5 Rules for Better YouTube Videos in 8 Minutes

If you're trying to get your YouTube channel launched, today's video talks about the top 5 mistakes that new YouTubers make when launching their channel and how to stop sucking on camera. So I got a question from one of my YouTube viewers, Patricia— love you guys— who wrote in to say, "Hey Evan, I have a problem with my videos, actually several problems." Welcome to the club. "But the one that I'm concerned about the most is that I think they're too dull, boring, and repetitive. I want to get people's attention, but I can't I can't do it by saying the same thing again and again. What would you recommend to shake up a little bit more about my videos? Thanks for this video, it helped a lot. This is a fantastic question, and I think every YouTuber struggles on their journey to eventually achieving success, and I've definitely learned a lot on my journey from starting with nothing to having millions of views on my channel. I'm gonna share with you the 5 mistakes that most newbie YouTubers make and how you can avoid sucking on camera. So number 1 is having no passion. So many new YouTubers have zero passion and emotion in their videos. And I get why you do it. You know, you're nervous in front of the camera. You're not used to speaking to a screen. You don't have an audience in front of you that you can get energy from. You also might be trying to remember the script and say exactly the words that you want to say and get exactly the message out that you want to get out. And the end result is a super boring brain video. I remember one of my first videos, let's link it up here, was on Walt Disney, and I had a professional video crew come in, and I had a script that I memorized that I wanted to be perfect, and it looked great, the setup was perfect, but because I was so nervous, and because I was just speaking to a camera, and because I wanted to get the exact words out, my delivery sucked! And I would use passionate words with no passion. I would say things like, "To learn from Walt Disney, you need to make sure that you follow your passion." So boring, right? So you've got to tap into your passion. You've got to stop worrying about saying the exact words exactly as you wrote them down, and instead let the emotion come through and have more passion in every video that you create. How you say something is equally as important as what you're saying. So inject more passion into your videos. Number 2 is repeating yourself. If you watch a lot of newbie YouTubers, in their videos are saying the same thing over and over and over again and maybe finding 3 different ways to say the exact same message. You need to practice getting your message to be concise. One exercise that really helped me that my media coach gave me is to practice doing One Minute Mondays, where basically I had to deliver a message and a story and something impactful in under 2 minutes and do that every single week on my channel. And at first it was really hard. I couldn't get anything out in under 2 minutes. And I thought, I have so much to say, I have so many stories, I want to get it out there. But when I look back Looking back on my old videos, I realized I just kept saying the same thing over and over and over again and using different words. So practice your own version of a One Minute Monday so you can get concise thinking and execution of your ideas. Number 3 is summarizing and not being specific. A lot of newbie YouTubers are not great storytellers. They're telling their story, they're explaining something that was traumatic in their life or life-changing that happened before. And you just give the high-level summary instead of making me feel like I'm a part of the story. This is something I had a huge problem with myself as I was trying to develop my channel and get better as a speaker. I would talk about a major problem I had and say, "Evan, that was a really tough period in my life, and so I decided I really had to turn things around." I would give very few details and wasn't very specific at all. Where instead, it's better to talk about fewer points but go deeper on them. If you're talking about a time in your life where you were really struggling, take me there. Make it feel like I'm sitting next to you on the couch watching it happen. Tell me about how you were crying and how the tears were coming out of your eyes and your nose, and tell me about how your mother came and put her hand on your shoulder and told you that everything was gonna be okay. Tell me what you were thinking, feeling, acting. Tell me about it. Make me again feel like I am right there watching with you instead of being up here where I'm disconnected and I don't really understand what's going on. So stop summarizing and start being specific. Number 4 is not personalizing your videos. Wherever possible, you want to be able to tell a personal story to help bring your point home. Your story not only helps people connect to you more, but also helps drive your point home. So in my first point, I was talking about not having passion and shared an example about my first Disney video that you can go back and click on. In my second point about repeating repeating yourself. I shared an example about how I kept repeating myself and used the 1 Minute Monday exercise to help me get through. So try to add a personal story or anecdote to every single video that you make. You'll often find that the best stories are the ones that make you vulnerable, where you're talking about real problems that you have. I've made videos talking about my divorce, my hair loss, my weight gain, as struggles that I faced when I was growing my business. I talked about how I was making $300 a month, barely able to survive, feeling totally worthless, feeling totally helpless, feeling like I added no value to the world, and I didn't know what to do with my life. And that can be really hard to do because in general, you want to present a positive picture. When you go out and you meet people and they ask you how you are, the default answer is, "I'm fine," where really maybe you're not so fine. And if you look at the top YouTubers, they're willing to share their vulnerabilities. They're willing to share their stories, and they're willing to be naked— figuratively— in front of the camera. So start sharing and start getting more personalized. Number 5 is your videos aren't important enough. My agent liked to tell me when we first started working together that my videos, they weren't important enough. He always used to say I had to up the stakes. Every time I got off a call with him when he reviewed my videos, he said, up the stakes, up the ante, make it more important. And it's true. If your videos are more important, if you go in with the intention of the videos being important, then that makes the quality that much better. Here's an exercise that I like to do before I get on camera. I imagine somebody who's having a problem, who's going through something really important in their life and who needs help. I imagine that my video is the last thing that they're going to watch before they make this all-important decision. If a video is talking about self-confidence, for example, I might imagine somebody who's just about to jump off a bridge and kill themselves and my video is the last thing that they are going to watch before they make that super important life decision. That makes me feel like the video that I'm about to create is more important, and when I feel like it's more important, then I'm going to project that importance onto you. Now the reality is it's not going to be that important for most people, but it will be that important for some people, and unless you project yourself with the confidence and with that importance stake in mind, you're not going to hit those people. I do videos helping entrepreneurs, but I've had people who wrote to me saying, Evan, your videos have saved my life. That's important! And so you need to approach your videos with that same level of importance. The next time you step in front of the camera, you want to be thinking, the video that I'm making right now has the ability to change or save somebody's life. Make your videos more important, start to up the ante, and people will start to care a lot more. And my 6th bonus tip is actually care. I think it's by default for most YouTubers that you care about your audience, you care about what you're doing. I feel the love from Patricia's comment that she's genuinely trying to make videos that people will care about. Some YouTubers don't care. They're just trying to put videos up there to try to make a lot of money. They're trying to monetize through advertising or sell some affiliate programs. If you don't actually care about your audience, then there's no way that they're actually going to care about you. So those are my 5+1 tips on the mistakes that most beginners make and how to stop sucking on camera. And of course, remember to continue to believe. For those of you watching, if you like this video, you want to see more, don't forget to subscribe to the channel. Thank you so much for tuning in. And I'll see you soon.

Self-improvement books are like fitness books. They never work on their own. What you need is a trainer. That's Evan Carmichael. Get the newsletter.