If you want to tap into the benefits of video blogging or video marketing, then you have got to be on YouTube.

While many other video sharing platforms like Vimeo, Veoh, Dailymotion, etc. exist, none come close to the popularity and robustness of YouTube.

In short, if you have to earn from your videos, YouTube is a platform that you have to be on. And being free and feature-rich makes YouTube the best choice for video marketing.

But if you have to earn a respectable amount from your videos, it is essential that you have subscribers, and a huge number of it.

The more the subscribers you have, the more will be your video views and more will be the ad views and clicks that can earn you money.

And when it comes to the number of subscribers, the more the merrier. You can never say that I have so many subscribers that it is enough.

That is why, you should always make an attempt to get more subscribers to your channel, and here are a few tips to do that successfully:

Offer quality content

The first criterion that must be fulfilled in order to get more subscribers is quality content. Th video that you upload must have good content.

Whether you are a posting a tutorial of some sort, or an interview with a popular icon, or a cooking video or anything that you want to share, it must offer good substance to the viewers.

If your video fails to offer what the viewers are looking for, they are never going to subscribe to your channel.

So, make it a priority to offer useful content via your videos and your subscribers will automatically increase.

Watermark your videos

If you have put in hard work to create the videos, you surely wouldn’t want others stealing it.

And thanks to YouTube, doing so is very easy. It allows you to add any watermark that you like to all of your videos.

However, instead of using your name or logo as a watermark, it is best that
you use a ‘Subscribe’ watermark. This will help you gain more subscribers very easily who will come back to view your latest videos.

Upload videos frequently

If you are not regular at posting videos, your subscribers will gradually lose interest as they find that your videos are few and far between.

That is why, before you start posting videos on YouTube, create a plan on what you want to upload and when you are going to upload it.

Follow the schedule and you will find that you are steady at work. Your channel subscribers will continue receiving what they want to see at regular intervals and that will keep them engaged.

Make the videos moderately long

While it is important that you post videos frequently, uploading minute long videos are of no use. Do not try to break one long video into many small ones in order to increase your post frequency.

Videos that are 10 minutes or longer gain more subscribers than those that are very short.

This is because the viewers would like to know more about the topic that the video is on and if they do not get valuable information, they may not want to watch more of your videos and there goes your subscribers.

That is why, it is recommended to upload videos that are atleast 10 minutes long or a bit more. However, do not stretch them unnecessarily as that can
bore the audience.

Use the YouTube intro and outro

If you have never heard of this, you need to go ahead and check this out.

When you add a sizzling intro and a fantastic outro to your video, your visitors are going to stick around for more than you can imagine.

Great intros pique their interest and mind-blowing outros make them want more. And to get more, they generally subscribe to your channel. And the best part is that with online (free) video creators, creating intros and outros is easy-peasy.

Create an interesting thumbnail

Thumbnails play an important role in attracting the attention of the viewers and if you can make the thumbnails catchy, you can compel more people to watch your videos.

The more they watch your videos, the better are your chances of gaining subscribers.

Use the End Screen efficiently

If you want more subscribers, you need to attract viewers to more of your videos. An effective way to do so is to use your End Screen to present/promote other related videos from your channel.

So, while you are about to end your present video, you are allowing the viewers a sneak-peak into other videos and if they have what the viewers are looking for, they will view them as well.

This will give them the information that they are looking for and make them feel that your videos are worth watching. The result? Well, they will subscribe to your channel.

Engage the viewers

If a viewer has liked a video that you uploaded, he/she may put a comment on your video mentioning the same.

Even if they haven’t liked something, they may express the same in the comments section. This should not only help you know what the viewers like or want to see in the videos, but also opens up an opportunity to engage with them.

Reply to the comments that the viewers have put in and they will surely like the gesture. Moreover, as you communicate with your audience, you stand a chance to convert them into a permanent fanbase.

Use a well-formulated channel description

Getting subscribers is all about attracting more viewers and a good channel description can do that for you.

Instead of going for a one-liner, add a brief channel description that tells the viewer about who you are, why you took to vlogging or video marketing, and how you can help them.

A compelling description will surely get you more subscribers. You can add a few keywords too for better rankings on SERP.

Optimize video titles

Another effective way of getting more viewers and thus, more subscribers is the use of proper video titles.

The titles that you use for your videos must tell the viewers what the video is about, and should preferably contain a keyword or two so that the search engines find it easy to rank your videos.

Do not ignore video description

Not only does your channel description matter, video descriptions are important as well.

It shouldn’t be too short (a one-liner) or too long (an essay). It should ideally be a few lines that will briefly describe what the video is about and how it can help the user.

Try to include a keyword or two in the description for SEO benefits. But never overdo it.

Harness the benefits of meta data

Poor video views count doesn’t necessarily mean that the video content is poor. It could be that it has poor discoverability percentage, i.e. only a few people are actually coming across your video.

This could be because of wrong/no use of meta data on your videos. Much like any content, your videos, too, need the proper meta data to rank well on search results.

And the more easily your videos get found on search results, the better will be the viewership and more will be the number of subscribers on your channel.

Use subscriber magnets

Go to your Analytics page and find out which of your videos has earned you more subscribers.

Once you find out, you can use the same video as a subscriber magnet.

You can add that particular video to the End Screen of all other videos, put it on the top of your video playlist, make it a channel trailer, or anything that will get you the eyeballs that you need.

And once the video gets the attention, it can get you more subscribers like it was doing before.

Use the SML magic string

This short, one-line code can make it easier for you to get more subscribers.

When the viewers click on your channel link appended with the SML magic string, they automatically get a pop up that asks them to confirm subscription to your channel.

By placing the subscription option directly in front of the viewer, you increase your chances of getting subscribers.

Work on your channel icon

Having an appealing channel icon is totally worth it. The channel icon will be displayed everywhere and you do not want an indistinct icon that anyone can miss.

That is why, it is important that you make the icon as eye-catchy as possible. For personal brands, a high resolution headshot works the best, while for a company, an appealing version of the logo would be the best choice for the icon.

Use the Creator Hearts

This is a fantastic feature provided by YouTube that can help you connect better with your audience.

Suppose a viewer likes the content of a particular video and makes it a point to mention that in the comments.

This feature will not only highlight such a comment, but also allow the channel owner to react with ‘heart’ to the comment.

And when you do that, the user will receive a notification. And statistics show that such notifications are more likely to get clicked, bringing them back to your video.

This will increase interaction, and thus, the chances of subscribers.

Create a trailer that creates a hook

If you want to attract people to your videos, you need a killer trailer that will not only provide snippets of what your videos contain, but also create a hook that will be easily taken by the visitor.

Let your trailer show snippets of the best that your videos have to offer and you will have the viewer hooked to your videos.

The more they watch your videos, the better are the chances that they will subscribe to your channel.

Use your blog to promote your videos

If you have a blog with a good number of new and returning visitors, then it is a good idea to embed your videos to your blog posts.

People who like what you offer in your blog are more likely to find your videos more interesting. That is why, they can be converted to subscribers
more easily.

Use a definitive CTA

What happens when the viewer finishes seeing your video? In most cases, they will click on another related video from a different channel to know more about what they are here for.

And there goes your subscribers. But if you use a strong CTA that tells the user to click on the subscribe button to get the latest updates from your channel, they are most likely to click the button.

And you get the subscribers that you need.

Collaborate with other YouTubers

Instead of seeing other YouTubers in same domain as your competition, try to collaborate with them to create new, interesting videos.

The viewers (both yours and your collaborators’) will get more value out of the videos and you will easily gain more subscribers.

Instead of seeing other YouTubers in same domain as your competition, try to collaborate with them to create new, interesting videos.

The viewers (both yours and your collaborators’) will get more value out of the videos and you will easily gain more subscribers.

Host giveaways

Everyone likes freebies and you can use the same techniques to engage your subscribers and get new ones. You can hold contests that will reward your present subscribers.

Contests can be adding the most number of subscribers, getting the most number of likes, and so on. And when they do so, you benefit.

Use social media

An effective way of getting more subscribers on YouTube is to promote your videos on social media. Most of us have accounts on many social media platforms and a great many friends as well.

If you are active on social media, it would be a great idea to post your videos on various platforms and if they are good, they will be liked and shared by your friends, thus giving you a great outreach.

The more your videos spread, the more you will get views and subscribers.

What is the use of a business if it doesn’t convert? A successful business needs to convert to whatever you want. It should not merely gain popularity and become traffic­intense without any use.

Let’s say you have a blog on a hot topic, for instance. The topic you blog about could be so hot and popular that it attracts thousands of hits every day to your site – that’s traffic. Traffic is something that every online marketer is after. We always want more of it. But what if your site is not generating any income even though it is generating thousands of hits every day? That is wasted traffic, right?

Pointless traffic or traffic that doesn’t convert

is useless. Hence it is quite important that you need to build a business that merely doesn’t attract pointless traffic, but converts that traffic into something you really want – in this case,

money!

Let me walk you through the basics of building a business model that converts. And I want you to pay close attention to the following and take action.

Choose a niche

In order to make money online, you should be really in one niche (you could also have multiple blogs/websites that generate you income on different niches). You cannot have a single blog/website that talks about all things under the sun. There is a reason I am telling you this: If you are a jack of all trades, you are simply ruining your opportunity to make money online. You need to get laser focused on your purpose on being online. For this you need to position yourself in one niche

– one market.

Now, finding a niche for your business is totally up to you. But choosing a niche is a very crucial step and this should not be ignored.

You would have heard many times about blogging on a topic that you’re passionate about. That is recommended indeed if you are thinking about blogging as business. However, if you think being passionate is bit too much, you should at least choose a topic that you know stuff about.

Choosing a totally new area to blog about, where you know nothing on the topic will only leave you frustrated in the long run, since blogging is about creating content.

Blogging is marketing your business via your content. So you should be prepared to create content on the topic you choose to blog, on a regular basis. If you choose a topic you’re not passionate about, or at least, if you’re not familiar with, then you would run into trouble when you have to create content.

The second aspect that comes into play is the profit you can make in a certain niche. This is what they call “choosing a profitable niche”. You should do adequate research before you choose a niche to blog about. The research process as a whole need not be very complicated. You can follow a very simple and indeed, a short process to choose your niche.

 1. Write down the topics/areas you are interested in, or passionate about.

 2. Visit Amazon Kindle shop and see if any Kindle books are available on the topics you have chosen. If there aren’t any or if you can find only a less than 100 books, the niche is not very hot. I refer to Kindle because it is getting popular and attracting a lot of crowd that is growing every day.

 3. Go to Google Adwords Keyword Tool (free) and find a handful of keywords that have a good/decent monthly global search. Better yet, if you have Semrush (which I heavily use almost every day), you can do excellent market research.

Find out the Demand in Your Market

Find out what is hot in your niche. Find out what people are hungry about in that niche. Find out what problems people have in that area that need a solid and quick solution.

This is your market demand.

Also find out a handful of popular blogs in your niche ­ go by Alexa traffic rank, average comments per blog post and the authority of the blog author.

Closely research those blogs and see what’s popular in there. Find out the popular posts that get lots of comments and social shares – those posts not only touch hot topics but also give out practical solutions.

Take note of these topics. Do your keyword research on these topics and come up with a handful of blog post ideas that meet the demand in your market. Make sure these topics can make killer posts.

Define Your Unique Selling Proposition

OK so you might have heard this already.

And while it is called “Unique Selling Proposition”, it is not about “selling” actually. Defining your USP helps you position yourself in your market. It helps you define your purpose. It helps you stand out from the crowd.

By defining your USP, you can position your business in the market is a unique way so that you differentiate your business and its purpose from the rest of the businesses in your market.

More importantly, it helps people find out *why* they should be listening to you or buy from you, for that matter.

It helps them realize *how* different you are from the rest of the businesses in that market. This clearly applies to blogging (if done as a business).

Given that there are countless number of blogs in most of the niches (say, internet marketing, weight loss, etc. are a few crowded niches), having a USP helps you differentiate from the others and stand out – without you having to take effort and “tell” people every time you encounter them. A USP serves this purpose automatically as soon as people find your blog – coz it is short, punchy and to the point.

You don’t have to make people read pages of sales copy before you explain them what it is all about. With a USP, I’d say that you don’t have to worry about your competition. A USP helps you easily stand out.

If you have done your market research and if you have identified your ideal customer, you have already completed 50% of the work in positioning yourself in the market.

The rest of it should follow in accordance with the views given below:

1.Your USP is not simply a slogan – don’t make it

a slogan for the sake of it. Your USP should have a purpose and clarity.

2.Don’t define it all. Let it be clear; and at the same time allow some sort of vagueness. Let your readers be curious about what you’ve got to offer.

3.Make it emotional – not all of it. But try to hit those senses.

4.Make it positive – absolutely.

5.Make it consistent with your own business passion and goals – do not define a USP in a false manner to please your audience or to compete in your market.

Take Stock of Your Potential

If you do not exactly know what your potential is, you will run into trouble. You must know what you are capable of. And you must know what resources you have at your disposal.

Get yourself a notebook and take stock of the potential things that you can use in your blogging business. For instance, if you can write five 700 word posts per day, that’s a talent. If you know web designing add it to the list. You could offer web designing as a service.

However note that, knowing a little bit of HTML

and CSS coding does NOT translate to web designing. If you put it that way in your list, later on when you start offering your service and work for your clients, you won’t be able to meet their expectations.

Similarly also take stock of any resources that are at your disposal. For example if you own Photoshop you can possibly use this tool for small design jobs and so on.

If you have a skill and don’t have the right tool or resource to use that skill, you could put that item to the list of tools/resources you should be buying soon.

In short, get to know your potential, take stock in what you currently have and then take stock in what you need to acquire. This will help you exactly pin point what you can offer as possible products/services via your blog in order to make money.

Start Delivering!

Yes you need to start now! I find that most bloggers hesitate at this point. They have everything ready. They have skills, resources, tools, and even a blog with a decent readership. But they hold back on starting to deliver.

I see blogging as nothing but content marketing. You market yourself, your brand, your business or your product via the content you offer at your blog. So if you don’t offer content, the very purpose of blogging is gone.

While you are creating content for your blog, make sure you attend to the basics of SEO (Search Engine Optimization).

Once you have pinpointed your market, the demand in your market, your blogging purpose (USP), you need to start delivering! Don’t let anything stop you.

I know the word SEO seems to be meaningless today. But if you use the basic techniques of SEO you can reap a great amount of attention from Search Engines. Stay white hat with whatever you do on this matter.

Depending upon the quality of your blog posts you will soon gather recognition, expertise and attention. Use it towards converting casual readers to loyal readers and repeat customers. It is so simple if you follow the steps I outline here.

The more you are willing to help, the easier it is to get paid for it.

But in order to get there, you must first be open and over deliver (without thinking about “sales” in mind); and more importantly, you should deliver what people are in need of – that is why we started with market research and market demand.

You don’t set up a shop and then think what to sell. You decide on your product, your capability and your stock and then set up the shop!

Alright! I know you are extremely interested in learning about making money from your blog. But allow me to do a little rant.

I’ll get back to the focus of this book quite soon (promise!).

I am writing this piece to vent out my feeling towards fake­it­until­you­ make­it bloggers.

But this is not simply a rant or venting out feelings

–you have got a very big lesson to learn from this chapter, even before you think about making money from your blog.

Fake­it­until­you­make­it bloggers ­ There are lots of them in the blogosphere. I didn’t expect there would be so many of them!

Who are these bloggers?

These are the kind of bloggers who teach people how to do something merely with their reading knowledge and not with their experience.

Sharing doesn’t need any experience. You can freely share awesome content and knowledge as you find it.

But you cannot teach people how to do stuff unless

you’ve done it yourself!

For instance, let’s say you are interested in starting an online business and decide to start a blog to promote your business.

Naturally you will read a lot of blogs that are about blogging, web hosting, SEO etc.

Naturally you will gain knowledge on these topics. But you are yet to gain experience.

At this point if you write a blog post about how one can start and run a successful blog, you are faking it. Coz you’ve not made it yet.

Following are the major areas that are hit…..

Reviews

This area is a total disaster. I can see bloggers who simply write reviews on products or services just to earn commission.

The commissions on affiliate products are attractive. That’s for sure.

But what about the trust you’d want to build?

Let’s take an example (although I say this is an example, I’m sure this is one of the most realistic

cases; I’ve experienced this many times even :))

Let’s say you find a product in Clickbank (no offense) which pays a whopping 60% commission. That’s quite tempting isn’t?

OK so you decide to write a review of the product by looking up “other” reviews of the product.

You manage to put up a detailed review with screenshots and publish it on your blog. OK so your review is great and now people will start buying that product through your affiliate link, after reading your review, right?

Wrong!

Again, I repeat, this model could have worked a few years ago, but not anymore. Let me tell you what factors your review of the product will miss:

(i)You have not put your hands on the product and you cannot write the review of an experienced person. Even though you have managed to mix mash various honest reviews, I’m sure people can still smell the fake­ness in the review (I do all the time).

(ii)Since you have no experience in using the

product, any follow up questions or emails about

the shortcomings in the product, or any queries will simply haunt you. You won’t be able to give a useful, and/or honest answer to your readers’ queries on this matter.

(iii)You won’t be able to clearly give out the negatives or the shortcomings of the product in an honest manner.

(iv)In general, your review will lack that “attachment” between you and the product, and trust me, people can easily find this out (people are much smarter and they are used to fake marketing tactics these days).

Income reports (or revealing income in any form)

Many bloggers publish income reports. It is one of the great ways to be transparent with their readers and it is one of the great ways to prove that a particular blogger is indeed making money from their blogs.

I can see that mostly income reports from bloggers in the “internet marketing” niche are so popular. This proves that the blogger is not talking the talk but also walks the walk. A couple of great examples of this is Pat Flynn from Smartpassiveincome.com and Steve from Stevescottsite.com.

Their income reports are quite popular as well and are a great motivation for aspiring bloggers like you who really want to make money from blogging

–their income reports prove that making money from blogging is indeed possible.

But I can also see some other bloggers who also publish income reports – faking them. While they might be just earning a $1000 or less, they publish income reports showing 10 times more earnings, just to create a hype; or to prove or show off (in a fake manner) that they are making a great living from their blogs. This is not a healthy trend.

PS: There is no offence against bloggers who publish income reports. I know many other bloggers who publish honest reports. The fact that I have not mentioned their names doesn’t mean that they count on the fake list.

PPS: Some bloggers don’t publish income reports and this is fine too. The fact that they don’t publish income reports doesn’t mean that they don’t make money. There could be various legal and personal reasons for a blogger to not publish an income report. This doesn’t mean that the blogger doesn’t earn from his/her blog.

Teaching (and preaching) people how to do stuff

OK this is on top of everything when it comes to faking. I can see various newbie bloggers write about making money online, complete SEO guides, copywriting 101 guides and so on while they have just started out.

The point is – they have not yet made it. So how can they teach someone else to do it? This is ridiculous.

When you have just started a new blog (assuming this is your first blog) and when you have published only a few blog posts, how can you talk about “proven ways to drive 1000 visits to your blog posts”?

Or “how to make $1000 in affiliate income in 30 days”?

Or “how to go viral on social media”? – when your own blog posts barely have any social shares!

You think you can really make fool of your readers by writing these fake tutorials? I bet.

The point?

Coming back to the focus of this book –

why am I telling you this? Faking things until you make them is dangerous. It can totally tamper

your earning potential.

I again repeat, people don’t fall prey for fake marketing tactics these days, as they used to do a few years ago.

They can clearly smell your fakeness and they will simply stop trusting you. If your readers don’t trust you on what you say, how on the earth are you going to make money blogging?

So please don’t.

If you have this question in your mind, “Can I fake it until I make it?”, please get rid of that thought right now.

Quick tip: Make a resolution to NOT to fake anything until you make it, when it comes to blogging!

PS: Faking it until you make it is not a completely bad thing. Just see that you don’t do it to others. But you can use it in a good way to improve your personality. For instance, you can keep repeatedly saying “I manage my time effectively”, even if you don’t, to yourself and master yourself on time management – Great tip from Brian Tracey.

1. CAN I REALLY MAKE MONEY BLOGGING?

Starting a blog is so different these days. I’m sure
you’ll agree with me on that.
Back in the days, about 5­10 years ago, starting a
blog was fun. Those who started a blog started it
for fun and as a personal blog.
Most of them never intended to make money from
their blogs. Until some day they accidentally found
that they can indeed make money from their
blogs.
Once they found that out, they started to make
their blog(s) more focused on a business topic.