How to Start and Grow a YouTube Channel in 2026

[00:01] talking about a step-by-step process that you can use to grow [music] your share the principles and the strategies that I would do and also what I would a YouTube channel. If you're new here, hello. My name is Ali and I've been

[00:14] since [music] like 2017. And in that time, I've documented my journey from full-time as a doctor to then becoming an entrepreneur and then a best-selling running an online community called the Part-Time YouTuber Academy, where since

[00:28] students start, grow, and monetize their incredible success stories that you might recognize. So, if you [music] get all the systems and processes that I've used to grow my own YouTube channel

[00:40] creators from all around the world and get one-on-one support and feedback from in the video description. Okay, so here's the thing. Growing a YouTube channel fundamentally comes down to three different things. We've got to get

[00:53] watch and we want to get them to like you. Them meaning your viewers. Because get people to click, get them to watch and get them to like you, then they are growing subscribers, like getting people to hit the subscribe button, that

[01:06] you, they are more likely to hit the subscribe button. But more importantly, they are more likely to become returning viewers who come back to your channel likely to then binge some of your content. And all of that is a good thing

[01:19] that contributes to the growth of your YouTube channel in terms of views or whatever metric you want. Now there are two factors in that are involved in getting people to click on our stuff and you are probably familiar with those.

[01:31] That is the title of the video and the thumbnail of the video. Now this is not YouTube channel you have to start doing really clickbaity titles and really that we have to keep in mind that it's not actually just about the video.

[01:45] YouTube is not just a video platform. It is a click and watch platform. You have to be relatively good at crafting titles and crafting crafting thumbnails that are not clickbay but that are intriguing enough for people to click. Now when it

[01:57] comes to getting them to watch, we need to craft a hook which is the first like 30 to 60 seconds of the video. And the video needs to provide a good amount of you know they click on the video they click on a title and thumbnail like how

[02:10] And then in the hook, in the first 30 seconds, you want to deliver on the thumbnail has set. So you might say something like, "In this video, we're YouTube channel, for example, right? Like often the hook is just repeating

[02:23] to give people a reason to keep on watching." And for most YouTube channels, you will find in the retention curves that like 30 to 50% of viewers mark. And if you think about your own viewing habits on YouTube, you probably

[02:37] don't watch all the way through every single video you click on. You probably a little bit, see if it vibes with you, and if not, you'll click off of it. on the side that you can constantly like be attracted to more things on. And it's

[02:50] actually watch a YouTube video all the way through. But you are more likely to watch a video all the way through if you feel like the video is giving you value. could be learning something. It could be entertainment value. You could be just

[03:02] value. You could be feeling inspired. But like either way, this is value that's causing you to invest your time, which is your single most valuable your time in watching the stuff. Therefore, when we're thinking about

[03:15] trying to grow our own YouTube channels, we want to be mindful that we are asking with their time and attention. And arguably, their time and attention is we want to create a video or a series of videos or a content library that gives

[03:29] on watching. Watch time is measured by something like average view duration analytics. Clicks is measured by things like impressions and like clickthrough in your YouTube analytics if you really want to. And basically the more average

[03:44] view duration we get for our content uh the more YouTube realizes that like oh and this video is keeping people on the platform on YouTube itself. And this is people are watching your stuff, firstly the more they are liking you because

[03:59] more they get to know you as a person, which is fantastic for all of the also the more the algorithm then realizes that, oh, this video is keeping doing really well. Therefore, we want to push this video out to similar people

[04:13] we've got to be pretty reasonable at crafting hooks. And this is the hardest to provide value. And then finally, we want to get people to like us. Now the give value, automatically you're more likely to get people to like you. So

[04:26] double dip in terms of average view duration and also people are more likely value. But that's not the only factor that makes people like you. Another key factor to make people like you is personality and vibes. Now obviously

[04:39] value is also very subjective. But there are certain channels that you watch where you vibe with the personality of the creator who's created the channel. This is also why faceless channels have a harder time of growing than channels

[04:51] channels because it's very difficult to channel personality and vibes through a Kudskart for example. They're a faceless channel but they do a really good job of channeling personality and vibes even though it's a faceless channel but they

[05:05] animators working for them full-time to craft these videos. It's a massive hard to do something like that especially if you are a solo creator or is why in general I recommend against faceless channels. I know that people

[05:19] without doing any work and without showing my face." It's just really, is a platform where fundamentally it's about the connection that your audience want to grow your channel, it's worth figuring out like what is the kind of

[05:33] unique, that makes you kind of stand out, that makes you your authentic self. self into our content so that you know not everyone is going to like us but so that the people who are most like us and that vibe with our unique personality

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[07:05] description to check it out for free. So, thank you so much ManyHat for to it. So, this is a little bit of a sort of highle overview of what's actually going on and what it takes to grow a YouTube channel. And if you

[07:17] them to watch, get them to like you. If we imagine all of this like packaged up into like a single package, this is what we would get as a single video and say this is the video that you make. It's a video that's

[07:31] that's gotten people to watch and it's a video that has gotten some percentage of on the video to start liking you as a person. This is one video. easy, everyone would be successful on YouTube. It is not that easy because we

[07:45] need to we need to make lots and lots and lots factors that contributes to the growth of a YouTube channel is consistency, but there's any magical like once a week, twice a week, once a month. There's no

[07:59] like magical level of consistency that causes the algorithm to start promoting your channel. It's just that the more videos you make, the more likely it is content. Like let's say there was a channel that only had four videos on it,

[08:13] right? Because like you got started, you maybe made a video, you maybe thought there and you realized and you realized it's hard and then maybe eight months YouTube again and you make video number two and then maybe a year later you make

[08:25] years later you make video number four. It's not that there's anything you've not been consistent on YouTube, but you only have four videos on your channel. And each video, we can kind of think of each video as a little bit of a

[08:37] I like to think of, which is that, you know, every time we make a video, we are the deck in our favor a little bit by doing sensible things like, you know, decent title, decent thumbnail, decent hook, decent value, etc., etc. But

[08:51] And you never know which of the videos is going to suddenly take off because this thing around this thing around in particular value and also personality and vibes is kind of subjective, right? Like I could make

[09:05] a video and I can think I've added a lot of value in that content but you know is the judge of that. Similarly I could make a video where I'm like a super basic obvious stuff that like h but maybe something about that video either

[09:17] specifically delivered really resonates with people and so that video might just take off. And this is very difficult to predict. I know a lot of very big very teams, they spend a tons and tons of money growing their YouTube channels and

[09:31] difficult to predict what will do well. There are certainly things you can do to increase your chances. For example, if you pick a video concept or a title that you can kind of do your own version of that. We call this viral replication.

[09:43] You are replicating an existing viral video. And so you're more likely to win particular lottery ticket. But the fact remains that if you only have four played four lottery tickets. Or another metaphor I like is that you've only

[09:55] planted four seeds. If however you have made 400 videos on your YouTube channel four or 5 years and you just keep on going. Now you have hundreds of seeds of lottery tickets that you've played and chances are at least one of those is

[10:10] going to hit. And what happens when one video starts to sort of get traction is that more and more people will discover your channel. And if they like that one to be like, "Oh, that's a really cool video. I've never come across that

[10:22] channel and see what else they've got. And then they'll start seeing maybe other like back catalog of like dozens of videos or hundreds of videos that becomes a bingeable asset. A lot of people have binge habits when it comes

[10:35] video and you really vibe with it, you might click the end screen and click on creator's channel and watch some more. The fact that YouTube knows that you've watch time, that means YouTube is going to be more likely to suggest that

[10:49] in your suggested videos. And so what you get is this sort of virtuous cycle of a particular creator, you will start that's how the algorithm works. And therefore, if you as the creator are

[11:02] we want to think about how can we create a bingeable content library so that one from now, when someone discovers that one video or that one or that one or then vibe with the rest of our channel and is going to be more likely to binge

[11:18] with a back catalog can can for example keep on getting millions of views for because they've got this long tale of views that people are discovering the channel, subscribing, watching stuff and you get this virtuous loop. So that is

[11:31] less about a magical level of consistency. It's more about the fact build the habits and build the systems for creating more videos. Secondly, videos helps you actually get better at the craft of making videos. So you get

[11:46] get better at getting them to watch. You get better at like allowing your because chances are if it's your first time and you've only made a few videos, But once you've made hundreds of videos, you become better on camera. You become

[12:00] You get better at getting people to like you. And so all of these things happen as a result of just making a lot of content, which is why I make the point to click, watch, and getting them to like you, but it is also about doing

[12:13] by the way, if you're watching this before Black Friday 2025, we have a YouTuber Academy. So, there'll be a link in the video description if you want to check it out. But now we come to the thorniest part of the video, which is

[12:27] are the factors that make for a good video. These are the factors that lead people to check out our channel. Um, you want to make lots of these videos, but there is also a science and an art to choosing the right videos to make. Now,

[12:40] if you imagine a YouTube channel where the first video is a video about cooking knitting and the third video is a video about like a mechanical keyboard and the importance of hydration and the fifth

[12:52] the sixth video is a review of Ali Abdal's New York Times bestseller feelgood productivity. Like that is a channel that's trying to do a lot of going on on this channel. Now, the way the algorithm works is that it shows

[13:05] the algorithm works is that it shows your video to a few people, and it sees small amount of people that it shows it to. It's looking at click-through rate. duration, how many people are watching. They now have these like little surveys

[13:19] video. So, they're sort of measuring viewer satisfaction. And I attended a talk um by YouTube themselves where the guy who runs the YouTube algorithm was somewhere between 50 and 100 different factors that the YouTube algorithm is

[13:33] looking at to basically get a sense of like who is vibing with this video and what is good content for that particular person. So what happens let's say a person A. Person A really vibes with your video about cooking. What the

[13:47] to be like okay you know person A is really vibing with this video about cooking. um let's find other people that are similar to person A and let's promote this video about cooking to that those other people. And so like if

[14:01] the algorithm's job what it's trying to do is match other people who are have similar viewing habits to that person to also you know promote that video. But about knitting. It is unlikely that the person who vibes with your video about

[14:15] knitting. Unless they just really freaking love your personality, which is just kind of unlikely. It's quite hard to have such a winning personality that people will just watch any anything you put out. You generally have to be pretty

[14:28] then, like unless you're like a really really really famous celebrity, it's get people to watch literally whatever you put out. Vanishingly unlikely. So, if that second video that you do is about knitting,

[14:41] person A watches your video about cooking and then the next video you make is about knitting, it is unlikely that person A is also going to watch your confuses the algorithm cuz it's like, okay, well, we showed this video to this

[14:53] it. Didn't click on it, didn't watch it, didn't like, okay, cool. So, now it's sort of like, okay, well, do we find other people who enjoy knitting? Let's say this is person B who enjoys knitting and we're like all right let's show the

[15:08] vibes with your video about knitting so it shows it to a couple more people who are interested in knitting. But the problem we have is that when you do some about knitting, some content about books, some content about tech, some

[15:20] content about like I don't know your dog, it's very very difficult for your channel as a asset to become bingeable and to become like a thing that grows. your cooking video or on your knitting video, but you won't really be growing

[15:36] your channel because the audiences are quite different. And this is where the idea of niching comes. And my hot take is going to be it's not that much of a hot take, but it's like if you want to grow your YouTube channel, you need to

[15:49] find a niche. Now, a niche I define as a target and a value. A target audience and a value proposition. So, for example, with my channel back in 2017, my original niche was I help medical applicants in

[16:04] UK. And in particular, it wasn't even that. It was like I help medical Oxford, Cambridge, Imperial or UCL medical schools. There's like four of niche, but I was providing a lot of value to a very specific target

[16:19] audience. And therefore, the YouTube algorithm did a good job of surfacing my videos to other people who were in that target market. There were only a few target market. But I would venture that like back in the day almost all of them

[16:32] because they were so targeted and they were so valuable to just a specific set of audience. I'm never going to get famous doing that, but it's a very good place to start. Sort of like Amazon. Amazon started out selling books. Now

[16:45] everything store and they sell absolutely everything. But it's very of business or with any kind of YouTube channel by trying to do everything. I you you're interested in productivity, you're interested in personal

[16:58] business, uh you've got some skills in your career, you've got a few hobbies, maybe you play some music, maybe you have kids, like of course you want to be and showcase your personality and like bring it all into your content because

[17:11] you are interested in. Unfortunately, when we are trying to serve our own interests rather than what other people want, it's very difficult to grow. Some Similarly, if you're trying to start a business based on what you want to do

[17:26] what your customers want, it's very difficult to grow a business that way. into a bit of a crossroads where a video like this, it's it's sort of like, do you want to do YouTube as a hobby or do you want to do YouTube as a business?

[17:42] And you're not allowed to say both, right? Because these are like it's it's business. And it's sort of like a seesaw that like you know you hobbies are They're doing they're things that you do because you want to have fun. Whereas a

[17:56] business is a thing that adds value to other people and ideally you make money and you get growth. Now we have a problem if for YouTube is treating it like a hobby i.e. I'm just going to make videos about

[18:09] stuff that interests me. That's totally fine. But if you then have an like a business goal i.e. growth and and maybe all that kind of stuff. But your approach is a hobbyist approach.

[18:22] And this where we have a gap between the goal and the path and the plan that we're following. This gap is where misery is contained because now like you want something and you are not working towards the thing that you want. Right

[18:35] now if you're doing it as a hobby and your metric for your hobby is having fun fun is aligned. You know I play the guitar as a hobby. I'm not particularly very consistently. I don't have a teacher. I've taken a couple of online

[18:51] make money from the guitar. If I started a YouTube channel, and I did try it back channel and I suck at music and I have the goal of growth, it's just it's, you fun, then yeah, things are going to work. You know, this is fine. We are in

[19:06] alignment. So, if you care about treating YouTube like a business, then I think you have to have a niche. You have to have a particular target and a particular value proposition because this is where

[19:23] demand come in. Okay. So imagine a world where there is only one YouTuber that talks about how to lose weight. There are a billion people in the world that person talking about it. If that person made a video titled how to lose weight,

[19:38] that person was providing value on how to lose weight, loads of people would would start liking the person because like this is literally the only person good advice on how to lose weight. How many YouTubers out there do you think

[19:52] or on fitness or in health or that kind of stuff? There's way more than one. that are doing fitness or health rellated stuff. Therefore, we get into this thing of supply and demand. There is a lot of supply of fitness related

[20:05] content. There is still a lot of demand for it, but there's a ton of supply. And trying to make generic fitness videos about how to lose weight or about how to get abs or something, it will be harder for you to stand out. It will you'll

[20:17] click. You will have to work harder to get them to watch. And you'll have to be personality-wise unique or whatever to get them to like you. I'm sure you can that's not really the hard hard part. The hard part in a very saturated niche

[20:31] them to watch. And so in that context, we'd want to be even more niche. We don't just want to be a generic lose weight channel. But let's say you're a channel that helps entrepreneurs get more fit. That your target target value

[20:43] is fitness. That is someone like my friend Dan Go. Dan and I connected over tips for entrepreneurs. And then he was my coach for a while and then I helped channel is blowing up because he knows that he is targeting entrepreneurs who

[20:56] everyone who wants fitness because that's really hard to compete in. And with anything at all. Right? His target audience is defined i.e. specifically rich people. And his value proposition and broadly he goes after men rather

[21:10] I help you get more fit. And so that's his initial in into the market. And then like life advice videos and like hey I'm in my 40s. You should do this if you're in your 20s or your 30s. A lot of it is fitness advice. He's jacked. He's got a

[21:24] he's got a bunch of different unfair fundamentally he's niched down rather than general fitness. He's niched down into fitness for entrepreneurial men and that is a very good thing. If you are

[21:37] for entrepreneurial men, I would say that even that is now still too broad, because now a lot of people are doing it and so you have to work harder to stand watch and get them to like you. And this is where the laws of supply and demand

[21:50] you have to understand if you want to grow a YouTube channel that you are at the mercy of the laws of supply and demand depending on what your niche is. anything and you're just trying to go broad, your YouTube channel will will

[22:05] basically never grow. There is a sad story that I saw the other day. Um it in a part-time YouTuber academy. I'm not going to name names, but she came to one of our events and she asked me a question uh at the end cuz I do talk and

[22:19] then I do like a Q&A. And I and she asked if I had any tips for growing her YouTube channel. And I looked at her channel and I was like, "Okay, what's "Oh, you know, I make lifestyle content." It was like vlogs about her

[22:31] like literally vlogs about her life in London, like lifestyle content. I was audience?" And she was like, "Well, you Um, you know, and I was like, "Okay, and

[22:44] adds to people?" She was like, "Um, well, you know, it's lifestyle, so I you is like." I was like, "Okay, fair enough." And then I brought up her channel and she had like 300 videos that she'd made over two years or three

[22:57] years, something like that. And she had 700 subscribers and the videos were getting like 100 views each. [sighs] Now, in that context, what I said to her, I was like, "Look,

[23:10] you know, I I I asked her, "What's your goal?" Um, I was hoping she'd say, "I'm "Okay, please, please, please say that you're doing it for fun." But what she said was, "I really want to make a million dollars from YouTube." And I was

[23:22] like, "Ah, [sighs] okay. So, you've made 300 videos, you've got 700 subscribers, you haven't got the appropriate watch hours. And you've been doing it for 3

[23:34] years, and your content is lifestyle, generic vlogs for people who care about life in London." Oh, and your goal is to become a millionaire. Oh my god. And so I was thinking, do I tell her? Do I tell her that this is just not

[23:48] working? Um or do I be do I try and be like, "Yeah, just stay consistent. You got this, girl. Like, go for it. You never know. One of these maybe your 400th video might take off and suddenly you'll become a millionaire." Like, and

[24:02] I was like, "Hey, you know, these people buy my stuff. They come to my events to get like the raw unfiltered advice." And you know, it is colored by my own experience, so like it's not gospel truth. But as someone who has seen lots

[24:15] lots of unsuccessful YouTubers, this girl falls into the category of this is 300 videos and you only have 700 subscribers, that is that is a sign that the market is telling you that they do not want what you are offering. And I

[24:29] think the reason for that was she did not have a niche or actually no she did. The the niche was like lifestyle girl content living in London. But it's so saturated and it's so hard to stand out in that space. so so so hard because the

[24:42] your favor. Everyone who's like a young lifestyle content about living in London. It's like there's so many of content, there's not that much demand for that content anymore. Maybe back in

[24:57] living in London was like or like it was novel to be living in I don't know like a particular city and people are like oh my god I really wonder what living in supply and demand are in favor of the creator. but like it's just not anymore.

[25:11] And so this was kind of heartbreaking to me cuz I was like, "Ah, she's put YouTube and she's been so consistent. She's just gone after the wrong niche. give a about her. They care about the value they get from the channel. And

[25:23] people, it's going to be so so so hard to stand out. So this is why if you want to grow a YouTube channel, you got to find a particular niche." Now, we have a bunch of students in our YouTube academy that have been successful and basically

[25:36] all of them have found a niche and they have stuck to it for a long enough time and then over time maybe they expand. For example, one of our success stories is a guy called Azul Azul Wells. He's like an old dude, older dude. He does

[25:48] old people. And if you look at Azul's channel, Azul's channel is very basic. titles and thumbnails. They're like super basic. He just sort of screenshots stuff. He doesn't really put much effort into his hook because he just starts

[26:02] personality and vibes. Like a lot of people like vibe with his personality. nice guy. But his videos provide a lot of value and specifically they provide they provide a lot of value to his specific niche which is like old people

[26:15] and the value is I help you retire early. So in that niche of like helping old people retire early, there's actually not that much supply of content trying to make money on the internet, they're not targeting 55 year olds and

[26:30] teaching them how to retire slightly earlier. But Azul is targeting 55 year olds and teaching them how to retire slightly earlier. Therefore, in Azul, Azul has found a niche where his expertise and his value resonates with a

[26:43] particular target market where there's not that much competition. And that is crucial because the fact that there's not that much competition means you title. You don't have to worry about making all these like fancy thumbnails.

[26:55] for word. You don't have to think about retention editing. You don't have to value. And as long as your personality is reasonable, you don't have to start like, I don't know, Logan Paul or Mr. Beast or whatever. Like, you can just

[27:10] straight up say helpful things, provide value, film the videos on your phone, and he's got hundreds of thousands of subscribers and making tons of money from it because he's providing a very specific value to a very specific person

[27:23] YouTube who are underserved. That is an example of a very very good niche. Or have a channel called How to Write Songs that currently has 170,000 subscribers. academy and they have targeted the niche of helping people who want to write

[27:38] songs get better at writing songs. Again, in that niche, there's not a huge still a little bit. There's more competition than Azul has, for example. for example, their titles are pretty good. Their thumbnails are pretty good.

[27:51] very good. They're providing a lot of value. They've got hooks. They've got it's not like they're trying to do generic fitness content. They're not trying to do productivity. They're not trying to do personal development. They

[28:04] focused on helping aspiring songwriters and existing songwriters write better songs. That is a very good niche to be money and all that kind of stuff. Because that's the other thing, like

[28:16] niche where you're helping a specific target audience, ideally who has some amount of money with some kind of value proposition that they care about, you product further down the line, whether it's a co course or a coaching program

[28:28] thing might be. Whereas, it's very difficult for people without a niche or very difficult for those people to make money because it's very hard for them to like actually sell a sensible product to their audience. the way they tend to

[28:42] deals and um you know influencer partnerships and stuff which I mean I mostly they're having a less good time of it because they're constantly chasing wheel. They're having to constantly sell stuff to their audience that they don't

[28:56] they can really sell of their own is like merch, that kind of thing. And know, celebrity levels like Logan Paul and KSI and have your own like drink or vanishingly unlikely that you watching this will get successful or get to the

[29:10] a YouTube channel without having a sensible niche. And I've seen some you don't need a niche. You are the niche." Because like people are there for you. And like yes, eventually they will be there for you and they will

[29:22] start to like you and they will start to then be more likely to watch your stuff. and only really care about themselves. They actually do not care about you. This is the thing we need to get into our minds. Like, and I've I've noticed

[29:35] know, I have a very big channel. I've been providing useful useful videos on the internet for the last like 8 years. And every now and then, we'll release a vlog on my YouTube channel. And that vlog will get basically no views in

[29:48] people don't fundamentally don't really care about me. Maybe there's like, I audience out of like 8 million total followers who actually would watch one they don't really care. They care about what they're going to get from it. What

[30:02] value can I provide? And so, the videos that do the best are the ones where we value to a specific target audience. So, when it comes to thinking about how to grow your YouTube channel, if you care about growth, you don't have to care

[30:15] fun, but if you do care about growth, I would really recommend you really sit down and figure out who is your niche, what is who is the target audience, what people actually care to watch your

[30:28] this advice is that if you haven't yet gotten started with your YouTube you'll think and you'll continue overthinking. You'll continue not taking this niche stuff, like there's so there's so much nuance to it. There's so

[30:43] go into choosing a niche as to whether it's likely to be successful or not. target audience, figure out your value proposition, and when you're picking succeeding in that particular niche. If you are interested, this is a lot of the

[30:57] YouTuber Academy, which is my flagship course that I've been running for the thousands and thousands of students go through it, including a bunch of YouTubers that you will probably recognize that took our course and it

[31:09] they have now grown their YouTube channels to hundreds of thousands, if lot of them are making really good money. There's links down below in the of this video and you're still worrying about your niche and you haven't yet

[31:21] advice would be slightly different because you don't want to be you can check that video over here, which is advice specifically for much for watching and I will see you there. Uh-huh.