Whether you’re trying to become the next YouTube superstar or you just want to drive traffic and sales through a YouTube channel, you need to learn what the most important factors are for finding success. Unfortunately, many people think that if you just record videos and publish them that people will find them and follow overnight. The reality is, however, that you really need to put a lot of time and effort into what you are doing.
A recent study was completed by Grapevine that looked at nearly 2000 YouTubers to figure out what is being down and what is working best. The survey found that only 2% of the YouTubers surveyed had more than 100,000 subscribers, and 89% have less than 5000.
In addition, the most successful YouTubers are spending at least six hours on each video that they produce and upload. This is a significant amount of time when you consider the fact that these videos are typically less than 15-20 minutes in length. The survey found that of those who have 100,000 subscribers, 70% of them are taking 6+ hours per video.
Grapevine co-founder and community director, Kimberly Bond, said of this report, “YouTube creators are certainly not born overnight, and it takes a lot of work each and every week and each and every hour to build your channel to celebrity status.”
This is clearly true when you look at the fact that successful YouTube channels started out with just 421 subscribers during the first year, and it grew slowly over the course of many years. In the 5th year of making and publishing YouTube videos, the top channels added an average of 42,128.
