14 Mistakes New YouTubers Make And How To Fix Them Smartly

I’m gonna tell you 14 Big Mistakes New YouTubers Make. So you can avoid them. So that you can get the results that you’re actually after here on youtube instead of struggling for years and years to try to get results. And we’re starting right now. 

You Have Not Set Your YouTube Channel Properly

Okay, so the very first mistake that a lot of new content creators make is they don’t set their channel up properly. And what I mean by that is if you go to your youtube channel and you start scrolling down through your youtube channel, you’re going to see different things based on how you’ve properly set up your youtube channel. 

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So somebody scrolls down on a desktop computer, or if they do it on a mobile device then what’s the first content that they’re going to see. Are they going to be able to see more of your content right here as they scroll down the page, or are they going to have to click on your videos tab to see the rest of the content that you offer? 

And this is important because if they have to click on your videos tab it’s okay. Because some people use youtube that way. However, you want to make it easy for people to find your content regardless of how they use youtube, whatever their preferences are. 

So for the people that like to land on your channel page, and then scroll down to see the available content. Well in that situation you want to make sure that you are funneling people into the content that they care about from you. 

So that you can just make it easy for people to binge, watch your content. And the easier that you make it for people to binge, watch your content, the easier it’s going to be for you to grow your youtube channel. 

You Are Not Using All The Features Provided By YouTube

The second mistake that a lot of content creators make is kind of along a similar vein to where not only are they not setting up their channel page properly, but they’re not using all of the other features that youtube gives us. 

For example, in every video you make you have the option to pin a comment recommending people to a relevant video or playlist. And the reason that this is valuable is that people watch your video on a mobile device or a computer. As they scroll down the page once, they get into the comment section you want them to see. 

Your comment recommending another piece of your content. And what you’re going to see when you start doing this especially if you’re getting a lot of traffic, when you just publish a video you’re going to have a lot of people that will just flow straight over into the other content that you’re recommending. 

Because that first video that you got is something that they are into. That’s why they came into the video in the first place because they’re typically interested in what it is that you’re doing for that particular video. 

But then once they’re in the video, you’re making it easy for them to find more of the content that they care about by recommending a relevant video. 

So for example, if one of the main videos that brought them in was about one thing. You want to make the videos that you’re recommending to them about something similar in interest, to something that they would care about. 

The same thing applies if you go to the very end of the video. You want to make sure that you’re adding end screen elements here as well. Because as your video is coming to an end what you want to do is you want to make sure that you’re giving people an option of other stuff that they can click on of yours to go and watch it. 

And in this situation, you want to make sure that you’re using a best for the viewer so that you can be recommending one playlist. Your recommendation should be based on what the video is about.

And then you have the best for viewers. So that youtube can recommend what it is that they think that the viewer is most likely to watch then as well. 

And then of course on the same video watch page if you go into your description it’s also really good practice to make sure that you’re adding links to other videos, other playlists down in your descriptions as well, that are relevant to the type of content that you make, or at least the type of content that brought that particular viewer. 

You Are Not Using The Data What YouTube Is Providing About Your Channel

Another thing that a lot of new content creators are making a huge mistake on is not using the data that youtube gives us to make the decisions around, what it is that you’re doing your youtube channel. 

The thing that I want to tell you here is youtube shows us, if we go into the analytics of one of your videos and see the audience retention report, it tells us how people respond to your videos. This gives us a second by the second report of how people respond to each part of our video.

You got to make sure that you’re using this particular information so that you can identify how viewers respond to what it is that you’re doing in your video content. Because if you can’t keep people watching then youtube isn’t going to start recommending your videos to people.

So because of that, you have to at least have acceptable audience retention for youtube to deem your videos as something worthy. Your click-through rate and your retention something that youtube deems as worthy to show other people on the platform that they think might be a good fit for your content. 

Okay, another one when it comes to the data that is important to make sure that you’re paying attention to as a new youtube content creator is your click-through rate, and from what traffic sources you’re trying to pull traffic from. 

So what I mean from that is if you go into your youtube analytics, you’re going to see under the reach for each video. You want to look at this and you want to say “okay this is a general idea of what I’m getting”. 

But you want to look deeper than this if you go to the very top, and you click on advanced mode then what you’re going to see here is you’re going to see a traffic source. 

Once you click on that traffic source if you go down here, then you’re going to start seeing the click-through rate for each traffic source. 

Because of that, you want to use this information to where you can say “okay this is what’s going on with this particular video, and with this particular thumbnail. So what I’m going to start doing now, is I’m going to start experimenting with my thumbnails, and I’m going to start noticing when I have that higher click-through rate. So I can start experimenting with the things that I notice are getting a better response from people when they are clicking on each video”.

You Don’t Know What Audience Is That You Are Making Content For

The next mistake that a lot of new content creators make is they don’t know who it is that they’re making content for. Now, this is important because if you don’t know who it is that you’re making content for, it makes it hard to package your videos from the outside in terms of your thumbnail and title, so that those people will respond to what it is that you’re doing. 

So because of that when you start to understand who it is that you’re making content for, you plan for who it is that you’re making content for, your video content can be structured and put together in a way to best resonate with the people that you’re trying to reach.

Your titles can be written in a way to best resonate with the people that you’re trying to reach, and your thumbnails can be put together in a way that will best resonate with the people that you’re trying to reach as well. 

You Are Not Investing On Your Channel

The next mistake that a lot of new content creators make is not fully investing in what it is that they’re doing. And I’m not talking about necessarily financially. Even though that can be beneficial with tools like Tubebuddy. 

However even things like books about youtube can be really valuable because you start getting all this information, there is a free resource for you called the Youtube Creator Academy that you can go through that youtube put together. That teaches you the best practices for youtube. 

So because of that invest in your future here on youtube by educating yourself on what’s required, what are the best practices, what is it that youtube expects from you, and things like that.

You Are Giving More Time In Consuming Content Than Producing Content

The next mistake is a lot of content creators spend way more time-consuming content than they do making content. We got goals we’re trying to hit here. You got to focus. And a lot of content creators will do that same thing to where you’re on youtube. 

Because you love the whole youtube thing, and because of that you’re watching tons of youtube content. But to get better at what it is that you’re doing in that situation, I recommend that you cut back on some of that consumption time. 

Either if it’s games or if it’s watching youtube videos or Netflix whatever it is, you cut back on that a bit and the reason for that is so that you can spend more time learning how to make better content, or just learning how to do things better. 

You Are Not Researching Topic And Viewer’s Requirements

The next mistake that a lot of new content creators make is when they’re putting their titles together, they’re putting their video ideas together, and cross their fingers and hope that it works. 

But what I recommend that you do is at the very least is that you go to youtube search, and you type in around the topic that you like to talk about, you start typing in those topics. 

So for example let’s say that you make videos on Fortnite. Then what you can do in this situation is you can look for fortnight inside of youtube search. And while you’re looking for Fortnite here inside of youtube search, they’ll tell you a bunch of things that people are looking for related to Fortnite. 

If I were to go ahead and just put it, And then you get to see that it shows me even more ideas and I go through the same thing. And the idea with this is that before you make your video you make sure that you’re making content that people are at least interested in. 

So it doesn’t matter if you’re making cooking content, or you’re making vlogging content, you’re doing gaming content, try to find a way or an angle where it’ll make it easier for people to discover it. 

Because you’re packaging it up based on the things that they’re looking for. So I’m not saying that you’re using this information only to target search. I’m just saying that when who it is that you’re trying to reach as we talked about before, then you get to use this information to make content around the things that those people that you’re trying to reach care about. And you get to title it and package it in a way that they’re looking for it.

You Are Wasting Your Time To Get Help From Big Creators

The next mistake that I see a lot of new content creators making is that they’re always trying to collaborate with like big YouTubers. Always trying to reach out to big YouTubers, if I can only get that collaboration if I can only get that shout out

It’s not that bad. But, instead of wasting your time, try to do those sorts of things, try to make awesome content. Because when you can make awesome content then you get on the radar of some of these bigger content creators. 

And it becomes much easier to collaborate in that situation. Because if you’re doing cool stuff, you’re adding value to your community, and then you reach out, in that situation it becomes a lot easier to collaborate because you’re hanging out in the same spaces. 

You’re talking to similar people on the internet and it just makes it easier. But instead of trying to always collaborate with bigger youtube channels, take an approach of “I’m gonna create my network of friends that are YouTubers. And we’re all gonna you know share information. And we’re all gonna come up together”. 

But the idea is that you just create a group of people that you become friends with over time and that you all come up together by helping each other in terms of sharing information on your stats and things like that. 

And by doing that it’s going to help your mental state because you’re going to have other people that are doing the same thing that you’re doing that you can communicate with.

Because I mean in a lot of cases for YouTubers either their friends or family don’t get what it is that you’re doing on youtube. So because of that it just gives you other people that can relate to, what it is that you’re doing. 

But having a really good network around what it is that you’re doing on youtube is extremely valuable, and I recommend that you stop thinking that you can’t do any of that because you’re a smaller channel, or that you’re a new YouTuber.

Can instead of trying to reach out to the big ones instead of doing that try to create an awesome network of people that you’re tight with so that you guys can all come up together.

You Are Overexpecting

The next big mistake that a lot of new YouTubers make is the mistake of expectations. And what I mean by this is of course you want to expect good things. Right. It’s like “hey I want to put out this video. I hope it does good. I’m doing all I can. I’m putting in all this work for it”. 

Of course, you want that result out of it. However, it’s important to understand that when it comes to youtube there’s a process that we all go through. Right. And that process typically starts with I suck at making videos, I suck at making thumbnails, I suck at writing titles. And that’s just part of the process. And you have to embrace that. And you can’t expect a lot when you’re in that situation.

Now in some cases, people will come onto the platform and they’ll bypass that part right out of the gate because of skills they brought onto the platform with them. But if you don’t have those skills that you brought under the platform with you, and you’re just kind of getting going it’s really important to instead of looking at it like “hey I’m not getting all the views that I want for all the work that I put in”. 

Instead of looking at it from that perspective looks like “okay all, I’m doing right now is I’m getting all these sucky videos out of the way so that I can hurry up and get to make some awesome videos. So while I’m putting out these videos right here and I’m learning about youtube, I’m learning how to write titles, I’m learning how to create a community, I’m also developing my skills so that I can make better content here on youtube for the people that I’m making content for”.

You Are Not Analyzing You As An Entertainer

The next mistake of not thinking of yourself as somebody that is an entertainer. And here’s what I mean by that when it comes to youtube, people come to youtube to learn things and for the sake of entertainment in some way. And of course, some people come on to be motivated. They’ll come and watch motivational content that kind of stuff. 

But at the end of the day, it comes down to “I’m coming onto youtube to be entertained in some way, or I’m coming on youtube to learn something in some way”. 

So because of that, it’s really important to look at yourself as an entertainer of sorts and just think when I’m putting my content together how can I do it in a way that’s as engaging as humanly possible so that people will respond to it better. 

It doesn’t mean I have to be obnoxious, it doesn’t mean that I have to be over the top. But what it does mean is it means that you have to level up a little bit because there’s just normal communication which is fine. You can do fine that way. But you still have to be engaging when you’re doing it. 

So one thing that can be helpful in this situation is to work on your audio. Working on your audio is important because audio is half the video experience. So if you can make really good audio, if you can get your audio to sound good, then right out of the gate the perception of what it is that you’re doing is going to be of higher quality. And it’s just going to add a little bit of tolerance to what it is that you’re doing even if you’re not awesome at it yet.

You Are Comparing Yourself To Other Content Creators

The next mistake that a lot of new YouTubers make is comparing themselves to other channels that are not yours. And here’s what I mean by that a lot of people are on youtube they’re looking at other channels. And they’re like “hey this person just put out a video with a similar title of mine. And they’re doing a lot better than mine. Why”. 

And the idea behind that is that you have to consider that you know somebody already has a subscriber base, and they’re putting out content. They’re able to collect data so fast from youtube. Youtube systems can quickly understand who is the right fit for that video based on how the people that are currently watching it. 

Whereas if you’re just getting started as a new content creator, you don’t have that yet right. The thing that you have is that you have maybe five or ten videos under your belt. You have maybe a hundred or five hundred or maybe even a thousand subscribers on your channel. 

So when you publish that video it just doesn’t collect data as fast. And because of that, it might seem like these other channels are dusting you, or they might be doing way better than you are. 

But it’s because of all of the content they have behind them. Now if we take that same scenario and we say “hey they started the same time as me, they have the same amount of videos like me, and they’re just crushing me”.

Well, the reason for that is because of whatever it is that they’re doing in their videos. However they’re presenting their videos, however, they’re putting their thumbnails, and titles together they’ll grab attention to their package, and how they’re putting everything together is simply working better than you. 

You Are Not Looking At Yourself

The next mistake not looking at yourself in the mirror, not being objective about what it is that you’re doing. And what I mean by that is when you’re looking at these other content creators you’re like “hey my titles are great, my thumbnails are awesome, my videos are incredible, it takes me a long time to make them, but people are responding better to some of these other pieces of content”.

Well, you have to look at yourself and you have to say “well if I think that everything that I’m doing is better but everybody’s responding to this other person’s stuff better maybe I’m just catering everything to my taste”. Which is fine.

Because in that case, you’re making things the way that you want to make them. But if you are concerned with growth then you have to say “okay well I need to make some modifications. So even though I think what I’m doing is awesome, I need to experiment. So that I can figure out how I can get people to respond in a way like they are responding to this other channel”. 

And if you can do that, and you can look at yourself in the mirror, and you can remove yourself from the ideas of just put like six hours into this video or eight hours or a week or two weeks however long it took you to make a video, instead of looking at it that way and thinking that it’s good because of all that time you spent, you just have to look at it and say “okay it’s not up to mark. People are not responding to it like they are on this other channel. So because of that, I need to make some changes somewhere I need to improve or modify what it is that I’m doing. 

You Are Not Analyzing Other’s Content For The Betterment

The next mistake is when you are watching youtube videos, a lot of people are watching youtube videos for the sake of entertainment right as YouTubers. We do it just like the normal users on youtube. 

So because of that when we’re watching content instead of watching content and just sitting back and enjoying it, watch content, sit back, and enjoy it, but also look at their editing look, at the pacing of when they’re cutting everything together, 

Look at how much b-roll they’re using, or how much they’re not using, look at what their set looks like, listen to how their audio sounds, look at what it is that they’re doing when they’re communicating on screen, or if they’re doing animations or games or whatever it happens to be for the type of content that you make.

Just look at what other people are doing and say “okay maybe they’re putting their content together in a way that based on, what it is that they figured out that is just a little bit more dynamic than what it is that I’m doing. So let me experiment with doing something similar to what they’re doing so that I can see if I get a better response from doing so”.

You Are Not Applying All The Good Advices

The next mistake is not applying. A lot of people start youtube, they fail and the reason that they fail is that one they’re not objective but two also they’ll know all the stuff but they just won’t apply it to what it is that they’re doing. 

And if you’re not applying it to what it is that you’re doing, if you’re not taking the information that you’re learning from this article and other videos about youtube, then if you don’t take the time to apply everything, not just one thing, not just two things but everything. If you don’t take that time to apply it, then you’re working against yourself. you’re creating disadvantages for yourself on the platform.

And at the end of the day if things aren’t working out for you then you have to look at yourself in the mirror again, and you have to say “I’ve been reading all these articles on how to do youtube, I understand it quite a bit when somebody asks me something about it, I can guide them what they should do but I’m not doing any of that stuff myself. The big wins come when you apply all the stuff it is that you’re learning. 

Conclusion

So these are some Mistakes New YouTubers Make and I told you the ways how you can avoid these mistakes. And to gain more tips and tricks on youtube make sure you subscribe to our newsletter so that you can get more knowledge direct to your inbox. 

And if you are a new YouTuber then we have an special article for you which will tell you about 8 Free YouTuber Tools Used By Big YouTubers (And They Never Tell You). Thank you so much for reading this article. I’ll see you next time.