If you’re new to YouTube but want to monetize your content you’ll need to generate 

, and you’ll also need 1,000 subscribers to qualify. Here are 10 tips to help you attract those first 1000 subscribers to your YouTube channel

#1 Apply Directly to Your Audience to Subscribe

There is a school of thought that suggests asking for subscribers, may sound a little desperate, even cheesy, but it's simply a part of the YouTube fabric. People ask you to smash that like button to improve the YouTube algorithm and engagement rates. I've never had a single comment on one of my videos complaining about asking for subscribers and if you never ask, you may never get.

#2 Use Resources to Encourage Subscriber Sign Ups

A way you could encourage your viewers and subscribe is to use animations on your videos to make the subscribe button pop. You can get all sorts of resources from all over the internet. Simply try what fits for you and you may see an upsurge in your subscribers.

#3 Take Advantage of Your Watermark Branding

Our next step is to take advantage of our watermark branding. When viewers click on this icon, it takes them to your channel where they could subscribe after watching more of your content. It's edited and created via the branding page on the Creator Studio. Make sure the word ‘Subscribe’ is included in your icon, and don’t introduce it right at the beginning or at the very end of your video. You want it to act as a visual distraction, maybe 30 to 45 seconds into the video.

#4 Add a Call to Subscribe on Your Endscreen

While you can’t add subscription links in YouTube Cards during your video, you can add a subscribe button to your Endscreen. Have a play around with graphics and animations for a really strong call to action (CTA).

Next up is a neat little trick. Whenever you share your YouTube channel add a command to the end of your link, like this: 

. When users click on it they are prompted to automatically subscribed to your channel before actually visiting your YouTube channel page.

#6 Use a Pinned Comment to Ask for Subscribers

Another way to directly appeal to your audience for a subscription is to write a comment and then pin it to your videos. When you do this, that pinned comment appears at the top of the comments list. Now again, I feel as if honesty is the best policy. Be open and transparent. Tell your audience why you're pinning these comments, why you're asking for subscriptions. Maybe it's because you want to invest the money you earn back into the channel with new equipment or products.

#7 Add a Subscribe CTA to Your Video Description

You could also add a similar message to the video description of all of your videos.

#8 Be an Active Part of the YouTube Community

Another thing you can do is reach out to an entirely new audience by adding value to other channels. That might be watching their content and posting awesome comments that either get pinned or liked by the channel creator and create a conversation. When people get involved in those conversations, they might think, "this video creator perhaps has value on their own channel." So, try and attract a new audience who may really enjoy your content and subscribe.

As an example, we get all sorts of awesome comments from you on our videos. I'm sure many other video creators are reading those comments, agreeing or disagreeing, generating a conversation, perhaps visiting your channels and subscribing. In a recent example, we had a video creator who got an audit on one of our live streams, and that drew in a significant number of new subscribers to his channel. He increased his subscriber base by 5% just by contributing to our 

#9 Post Content on a Regular and Consistent Basis

Our next tip may sound obvious, but it does need reinforcing. Post new content on a regular basis. For some viewers, it may only take one video to convince them to subscribe to your channel. But for others, they may watch a video, enjoy it, but they don't subscribe. Then in their YouTube homepage, they see a never new video from you, they watch it, enjoy it and say, "Yep, I've seen a couple of videos from this person now. I enjoy their content. I'm going to subscribe."

#10 Make Your YouTube Channel Homepage Welcoming

Following on the theme of encouraging viewers to become subscribers, make sure that your channel homepage is very welcoming. Use a channel trailer, give a good description about what your channel does including a good channel banner, and of course, plenty of playlists that tell the viewer exactly what your channel's about. In fact, when you're sharing videos, share the playlist video link. That means that when a viewer is watching your video, they're within your playlist environment. There may see it more videos that they like from your channel and eventually subscribe.

If you want to take your YouTube channel to the next level then make sure to download vidIQ. It will help you research YouTube, analyze videos, audit your own channel, and take actionable steps 

Want to monetize your YouTube content? We show you how to get your first 1000 subscribers so you can hit that goal.

Top 10 Tips to Get Your First 1000 YouTube Subscribers NOW

Sure, you have a big YouTube channel now, but can you remember who your first ever subscriber was? Yes, it may have been your mum or your boyfriend, but it’s still fun to go back in time and confirm.

Here’s a fun little fact for you - the 

 went live on February 22nd, 2013. After 30 million views and 500K subscribers, we decided to find out who our very first subscriber was. You can do the same by following these steps:

Click on your profile image in the top right-hand corner and go to the YouTube Studio

On the dashboard screen, scroll down to see "Recent Subscribers"

Click on “See All” to open a new dashboard

In the top right of this screen, click on the "date range" and select "Lifetime"

Now click on the "Date Subscribed" column twice, to show you the first or oldest subscriber

The one person who can stake their claim as "first" on vidIQ for any of our videos is 

. Unless she decides to unsubscribe. Don’t do that Ali.

Without the viewers who watch your videos, the people who subscribe to your channel, the community that engages you and supports you, you as a creator might as well present to an empty room.

These are the people who first placed faith, trust, and value in the message you have to share.

As a creator community, especially during these very challenging times for everybody, give something back to those who first supported you and gave you the courage to start your YouTube channel. Take a look back to who your first subscribers were and watch one of their videos, give it a like, and post a nice comment. It may mean the world to them right now.

If you want to take your YouTube channel to the next level and 

 then make sure to download vidIQ. Join over 1 million other users and use vidIQ to help you research YouTube, analyze videos, audit your own channel, and take actionable steps 

And if you’re really serious about growing your YouTube views and subscribers, sign up for exclusive access to the 

 and learn how to launch a successful YouTube Channel in just 30 days.

Who was the first person to ever subscribe to your YouTube channel? We show you how to find out.

How to Find Your Very FIRST YouTube Subscriber!

A huge number of YouTube creators find themselves at home right now, with perhaps a little more time on their hands as they get to avoid the morning commute, or have their lunchtimes to themselves. If you’re an active creator, you’ll know that most of your time is spent in front of the camera, and then editing the footage into something you’re eager to upload.

And while publishing consistent and engaging content is the key to growing views and subscribers, there are also many things you should be doing to keep your channel in the best possible shape. We’ve put together 13 little tasks you can easily do as part of this housekeeping. Just tackling one a day over the next couple of weeks can have a huge impact on your YouTube channel going forward. We’ll be suggesting the following:

Complete your ‘About’ section in full

13 Easy Ways to Grow Your YouTube Channel

Just devoting some time each day to the following can really improve the experience for your audience. Just pick one and start today!

Your channel page is the home of your YouTube universe that can often be forgotten and neglected once you start creating content. So it's time to revisit, fix, clean and improve it.

Make sure your channel trailer or the video that auto-plays at the top of the page best reflects what you do on your channel. If you don't have a channel trailer and you're not sure what video to use, pick the one that brings in the most subscribers. Viewers trust you with that content, after all, so you might as well use it.

Next up organize your video shelves so that they continue to educate visitors as quickly as possible as to what you do. For instance, on the 

, we have a ‘New to vidIQ’ shelf that touches on our tools but also includes general YouTube tips and tricks, and gaming advice for creators since we know that content is incredibly valuable for a big portion of our audience.

Our next shelf is devoted to our latest uploads so visitors know that we are still creating content and on a very regular basis.

Many creators are great about keeping their playlists updated. But let’s be honest, you may have had really good intentions about keeping your playlists up to date, but have fallen a little behind.

Now's the time to package them all up nicely with neat little bows. Consider whether or not you need 98 videos in a playlist, because let's be honest, who's going to start watching a 98 video playlist. Just find a playlist that only has one or two videos in it and decide whether you're going to add more videos to it or get rid of the playlist.

Remember to write playlist titles as if they were video titles rather than file names. You've got to give a reason for viewers to click on those playlists too.

#3 Complete Your ‘About’ Section in Full

Reread and then rewrite your channel’ ‘About’ section. Focus as much as possible on the value the viewer will get from your channel. Make sure to drop in a few keywords to ensure your channel can be found by a user searching for those particular keywords.

Do this as a little test. See how many times you write the word you versus how many times you write I or talk about yourself. Remember, this isn't a dating profile. This is for your viewers, subscribers and community. Here’s the vidIQ about page to give you an example:

#4 Update Old Thumbnails and Video Titles

Now might be a great time to revisit some of your old videos with terrible thumbnails and see if you can make any improvements.

But bear in mind you do have to be a little strategic about this. There is an effort versus reward ratio, but you have to find the balance. Don't just go back to all of your old thumbnails and try to improve them.

Look at the videos you think are still relevant and they have performed well in the analytics, for instance for 

 or maybe for audience retention. They may have done well for certain metrics, but they just haven't got the discoverability you think they deserve. For those videos, take a look at the thumbnails and try and improve on them them.

And the same goes for the titles as well. It's also highly likely that you've leveled up your metadata or search engine optimization skills. So take a look at the video descriptions, you can maybe have a look at the tags if you really want to. But again, be selective. Don't try and update everything, tests a couple of videos that you think have a potential to work now, even if you did make them six months, a year, five years ago.

best practices for YouTube Custom Thumbnails.

Also consider your info cards and end screens. You may have launched a video a year ago and it didn't do very well for a couple of months and then all of a sudden, it took off, and turned into evergreen content, which is a huge win!

But what you might have forgotten to do is go back to that video and say, hey, this video is getting a lot of views, maybe I could funnel those viewers into more recent content by using more appropriate info cards and end screens.

#6 Make Your Best YouTube Content Even Better!

Personally speaking I always think it's much more difficult to relight the fire in a existing video on YouTube. And I'm always more forward thinking in creating new content. So - create new content from your old content!

A couple of years ago, we made a video on 

 and it did pretty well 145,000 views. But since then the landscape has changed and I, personally speaking, feel I am a better educator and creator.

So we remade this video with new advice, better filmmaking techniques and improved SEO. And now this 

, published in February 2020, sits at the top of a search rankings with nearly 100,000 views in just a single month.

We did the same thing in the gaming topic, too. I made a video a while ago about 

Then Dan, our gaming expert came along and he said, "I can do a better job than that." And I said, yeah, we'll go on then. And he did and it's at the top of the search rankings and will likely get a million views this year.

#7 Reach Out and Connect With Your YouTube Audience

So at the time of writing, we are still deep into the 

, where there are many people stuck at home and they are turning to YouTube for entertainment, education, and in some cases, communication. This is where you as creators can step in.

Now I know that content takes a long time to create. For me it takes days, for others it takes weeks. For animators it can take months but there are ways you as a creator can create rapid fire content, and directly communicate with your audience every single day.

One of the best way to do this is through livestreams. If you've built up a community, you can invite all of those people who are stuck at home right now to join you in a livestream. I guarantee that your viewers will appreciate it.

We know this because we do channel audits every single week on the 

 (Tuesday 11am PT) and the engagement and enthusiasm is insane.

The aim isn't necessarily for you to gain Watch Time out of these streams, it's for you to give value to your viewers, whether it's through questions and answers, education, or just entertaining them.

There are a lot of people doing this right now, there are yoga instructors, musicians, fitness coaches who now can't go to their clients or go to their place of work and they're turning to YouTube to do that. If you're new to livestreaming, here's our brand new guide that's going to give you all the information you need:

If you have enough subscribers, as well as livestreams, you'll also have access to some other cool tools that allow you to keep in touch with your community on a regular basis.

The Community Tab is your YouTube social feed, and a place where you can post pictures, gifs and voting polls. You can tease video footage to go behind the scenes, or in our case celebrate our amazing 500,000 subscribers:

Voting polls in particular are a good source of engagement. Everyone loves to cast their ballot even if it is to decide the name of a vidIQ tool. There's also a cool extra bonus with community posts - they reach beyond your subscribers. If you want to know more about how that happens, 

. It is scary but fascinating at the same time.

The next communication tool if you're fortunate enough to have it is YouTube Stories. YouTube Stories are essentially Instagram Stories or TikTok 15 second video clips that you record vertically. You don't create a thumbnail or a title, you simply push them to your YouTube channel, and people can watch them through via mobile YouTube app.

We've been using YouTube Stories to do Q&A. I'll post a clip asking if you've got any questions about your channel, vidIQ or YouTube just post them in the comments, and I will respond with a YouTube Story. They are proven to be very successful and they are generating a lot of subscribers for us as well.

Another way to communicate is to collaborate. Here I am making a cameo appearance on Dotto Tech to share my thoughts about working from home (catch me around 4:25 seconds in).

Steve Dotto and I helped run a YouTube meetup in Vancouver, so it felt like a natural fit to help him out. It also exposes me to a brand new audience of potentially 274K subscribers.

Of course not everything needs to be directly associated with your YouTube channel. If you have the time, you can invest it in your personal development.

For example, you could learn how to use some new equipment such as a camera or a microphone to up your production values. You could go on to YouTube and find out how to better present in front of camera, to build your charisma.

You could, if you really want to, go through all of our 

 and learn more about how to grow your YouTube channel. Or better yet, start one of our 

! We have a 30 day, 32 video course about how to start your YouTube channel that's useful for even seasoned pros.

Right now economies across the globe are in total chaos. And as a result, people's lives and the way they work are going to fundamentally change. In this current landscape. YouTube provides many of these people with an opportunity, because there are almost no barriers to entry.

A lot of people have a lot of skills, and at the moment, they can't get paid for them. But what they can do is take those skills onto YouTube and create opportunities of their own.

If you haven't started your own YouTube channel yet, or you've already been on YouTube for a period of time and you're not doing anything right now. You may miss out. YouTube was already a competitive space coming into 2020 It isn’t going to get any less crowded anytime soon.

Another thing you might want to do is create an ideas board. A lot of creators really do struggle with video ideas in the moment with the time that you have right now, you have the opportunity to build out six months, even potentially years worth of content.

If you do want to learn more about generating YouTube ideas, we have the perfect video here:

Right now is a good time to improve or upgrade your YouTube channel. Here's some advice from vidIQ on how to work on one fix a day ⏰

13 Ways to Grow Your YouTube Channel Right Now!

As a YouTuber, you have the potential to reach a global audience with your content. Because as access to the Internet and cheaper mobile devices increases across the world, millions of new viewers are tuning into YouTube to watch a staggering range of topics and creators.

Even if you publish content in your native language, you can translate your video into a huge number of other languages. That way you can reach audiences in many different countries, and therefore grow your views and subscribers. And who doesn’t want that?

Find Out Where Your YouTube Viewers and Subscribers Come From

First of all, let's first find out where your audience comes from so you can make decisions about what languages to translate your content into.

Click on your YouTube profile image and then go to the new Studio.

From here click on ‘Analytics’ and then click on the ‘Audience’ tab at the top of the screen.

Below the graphs, you should see a ‘Top Countries’ panel showing you where in the world your audience watches from.

With this information, you can start to translate videos into that country's native language.

How to Translate a Video Title & Description on YouTube

To do this go to the ‘Video’ section of the YouTube Studio.

On each video in this list, you will see an edit button that will take you to that video's details page.

Down the left-hand side you will see a subtitle section, click it, and this will show you all of the current subtitles and translations for this video.

 audience are from India, so let's do a Hindi translation for some of those viewers. To do this:

Click the ‘Add Language’ button and use the drop down menu to select the language you want to translate into. Now this language is being created. Click ‘Add’ under the title and description column, a pop up box will now display showing the video's original language for the video title and description and an empty box for your translations and this is where we insert a little magic.

Once you have the vidIQ extension installed (

), you will see this translate button that with a single click will translate both the video title and description into your chosen language.

Make any edits to the texts you need to and then click the publish button so that now when viewers use YouTube in that language, your title and description will be correctly translated for them.

If you want to translate video tags, you can do that too. Go to the details section for the video and then scroll down until you see all of your tags for that video. Again with vidIQ installed, you will see a translate button that allows you to choose a language to translate all of your existing tags into as quickly and as efficiently as you've just seen.

There is a caveat with video tags however, in that irrespective of language, tags share the same tag space on YouTube. So you can't have a set of English tags and a set of Hindi tags, they are all lumped together and with 500 characters to play with, that's not much room.

How to Translate Subtitles for a YouTube Video

The next question that you may be asking is what about subtitle translations for your entire video?

The challenge we've had with subtitle translations is that the AI needs to listen to you in your native language and translate that into text, which isn't always perfect. Then it needs to take all that text and turn it into a new language and by the time you've gone through all of that process, the translations can be a little garbled. To say the least.

The best option available to you right now is to use a professional service such as 

. We use Rev to transcribe our videos in English, then convert those transcriptions into other languages.

This service can be pricey, so this suggestion is for larger channels who are getting millions of views a month and have a large audience in other languages. When you're talking about four or five percent of people watching in France, Spain or Italy, that can add up to hundreds of thousands, if not millions of views for those types of channels.

Or if you want to go even further, you can do this. In the video below, I am speaking Spanish. Now, I have to be honest with you, I have no idea what I’m saying because I don't speak Spanish myself. But the guys at 

 do. They take your channel and translate the whole thing into a brand new channel with everything including your voice translated perfectly into that language. That's why we call this YouTube channel 

When you can provide audio in a new language, it takes translation to the next level. Over the last year, we have been creating and translating content that will provide real value to our Spanish speaking vidIQ audience and just like any channel, it has required a lot of hard work and a lot of patience. But just like any channel, when it does the right things consistently, YouTube will begin to reward you with more views, more subscribers, more exposure.

So as your channel begins to grow and your audience starts to widen, think about the languages that those people speak and how you can help them with your content.

Did you know that you can translate your YouTube video title, description, tags, and subtitles into a huge range of other languages? It's a great way to reach a global audience and grow your views and subscribers.

How To Translate Your YouTube Video in to ANY Language

 and now you think that feature should apply to every single video you publish. You don't have to convince us, but you do have to convince YouTube.

The next time you upload a video you may find yourself encountering a new screen as part of the upload workflow. This new step gives you the chance to “self-certify” your content before it goes live. If you are part of the 

 step two will always ask you whether or not you want to monetize the video. If you say yes and save, a new third step will appear labeled ‘Ad Suitability’.

On this screen, you will be quizzed about whether or not the video contains certain content that might make the video not suitable for all advertisers. You can click on each box and answer the questions contained within. And as you do so the revenue potential box to the right will show you how this might affect the revenue on the video. In some cases, you will get the all-clear, indicated by a green dollar icon.

While in other cases your video may only be eligible for limited ads as indicated by a yellow dollar icon. Just to be clear, this doesn't mean that your content is inappropriate for YouTube and that you will get community guideline strikes. But it may be inappropriate for certain advertisers who want to target particular audiences.

There are 8 categories to work through including adult content, violence, drug-related content, sensitive issues and more. If you are 100% confident your content doesn't come close to any of these issues, you can simply check the none of the above box at the bottom of the screen, and move on.

YouTube: Self-Certifying Your Content for Monetization

Why is YouTube now giving creators the ability to self-certify their content? The answer is because YouTube wants to place the burden of responsibility on you, rather than itself, for the content on the platform.

Now this has both its positives and negatives. So let's take a look at both.

It is well known that YouTube uses lots of machine learning and artificial intelligence to automatically review content, but that isn’t always foolproof. So it stands to reason that if you are truthful with your self-certification - and this is confirmed through an automated review - YouTube will start to trust you more. That means it's less likely that your future content will be hit by inappropriate misleading ad warnings when you don't deserve them.

This may also mean that if you have been on YouTube for years, without any issues, you may not see this screen very often, or even have to go through this process.

On the flip side if you're brand new to the YouTube partner program you may have to confirm this screen with every single video you upload. We'll have to see what happens over the next couple of months. Ultimately for all those creators who are doing the right things, this should add an extra layer of comfort.

YouTube Partner Program: Don’t Upload Inappropriate Content!

Now if YouTube decides that your content is doing something wrong, then they're washing their hands of it and saying, "we asked you to fill out this form, you didn't fill it out properly, it's your own fault".

YouTube also says that if you continually misrepresent your content they will review your participation in the YouTube partner program.

In a sense, YouTube is gathering evidence. Like they do with the ‘Made for kids’ question - you have to answer regarding 

So with all of this in mind, here are a couple of tips to follow:

First, and obviously, be honest. If you try and cheat the system, or dodge the questions now, it's going to come back to bite you later.

Secondly, if you're not sure if your video falls into any of these categories, you can play it safe. Set one of the categories, unlist the video and then request a manual review so that human reviewers can check on the video.

Over the past year, YouTube has been experimenting with running adverts against edgier content. That's because in part if YouTube knows the nature of the content, advertisers can target those particular videos with the right target audience.

YouTube has a dedicated support page on advertiser-friendly guidelines that does include broad examples, so that's definitely worth checking out. 

If you would like to learn more about monetizing your YouTube channel then make sure to check out this 

YouTube wants you to earn revenue from your videos so it has introduced a new step to confirm your uploads are ad-friendly. Read more about this new feature for creators in the YouTube Partner Program.

How to Monetize Your YouTube Videos (and Keep Them Monetized!)

 here at vidIQ, as we’re always getting asked how to create a one, or how to grow one. We also get asked the following question a LOT - is it too late to start my own gaming channel when the competition is so fierce out in YouTube world.

And the answer is, if you hit the right strategy then no, it’s not too late. Particularly if you’re prepared to put in the work and the wait time. No-one is going to become as famous and successful as 

 overnight (not even Pewds himself), but if gaming is your passion and you feel you have something of value to offer your target audience, then go for it. Today.

To show you it’s entirely possible, let’s shine a light on one particular creator who only started their channel in March 2020, and now (at time of writing) has over 8K subscribers.

100 Percent Zelda: A Gaming Channel Case Study

 is a channel focused on the action-adventure game Zelda: Breath of the Wild, and it came to vidIQ’s attention during one of our live-streamed channel audits that take place on 

The creator then shared a post on Twitter about how the channel was suddenly gaining some traction

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">I made it in right under 3 months! =) This last 2 weeks were crazy!! Quality over quantity for me. Do it for your audience, not yourself, and the rest will come. Thank you to all my wonderful subscribers =)<a href="https://twitter.com/vidIQ?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@vidIQ</a> <a href="https://t.co/2RC8p8rS90">pic.twitter.com/2RC8p8rS90</a></p>&mdash; 100 Percent Zelda (@100percentzelda) <a href="https://twitter.com/100percentzelda/status/1276368834144976896?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 26, 2020</a></blockquote>

To understand exactly what this creator thinks happened to get their channel to take off, we reached out to them and asked if they would share just a little bit of insight. What we learned from 100 Percent Zelda is, obviously, they're a fan of Zelda, but not only that, they're a fan of watching creators on YouTube who also play Zelda. Take a look at

How a YouTube Gaming Channel Got 1000 Subscribers in Three Months

The creator of 100 Percent Zelda decided they wanted to start a channel, so they started taking note of things they liked and things they didn't necessarily like about other creators and the way they were covering the game on YouTube.

In addition to doing some serious competitor research, they also joined Zelda communities across the Internet and paid really close attention to the types of questions people were asking in those communities.

Perhaps the most crucial step this channel took though was keeping their audience in mind when they decided to launch. They determined that if someone was going to subscribe for 100 Percent Zelda, they had better get 100% Zelda. But the creator went a step further and not only niched down on gaming and ‘Zelda,’ but went one step further to focus right in on ‘Zelda: Breath of the Wild.’

That’s proved to be a winning strategy, with videos like this one generating amazing views for a relatively small and new channel:

So, we already know that they've seen explosive growth covering ‘Breath of the Wild’, but the long-term plan for this channel is to eventually explore other Zelda games. As we know, there are plenty of Zelda games to choose from with more on the way in the future.

What’s really helping this channel with its success is the type of Zelda content they're creating. They're not just playing Zelda, they're answering those questions that they learned about from the community like ‘

Key to YouTube Success: Know Your Audience

The methods that 100 Percent Zelda used here to grow their own channel are totally repeatable. As with any big game franchise, when the game features a lot of depth like ‘Breath of the Wild’, a lot of questions come up as players try to find out how to do something in the game. That’s a lot of video content to be made just answering those questions.

100 Percent Zelda started their YouTube journey by making content specifically for their audience. As they continue to grow and people connect with them on a more personal level, that will be time to branch out into different Zelda games, or different games altogether.

Of course, if you want to play multiple games across multiple genres, then you'll probably start generating some subscribers, but any time you switch a game or switch a genre, you need to be prepared for some of those subscribers to never come back.

One size doesn't fit all on YouTube, but with a little research and some hard work, you can make high value, dependable content that people subscribe to and continue coming back for.

Want to Make it as a Gaming Creator on YouTube?

If you want to get more insights into YouTube to kickstart your gaming channel success, then make sure to download vidIQ. Over 1 million creators use vidIQ to help with keyword and competitor research, channel audits, and so much more. 

And if you’re serious about growing your YouTube views, subscribers, and community, sign up for exclusive access to the 

. Learn how to launch a successful YouTube Channel in just 30 days.

Yes, it's an insanely competitive space, but you can still find success with a brand new gaming channel on YouTube. Take this Zelda enthusiast for instance!

No, It's NOT Too Late to Create a YouTube Gaming Channel (Zelda Case Study)

On average, how many comments do you get on your YouTube channel every single day? As your channel grows, you’re only going to get more of them, so let me show you how to answer them efficiently so you can stay better connected with your audience.

YouTube has rolled out a new feature called ‘Smart Replies’ which should help you answer at least some comments with automated text. But we have an easier solution that you can use via the 

But first, let’s take a look at the new YouTube Smart Replies set up. You need to access the comments page first. To do this:

Click on your profile image in the top right-hand corner of most YouTube screens

Click ‘Comments’ in the left-hand navigation bar to display the most recent comments that have been posted on your channel, whether they be for your videos, community posts, or YouTube stories.

Underneath some of these comments, (but not all), you will see some smart reply boxes. To add these as a reply to the comment all you need to do is click the box which will populate the reply line, which you can edit if you wish before publishing.

When smart replies appear, you don't always get the same options as they are context-specific to the comment itself. Presumably, YouTube is picking out common phrases and predicting comments you might use as stock answers. Hopefully, over time this will improve, giving you more smart replies to more comments.

Reply to More YouTube Comments with vidIQ

Now while this is a step in the right direction for YouTube, I wouldn't exactly call them "smart" replies. First of all, they're fairly infrequent, and I would also say they're pretty dumb replies since each one only contains a few words and a smiley if you're lucky.

Well, there is a tool that can do this a lot better and it's absolutely free. Let me show you what it is.

Let's take this as an example. On a video about how to get 1,000 subscribers we see a person who has posted a comment, but they only have six subscribers. We know this because we have 

 and along with the sub count, you will see this vidIQ button:

Engaging with your audience via comments is one of the keys to success on YouTube. The platform has rolled out 'Smart Replies' to help creators with this, but we have an even better solution!

Posts Written By Carla Marshall

Top 10 Tips to Get Your First 1000 YouTube Subscribers NOW

How to Find Your Very FIRST YouTube Subscriber!

13 Ways to Grow Your YouTube Channel Right Now!

How To Translate Your YouTube Video in to ANY Language

How to Monetize Your YouTube Videos (and Keep Them Monetized!)

No, It's NOT Too Late to Create a YouTube Gaming Channel (Zelda Case Study)

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