If I Started a YouTube Channel in 2026, I’d Do This!

If I started a YouTube channel in 2023, I would make sure to upload at least 3 times per week. And I actually did start a brand new channel a couple months ago called Tube Mastery, and here's what happened on that channel after I started uploading 3 times per week. As you can see, the views absolutely took off. But because of a couple issues with the production line on this channel, we actually stopped uploading for a while, and you can see what happened to the views right here. But we don't want to just upload videos for the sake of uploading videos. I'd also want to make sure that my videos are at least as good, if not better, than the competition. This means that if my competitors edit their videos in a certain way, I would do something similar. And this does not mean that you should copy it exactly, but rather just use it as inspiration and see why your audience might like this type of content and try to incorporate some of those things into your videos. If you upload 3 great videos per week, at least as good as the competition, there's no way that your channel's not going to grow. If I started a new channel right now, I'd also make sure that I'm in a niche where videos regularly go up with over 100,000 views. And if you don't know which niche to choose, here's a list of 100 different niches that we're just gonna scroll through real quickly right here. And right here, in my opinion, are the best niches on all of YouTube. And also, just to give you some extra value, here's a ton of high CPM niches, meaning that these can make a lot of money per 1,000 views. Now, you might get overwhelmed by this given there's so many options, but the truth is there's people interested in so many things and most of these can work great. So at the end of the day, I just recommend choosing something that you're interested in. Then all you have to do is search it on YouTube and make sure that there are videos showing up regularly with over 100,000 views. With my new channel, I would also make sure to optimize it correctly. And to do this, I'd sign up for a software called vidIQ. And when uploading new videos, I would use it to grab keywords from already popular videos to add to my videos and use some of their suggestions as well as I'm adding tags. It's also important that the topics for the videos on the channel are good too. So I'd make sure that the ideas are solid by having half of them come from already popular videos within my niche and the other half coming from keyword research using vidIQ. And for the vidIQ keyword research, all you have to do go into vidIQ, go to the Keywords tab. From here you can search what your channel is about. Say your channel is about cars, so we can just search cars right there. Then we go to Related Keywords, click View All right here, and then sort by the highest overall score. This is gonna show us keywords with a high amount of search volume— lots of people are searching for them— and a low amount of competition, so your videos can rank easier. And as you can see, you just go down this list, skip any that don't relate. For example, a lot of these are video games right here. But let's say we find some good ones like this one, Rolls-Royce Phantom. This would be a great video topic right here. Also, with my new channel, I would make sure to upload at least 60 videos to give this a real shot. Now, most people on YouTube, it's sad to say, they only upload 10 videos before quitting and saying that YouTube doesn't work for them. And honestly, if YouTube is something that you want to do, and I'm guessing it is if you're watching this video right here, please don't be one of those people and please give this a real shot, which in my opinion means uploading at least 60 good videos. This doesn't mean shorts. This doesn't mean videos where you put hardly any effort into them whatsoever. This means at least 60 good quality videos because I promise you if you build up a backlog of at least that many videos and they're good, you're within a good niche, there's almost no way that your channel is not gonna grow quite a bit over time even just with that initial 60 videos. And most of the big channels out there have uploaded hundreds if not thousands of videos on their channel and that's how they got to that point. And remember every big channel including if I were to start one right now, always starts with one video. And that brings us to a question you might be asking, which is, is it even possible to grow on YouTube right now? Isn't it too saturated? And that's a great question because saturation up to a certain point can actually be a really good thing. Now, I know I might have lost some people there, and I know this sounds counterintuitive, but this can actually be a good thing because your video can go in the suggested videos of some of those other popular videos that are out there. And if those videos aren't out there and you're not in a saturated niche, you might not have some of those possibilities. However, in my opinion, there can be such a thing as too much saturation if you can't produce content equal to or better than what's working. And this simply means having a higher amount of audience retention. People watch your videos more on average and they have a higher click-through rate. People click to watch your videos based off your thumbnails and titles more than your competition. And also everybody talks about too much competition, but everybody also fails to account for that there's more viewers on YouTube right now than ever as well. And out of all the of so-called competition that's out there, how many people are actually giving YouTube a real shot? How many are just quitting after 10 videos? How many are putting low-quality, low-effort content up onto YouTube? Honestly, if you just put a little bit of effort into this and you really give this a real shot while doing all these different things that I'm about to share with you, including the 7-week roadmap I'm going to give you for free right here, your channel is going to grow fast. And it doesn't matter at all how much saturation there is if you can produce videos better than the competition. So yes, it's 100% possible to grow a channel in 2023. Right now. And now, like I promised, here's the 7-week challenge roadmap that I would follow with my new channel. And let's start with week number 1. In the first week, I would choose the channel's niche. I would take 1 day to choose the type of channel that I would run. For example, if I was an introvert and I didn't want to get on camera, I would do a faceless channel. And yes, you can actually grow huge channels without ever showing your face. I got a million subscribers on a channel doing just that. And if I was an extrovert, I'd do a personal channel. And then through days 2 through 5, I would go about choosing my niche. And the way I would do that is I'd make a master list of a bunch bunch of things that I'm interested in, just put it in a Google Doc, write down everything that I'm subscribed to on YouTube, that I read about, that I just have a general interest in. And feel free to also go back in this video to reference that list of example channels if you ever want to, if you need more ideas. And I'd really try to think hard about this as well because this might be something that I'd run for potentially years into the future, so I want to make sure it's something that I'm okay talking about, you know, potentially for years. And that's why I give myself a couple days to choose my niche. On day 6, I would then choose my channel's name, and you can use tools like the Shopify Business Name Generator to come up with tons of channel name ideas. And then you can use the Global Brand Database at this URL right here to ensure that the name that you want to do hasn't been copyrighted. And now on week 2, I would set up my channel for success. I take a day to do all the standard things like actually creating my channel. And by the way, feel free to check out my video which shows how to create a channel properly in 2023, and it includes all the right optimization settings and everything to make sure that you're going into this with the best foot forward. At this point, I would also make my logo and channel art. And if you're not sure, this is a logo on YouTube, and then this image right here is the channel art, and you can use free software like Snappa or Canva for making these. They include free templates as well, so you make sure it's the right size and everything. But you can also use something like Paint.net to create it as well and then download a template from online to ensure that you have the right sizes. I would also verify my channel to unlock more features as well, and in order to do that, you click on your profile picture and you go down here to YouTube Studio. From here, then you go to the left-hand side, go all the way down to Settings, click that. From here, then you want to go to Channel and then Feature Eligibility. From here then, you definitely want to unlock these intermediate features right here, and these require you to verify your phone number. So you basically just put your phone number in there, it'll send you a text, and you verify it. This will unlock videos longer than 15 minutes, custom thumbnails, which like we said are incredibly important on your YouTube channel because it gets people to actually click your videos. So you definitely want to unlock that, and live streaming if you ever want to do it. And then for the rest of the week, I would do my secret SEO keyword strategy that I teach in my course Tube Mastery and Monetization. And I would also get my first 33 video ideas. And now on week 3 through 6, I would actually generate my first 33 videos. This means writing the scripts, which I would do in Google Docs, and then recording the videos. And if you're not showing your face, you can literally just use your phone to record the voiceovers, or if you're getting in front of a camera, then you can record them that way. And then editing the videos, here's some free video editors, and then making the thumbnails, and here's some free image editors to do that. And now on week 7, I would actually upload and optimize those 33 videos. And now this does not mean that I I would publish them all in one week. Rather, I would schedule them to be uploaded 3 videos per week over the next couple months. And just like that, I would have almost 3 months of content scheduled into the future on the channel. And then I would just rinse and repeat this process, continue growing my backlog until I have hundreds of videos on the channel getting millions of views per month and making thousands of dollars per month. And right here's an overview of the 7-week process challenge right here. So feel free to screenshot this as you're going through your journey. And also, I wanna make it clear, it's not a matter of if I start a new channel, in 2023. I already have, and I intend to start more channels this year as well because I truly believe that YouTube is the best place to start an online business. And I could go on and on about why YouTube is so amazing, but in short, it's just because YouTube is incredibly high leverage. You know, you upload the videos once, they live forever. I have videos I uploaded back when I was in school that still make me money every single month today. So my advice to you is to plant these seeds now. Your future self will thank you. And upload tons of videos until you have a giant garden, so to speak, of thousands of videos all getting your channel tons of views, and hopefully making you a ton of money as well. And speaking of money, if you want to discover how I make tons of money with YouTube, check out this video right here. This video is essentially a free course, basically, that shows you exactly how I make money on YouTube without making videos. I think you'll get a ton of value from it. Thanks for watching, everybody, and I'll see you there.