Ah, "The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening", a blast from the past, one of the best games I've played all year, and a million times better than the rubbish that is "Breath of the Wild". Anyway, you're probably not interested in that. You want to know how I got this game into the video description. Let's find out.

5 Easy Steps to Add a Video Game in the YouTube Description Box

To do this for any video you have already uploaded to YouTube, on any YouTube page, click on your profile image in the top right-hand corner of the screen and go to the YouTube Studio.

From here, you want to go to the Video section from the navigation panel down the left-hand side.

Next, click on the video you want to edit, and then click on the Advanced tab at the top of the screen.

Halfway down this screen, you will see a ‘Categories’ option, click on this to list all of the available categories and select gaming.

When you do this, a new field will appear to the right and this is where you can type in your game title. The field will auto-complete if the game is in the database, so type it out, click on the correct title, and don't forget to save.

Anyway, if all things have gone right with your video description, it should look something like this.

The title and box artwork of the game will be displayed at the bottom of the viewable description. If you click it, you will be taken to the auto-generated YouTube channel where you can view more videos from channels who are making content on the game.

When viewing a video through the mobile YouTube app, it does work a little differently in that you have to expand the description before you can see the game title and artwork.

Setting Up a Video Game Title When Uploading to YouTube

If you want to set the game title when you are uploading a video, in the new YouTube upload workflow, you will find YouTube categories on page two in the Advanced settings and it works in exactly the same way. Choose Gaming as your category and search for your video game.

With all that said and done, is this guaranteed to get you more views? Let's be clear about one thing, this is not a cheat or a hack or a game unlock, forgive the pun. It's not going to immediately give your video more exposure, more views, more subscribers, and that type of thing.

But it certainly is not going to harm your video. If you give YouTube as much SEO as possible, it will help identify your content and potentially serve it up to the right audience. The fact that it goes into the auto-generated YouTube channel is enough of a reason to do it, as it only takes a couple of seconds.

Oh, and if YouTube's biggest gaming channel does it, that would be PewDiePie, you should probably follow suit. And if you want a lot more help pointing you in the right YouTube direction when it comes to keyword research, video analytics and channel improvement tools, make sure to grab vidIQ. It is free to download (see link below).

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.

Want to add a video game title to your YouTube description? We show you how in 5 easy steps.

How to Add a Video Game Title to Your YouTube Description [2020 Method]

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.

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

How to Start a Gaming Channel On YouTube The RIGHT Way!

The Internet is a vast universe of information, ideas, opinions, facts (and non-facts), and it can be hard to keep up with the latest big picture trends. Luckily, once a year a report is published that makes the industry sit up and take notice, as it confirms what’s happening online - and why we need to care about that.

” from Mary Meeker contains four fascinating facts that readers of the vidIQ blog will want to know.

#1 Fortnite Has 250 Million Users Across 7 Platforms

Another interesting trend highlighted by Meeker is this: Epic Games have doubled Fortnite’s installed base year over year to 250 million registered users. How has Epic accomplished this amazing feat? According to Meeker, the growth in Fortnite’s registered users has mirrored the online video game’s expansion across seven platforms. She adds that Interactive gaming is an “increasingly relevant way to communicate.”

, Fortnite isn't just a video game — it's also a legitimate "social media.” His story says a new study from the National Research Group has found, “Fortnite players spend more of their free time logging into the battle royale game than they do scrolling through Facebook and Instagram or streaming on Netflix and YouTube.”

#2 YouTube is Still Growing its Audience!

One of the most important facts in the report is the fact that YouTube continues to attract viewers of all ages around the world. across the world aged between 16 and 64 years old.

As you can clearly see, viewers aged between 16 and 64 who log into YouTube at least once a day is up from 22% in Q2 2017 to 27% in Q4 2018, while Instagram is up from 13% to 19% over the same period.

This is fantastic news for YouTube creators who are looking to build a solid subscriber base and generated those views and engagements. YouTube remains the leading video platform in the world and there are huge opportunities for growth among creators:

#3 There are 3.8 billion Internet Users Across the Globe

The report also confirms that there are now 3.8 billion internet users worldwide, that’s around 50% of the total global population. So YouTube creators still have an unprecedented opportunity to reach a huge range of viewers with the content they create.

#4 There is a Huge Opportunity for YouTube Audience Growth in India

So, where can YouTubers find opportunities for growth? The report confirms that China represents 21%, but as YouTube is officially blocked in that country it may be India (12% of the world’s Internet users), that currently holds the most potential for audience growth.

The chart below shows the percentage of Internet vs Non-Internet uses across a range of countries, but as the barriers to entry fall with each advance in technology, the potential for YouTubers to develop an audience in countries like India, Indonesia, Brazil, The Philippines, and Nigeria has never been greater.

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 

The latest report on Internet trends shows how Fortnite is taking over the world, and how YouTube is still proving a real draw to users around the globe.

Fortnite Has 250M Users Across 7 Platforms: New Report

In the latest in our series on 'How to Start a Gaming Channel on YouTube,' we discuss just how important research is. How important? It's probably the MOST important prep you can do before you pick up that video camera, and it isn't an exaggeration to state that the success of your whole YouTube Channel depends on it. So, yes, it's pretty important.

How to Get More YouTube Views with Your Gaming Channel

There are millions of gaming channels on YouTube right now, so how do you stand out from the crowd? We've already talked about 

making you the star of your YouTube channel

 and taking your personality to the forefront. But when it comes to the games, you need to be able to answer questions that nobody else can answer, faster than anyone else, or better than anyone else?

Let's use Clash Royale as the example. Every couple of weeks they release new cards for you to play with, one being a new card called the Giant Snowball. Now you don't really need to know anything about that other than if you search on YouTube for 'Clash Royale Giant Snowball tips', you'll find there'll be big YouTubers at the top of the search rankings. But if you just go down a little bit, you'll find a channel with only a thousand subscribers but a video that has 150,000 views. So, how did this happen?

That video answers a very specific question about one particular game, and it was one of the first videos out on the topic. This is the first video this channel has made, and it has 150,000 views and have gained 1,600 subscribers from that. So this, if nothing else, is proof that you can start a gaming channel in 2019 if you do the right things.

Because I have a passionate knowledge about that video game, I know what to search for. It should be the same for you, whatever game you're interested in. But let's take an example of a game I know nothing about: Fortnite.

I did a couple of searches, and within five minutes I was able to search for 'best shotgun in Fortnite save the world 2018' as a long tail keyword. And instead of finding channels with millions of subscribers, I found channels with a few thousand subscribers getting tens of thousands of views.

So it is possible to do on any type of game. You just have to think of this from a really specific point of view. Are there any Easter eggs that you know of that nobody else does? Is there a big patch coming out with new weapons that you want to cover before anybody else? Think about how you can offer something valuable, new, and unique to your audience before anybody else or, as I said earlier, better than anyone else. And you're onto a winning strategy when it comes to a gaming channel.

How to Start a Gaming Channel on YouTube: Research is Everything!

How to Start a Gaming Channel on YouTube: The Creator is the Star

How to Start a Gaming Channel on YouTube: Focus on Your Target Audience

How to Start a Gaming Channel on YouTube: Double Down on Successful Content

Want To Get More YouTube Views & Subscribers?

In our series on how to start a Gaming channel on YouTube, we discuss how research is the cornerstone to generating more views and subscribers.

When it comes to starting a Gaming channel on YouTube, stick to your guns. There's two ways to look at this. First of all, stick to one game for a period of time so you build a rapport with your audience for a particular game, and a particular topic around a game.

I've seen so many channels play Need For Speed one day, FIFA 18 the next, then WWE 2K18 the next day. Your audience is just not going to know where you are on what you've decided on. It's too exhausting for them to keep up.

The second way to look at sticking to your guns is when you have successful content, double down on that strategy. If you find a particular secret, which is really interesting to your audience, find another way to look at that secret or something that's very similar.

 to see which is your best content over the last 30 days. Check on it on a regular basis and see if you can double down on more of that content.

In our series on how to start a Gaming channel on YouTube, we discuss why doubling down on your most successful content is the best strategy.

In the latest in our series on how to start a gaming channel on YouTube, we’re going to take a look at 

. If you look at any of the top gaming channels on YouTube, you will see that their thumbnails are a work of art, really bright, oversaturated, with lots of punch that really draws you into the visuals when you're deciding what to watch next. Two quick golden rules for gaming thumbnails are:

A very common mistake gaming channels make is to take a screenshot from the game and use it as their thumbnail without any further editing or context. And what some channels do is use the same screenshot over and over again with multiple videos. And that just really isn't appealing at all to the casual viewer.

I understand, as a video creator myself, that there is a huge temptation to just push a video out of the door once it's finished. But you should be spending at least 30 to 60 minutes on your thumbnail, making sure that it's not too cluttered, and that the one or two objects in that thumbnail really tell a compelling story.

Look at the top YouTubers in your video game sphere and see how they craft their thumbnails. We're even seeing smaller channels on YouTube producing amazing thumbnails. It's a really competitive area, and video creators are understanding more and more that custom thumbnails are vitally important whatever channel size you are. So, make sure you work really hard on them.

How to Start a Gaming Channel on YouTube: Custom Thumbnails Can Make or Break You

If you want to start a Gaming channel on YouTube, make sure that your custom thumbnails are working for you, not against you.

Welcome to the latest in vidIQ’s recent series on how to start a Gaming channel on YouTube. And this post’s tip is - no game lasts forever, and at some point you will have to pivot. This advice ties itself all the way back to another tip, which is 

you must become the star of your own YouTube channel

. Once you've built an audience, gained their trust, they become subscribers, super fans, then you should be able to take them on a journey with whatever game you like.

When pivoting, you might want to start with games that your core audience is familiar with or comfortable with. So, for example, a lot of Clash of Clan YouTubers went onto Clash Royale. For Fortnite gamers, you might want to move onto Call of Duty, or some similarly themed topic.

When you've built a huge audience, you can go wherever you want. That might be nostalgic retro games that you're a big fan of, or your favorite games of all time. For example, mine is Golden Eye on the N64. But I don't think VidIQ is quite ready for a ‘Let's Play’ on that yet.

To summarize, find an audience, become their best buddies, and then take them on a gaming journey wherever you want it to go.

It seems like these days everybody wants to have a Gaming channel on YouTube, so the competition is more fierce than ever before. And it's relentless. In fact, you could say it's like putting your video game on the hardest difficulty setting. Are you dedicated enough to beat it? That's up to you.

The secret of starting a successful Gaming channel on YouTube is knowing just when to pivot. Read the secret to success from vidIQ

How to Start a Gaming Channel on YouTube: Find the Best Opportunities

In the first part of our 'How to Start a Gaming Channel on YouTube' series, we're going to focus on the challenge that face gamers in 2019 with so much competition about. Now, if you're not a gamer, don't worry. Stick around because many of the strategies that we suggest to you are relevant for all types of channels. We're just putting it into the video game context.

. The most important thing about your channel is not the video game you're going to cover, it's YOU. While the average viewer may find your content through a YouTube search or suggested videos, they stick around because of what you can uniquely offer to your audience. Whather that's through the humor that you have, the energy, the enthusiasm, or the passion. It's all about how YOU and your content makes your audience feel beyond any video game that you're actually playing.

Ask yourself two questions. Question #1: why do you go back to your favorite video game YouTubers? Is it because of the video games they're playing or because of the personality of the channel and that they connect with you directly.

The second question is, if they pivoted from the video game that you're interested in, would you still go to their channel, irrespective of what video game they were playing next?

For some of you this may be your first challenge. Get in front of camera. Talk directly to your audience while you're playing your video games. If you're not ready to do that then get behind the microphone so that people can hear you. You can maybe do a face reveal later on. The key element is making YOU the star of a channel, not the games that you play.

With that being said, the video game or video games that you cover on your channel are immensely important to you. The golden rule of any YouTube channel is that if you're passionate about the topic that you're covering, you'll be passionate about how you share it with your audience. And that always comes through in the videos that you produce.

In our series on how to start a gaming channel on YouTube, we discuss how the creator must always be the star if you want more views and subscribers.

Here's a challenge for you. What is your favorite video game right now? And if you were to start a YouTube channel on it, could you come up with 10 quick video ideas in 5 minutes?

Now this may sound like a tough challenge, so I'm going to challenge myself right now. My favorite video game is Clash Royale. Here are 10 quick video ideas I can come up with off the top of my head:

The best comebacks you've ever seen in Clash Royale

How to spend your money on the right cards on Clash Royale

Which cards should you be requesting from your clan?

Five new game modes I would love to see in Clash Royale

What should I spend my Clash Royale gems on?

I bet most of you had no idea what I was talking about, except for two or three people watching this video who have played Clash Royale. And that's the audience you need to appeal to with your gaming content. You want to really focus down and concentrate on a target audience with a specific value proposition that they can relate to.

Who should be watching? Why should they care? We've brought this up many times before. It applies to your video game channels as well.

YouTube Strategy Tips: If you want to start a gaming channel on YouTube from scratch, you are going to have to find unique content that appeals to a particular audience.

Attention all video gaming YouTubers. Google Stadia might be super important for you so let’s take a look at this brand new feature from the platform.

What is Google Stadia? It’s a new type of gaming streaming platform that doesn't require any new technology, and is available on virtually any technology already in your house, whether it be a laptop, a mobile device, even a ChromeCast. This allows you to play triple A games, with super intense graphics, at high resolution, over the internet. Yes, this is Google's answer to Cloud based gaming. Other advantages include no need for a new game controller, although there is one available, and you also can access these games seamlessly.

For example, if you're watching a YouTube video, which has an advert for a video game, you can literally click on the 'Play Now', and start playing that game instantly, and transfer it to another device instantly, starting off from where you left it on the other device.

Is Google Stadia the Future of Video Gaming?

This sounds like the future of video gaming. Now that's quite a bold statement, and it may turn out not to be true. However, if Google Stadia does become a major player in the video game market, you’ll want to be there when it kicks off right? Until now, Stadia was a word more associated with sporting venues. Now it's part of gaming culture, and already YouTube searches are being flooded by everybody giving their opinions on the new gaming platform. It's why a channel with a little over 5,000 subscribers is currently competing with the big boys, ranking number four for this search term.

When we talk about riding the wave of a trend, this is exactly what we mean. This is your very small window of opportunity to establish yourself as an authority on the subject. It's why we're making this video after all. Now by the time you see this video, it may already be too late to give your take on Google Stadia. The window of opportunity may have passed. But you also want to strategize evergreen content.

How to Make YouTube Content Around Google Stadia

For example, one video I can think of right now is 

‘Everything you need to know about Google Stadia before it's released’.

 Then when the service is launched, you want to be the first person to do tutorials around it - 

‘How to use Google Stadia, a beginner's guide.’

 That could sit there for years and years, bringing in views for your channel.

I'm telling you now, the most common questions that are going to be asked about Google Stadia, a Cloud based gaming service, are:

What controllers can I use on Google Stadia?

What games are available on Google Stadia?

I could think up of another 20 ideas all about this product, and it's not even launched yet. In fact, let's do a little bit of a friendly wager here. I bet, by this time next year, somebody is going to have a video with over 100,000 views, that is titled ‘How to use a Playstation 4 controller on Google Stadia’, or words to that effect. If you take one piece of advice away from this video, it is this. If you think Google Stadia is going to be important to you and, most importantly, your audience, start your research, make videos, get your foot in the door. This is your opportunity.

But there's also something else to consider through all of this. Stadia is a Google product, and so is YouTube. Yes, YouTube is integrated into Stadia. Let's start with Crowd Play. This allows a video creator to livestream a game through YouTube and create a lobby, where livestream viewers can actually join the game that is being played. Imagine that, joining ninjas that play Fortnite, or the diamond minecarts who play Minecraft. It's real time YouTube collaboration. In theory, this sounds amazing. In theory of course. We don't know what games will be supported just yet. I can't imagine Minecraft, a Microsoft game, being one of them.

Another feature goes by the name of State Share. This is where a player can reach a certain part in the game, whether it be a big boss or a scary part in a horror game, and then share that state through a link, on YouTube for example, for other gamers to play and experience. To be honest, in the real world, I have no idea how that's going to work, but it sounds exciting. If we step back and look at Stadia as a whole, there are still a lot of unanswered questions. We don't know what games are going to be available for it. We don't know how payment is going to work. Is it per game, or on a subscription based service? And we don't know the release date yet.

Google are going to reconnect with the community in summer, to let us know more about that. But, as a video creator, you have no excuses. You know it's coming, you should be preparing for it. It could be a revolution in the gaming industry.

Is Google Stadia the Future of Video Gaming? Possibly - and that's why YouTubers should start thinking about creating content around the streaming service right now.

Google Stadia: Why YouTubers and Gamers Should Start Getting Ready For it Right Now

Welcome back to another episode in our exciting new series that champions some of the most inspiring YouTubers in the community. They walk you through there own personal journey to YouTube success, animation style.

 who has built up a number of successful channels on YouTube including, of course, Prestonplayz, 

. Together, these channels have generated over 17 million subscribers and over 4.5 billion views. Let's watch the story of his YouTube creator journey from the man himself - full video transcript is below"

PrestonPlayz: His YouTube Journey to 4.5B Views

Hi, I'm Preston Arsement. Gamer, businessman and creator of PrestonPlayZ, TBNRfrags, PrestonRoblox and PrestonMinecraft. I know, so original. Honestly, I wish I knew exactly when I realized I was a successful creator. But YouTube just moves so fast. Because of all the hard work and the hundreds of all-nighters I've pulled everything is a blur. A happy, fun blur but I'll do my best to explain because this is my creator journey.

Long before I got into the YouTube business I was always an entrepreneur. I was a lifeguard, I worked for a painting company that my family knew and I would do any odd jobs to earn money. Even at 11 years old I was mowing lawns and knocking on our neighbors doors to drum up business.

My first channel TBNRFrags is focused mainly on first person shooters, and geared towards a slightly older audience. I started that channel simply because I saw one guy uploading Call of Duty videos and thought I could do the same thing. It might seem a little bit conceited but most 16 year olds are a little conceited right? I was a PC gamer and I saw a YouTube creator named xJaws who you might remember. He made Black Ops 1 content and I thought to myself heck, I can do this and I'm on PC so it's gonna be even better.

Of course in the beginning it wasn't as easy as I thought, I was scrutinized by a lot of Call of Duty community as every creator was especially because of my faith. The community was not the nicest so I had to build up some thick skin, had some motivational chats with my mom to keep me on track.

It's difficult to get berated by thousands of people daily. I remember wanting to quit at 30 000 subscribers but of course, my mom convinced me otherwise. She knew I really didn't wanna quit and I think deep down inside I knew I didn't wanna quit as well. But sometimes, it's just really hard to deal with the backlash that you get being on a platform with so many eyes always on you. If you wanna be a content creator this is definitely something you are going to have to be aware of, and you're gonna have to build up that thick skin.

It was hard to build an audience so I transitioned to doing more zombie game play. The audience was bigger and I love zombies. Plus, since I was killing zombies instead of other players I could engage with my viewers a whole lot more while I was playing.

If you guys didn't know, I really got my start on Twitch TV rather than YouTube. And I used Twitch TV to grow my YouTube audience. I had a really big breakthrough whenever I signed with Machinima in November of 2011. They made me a Machinima Respawn Director on their YouTube channel allowing me to post a video a week on the channel and then I started a series on my channel called Moab with every gun in Modern warfare 3 and that's a really helped accelerate the growth of my YouTube channel. As well as the bags under my eyes, 'cause it take me about 12 hours to get each gameplay video.

However my real breakthrough on YouTube came when I moved to Minecraft. I'm not even kidding. When I created my second channel PrestonPlayz my new found success wasn't necessarily from the change in video game, but the way I changed my approach to making videos. My TBNRFrags videos were more focused on being good at the game. Like I said, sometimes videos would take me up to 12 hours sometimes even longer. At other times I could get it done within 30 minutes to an hour due to the nature of Call of Duty and trying to get 24 kills in a row with a weapon that was not necessarily made for getting 24 kills at a row.

For example a silenced pistol, it's very difficult to do and sometimes it would take multiple days just to get one of these game play videos. It was mind numbing. Don't get me wrong, it was really cool to have people watched me for my game play and my skill, and they still liked my channel, but they weren't really watching for me. When I made that transition to become PrestonPlayz I focused on what I was saying as a commentator and how entertaining and engaging I was at least trying to be. It wasn't about who was the best at Minecraft, it was way more fun trying to be an entertainer.

In 2016, one of the hardest times that I'd overcome was when my dedicated recording group of friends, but you all know as The Pack stopped recording Minecraft content. Felt like I had lost my place in YouTube. But I continued recording videos by myself and eventually found new people in the community. Smaller YouTubers that were funny, wholesome and had a whole lot of good stow and just wanted to pursue this full-time. By giving these smaller YouTubers a chance I was able to connect with new viewers and continue to move forward.

We as humans want to progress in life. Correct me if I'm wrong. Creating content is like playing a game with YouTube's platform. What are the secrets? What's the next big trend? How can you make your own trend? How can we combine element X with element Z and element Q, to create this awesome new type of content? Moving forward is always important but having a balance in your life is also extremely important.

I would say the big struggle throughout YouTube would definitely be not taking enough creative time for myself, I tend to like to stay inside and record videos for about a 100 hours a week I'm not kidding. But at a certain point I realized that if I don't go outside, go to the gym, get some fresh air or even read my bible, my commentary will start to drop off and I'll start to lose my edge. Hard work is what helped my channels takeoff and grow and of course I credit a lot of that to my faith and all the family and friends I have around me, but there still has to be a balance even if it's not always 50-50 or even 90-10.

I've now learned that the more I've intertwined my family into business the more fun I've honestly had. My siblings and my amazing wife we're always having a blast filming content with me. I think that family has really made me successful because I want to work hard for them. I came from a humble beginning, we all lived a in motor home together for many many years and had just each other and that's all we needed. My parents had a traveling music ministry and so we got very close in that tiny motor home together. So the fact now that I have a nice car, and a nice house it really doesn't mean much to me, at least not as much as getting to hang out with my family. And of course the amount of sweet messages I've received from my audience has just been so overwhelming. I have a fan art wall at the office and I don't even like to call my viewers fans I feel bad but this viewer wall of mail and art in the office if I ever need inspiration or I need to remember why I'm doing what I'm doing because maybe I've had a hard week or something has happened, I just go to that and I just look at it. I mean it's just, it's overwhelming to see the support and to see that somehow I've changed peoples lives for the better by just playing video games and uploading it to YouTube.

My long-term goal is to stay within the video game industry and to grow as many companies as I can. We have the blessed opportunity to use YouTube as a vehicle to move forward with all of our companies. And don't get me wrong, YouTube is still so much fun but I wanna gain experience and knowledge in other areas and keep growing companies within the video game industry.

We've recently started a fourth channel for the newer version of Minecraft. It's called Bed Rock Edition Windows 10 edition, Pocket Edition whatever you guys wanna call it, but do a lot of cool branding content on PrestonPlayz now, it's fun to kind of expand, play new video games but eventually I think I'd be more fun if it was mainly real life content. Vlogs, videos of my siblings, challenge videos with my wife, just having fun with my family and friends, and trying to entertain viewers. In fact, we've already started doing that in 2019.

The audience that we have is the coolest audience ever. And making videos for them is literally just pleasure at this point. You ever go to Chick-fil-A and they're like, "My pleasure." That's how I feel when I finish a video. My pleasure. Whenever we put out a brand new video people are like this is awesome, Preston is making money and working with the cool brand and we like it. I feel like nowhere else on YouTube can you find that kinda support from an audience. It's so easy to keep coming back and filming videos and stay motivated when you have the most amazing audience in the world. If you wanna be a creator follow your dreams. I don't think it gets any more simple than that.

A lot of us see things through a specific lens that we were forced to see things through, something that tells us our dreams don't matter. Or that they're too far fetched. But you have to find your own lens to look at the world. Find the way to believe in your dreams and pursue your passions.

Want to start a gaming channel on YouTube and end up as big as PrestonPlayz? Watch his creator journey for the story behind his phenomenal success.

How to Start a Gaming Channel on YouTube Like PrestonPlayz

So you're a big fan of Fortnite, PUBG, Clash Royal, WWE 2K 18 or GTA V? And now you want to start a gaming YouTube channel? Awesome! Guess what? So does everyone else! There are millions of channels now about gaming, all competing for those same views and watchtime minutes.

What you want to know is why some channels stand out more than others? A lot of it has to do with channel personality, what the channel can offer that others can't and how enticing the content is. We explore this and a lot more with challenges, subtle gaming references and you'll discover what my favourite game of all time is.

How to start a gaming channel on YouTube in 2018? It's one of the most competitive video spaces on the platform. Here are 10 great tips to get you started!

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