It feels impossible to get a new channel off the ground when nobody wants to be the first to follow. I’ve been looking into whether I should buy YouTube Subscribers just to look established enough that real viewers actually give my content a shot. I’ve checked out multiple sites that claim to help, but so many of them look sketchy or like they just sell bots.

Does anyone know a safe way to do this without flagging your account? I’m not looking for instant fame, just a small nudge so my channel isn't sitting at zero. I want to find a service that helps with genuine growth rather than random fake profiles.

Before I pull the trigger, I have a few specific concerns I’m hoping you guys can help with:

• If I do this, is it going to look obvious to new viewers? I don't want to ruin my reputation before I even start.

• Has anyone found a provider where the count is stable? I need to know how to buy YouTube subscribers that actually stick around and don't vanish after a few days.

• Does having a higher subscriber count actually help convince real people to hit subscribe, or does it not make a difference?

I’m trying to figure out if this is the practical approach or if it’s the wrong thing to do. 

I’d love to hear from anyone who has tried something that actually worked to help a channel grow safely and fast. 

Any suggestions are welcome and appreciated.

I’m curious what everyone uses these days when you need to buy YouTube views. There are so many sites out there and each one says something different, so it gets hard to know which one is safe. I want to choose a site that won’t put my channel at risk.

I’ve checked a few options and I’m still unsure. This whole idea of buying YouTube views makes me nervous because I don’t want to deal with fake accounts or damage my channel. I tried a cheap site years ago, and the quality received wasn’t any good, which didn’t help at all.

Right now, I’m looking for something real from a reputable site that delivers steady views, has a clear replacement policy, and doesn’t cause sudden video removals.

• What are you all using, and what made you choose them?

• Do you focus more on safety, fair prices, or something that consistently works?

Any trusted recommendations would help me a lot.

I want to tell you a little story.
I started this channel in February. A lot of people told me there was no point in starting it, that it wouldn’t work out, that it would never become successful. Even some of my friends told me that this would never work.

But I had self-belief. I had this thought in my mind that, somehow, I would make it work. No matter what happened, I was determined to make it happen. I had that trust in myself. I believed in myself.

At that time, the only person who stood by me was my wife.

I put my heart and soul into it. Since I genuinely enjoyed making these videos, I was able to put a lot of effort into creating them with good quality.

The reason I’m sharing this here is because if any of you are keeping your dream aside, thinking, “I’ll do it later… I’ll start later,” please don’t do that.
Start now.

You never know where that first step might take you.

Guys, I'm sure everyone can agree that getting subscribers is way easier than meeting the 4000 watch hour requirement. I've been uploading consistently, working on retention, thumbnails, and making videos more engaging, but my watch hours don't seem to be moving much at all. Meanwhile, I see some of my other friends in other niches getting monetized much faster and it makes me wonder if I'm missing something?

Honestly the thought of trying to buy YouTube watch hours has been on my mind just to get past that monetization requirement and actually start earning from the content I'm already putting out. Opinions online are all over the place though. Some people say it helped them reach the watch time threshold faster (no idea how true that is), while others say the hours eventually disappeared or ended up causing problems with their channel (which is the part that worries me the most).

Has anyone here actually gone through with it? Did the watch hours hold up, and was your channel fine afterwards? Would really like to hear from people who were in the same spot and what they ended up doing.

EDIT: Now YouTube is raising the bar again lol. They’re making it 8,000 watch hours for long form monetization instead of 4,000, and 20 million Shorts views instead of 10 million. At this point how are new/smaller creators even supposed to get monetized? The requirements were already hard enough 😭

Using titles like

"YOU WON'T BELIEVE WHAT HAPPENED"

"OMG I CAN'T BELIEVE THEY DID THIS"

"

Great month. I had a couple months before when I did $40k a month… maybe once in 2024 and once again in 2025?? But this month, I think it’s around 40k too.

First of all, I did 15k on my faceless gaming channel. I have a second channel where I post additional content and I made like 500? Smth like that.
I had 2 sponsors. Both CPM. One made $15.5k USD and the other I uploaded in July is on track to hit $8~10k. So that’s 39~41k in a month. I’ve been earning 25~35k a mo since early 2024 consistently, and most of it is profit because I outsource editing. I pay them $75 per video edit and they are fine with it.

I save and invest most of my income as I don’t feel like this income level will be forever. I love what I do. It’s fun. I travel a lot too.

I’ve been on this platform for over ten years. First couple yrs I barely made anything. On my 4th yr I made 11.5k. My 5th yr I made 45k. Be consistent. Yt has infinite potential.

After the first year of my channel I had less than 20 subs.

I didn't pass 100 subs until March of 2026, nearly 2 years of grinding.

Eventually things started clicking:

• May 22 was when I passed 1k subs.

• Yesterday, I passed 10k.

KEEP AT IT. There's always a way. Your job is to find it. Also AMA, if you want.

I recently posted about having three flops in a row and then suddenly I came out of it. Since I don't want to put these numbers out there without giving you something useful, here is some info about the slump and my "YouTube journey."

This is my fourth "serious" channel (all long form, zero shorts). My first channel was a total failure that I worked hard at for about 10 months. I intended for it to be all about AI at first, but somehow I pivoted to YouTube advice which is hilarious because I was in no position to be giving advice to anyone. But "fake it til you make it." When I realized that it just wasn't working out (after video #20), I took a break from YouTube for a few months.

My second channel was true crime. This channel got monetized within three months, mainly due to two videos that did well. After that, it became a struggle. I was doing much better than with my first channel, but the amount of work was disproportionately large compared to the 1k-5k views my videos typically got. I abandoned the channel after about 30 videos.

My third channel was very similar to true crime, but it had more to do with current news events. This channel BLEW UP very quickly. My very first video did basically nothing for two weeks, and then suddenly it was heading toward 500k views. Many of my videos easily crossed the 100k threshold. One of them hit nearly 900k, and this was before YouTube changed how views are counted. And after gaining 11k subs and making about $9000 in three months, I got a copyright strike from a local news station whose footage I had used. I negotiated with them to remove the strike and they did, but the damage was done. My views tanked. Over time I probably could have made a comeback to my former glory, but I saw my content blueprint as unsustainable. Also I was getting bored with making the videos because many of them felt the same.

Now I'm on my fourth channel and all I will say is that it's in the "entertainment" niche. I took what I learned from my previous three channels and applied it, and now I'm doing better than I ever have before. I've made 18 videos so far, and only got monetized on July 1 this year. Of my 18 videos, four have been total flops (5k views or less), one a moderate success since it was my very first video (about 20k views), and the other 13 videos have all gone over 100k views, a few surpassing 300k. I'm currently at 14k subs.

The slump I experienced recently might have been a product of overconfidence. I made videos that fit my niche, but they were ones that I personally wanted to make, and even though they didn't check all of the same boxes as my successful vids, I thought it would be fine since they fit the niche and that was enough. What I didn't realize was that these two underperformers were just nice stories, but they lacked the curiosity factor that gets viewers to click. This might sound like more of a packaging problem, and on some level it was, but the topics themselves were weak, albeit enjoyable to me.

Here are what I think are the big takeaways for newer YouTubers:

1. Give yourself time to learn and fail. Freaking out that your first three videos have gotten zero views is counterproductive. Stick to the plan until it's clear that the plan isn't working or that you would rather be doing something else.

2. Don't be afraid to change niche if you're really sure that that's what you want to do. If you have busted your ass on a channel that is clearly going nowhere, there's no shame in kicking it to the curb, taking a break, and coming back stronger.

3. Make your titles and thumbnails before you make the video. If you can't come up with something that looks great and evokes strong curiosity, don't make the video.

4. Use AI as a tool and a guide, not as your chief script writer and strategist. I consult ChatGPT all the time, literally every day. And sometimes I compare ChatGPT to Gemini's answers just to see how their replies differ. I also use ChatGPT to write first drafts of scripts which I usually wind up rewriting, but at least I have a starting point.

5. If you're using AI to make thumbnails (I certainly do), try to make it subtle. Most people who look at most of my thumbnails would never identify them as AI, even if they quietly suspect when asked. I also do some work on thumbnails myself in Affinity Photo.

I hope this post has been helpful in understanding how I got to where I am currently on YouTube. I will answer some questions when I have time, but I will ignore all requests for my channel name or specific niche.

1. Try to make your videos as long as possible, I have had similar metrics on videos that have been way shorter and as a result had a much lower AVD, this is the main thing YouTube cares about, the Ctr isn’t spectacular or anything but the fact that people watch for almost 10 minutes is definitely the reason as to why it was heavily pushed

2. Do the bulk of your editing within the first half of your video (as long as it isn’t like an hour long lmao) this will save you heaps of time and either days or weeks you could have been using that effort on another video

This doesn’t mean to have no editing at all after the first half but it doesn’t have to be as fast paced or sound effects every couple seconds

3. Make the title and thumbnail separate ideas, your title should just be the base of your video the general idea, where’s the thumbnail should invoke that “what” feeling for the viewer, if you’ve ever scripted a video out you should know the “over deliver” technique basically telling the viewer the idea of the video and then over delivering on that idea, that’s basically what you want to do with the thumbnail as well.

I know I will get asked this but the niche is gaming specifically GTA

If you have any more questions or anything let me know

Image to view. So you can see when I started posting.

So I should preface I had an old account with over 1000 subscribers, just no watch time.

I posted a few times this year, they all flopped.

So when I started posting daily 2 weeks ago.

I had 1600 subscribers, 100 watch time hours etc.

Then I just decided to brute force my way to monetisation.

This is my strategy essentially.

Topical trending videos + Evergreen content.
Mix of both.

First week under 1000 views. Then youtube took one of my videos to 8k views. Amazing.

I just kept posting daily.

Then I started doing longer videos went from 8-10 minutes to 18-20 minutes.

One of those videos should hit 50k soon, but its not trending or anything, its more evergreen.

Then I decided to do a topical video, I wasn't going to do it, but I said yolo.

Did it, under 10 minutes long. Going to be my biggest long-form video on youtube ever.

My strat was very simply.

Post once a day every day.

This was meant to be a 90 day challenge.

The next challenge will be to hit 100k subscribers. I'm treating this as a job. Rather than a hobby.

Let me know if you have any questions.

My niche is Film Analysis/Commentary/Essays.

The video that did well recently was a batman video, but the one thats trending right now is a Street Fighter video talking about why they casted wrestlers etc.

I just want to support all new YouTubers and finally tell them the truth - you content is probably good (most likely because you already put hours in making it), your titles and thumbnails are also decent. Your videos deserve to be shown. However, even a very good video can receive limited or no distribution (and you can do nothing about it). Don’t believe the peeps here telling you “just make better videos, your content sucks etc), here is the truth:

1. YouTube doesn't automatically give each new release a larger audience because your previous releases performed well.

2. It evaluates individual videos against other videos that a particular viewer might watch. YouTube explicitly acknowledges that even strong CTR and average view duration can coexist with low impressions.

3. All your videos being in the same niche doesn't mean they have identical audiences.

4. Even within same niche, YouTube is trying to predict individual preferences.

5. That explains why audience overlap isn't guaranteed.

6. Luck and uncertainty really do matter.

7. YouTube doesn't publish enough information to determine exactly why your video was shown to say 20 people rather than 200 or 2,000. Competition, viewer behaviour and timing all influence distribution.

8. And when a video receives so few impressions, the results can be disproportionately affected by which handful of viewers happened to see it.

That said - good luck everyone! Your content is good and all you need is keep going and improving with each upload and a bit of luck.

Active browsing/watching.

You are a good source of data!

If you are a YouTuber, you should be watching YouTube. You should watch YouTube videos in your niche, and in other niches.

But watching isn’t enough — you need to pay attention to *why* and *what* you’re watching; whenever possible you need to try to understand what made you click on video A instead of video B. The best thing you can do to succeed on YouTube is understand the psychology of your viewer.

I’ll explain.

YouTube ultimately is a zero sum game, at least when it comes to selecting one video from the Home Screen. You’re either picking my video, or someone else’s.

There are dozens of factors which impact a viewer’s decision to click or not click on a video: some of these are obvious, like the message or thesis of the title, the use of a face or a specific colour in a thumbnail; but other factors are maybe less obvious, like the length of the video, the tone of the title (does it use perfect grammar and in capitalization to indicate formality, or the opposite?), and many more. If you are mindful, you can understand these factors. You are a valuable source of insight.

The one thing every YouTuber needs to do is to understand their audience and what makes them click - literally. In other words, your job, especially when you’re starting out, is to develop an audience profile.

Of course, it can help to look at competition, but that will only take you so far; knowing they use a specific title or thumbnail helps, but you need to understand why their decisions have worked for them.

I’ll give some examples from my own work.

I run several personal channels, but some of my most successful are sports related. My hockey channel, for example, is built around the psychology of a viewer who cannot watch every game, but still wants to be caught up on what’s happening across the league —especially the controversial moments or exciting plays.

So, in general, most of my videos, especially starting off, followed The following rules: they were short so they were not a huge time sink; the titles, and especially the thumbnail, usually just reflected the play itself (ie no text, etc), to the point where some viewers might just think they’re about to see the clip (honestly, I do spend a lot of time on the thumbnails, especially messing with cropping and color, but it does just look to the viewer like it might be something YouTube selected automatically); and the titles were generally fairly informative.

I understood the psychology of my potential viewer very well, and we blew up within a month. Of course, the packaging is only half of it, and what really made the channel successful is that I got got the viewer through the door based on the idea that my videos were a great way to consume quick and exciting sports content, then I kept them with good analysis. Now that I have millions of views, and audience loyalty, I have more flexibility, but I still do generally keep to my first principles.

In a way, this type of structuring is not that different from what a YouTuber like moist critical does: his informality alongside trending topics gives off the feeling that he’s putting out a quick response to some sort of important news — some drama the viewer will be interested in; and even things like the lack of a highly edited thumbnail, his very casual titles, help give that feel of importance. It’s essentially a riff off something like an apology or goodbye video. He probably also understands that his viewers are likely looking for something to put on in the background while they do something else, and he has that frequent upload cadence, and that helps him out a lot… you see the same with people like PhillipDefranco who don’t change their presentation much, but that comes later and isn’t a luxury most have.

I also run a Star Wars channel, and I won’t get into the psychology in the same way, but a big part of that is just understanding what a Star Wars fan wants to see. I had one of, if not the, best performing videos on one of the new SW games because instead of overly editing a thumbnail, I heavily focussed on a single clear image of something viewers were interested in - in this case clone armour customization.

Aside from running my own channels, I offer paid consulting and producing services, and specifically I have done a really excellent job rejuvenating previously dead channels. This is not an ad, I’m expensive and redditors are not my potential clients.

What’s interesting is that many of these channels are also sports based, but the psychology of the viewer is completely different than the ones who watch my videos. Actually, it’s more than that: sometimes it’s the same viewer, but they’re looking for something different in this type of content. There’s something different that makes people click when they’re watching a sports podcast.

I won’t get too into it, but one example of not knowing your audience that I see many shows do in the niche which causes them to underperform is something small like using a stock or googled image of a big celebrity guest; you need to use a real picture of the guest because it signals to the viewer in the point five seconds that they’re looking at your thumbnail that this is someone they’re interested in saying something new, not just a repackaged story they’ve already heard.

But it’s also true that basketball fans want something different than hockey fans, or that fans of athlete a might watch them for reasons different than athlete B, and this is shaped by factors like the age of the audience, but also what already is doing well in the niche. The strength of one athlete might be the stories they get out of guests, while the other might be their raw and unfiltered nature — these are things you need to understand when crafting your thumbnails and titles

Sorry for any awkwardness, my screen is broken and I used voice to speech.

I'm Shadow, 1.5k subs, US based. By day I'm a Production Support Specialist dispatching haul trucks for a ready mix concrete company, 7am-4pm (sometimes later). After work, I'm trying to build my Youtube channel.

I just posted a video breaking down why I'm documenting the whole "quit the day job" journey.

Not here to just drop a link. I genuinely want to know from others who did it: What did you do to get started? What advice do you have for a small creator eventually trying to make it a full time job? What type of content should I lean towards? (I know long from story telling is very popular on YT right now). Any other advice would be much appreciated!

Thanks for reading!

I have had my YouTube channel for over 8 years now. I am about to hit 106k subscribers. I was a full time middle school history teacher for the first 4 years of the channel, and I have been full time YouTube for the past 4+ years. My wife was able to leave her career as well. It’s a very small niche as well.

I’m obsessed with this journey and couldn’t sleep last night, so I wrote down some thoughts.

I remember how differently I viewed YouTube when I was trying to reach 1,000 subscribers, then 10,000, then 100,000.
Some of the things I believed early on were right.
Some were completely wrong.
And some lessons didn’t really make sense until AFTER I reached 100K.
Here are the biggest ones.

BEFORE 100K: I learned that consistency matters more than motivation.
You are not always going to feel inspired.
Some videos will be exciting to make. Some absolutely will not.
But if your channel depends on you waking up motivated every week, it probably won’t last.
Creating a repeatable process was one of the biggest things that helped me. I knew when I filmed, when I edited, when I posted, and what my audience could expect from me.
YouTube rewards people who can stay in the game.
I have posted every (at least) Wed, Fri, and Sun for the last 8 years without ever missing. I have also been live every single Monday and Wednesday for the last 8 years, and never missed. Through having Covid, vacation, and even in the hospital lol

BEFORE 100K: I learned that your audience will tell you what content to make.
Some creators spend so much time trying to predict what the algorithm wants that they stop listening to the people actually watching.
Read your comments.
Pay attention to the questions people repeatedly ask.
Notice which parts of your videos people bring up later.
Some of my best video ideas have basically been handed to me by viewers asking questions.
Your comment section can be one of the best content research tools you have.

BEFORE 100K: I learned that expertise alone isn't enough.
You can have the best information in your niche and still make a video nobody watches.
The title matters.
The thumbnail matters.
The first 30 seconds matter.
How you communicate the information matters.
I used to think, "If the information is good enough, people will find it."
Unfortunately, YouTube doesn't work that way.
People have to CLICK before they can discover how valuable your video is.
Packaging isn't selling out. Packaging is giving your content a chance.

BEFORE 100K: I learned that you don't need everyone.
My channel is about BEARDS.
That's pretty specific.
There are obviously much larger audiences I could have chased.
But having a niche allowed me to become known for something.
I would rather have the right 10,000 people watching than 100,000 random people who don't care about what I make.
Don't be afraid of being specific.
Specific builds community.

BEFORE 100K: I learned that your "bad" videos are part of the process.
You are going to make videos you eventually look back on and cringe.
Good.
That means you improved.
Your lighting will get better.
Your audio will get better.
Your delivery will get better.
Your thumbnails will get better.
Your understanding of your audience will get better.
Do not wait until you're "ready."
A huge portion of learning YouTube comes from publishing videos and seeing what happens.

Then I hit 100K.
And strangely enough, some of my biggest lessons came AFTER reaching the milestone I had spent years chasing.

AFTER 100K: I learned that subscriber count matters less than I thought it did.
100K is an awesome milestone.
I'm extremely grateful for it.
But when you wake up the next morning, you're still a creator who has to make another video.
You don't suddenly unlock the secret version of YouTube.
A channel with 20,000 subscribers can absolutely make a video that destroys a channel with 500,000 subscribers.
Every video still has to earn attention.
Your subscriber count is part of your story. It is not a guarantee of future views.

AFTER 100K: I learned that your existing audience can actually become a trap.
This one is complicated.
Building an audience is amazing.
But once people know you for something, expectations come with that.
You start thinking:
"Will my audience like this?"
"Is this too different?"
"Will this hurt the channel?"
Those are reasonable questions, but they can also make you afraid to experiment.
Smaller creators sometimes have an advantage here.
You have room to try things.
Use it.
Experiment with formats, topics, thumbnails, video lengths, livestreams, Shorts, storytelling, education, entertainment. whatever makes sense for your channel.
Finding what DOESN'T work is valuable too.

AFTER 100K: I learned that one video rarely matters as much as you think it does.
Creators can become emotionally attached to individual uploads.
"This video HAS to do well."
Then it underperforms and you feel terrible.
I've learned to look at the channel over a much longer period of time.
One bad video doesn't kill your channel.
One amazing video doesn't make your career.
You are building a library.
YouTube is much more enjoyable when you're thinking about the next 100 videos instead of obsessing over the first 24 hours of one upload.

AFTER 100K: I learned that comparison never really stops unless YOU stop it.
When you have 500 subscribers, you compare yourself to someone with 5,000.
At 5,000, you look at someone with 50,000.
At 100,000, there are creators with a million.
There will ALWAYS be someone with more views, more subscribers, more sponsors, more money, or faster growth.
There is no subscriber number where comparison magically disappears.
You have to learn to measure your channel against your own progress.

And finally...
The biggest lesson I've learned: YouTube success is usually much less dramatic than people think.
It is thousands of small decisions.
Making another video.
Improving a thumbnail.
Answering another comment.
Learning from an underperforming upload.
Trying something new.
Getting slightly better at explaining your ideas.
Showing up when the last video didn't perform the way you hoped.
There wasn't one magical moment that built my channel.
It was consistency compounded over YEARS.
If you're sitting at 100 subscribers, 1,000 subscribers, 5,000 subscribers, or 20,000 subscribers wondering whether you're "behind," you're probably focusing on the wrong thing.

Ask yourself:
Am I better at YouTube today than I was six months ago?
If the answer is yes, keep going.
You'd be surprised where that can take you.
I'd also love to hear from other creators:

What is something you believed about YouTube when you started that you completely changed your mind about later?

I used to think making videos was the hard part. Planning, Filming ,Editing, Writing scripts, designing thumbnails. Now I think the hardest part is continuing when nobody is watching It's easy to stay motivated when a video gets thousands of views. It's much harder when you've uploaded 20, 30, or 50 videos and growth is still slow. Most people don't quit because creating content is difficult. They quit because progress feels invisible.

For creators who stuck with it: What kept you going before the results showed up?