Are you starting a Youtube channel or trying to build up your subscriber count? You might be wondering how important a high number of subscribers is when it comes to the overall success of your channel. Here’s some advice on subscribers and whether increasing your amount should be your top priority.
Subscribers are important as they lead to monetization and higher amounts of people seeing your content by making Youtube more likely to show your videos to a particular viewer for a short time. But an additional way to get Youtube to show your videos to more viewers is for them to hit “like.”
In the following article, the results of having subscribers to your channel will be discussed.
Earning Money
Subscribers are necessary to your channel’s success. According to the YouTube Partner Program Channel Requirements, you must have at least 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 watch hours in the past 12 months to start earning money from YouTube. After meeting those requirements, you can apply for YouTube’s Partner Program. It’s through this program that Youtube creators can start to monetize their channels through ads, subscriptions, and channel memberships. So yes, subscribers are essential–to an extent.
What Happens When a Viewer Subscribes to My Channel?
When someone clicks the “subscribe” button under your video on Youtube, they will see your new videos under the “subscriptions” tab on your page. This can help increase the number of people seeing a given creator’s videos because they will be listed on that subscription page. Subscriptions are used to inform the Youtube algorithm of which videos are most likely to be watched by viewers, but this is not the singular or ultimate deciding factor used to inform the algorithm’s ranking of recommended videos. It is only one aspect of the ranking.
Another predictive factor used to inform the Youtube algorithm is “likes.” Liking a video informs Youtube to show similar videos in order to increase viewership on the platform. So asking viewers to subscribe is one way to try to increase views, but encouraging viewers to hit the like button is another way to boost viewership.
Focusing on Likes
Likes are important because it’s something a viewer can do on every single video they watch. You can only subscribe to a particular creator, but you can like as many videos as a creator makes. It’s an action that viewers can take multiple times. This is a minimum viable call to action that lets the algorithm know that the viewer enjoyed that video and to show more like it. This leads to the algorithm showing more of that particular creator’s videos.
If you are wanting to monetize your Youtube channel, consider focusing some energy on increasing likes and not just subscribers alone, particularly after you reach the required minimum of 1,000 subscribers. This will help you maintain subscriber loyalty, which will better help to ensure a steady and consistent audience in the long run.
Subscriber Loyalty
At this point, you might be wondering the best way to not only increase viewership but maintain a loyal audience of viewers that are more likely to be consistent and keep coming back to your videos. You can always invite viewers to subscribe, but a more organic way to build a loyal audience is to let them come to you.
This way, those subscribers are more likely to stay subscribed because they are interested and want to be there, and you know this because it was their own idea to click the button in the first place! This is an indication that they are genuinely interested in the content you are producing, which means they’re more likely to stay in the long run.
How Do I Get to 1,000 Subscribers?
If you are a new channel or have yet to start your Youtube channel, getting those first 1,000 subscribers necessary for monetization might seem daunting. Just know that this goal is achievable with time. As you work to build your subscriber count, just keep a few things at the forefront of your mind.
Ask yourself if your channel has valuable ideas? Are they well executed? Has enough time gone by or videos been published in order to see the growth you’re looking for with your channel? Focusing on these three questions can help you know where to start and what areas to focus on in order to increase your viewership.
Also useful to keep in mind as you work to grow your channel are the steps that occur for a video to spread and potentially go viral.
Here’s how a video spreads:
- First, a creator must publish a good video that people will want to watch. There are different factors that can impact a video’s watchability, like video quality, sound, humor, etc. If you are producing good, high quality videos, more people are going to watch. Take note of the qualities in videos that you yourself find interesting to watch, and work toward implementing those qualities into your own videos. You can always be thinking of new ways to make your videos interesting and stand out.
- Second, the audience finds the video and responds. The response is key–the more people watching an interacting with a video will make it more likely to be recommended to others, based on the algorithm. Likes, comments, shares, and subscribes are all responses that send a message to the algorithm to show the video to more people
- Next, the algorithm observes and adjust according to the audience response to the video. The more people who watch and interact, the more likely the algorithm is to suggest the video to others who have watched similar videos. It is this step in the process that leads to videos going viral.
- Lastly, repeat. This is a process that happens over and over again, every day, on all corners of the internet. As you continue to create and produce content, you can adjust your videos to cater to certain audience and their interests. This will help you build a larger following of loyal viewers, as well as increase your audience as viewers continue to interact with your videos over time.
Ultimately, remember to keep trying and working hard–it can take time to grow your channel, and it can be difficult. But it’s achievable.
