How do people get millions of views on YouTube?

While I have been on YouTube since 2014, I have recently started uploading more videos and am playing around with a few basic strategies.

At first this is going to be slow, just like getting started at most things but my past

experience tells me that if I continue to follow this strategy, I should eventually get more views and subscribers.

Content is King or Queen - I am attempting to upload at least one video per day to my channel. I believe this is important because the more videos you have, the better the chance people will have to find you in the YouTube Search or related or suggested video sections.

Quality Videos - Creating videos is no easy task and I have a lot of respect for the seasoned YouTubers who have made a career out of YouTube. I do mostly screencast videos in the How To Category and I typically aim for around 5 to 10 minutes per video. I spend time editing the video to fine tune it and try to clean it up to make it more appealing.

Keyword Research - It’s important to know what keywords you will want to target for your videos. You can use Google Keyword Planner or you can simply start typing in the YouTube Search bar and see what comes up for your idea. You can try How To, as the start of your query.

Titles - This is extremely important since most people will first come across your video and see a title and thumbnail image. So make sure to use your keywords in the title of your video.

Thumbnails - You will want to make sure you use good quality thumbnails. I like using the website Free stock photos · Pexels to get free stock images that I can then download in the 1280 by 720 image size which is what’s recommended for YouTube Thumbnails. I then edit the image either in Photoshop or in GIMP which is a free alternative to Photoshop. I have a video on my channel on creating thumbnails with Pexels and Gimp. Here is a link to one of my articles How to get Free Pictures for your Blog or Website

Description - You will want to make sure that you are adding in proper descriptions and taking advantage of the 5,000 character limit which means you can create a mini blog post in your description area. This will help YouTube better determine the content of your video. Make sure to use your keywords in the description area.

Tags - While tags aren’t considered as important, I still recommend making proper use of tags with your target keywords in them. You are allowed up to 500 total characters in this area so choose your tags wisely.

Your Website - You should also feature your videos on your website. This will give your current website visitors a chance to discover your video content. Here is a link to one of my articles on this topic How to use YouTube and WordPress for SEO

Playlists - You should make sure that you organize your videos into playlists. This can potentially increase the amount of time a person spends watching your videos and keep them coming back for more.

Trailer - You will want to create a 1 minute trailer for your YouTube Page where new visitors can get a better idea of what your channel is about.

Social Media - You should already be active on Social Media and you should be developing connections with others. This will help you get more organic reach if people interact with your content/videos that you upload. Here is an article I wrote that goes into more detail on this How to use Social Media to Market your Website or Blog

Pay to Play - You might want to consider investing a few dollars promoting your videos with Paid Ads or buy views on the main social media sites and even Google and YouTube. This will help you to generate early traffic to your channel. Just make sure to have sufficient content to share.

From my experience, one of trusted providers is AudienceGain. They have professional users everywhere around the world who will promote your channel through their internal network – boosting your credibility and social proof quickly. I've bought from them many times since last year and I have not gotten any problems till now.

Email List - It is also helpful to build up your email list and send out weekly or monthly emails with your videos. This will help to ensure your videos get watched even if people miss them in Social Media.

Collaborate - I haven’t tried this one out yet but others mention that this is a useful way to build up your views and subscribers. It makes sense. Collaborate with others who are in similar fields and you can both benefit.

These are just a few ways to generate views, traffic and gain subscribers. It will be slow in the beginning but in the long run, consistency will pay off.

Here is a video I did that talks about generating traffic to your website that also applies to YouTube Videos.