Ask HN: Is it too late to start creating content on YouTube?
Yes, you can make (good) money with web development on Youtube in 2020. But:<p>- it won&#x27;t be passive income<p>- it will take some time to figure out how to do it<p>These are the problems you need to solve:<p>1. Pick a niche<p>2. Create your audience<p>3. Build your course<p>4. Sell your course<p>Let me share a few tips, as someone who started his own programming Youtube channel in late 2017, and last month made 7k. (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;c&#x2F;eattheblocks" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;c&#x2F;eattheblocks</a>)<p>1. Pick a niche<p>Web development is a large topic. There are already some very established channels on this, and as a beginner it will hard to compete with them.<p>What you need is to go for a specialized tech niche. Example:
- React
- Testing
- Java
- Frontend
- Mobile
- Devops
- etc...<p>You can do some research to see how crowded each tech niche is.<p>You can also create your own niche by combining a tech and a business application. Ex: Python for finance.<p>2. Create your audience<p>You need to create a following of people who really like your content, because later some of them will become your customers.<p>And to do this you need to publish regularly helpful videos. By helpful, I mean helping them to solve their problems. So it&#x27;s very important that you spend time to understand in details their problems. And their problems don&#x27;t necessarily overlap with your own personal interest.<p>Now, let&#x27;s get more specific to Youtube. There are 2 source of traffic on Youtube:<p>- Search<p>- Suggested videos<p>As a beginner, you want to focus on search. You will create videos that solve a very specific problem. That way you have a chance to rank for these keywords. You won&#x27;t have a lot of traffic like this, but it will a good beginning.<p>Search is good, but what will really make your channel grow is suggested videos. Once you have a small following, you want to start optimizing for this. Youtube will show your videos as suggested videos IF if believes people want to watch them. And it will believe this IF the people who already watched your videos watched a good portion of them. Or better, if they kept watching other videos of your channel after.<p>To make this happen, you need to:<p>- Have a good title and thumbnail that make people want to click<p>- Have a good hook at the beginning of each video. i.e 10-15 seconds where you catch the attention<p>- A short branding where you explain the value of your channel. Ex &quot;Hey I am X and on my channel I teach Y&quot;<p>- A good main content, where one part follows logically the previous one. If possible try to teach while telling a story. You can search what is the &quot;South Park rule&quot;.<p>- A conclusion that leads them to other videos on your channel.<p>3. Build your course<p>It&#x27;s often difficult to decide what to put in the course, and what to make free on Youtube.<p>Here is an easy way to think about it. On Youtube, you will give useful, but very specific help. Ex: How to write a Redux reducer. And in your course, you will teach the whole process. Ex: How to build a Full React application.<p>There are 2 caveats:<p>- making the course too long<p>- making the course too broad<p>Beginners always think they have to make their course super long to make it attractive. That&#x27;s exactly the opposite. Think of your course as a shortcut to achieve a goal. Students want to achieve their goal as fast as possible.<p>And your course also need to be very targeted. If you try to teach too much, and it&#x27;s just a mix pot of various tips and tricks, it&#x27;s gonna be harder to sell.<p>On a practical level, I recommend to use a service like Teachable (that&#x27;s what I use) to host your course. Think of it like a white-label Udemy. They take care of hosting your videos and billing your clients. Huge time saving.<p>4. Sell your course<p>Now to the fun part, making money!<p>There are 2 main business models:<p>- subscriptions<p>- one-time sales<p>One problem with subscriptions is churn. Students want to learn something at a specific point in time. Once this is done, they might not want to stay.<p>Another problem is that you have to keep producing content. Which might be overwhelming, since you also have to keep producing content for Youtube.<p>With one-time sales, you sell a specific course. This is an easier sell: your course will help students reach a certain objective faster and more easily that if they were to do it on their one.<p>A big caveat is to price your course too cheap, thinking you will make many sales. At the beginning, you won&#x27;t make many sales because your audience is small. So I recommend to start with an expensive course. At least 100 USD. Yes people for that and even higher. My main course is 250 USD.<p>To sell a more expensive course, you will need a more sophisticated sell process. Enter the wonderful world of sales funnel. The idea is that you will help prospective students to understand their problem better and better, until you introduce your solution (the course) at the end. Practically, that probably mean creating a sequence of 3-5 emails that will lead to your course. Your Youtube videos should have a CTA to register for this sequence of emails.<p>My final advice is:<p>- first try alone for a few month<p>- and then get help. That&#x27;s what REALLY made a lot of difference for me. I took a course called 30x500 and that was really eyes opening. And now I hired a consultant specialized in online courses. 2 very good investments.<p>Good luck!