had been made, the audio had been recorded, the channel was ready, and the video was currently rendering at 24 frames per second in Adobe Premiere Pro.

I  knew I had a huge advantage by being one of the first ones to post a video about this game. Apart from IGN and other large channels who had gotten early access and reviewed it left and right already, of course. Still, my spirit was high.

Realizing that it might still not take off, I researched how to make my video rank high in YouTube´s algorithm. I quickly realized that the job was only half-done. I needed good keywords, a thumbnail, and a kick-ass title.

I decided to do some more research. I found out that the title needed to match with the keywords and the video description, in order for YouTube to really take notice.

I found out that a good title should have optimally 70 characters (including spaces), and to promise some form of value.

I don´t know about kick-ass, but the title ended ut being: "5 Things They Don't Tell You! | The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners Tips & Tricks |".

A mouthful, sure, but it covered all the bases. I had the name of the game, "Tips & Tricks", and a clickbait-y; "Things they don´t tell you", to go along with it.

I then made sure to include the title in the description as well, before starting to work on the thumbnail.

Luckily for me, I already knew a bit of Photoshop before starting out, so I looked up how to make the thumbnail as clickable as possible.

I learned that making a clear title with contrasting colors was a good start. Then I made the title into one solid piece by filling the blank spaces in the words with black.

Happy with how it turned out, I moved on to the keywords.

Looking up some more tips, I came to the conclusion that the keywords needed to reflect what was in the video (duh), and then some.

What I mean by that i took some liberties when it came to keywords. I included all of the ones I assumed to be relevant, such as:

"The Walking Dead", "Saints & Sinners", "Tips & Tricks" "TWD Saints & Sinners Tips", 5 things they don't tell you", top 5", "5 Tips"TWD tips and tricks".

I also happened to include "Before you buy Saints and sinners", which I still to this day, do not regret.

Step 7: 📃 Posting

When everything was in place, and with my heart pumping, I posted the video. Then I forgot about it completely.

Or, I tried to forget about it. I tried stopping myself from checking in every 15 minutes in case I had reached 1 million views. Obviously, that wasn´t the case.

In fact, it took over six months for the video to really take off, and after seven months I was getting emails from YouTube almost daily.

When I reached 10k I was surprised. When I reached 50k I was stunned. The numbers kept growing, and after about one year I had reached 100,000 views.

As you can see, I changed the name of the channel. I´ve since changed it again to RageQuip. Don´t ask me why, I just can´t get names right. It´s the same for online gaming.

Anyhow, thats how I got 100k views on YouTube from a channel that had zero views and zero subs.

If you´re wondering how many subs this video landed me, the answer is around 600. Could I have done better? Sure. Am i satisfied with the result? Absolutely.

At the time of writing this article, the video has 159k views, with 685 subcribers on the channel.

I have posted more videos too. Some more successful than others, but no one coming close to this one. If you´d like to see the video, here´s a link.

I definetely learned a lot from this process, and I know that if i really put enough effort into it, I can make the channel much bigger.

But making this video and the following videos made me realize something important about myself. It´s a lot of work, but if you stick with it, there´s some serious money to be made.

One day I might post a video with a bigger goal in mind. Until then, I`m glad to be back to my old job.