Although this post is all about gaming channels, the advice is applicable to all types of topics. However, check out our video on ‘

How to Get Your First 100 Subscribers on YouTube

’ for tips and tricks for every YouTube creator.

6 Ways to Get Your First 100 Subscribers as a YouTube Gaming Channel

How long have you been active on YouTube? And, in that time, how many subscribers have you gained on your channel? If you’re struggling to hit your first milestone then check out the following 6 tips for success

#1 Determine Your Value Proposition so Viewers Subscribe

As you can imagine, competition in the gaming space on YouTube is heavy. And as time goes on that competition is only going to increase as more and more gaming content creators are enticed onto the platform.

So as you continue on your YouTube journey towards that first 100 subscribers you need to ask yourself, why should people subscribe to me? And once you determine that, that needs to become your value proposition.

What’s a value proposition? It’s simply what makes your channel valuable, and if that's something you haven’t determined yet, that's my first assignment for you. Determine your value proposition and then make it clear upfront.

If you have less than 100 subscribers you need to build some credibility and authority around that value proposition.

You need to put your money where your mouth is and show us just exactly how you're going to help us master the game of Temtem, for instance. Luckily, you can do this in a multitude of ways. You could do tutorials, you could give your take on Temtem versus games like Pokemon, or you could show highlights of some of your best moments in the game where you conquered some of the most challenging boss fights.

But keep in mind, it takes time to build credibility and authority, and you're going to need a few videos under your belt before people start seeing that you actually are the master of Temtem.

This advice assumes that you've niched down your content to at least one genre of game if not one game altogether. We recently published a video on the subject and I highly recommend checking it out because I go over exactly how I would go about niching down into at least a genre of a video game.

#3 Create a Video Library of Content on Your YouTube Channel

Once you have decided which game or genre you’re going to focus on, I recommend building a healthy library of videos.

Even if your plan is just to make one video a week, I would recommend starting out with about three to five videos on the subject that you're covering. This will do a few things for you.

For one, it's going to help your potential subscribers know exactly what kind of content they're going to get if they come back wanting more. Secondly, you're giving YouTube more data to help better categorize your channel. The third thing this is going to do is give you the opportunity to diversify your content out of the gate.

Let's say you don't want to just make Temtem tutorials, but you also want to create some generic ‘let's play’ content where it's just you playing the game for 20 or 30 minutes. You can do a couple of ‘let's plays’, and mix in a tutorial and a review or two. Now your potential subscribers have a really good idea of what kind of videos you make around this game or the genre of games.

#4 Run a Channel Audit so You Know What’s Working

This seems like the perfect opportunity to show you the 

 we offer here at vidIQ. As you build up a library of videos, you're going to be getting a lot of data points, so run a channel audit often (even every day) and take a look at videos that are getting decent views, and decent engagement. Then, double down on that kind of content. Give your audience more of the things that they're coming back for.

You can also use this tool to determine videos that could use a little more work. You can go into these videos and determine why did people only watch for a short time, which is an amazing opportunity for you to learn from your old content and make more engaging videos going forward.

#5 Work Extra Hard on YouTube Custom Thumbnails

So you've picked your game or your genre and you know exactly what content to create to get you your first 100 subscribers because now you're giving them value on a very specific topic.

So with that out of the way, the next thing we need to focus on is your thumbnails. Generally speaking, I've seen countless creators do one of two things. First, they take a screenshot from the game and let that be their thumbnail. YouTube just chooses it for them and it very often doesn't really match the title of the video, so as a viewer and I'm not really sure what I'm going to get.

Secondly, I've seen a lot of over-produced thumbnails where creators try to cram as much text and tiny images into an already tiny thumbnail as possible in order to try and communicate what the video's about in just one little picture.

I can't stress enough, please don't skimp on your thumbnails. As gamers, we have a lot of awesome opportunities to make really colorful, eye-catching thumbnails because video games have already done half the work by basically allowing you to play in a work of art.

Now I do understand that some games make this a little more difficult than others. Like Temtem is a very visually appealing game, but what about a game like Braains.io? Braains.io is kind of a zoomed-out, top-down game and taking a screenshot and trying to make it a fun clickable thumbnail is a little bit tough, but a lot of creators have kind of found a way to make this work for them.

The fact of the matter is even if your game doesn't really allow for nice screenshots to be taken within it, be sure to put in that effort yourself and find a way to make your thumbnails clickable and eye-catching. Perhaps take a character from your game, and make it the hero of your thumbnail, but make sure that people visually connect with your game rather than just simply taking a top-down screenshot and calling it a day.

For more information on creating the perfect custom thumbnail (and why it’s vital that you do) check out 

So up to this point, if you've been following this advice, you now have a strong value proposition, you have amazing thumbnails, you have a clear idea of exactly what your channel's about and you've communicated that to your audience. You're starting to build up that authority and that credibility by posting a number of videos that identify you as an expert on whatever it is you're covering.

Now that you've honed in on the value that you're offering your viewers, it never hurts to ask people to subscribe, I can't stress this enough.

Think of it this way, they've already clicked on your video out of interest. They saw your thumbnail and thought oh wow, that looks nice. They looked at the title and said, "Oh wow, I actually need to know "how to beat that boss fight in Temtem." Then they've clicked.

Now, let them know, you do this thing kind of a lot and you would like them to subscribe. When you watch videos here at vidIQ you'll notice that right at the bottom of the screen we always put something that indicates, hey, don't forget, you can subscribe. We make videos like this all the time. It never hurts to invite people to explore your library of videos a little bit deeper and decide if you're a creator they would like to visit again.

YouTube Gaming Channels: You’ve Got This!

Getting your first 100 subscribers on YouTube is probably going to be the hardest uphill battle you'll have on the platform. But once you get that first 100, you may find that 200 isn't far off because by now, you've built up a lot of credibility. You have a library of videos. You have an upload schedule and your audience is coming back for more.

YouTube is a marathon, not a sprint. So enjoy the time it takes to get your first 100 subscribers. Learn with every video you make and you'll get there, I promise.

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.

YouTube controller icon showing subscriber growth reaching 100 subscribers guide

Your first 100 subscribers on YouTube is a big deal, but every channel is going to face its own set of struggles along the way to this goal. We show you how gaming channels can break through this first hurdle

How to Get Your First 100 Subscribers as a YouTube Gaming Channel

How often do you upload gameplay videos to your channel? In gaming, daily uploads are common, with creators maybe recording for a few hours, breaking that content up into smaller clips.

I've seen many reuploaded live streams broken up into several episodes, which gives the gamer ample content to upload every day. But is that the right strategy?

Building a Gaming Channel on YouTube: Upload Frequency

Now, the strategy of recording for a long time and then breaking it up and uploading segments of this recording every single day has its place on your gaming channel. But I've tried this for myself and I can tell you, if you're looking to grow your channel instead of just engage your current audience, this strategy isn't going to be very effective.

YouTube won’t necessarily reward you if you upload content as much as possible. If you're just uploading “episode 82” of your gameplay video, that's probably not a big search term that anyone is looking for.

Daily uploads do have the benefit of getting seen by your own audience because you've made that a schedule, and it's pretty easy to upload content every day when all you're doing is hitting record and just playing your favorite game. And for the bigger, more established channels, YouTube may just push your content because you're just uploading so many videos. But let me explain why smaller, newer channels should take a different approach.

Why Uploading Daily Gaming Content isn’t the Best Strategy

The first issue you're going to have is burnout. When I was doing this on my channel, I was trying to upload every single day. But not only did I get tired of the game fast, I got tired of all of it - editing the videos, creating thumbnails, trying to think of new titles and tags. It can just be too draining to make that much content all the time.

More importantly, it became harder and harder to come up with ideas about what I was going to do in every video. Even if it was a game like Minecraft where I'm building something, it doesn't take very long after about 50 days or 50 videos in to run out of things to build.

Combine all of those problems with the fact that my YouTube channel just simply wasn't growing made me look for a better solution.

The turning point for me was to cut back on the amount of content I made. Only then did I start to see progress. That's because instead of just making content as often as I could, I took a step back and asked myself, "What are people who play Minecraft really searching for? What are the problem areas? So adopting that quality over quantity method helped me grow, and that was a huge learning curve for my channel.

Now, as someone who started a gaming channel, I, like many of you had somebody or a few people I was watching who inspired me to keep creating. I would watch their channels as a fan and I would see them uploading every day and I would see their videos getting thousands of views and it made me excited.

 I could really understand what is making those other gaming channels work. The tool allows you to choose any channel you want and check out how their videos are doing based on views per hour, views in general, or just the date uploaded.

The reason I've picked these very large Minecraft creators relative to the size of my own channel, is because they appear top for the search term Minecraft. These are well-established creators who can get almost 20,000 views every hour on a video that was posted two days ago, but even they still need to be putting in that quality work.

You'll notice that a lot of time has been spent on their very custom thumbnails. These are not screenshots taken from Minecraft, these are handcrafted, custom thumbnails that are all very eye-catching, and have a lot of color to them.

There's one specific channel I want to point out that does a really good job though and that is 

. The thumbnails are pretty nice. They are screenshots from the game and they simply say Minecraft and then what it is. SkyBlock, The Survival Guide and so on.

What's cool about this channel is everything is still part of an ongoing series. There’s a series about SkyBlock, but specifically going to the nether in SkyBlock, which is going to be a term viewers are searching for.

What Pixlriffs tends to do is stay within that same Minecraft world. So in effect, these are still, let's play videos as you may know them, as you might create for yourself, but they all have a purpose.

The point of me showing you this is on this channel, everybody's happy. Pixlriffs is making content that's probably going to get him discovered by a new audience and his current audience gets to watch as he plays Minecraft and progresses through the game.

Why Bigger YouTube Gaming Channels Can Upload Every Day

Now, these creators all have pretty large audiences. They also have great custom thumbnails and titles, and a lot of time and effort has been put into optimizing their content. You'll also notice that they have a pretty high upload frequency, they upload quite often, but what is important to remember when looking at your competition, especially when you try to compare yourself to larger channels, is that these channels are a lot more established than my own.

Some of them are doing this as a full-time job, some of them even have teams of people helping them with new thumbnails, editing, and research, etc.

As a new smaller channel, this is definitely a struggle I had. I had to remind myself that I have to start somewhere. I can't come out of the gate at the same level as these other creators. Even if I know I can make quality videos as nice as theirs, I can't do that every single day without quitting my day job or hiring a bunch of people to help me. I'm not saying that's what you have to do to get to this level. I'm just saying for me at the time, that's what I've struggled with.

All of our journeys are different. Mine is going to be different from yours, and from other creators, but one thing we all have one thing in common and that's every single YouTube channel starts with zero subscribers.

They start by asking their friends to subscribe and they test things out and then they slowly grow over time. Some of the big creators have been around for quite some time and that also gives them an advantage in the Minecraft space.

The point is if I want to grow as a Minecraft channel today, I'm going to have to try a whole lot harder because a lot of those questions that people are searching for are being answered already. There are a lot of competitors who are already covering those topics.

So when I say quality over quantity, it's especially important to remember that depending on the game you're playing and just how popular it is.

So do daily uploads help grow your channel on YouTube? Yeah, absolutely. If you can upload one video a day and you've put in the time, and the research, including creating an awesome thumbnail, an awesome title, awesome tags, and you've done everything you can to make sure that video is as high quality as possible. If you can do all of this, then go for it.

But if you don't have time to do all that work. I would highly recommend instead of daily uploads, perhaps just publish one or two videos a week. This is going to give you time in between videos to come up with those ideas to make a nice handcrafted thumbnail or to really research your keywords and titles

The key is to be consistent with your publishing schedule. You want to make sure that you upload videos frequently enough so your audience is used to finding them and YouTube is used to knowing when it should push your videos because you've uploaded them at the same time consistently week after week.

So say you upload your one or two videos a week and you find yourself with some extra downtime and you think, "Oh, that Dan guy's totally wrong. I want to make daily videos." I still think that's totally cool because as you make those more searchable, high-quality videos, you're going to want to maybe put some more out there for your audience to watch that has already subscribed, has already decided they like you.

There's nothing wrong with posting a regular old gameplay video every day, but the main take away for you is that quality over quantity is going to help with the overall growth of your channel to bring in those new subscribers.

YouTube content posting schedule calendar with daily video upload icons and gaming characters.

Is uploading daily content really the right way to grow your gaming channel on YouTube? We take a look at why this may not be the best strategy for new or smaller channels.

Will You Get More YouTube Views if You Upload Gaming Videos Every Day?

Are you a new YouTube gaming channel that’s excited to generate your first 1000 subscribers? If you’ve read our post on 

how to get your first 100 subscribers as a YouTube gaming channel

, you’ll know it’s going to take strategy and focus.

In particular, it's the the focus on the games you’re covering, and the way you’re covering them. In this post, I’ll share 5 ways to stay focused as you reach for that 1,000 subscriber goal on your gaming channel.

#1 Understand Channel Success on YouTube: Watch Time & Subscribers

What’s the average length of the gaming content you are uploading to YouTube right now? It’s important to know that because of YouTube Watch Time. The reason 1,000 subscribers is such a coveted goal is because it is one of the requirements you need before YouTube will allow you to monetize your channel. The other is that your channel must have generated 4,000 hours of Watch Time.

If you want to earn money from Adsense on YouTube then you must reach both of these goals. If you want more advice on how to do that, here’s a very handy video we created that takes a deep dive into both metrics:

If you’re uploading hours and hours of gameplay to YouTube you may think that building Watch Time couldn’t be easier. However, this isn’t always the case.

YouTube is measuring your channel based on the amount of time a viewer sticks around and watches your content. The reason I love this metric so much is because it is YouTube's way of sating "Okay, people sat through the majority of your video. This must mean your video is entertaining and because of that, we are going to push it more."

Simply making your gameplay video 10 minutes longer than it probably needs to be doesn't mean you're going to get 10 extra minutes of Watch Time from each person who watches it. And that's the very reason you'll hear me stress 

If you upload daily but you’re only getting two minutes of audience retention on your 20-minute gameplay videos that send a less positive to YouTube. Longer videos don’t always equate longer Watch Time. You have got to put in the work.

#2 Create Quality Long-Form Gaming Content

Not every video is going to be able to be 20 minutes long and have people click on it and watch the entire thing. However, there are plenty of other videos that would make good long-form content.

You could do a listicle of perhaps the top 10 ‘Cities: Skylines’ mods. During that listicle, you could cover each one in detail and that itself could be a pretty long video, but still jam-packed full of valuable information.

In "Cities: Skylines" you could also cover the best strategies for setting up your road network so you don't cause a bunch of traffic jams. Videos like this that go into detail, or offer up multiple strategies offer the viewer enough that they might just watch the whole thing:

Always consider your audience when you're making the content that you make. Consider what you would like to watch and what amount of time you'd be willing to sit through a video.

#3 Create the Highest Quality Content You Can

If the actual quality of your videos has been a problem for a while, it's going to be a bit tougher to increase that Watch Time and reach 1,000 subscribers without first investing in your equipment.

And the first upgrade that any YouTuber should be looking at is, of course, a microphone. Invest in a good sound setup because people like to hear nice crisp audio. I use an AT2020 Condenser mic, which I really love. I also recommend the Blue mics such as Blue Snowball, and Blue Yeti. Microphones are not as expensive as you would think so it’s worth splashing out on them.

Other than microphones, if you're still recording using software that comes with a watermark, it's probably time to upgrade that too. Luckily for you, programs like OBS and Streamlabs OBS are free screen-capturing tools that record at a very high quality and just about anyone can learn how to use them.

Another software recommendation I have when it comes to recording would be Nvidia Shadowplay. If you have an Nvidia graphics card, check and see if it's compatible with Nvidia Shadowplay. It'll record your screen for you off the video card. The recordings are high-quality and the software is very customizable.

#4 Start Building Your Community as Soon as Possible

On your way to 1,000 subscribers, you should be looking to build your community as soon as you can. You've probably already started doing this by answering comments that you're getting on your videos, and if you're not doing that, I would really recommend you start today.

Comments are a fantastic way to engage with your audience and get feedback on how your videos are doing, and how your viewers enjoying them - or not.

Before you reach 1,000 subscribers, you should really be focusing on growth within your YouTube channel itself. You could worry about Discord or social media later on, but at the start don't get too wrapped up in managing a lot of different community platforms. This is going to take time away from making high-quality content and engaging with the audience already engaging with you in the comment section of your YouTube videos.

This engagement is important because people are subscribing to your channel because of you. You are the star of your channel. They may have clicked on one of your videos for the first time ever because you addressed a need that they had in a game they were playing, but they subscribe because they had a connection with you.

And after they hit subscribe, I would recommend keeping them coming back by setting up a content schedule. You don't necessarily even have to make a public announcement that you've set up a schedule. Just upload consistently. If people know where to find your videos, they're going to come back on a regular basis and watch.

I would also recommend looking at what types of videos you post. Perhaps you just do ‘let's plays’ on a Monday. And then tutorials or reviews on a Wednesday.

These may be strategies you're already experimenting with at this time and you're probably going to keep experimenting even after you reach 1,000 subscribers. I would at least hope so. As you get closer and closer to 1,000 though, I would look to tip the scale a little bit.

When you start YouTube you're probably going to be experimenting 80% of the time, and uploading regular content that people are used to seeing all the time the other 20% of the time.

But as you start to learn more and more the types of videos people enjoy coming back to on your channel and you're doubling down on that content, you want that scale to tip closer to 80% of the time doing those regular videos and 20% of the time experimenting. As YouTubers, no matter who you are, you should always be experimenting and trying to do different things to stay versatile and grow your channel.

#5 Create Gaming Content That You're Passionate About

However, as your audience grows, it's not necessary to experiment so heavily. We are VidIQ, so we do talk a lot about growth, and strategy, and numbers, and that's all very exciting. And I'm not discouraging that at all. But don't forget why people start YouTube channels in the first place.

It's very likely that they have a passion for something and YouTube just happens to be the platform where they feel most comfortable sharing that passion. In my case, that passion happened to be playing video games. Hypothetically speaking, if I start a channel all about city building games like "Cities: Skylines," it's more than likely because I feel I'm pretty good at "Cities: Skylines" and I have a lot to share, and I want to show people new ways to play the game.

The point is the goal of creating the channel wasn't to get rich and famous, it was to share my passion with an audience. So keep track of those numbers and celebrate the milestones every step of the way.

But never forget that your YouTube channel is about you and the subject matter that you're covering. The reason it's so important to stress that is because as you make a content schedule, you may get into territory where you start to burn yourself out a little bit. And as a gamer, I've done this too. I was on a good trajectory and things were awesome, and I didn't want to stop uploading, even though I was starting to feel a little 

I was editing a lot and recording a lot, and I was getting tired, but my schedule was Monday, Wednesday, Friday so I had to upload on those days. This isn't a healthy habit to get into because you're worried about the numbers too much at this stage. Just remember quality over quantity every time. Your audience will understand if you need to take a break along the way.

Getting 1,000 subscribers is super exciting, but it doesn't all happen at once, unless you have some kind of a viral success. So to recap, quality over quantity. This can happen by upgrading your setup. Build your community, make that content schedule. Most importantly practice good, healthy habits. Do not burn out making a gaming channel because I can tell you from experience, it's easy to do.

YouTube subscriber growth tips showing milestones from 970 to 1000 subscribers.

Growing your YouTube gaming channel is exciting but very hard work. We share 5 ways to stay focused as you reach for that 1000 subscriber goal.

YouTube Gamers: How to Get Your First 1000 Subscribers

Many gamers on YouTube were inspired by other gaming creators. And the first creators we discover are often the ones that are well established on the platform and seem to be able to play any kind of video game they want.

So with that in mind, starting a gaming channel and playing whatever you like seems pretty easy, right? I mean, there are millions of gaming channels with billions of views so why shouldn’t your channel be just as successful?

Why PewDiePie Can Do What He Likes on YouTube

One creator in particular, has inspired a huge number of gamers - Felix Kjellberg, AKA 

In a recent video, all about how to start a YouTube gaming channel, I discussed how to grow your views and subscribers by narrowing down your niche to just one video game. A lot of YouTubers responded by stating they wanted to play multiple games within multiple genres on their channels and still grow. One comment on that video really stood out to me. The commenter asked:

“What about PewDiePie? He plays whatever he wants, when he wants and is not afraid of being bad in a game. He does everything on his channel, not just games.”

Something really clicked with me when I read this comment. And I realized why so many new gaming channels seem to be all over the place when it comes to their coverage of games and different genres.

A lot of gamers think if it's good enough for PewDiePie, it's good enough for me. And that mentality may be actually a pretty good way to start a YouTube channel because you have to start somewhere, and you're going to need some practice. But trying to follow in PewDiePie's footsteps in 2020 is a different matter.

How PewDiePie Went From Zero Subscribers to 103M

What if I told you that PewDiePie once had zero subscribers. He started his channel in 2010 playing primarily horror and action video games and was so popular he reached his first 1 million subscribers in July of 2012. If we take a look at some of his older videos from around nine years ago, you see PewDiePie probably had a pretty familiar journey playing around with various games on his channel until he got into Amnesia, and never really looked back. Horror games were PewDiePie's bread and butter.

Let's take a look at another creator’s journey. 

 is currently at 25 million subscribers, and if we're sorting by the very oldest videos on his channel, he was also playing a lot of horror games at the beginning. He was exploring a niche while testing out other games. Some of these videos have custom thumbnails, some of them do not.

, now with 23 million subscribers was playing a lot of first-person shooters in the beginning. That's how he got his start on YouTube - this was his third upload way back in 2013:

These are some of the biggest names in gaming today and they got their start just like us with zero subscribers, testing out different content, staying within their niche and growing from there.

How to Find Your Way on YouTube as a Gamer

For those of you with gaming channels, I have a strategy I want to share with you for finding your way. I want you to know that if you still struggle to figure out exactly what you would like to play on your channel, it's okay to start testing by playing some different games. These videos can be great practice if you are just getting started on YouTube. You should also be working on your titles, tags, thumbnails, and descriptions of course.

If you're playing different games at some point you’re going to find one game, or even one genre attracts more views and engagements than your other content. That's when I want you to pounce and double down on that game.

As long as you played the game with the intention of hopefully making more videos around it, which I would imagine you did, this strategy is going to grow your channel a lot faster than if you continue just playing random games and ignoring those moments when things kind of stick.

It happened to me. I was inspired to start making videos on Minecraft by watching other Minecraft content creators. But one day I was gifted a new survival game that had a lot of the same aspects; build, mine, craft. I tried it out and I put it on my channel, and that video got more views than anything else I had published previously. It blew up, so I did about 30 or 50 videos on it.

I still wanted to make Minecraft videos from time to time and I did, but for the most part, this other game was driving the growth of my channel and I always made sure to have new episodes out all the time.

Now I got lucky because that game was a gift from just a friend of mine and played it and it worked out, but a lot of you aren't going to have the same luck.

 to look for new games to test out on your channel. Start by testing out different keywords and key phrases around your genre. Let's say your genre is building survival crafting games like Minecraft, but you don't want to play Minecraft itself. So just type in “survival game”, switch your category to gaming, add your competitors, then choose your view per hour threshold. The Trend Alerts tool will also send you emails to keep you up to date. Ideally, you want to pick competitors that are closer to your level of subscribers, and channel views, etc.

Many, or I would argue probably most. gaming YouTubers start a channel and they don't know where it's going to go, what they're going to play, or even for how long. Unless you already know that it's okay to test out different games and we want to encourage you to double down when one of those games becomes a viral success on your channel. I use the word viral loosely because that success is relative to how other videos have performed on your channel.

Animated man with headphones and text "0 Subs?!" on blue background, YouTube growth concept

Millions of gaming creators have been inspired by PewDiePie to create their own YouTube channels. Let's take a look at how he built his success on YouTube and how you can follow in his footsteps.

How to Start a Successful Gaming Channel like PewDiePie

We recently published a video and a post around 

starting a YouTube gaming channel in 2020

, and in that video, I discussed playing just one game. But what if you don't know what game to play? What if you don't know which is the one game for you? This method could help you find out exactly what that could be.

Wait. I just spent all that time telling you to play one game, and now I'm telling you maybe there's another way. Just hold on. I still think sticking to one game is a good strategy, but what if you play lots of different games? What if you play games that have to be kind of similar?

The Benefits of Sticking to One Genre on Your YouTube Gaming Channel

Let's first discuss why it's important to play one game in a lot of cases. And, mainly it's because YouTube is going to understand what your channel is about. That will lead to the platform suggesting your videos among creators who make kind of the same stuff, and among search results for people who are looking for that content.

So, if you play Stardew Valley, then you want YouTube to recommend your videos when someone types in "Stardew Valley." But if you play Stardew Valley and a hundred other games, YouTube doesn't really know where you're at, and it's going to be a little bit harder for the service to put your videos out there for people searching for Stardew Valley.

Now if that sounds like something you're doing right now, let's talk about narrowing down your content a little bit. Let's not dive right into one game so fast. What if we at least dive into a genre? What is Stardew Valley? Stardew Valley is a couple of things. I consider it a farming game, or an RPG.

For hypothetical purposes, let's focus on farming. I like farming games! I like Stardew Valley, I like Farming Simulator, I like games that feature farming. So let's just say that my channel is going to be a farming game channel. Now, that's pretty specific, right? There's probably not a lot of channels that just focus on that one type of game.

Even if you don't play Stardew Valley, you might be thinking to yourself, "Okay, I don't like farming games at all, "but I do like to play a lot of Call of Duty, "so what does a strategy for that look like for me?"

COD is a first-person shooter game, so, now that we know that, now that you have your genre, here's what I suggest doing: Take that game that you like, take that genre that you like, pick one of the games out of it, and go in, and make five videos on it. Make ten videos. Make as many as you're comfortable making.

After you publish ten videos on one game, you're probably going to come away with some pretty decent stats, which is good. Data is always good for testing purposes like we're about to, you know, theoretically do.

So for me, that game happened to be Stardew Valley. Let's say I make ten Stardew Valley videos, and I'm like "Okay, I finished the Community Center, "and I got a bunch of money, "and I'm pretty happy with my progress in Stardew, "I'm kind of tired of it right now. "I'm going to swap over. "I'm going to make ten videos on Farming Simulator."

Now, after every Farming Simulator video I post, I'm going to be looking to see what my numbers are doing, and how my audience is responding to that content. In the comments, are they saying, "Aw man, I really miss Stardew Valley"? Hey, it's still good that they showed up, right? They like you, they're watching your Farming Simulator video and they came in to say, "Yeah, I kinda liked Stardew better," but at least they came in! Maybe they'll stick around, maybe they enjoy the farming games as much as you do. Or maybe you notice a whole bunch of people commenting on your video that weren't there before! Hey, okay! People really like this Farming Simulator game.

I know I'm just using two games as an example, I'd probably recommend trying this with a wider spread of farming games in this case, but I just happen to really like these two farming games, and if I'm being honest, there's not a lot of farming games that I really play. So, maybe not a perfect example. But, play as many games as you need to play in your genre.

If it's MMORPGs, then play the various MMOs that you like to play. If it happens to be first-person shooters, play those. If it happens to be games like Minecraft, survival games, building games, play as many as you can get your hands on that you'll enjoy. The most important thing is to upload these videos regularly. So, I want to stick to a schedule, and I want to upload games that are at least similar to one another.

Know Your Gaming Genre and Find New Opportunities

So I've hypothetically made my videos about Stardew Valley, I got tired of it, I made my videos about Farming Simulator, and I'm noticing some trends. Let's take a look at this.

Now obviously I didn't record any Stardew Valley or Farming Simulator videos, these are all kind of hypotheticals to get you thinking. But let's just say I did. What I want to know is what's going on in Farming Simulator? All right, so if you were to record farming simulator videos you'll see that your volume and competition look pretty good. This is actually a pretty decent search term - but is it though?

There's a lot of people playing Farming Simulator on YouTube, what if playing Farming Simulator won’t get me discovered? What if it's the word "simulator" that’s the key?

As somebody who plays a lot of games, I know that the simulator genre is actually really popular. Competition is pretty high, but there's a high search volume for people looking for the word "simulator".

Now, what have I just discovered about my content? So far as I can tell, this is not a bad idea! What if people like simulator games as much as they like farming games? What I've just done is given myself an opportunity to explore a whole genre of games that I didn't even think of at first!

Now don't get me wrong, I know this is a very specific example. We're talking about farming games, now we're talking about simulator games, and if this isn't anywhere near your genre, just know that there's a lot of different ways we can categorize games.

Games are cool because they have more than one genre, they're more than one thing a lot of times. Take Fallout, for example. Fallout 4, you could argue it's a first-person shooter game, but you could also argue, because it has a currency system built in it, and quests, it's actually an RPG. So as you're playing Fallout 4 on your channel and you're starting to get kind of tired of it, what if you played another RPG?

What if you were tired of first-person shooters at that point, but you thought, "Man, I could really go for some "Stardew Valley!" Well, Stardew Valley isn't just a farming game, it's an RPG. It has a currency system, it has quests you can do, and in some ways, Stardew Valley is similar to Fallout 4, believe it or not.

So by now, I assume you kind of get it, right? You don't have to play just one game on your channel, you could be playing all these random games. And people might ask you, "Why do you play so many random games?" And you can go, "I don't play random games. "I play simulator games! "I play Farming Simulator, I play Truck Simulator, "I play Thief Simulator." These are now your genre. Now you are the authority on simulator games.

But for those of you sitting there going, "Okay, but I actually kind of like playing just one game, "I was on board with your last plan, "what are you doing to me, you're driving me crazy!" And to those of you who are thinking that, I want to say, there is always an opportunity to niche down your content and be just the Truck Simulator person.

Or, let's say you feel like Farming Simulator has so much more depth than all the other simulator games, and that's all you want to play from now on, that's probably a smart move if your audience has really been taking to it very well. Maybe, if you're lucky, Farming Simulator has some of the best views on your channel and that's more of a reason to just stick to that one game.

The point is, there's no wrong way to do this, and every channel is going to be different, and there's never one secret sauce that I can give you that's going to work for everybody watching. I just want to get you thinking. I just want you to think about games in terms of genre.

Maybe that is a way for you to play multiple games, or at the very least test to see which one game happens to be the best for you. We talk a lot here on this channel about getting discovered, a lot of our videos and advice is to that end. You want to be discovered by people out there on YouTube, looking for things.

But when we're talking about video games, it's even more important to stress this one thing: Please play games you actually enjoy. The most important thing that you can do on a gaming channel is to play games that you enjoy, because your audience is going to sense when you're not invested in the game, and in turn, they won't be invested in your video.

So to those of you out there playing games and trying to find yourselves on YouTube, I hope this was helpful. I hope I managed to kind of enlighten you to a new strategy or two for finding not only your game but your audience.

Comparison of three game levels with icons showing correct and incorrect choices.

If you're thinking of starting a gaming channel on YouTube make sure you have the right content strategy from the get-go.

Dan Carson

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