The 5 Paths to Youtube Success

Being a long-time watcher of Youtube content, you see a lot of channels come and go. Some rise up quickly to become overnight successes, and others are slow burners, gradually building a following over time. Some content seems random, whilst others seem carefully curated and crafted.

So what's the secret?

Here are the observations of the 5 Paths to Youtube Success, by one of the people that helped many of the lucky ones one their way, just by watching:

1.  Celebrity
If you're already famous, getting a fan base is much easier. We have seen many Youtube channels set up by celebrities as an extension of their creativity - for example George Takei's TakeisTake or Adam & Jamie's (from Mythbusters) Tested.com (although they joined the already established Tested channel)

2. Memes
Whether it be a shocking moment captured, humour, trends, titillation or just being offensive - the right video at the right time can spread faster than any other and generate millions of views. But be warned - they're also the most difficult to maintain channel momentum. Most Meme channel only end up having a handful of videos and never recapturing that initial lucky success.

3. Skill & Talent
Showcasing a great skill or talent at something, be it physical, mental, vocal, craftsmanship or other can generate a huge following, as people seem to enjoy watching them show their stuff - but it may still take time to get high viewing figures

4. Great Presentation
Being a great presenter of content seems to be hugely important for Youtube success. Many of the biggest channels (that are not covered by any of the above) seem to do best if they are presented well by a team with: clear speaking voices, clever wit and affable personalities. Most of the top shows I've watched, regardless of content, seem to ALL comply with this point

5. Working Your Way Up
This last one is the hardest of all, as it takes a lot of work and even harder still - patience. This involves working your way up from scratch by starting with zero, trying stuff out, learning, changing, developing, listening, promoting, sharing... whatever it takes to claw yourself an audience. This can take several months or, more commonly, several years; but is by far the most rewarding to see


Personally, I have to put myself at number 5, as its early days for me and my little channel at www.youtube.com/workingminiatures - but I have great fun doing it, I'm learning with every video I produce and its really rewarding seeing the numbers steadily climbing :)

So my advice (for what its worth) is create content for yourself - make the kind of Youtube videos that you would want to watch, not what you think are trending.  Be patient, experiment, watch other videos and learn from them and slowly, (perhaps very slowly) you will start to get an audience.

And that may take time, but don't give up - for the first couple of weeks of my channel, I was pretty much the only viewer!

Also, explore the tools that Youtube have to offer - take some time to learn their admin system as there are a plenty of tools they provide to help you on your way.

And above all - enjoy it!

Museum Setup: Update 5

New display shelves are nearly completed! These bad boys are custom made for the cabinets and effectively double the space allocation for exhibits. So we're future-proofing (for the time being anyway).

In the photo below you can see the top rows completed - just the lower half to do hopefully this week.

It took a little cash, some experimentation and patience, but I think its worth it. Still need some more acrylic risers to display the smaller items (like the board games) more effectively.

I was going to use this shoot of photos for new headers on the Youtube Channel and social media, but the quality isn't there - will have to try again.

Museum Setup: Update 4

Another good weekend at The Museum - this time focusing on applying the graphics to the new two wings.

I've now got the technique working pretty well, using weak soapy water dabbed on the glass, and then applying the sticker. This allows you to slide it around and get it exactly where you want it. Then using a squeegee card (3M do a great little one with a felt edge) you squeeze out the water and let it dry - no air bubbles, and comes out really clean.

Museum Setup: Update 3

Good weekend here at the Museum - completed the first video which is now live on Youtube, which I'd actually shot and recorded at the same time as doing the intro video the week before.

I needed to shoot a couple of extra clips, and record new opening audio, as it was originally going to be added in at the end of the intro video - but that took so long to do that I wasted to split them up.

Extensions before construction seen next to the current over-crowded Museum

Then, I finally got hold of the Museum extensions, so we now have THREE wings! This means Im going to be able to showcase the whole collection at once, and not overcrowd things. I'll also be able to divide things up into categories - House & Home, Arcade, Toys & Novelties and so on.

Building of the cabinets went well, and they look awesome as a set of three.... hope thats enough space!

...And the 'After' shot! So much space! Exhibits not properly laid out here - I'm just planning
where to put the different categories

Then, I worked on the third video shoot, which went well. Well, I say 'well'... it required trying to get a particular game to work on camera. Nearly two hours of trying, and I still couldn't get it to behave. So I compromised with a shot featuring a little 'assistance'. After editing it all together, it seemed quote funny, so I think that will do. If I maybe carried on for another hundred attempts I might have lucked out, but bugger that.

I also had to do a couple of weird shots, one of a dancing Statue of Liberty, and the other a shot of me slapping Colin the Robot.

Such a weird thing to film. Her face says it all.

Third Video will be online soon.

Museum Setup: Update 2

Things are progressing nicely here at the Museum - Additional floorspace has been ordered (from Ikea) and will be collected soon. Then, our chief architect will work on the long construction process, which may be shortened if he bothers to read the instructions.

First video shoot

The first ever video for the Youtube Channel began shooting recently. It took a while to work out a process to make it feasible - and after some laughably bad pilot shoots (culminating in the featured exhibit failing to work), I rethought things and went with a different approach.

Filming, talking and demonstrating intricate miniatures all at once is just too much (for me anyway). Too much going on to keep things sounding natural and also try and think of things to say when you're trying to remember where a tiny button is and keeping it in focus on the camera.

So I tried a different approach of recording the video and the audio separately. For the first shoot, I did the video first, and then the audio afterwards. It seemed to go really well, and meant I could focus on each task, getting good quality video shots and then taking time to get the audio right without the pressure of everything else.

So I spent half an hour demonstrating with my hands and doing pantomime style gestures that I could then edit in to suit the dialog - it sounds like it wouldn't work, but it does! And without having to sync in live dialog, retakes and additional camera angles become more achievable. I was able to do a run-through and then redo the whole thing but with a macro closeup, so I can inter-cult between the two in the edit stage. And recording dialog when you're not distracted by a camera viewfinder and getting the exhibits to work properly makes things a lot easier to sound natural.

Above is a shot of the filming in process - as you can see its a pretty high-end Hollywood kind of production. The desk, the room and everything you see was hand-crafted by prop masters to perfectly replicate cheap-ass scummy housewares. You can't see a camera in shot, as the budget only allows for one and I was using to to take the photo. But if you're interested, Im using an iPhone 4S, combined with the excellent Olloclip add-in wide-angle and macro lens. Without these, the quality of shots would have been useless. Lights are little tabletop bright LED things I found on Ebay - the white one is usually in my bathroom... as I say, pretty high-end setup. And the iPhone is mounted on a cheap knock-off Gorllapod style tripod, which allows me to create a low eyeliner. Other than that, the only other kit used is a cheap clip-on microphone, which plugs directly into the iPhone and helps to give clear audio - much better than the built in mic.

So it all went well, and in half a day I had pretty much all the shots and audio takes I needed to edit. (Shown here are my extensive, professional notes.)

I'll be using iMovie on my iMac (which in the photo double up as a back-board prop stand and light power supply) which should give me everything I need - although its been a few years since I looked at it, so might have to relearn a fair bit.

Next update soon.

Museum Setup: Update 1

Here we go then. This may not get off the ground. Who knows? But if it does, these setup posts may be of interest to someone (other than me) - so what the hell. Let's do this shizzle.

Welcome to the first post of the newly founded Museum of Working Miniatures - an idea I've had for a long time now, but have only just got around to sorting it out.

The Museum will showcase my collection of working miniature exhibits - by that, I mean tiny miniature things that look and function in exactly the same way as their larger original versions. I've set up 5 Rules to clarify this, but let's look at those another time.

This blog will firstly document the setup and publication of the Museum, as well as being a place for additional photos, articles, video links and generally anything else I can think of.

The Museum is currently being created as we speak - there are some first blush photos below. Its looking like I drastically underestimated the amount of space needed, and need to expand the Museum floorspace by a factor of about 300%. So its going well.

You missed an exciting event in the early build of the first wing of the Museum, when just after construction there was a catastrophic failure of a main support, causing pretty much all of the exhibits and their tiny, tiny pieces to come crashing down and scattering. But luckily, there were no breakages, and all of the pieces were found and reconstituted over a very long, boring day.

The structural failure it turns out was due to the builder, who didn't read the Ikea instructions closely enough and built it wrong.

However...

The next two wings will be purchased and added soon, and then the glass graphics can be applied. I need to find a way of adding more mezzanine floorspace, but I have some ideas on that.

Once all that is done, the next step is video production, to document the exhibits. I've already bought some equipment for that, so I'll perhaps go over that in the next post.

I'll keep going until the authorities stop me.

Thanks

- The Curator

PS. If you're still reading this, I judge you for it.