These are the Skills You Need to Become a Successful YouTuber in 2024

You might be the best at coming up with great video ideas. However, if you don't know how to communicate in an engaging way that keeps people interested, guess what's gonna happen? Nothing. 

And it doesn't matter if you're making gaming content, cooking videos, vlogs, teaching people stuff. Whatever it is, if you can't communicate in an engaging or interesting way, people are going to tune out. In fact, communication is such a big skill that they have entire industries related to people just doing voiceovers. 

Companies like Disney and Pixar, they hire real actors to voice their cartoons, because the actors are professional communicators. And most importantly, as it relates to you and I, we're creating on a platform that is filled with excellent communicators. 

To compete, we all have to be able to communicate and we have to be mindful of how we're communicating. To help with this, I recommend a channel by a guy named Vinh. 

He can help you better understand the nuance of presenting your ideas. I'll put a link to him and some other helpful things for you in the description. But the idea is that being a better communicator will help you do better on YouTube. 

Now, when it comes to video production, you don't have to go out and get the best cameras, or anything like that, but you do need to understand some bare bone basics if you want your content to be received better. 

For example, when you're making your videos, it's important where you're positioned in the frame. For example, if I'm down here in the frame like this, it looks a little bit weird, or a little bit awkward, or there's all this extra space over here that like, what do we even do with all this? 

But if I'm here, or here, or even here, even though there might be some space, everything is balanced a little bit better, and your focus is in the right place to where it's not weird. 

To help with this, you can watch content around the concept of the rule of thirds. But I'll give you a crash course real quick. 

The rule of thirds is where you divide the frame into nine equal parts. You position yourself in the frame, either on this line, or on this line, or right here in the middle. 

Another tip that isn't necessarily part of the rule of thirds, is that you also wanna make sure that you have some headspace, a little bit of space above your head to the top of the frame, but not too much headspace. 

And this is where you gotta start thinking about the rule of thirds and how things look and so on. So for example, where I'm sitting right now, in order to fill the frame up and make everything feel comfortable, my eye line needs to be a little bit above that top third, and I need to have a little bit of headspace. 

But if I was zoomed in, I would put my eyes right here on this top third, or pretty close to it. 

As part of video production, getting good sound in your videos is also really important. 

It doesn't have to be the best, it just has to be to where people can clearly hear what it is that you're talking about. And it's also important as part of good sound to make sure that there's just nothing annoying going on with the sound that would cause people to be distracted from what it is that you're saying. 

Good audio will also help with your camera presence because people hear you like you're sitting in the room with them, compared to them hearing you like you're, I don't know, not sitting in the room with them. 

Lighting yourself, or if you're not in the videos, lighting your subject in a way to where people can clearly see you or the subject is also super important. Again, you don't have to do anything fancy, technically you can use the sun to help you light your videos. 

Next, is editing. - Dude, come on, anybody can edit a video. 

What are you talking about? 

- Oh, no, no, no, no, no. 

There is a huge difference between cutting videos and editing videos. - Oh, that's... Okay, yeah, that's good. - Thanks. 

But anyway, cutting videos is where you go into your editing software, you remove the silence, maybe you make a little bit of corrections with the framing, and things like that.  

And then maybe you'll add some B-roll or some graphics to your videos, maybe you'll even have some music playing in the background. But that's all just cutting, that's not editing. Editing is about creating an experience with your content. 

When you edit, you might slow down your video in order to create some tension between the fast parts and the slow parts. You might remove an entire section of your video that you've spent hours or days on just so you can make it a better experience for the viewer. 

You might add music to a part that starts slowly building up, and as the buildup happens, you start cutting faster and faster as you're getting to your point or the climax of the game, or whatever thing it is that you're sharing with people, or maybe the big reveal of that craft project or that food that you made. 

Or you might slow things down a little bit, cut less, have more space between your words, intentionally leaving it in the video for the sake of the impact that it's going to make. You get the idea. There's a big difference, and it's important as a content creator that you learn how to edit. 

Next. On YouTube, keeping viewers engaged is extremely important, and by keeping people engaged, I don't mean just having people like your videos. 

I mean having people interact with your content, enjoy it so that YouTube recommends it to them more, and then they come back to the channel and they watch more, and then they enjoy that too. 

On YouTube, it's really important to be intentional about what it is that you're doing. That comes down to the videos that you're publishing, the reason that you're publishing those videos. If you have goals that you're trying to accomplish with each individual video, that's important. 

As part of the bigger picture, it's also important to think about if I'm publishing this video here, then what videos am I gonna be publishing after this that's going to relate to this video that I publish that will keep people coming back to the channel. 

And it's also important to zoom out and look at a bigger picture when it relates to your content, because on YouTube, over time you build up this huge library of content, and it's important to think about, "Okay, if somebody watches this video and I get 'em to the end of this video, then in that particular case, what other video can I send them to once they get to the end of the video?" 

If you're planning your content, you can plan all of this out, and you can create a much better experience for the viewers and cause more people to come back to your channel when you publish content that they care about. 

Content planning also helps you stay on track. So, for example, as part of your content planning, you might intentionally say, "I'm going to optimize this video for YouTube's recommendation system. I'm going to optimize this video over here for YouTube search." 

And when you know that as part of your content planning before you even make the videos, if you publish a video and it doesn't do great out of the gate, but you know you've targeted it towards search, it's fine. 

And that approach is better than panicking because a video didn't do great right out of the gate and it ended up as a 1on your one out of 10 graph. And just as a heads up, that one out of 10 graph, just stop paying attention to it. 

Not only can it make you feel bad about the videos you publish, but sometimes you'll publish a 10 out of 10, and it'll end up being a one out of 10, 90 days down the road. So, keep that in mind. 

Next, is reading and understanding your YouTube analytics, at least at a basic level. You don't have to be a data scientist, but you do need to understand what's happening on your channel so you can make adjustments if you need to. 

All you need to do is go in and start paying attention to how people are responding to your videos, you can do this through your audience retention reports. Start paying attention to how people are responding to your thumbnails and titles. 

You can see this through your click-through rate, and you can even level that up through your traffic sources report, looking at your click-through rate for the different traffic sources as well, meaning the different pages of YouTube. 

If you're trying to grow your channel, then it's important to make sure that you're looking at the content that's driving subscribers, compared to the content that isn't. 

And it's important to know for the sake of growth and serving your current viewers, how much people are coming back to your channel that are already engaged, and how many new viewers are interacting with your channel, because the new viewers is where the growth comes from. 

But if you go into your YouTube analytics for each individual video that you publish, you can learn a lot, and it can help you grow faster, it can help you better understand your audience, and it can just help you do better overall. 

Next, is time management. When it comes to time management, if you're gonna do this for a long period of time, then you gotta learn how to manage your time as it relates to working YouTube into what it is that you're doing. 

Everybody has some spare time here and there in order to make content, but the trick is, in order to do this long-term. 

Especially for somebody that wants to do this full-time, it's important to work the process of coming up with video ideas, researching those video ideas, making the content, publishing that content onto YouTube on a regular basis into your lifestyle.  

So that it can not only become something that you do on a regular basis, but it can become a habit that will keep you moving forward and publishing new content and just growing as a person and as a channel overall. 

One thing a lot of creators will do, especially those who are wanting to make the jump from a casual creator to a full-time creator, the thing that they'll do is they'll actually work the process of creating content into their calendar. 

So they'll literally schedule what it is that they need to do in order to get it done, and then they have that dedicated time and they make it as important as showing up to a job, or showing up to a doctor's appointment, or whatever, so that they can ensure that they get it done. 

Next, is branding. When it comes to branding, a lot of people think that branding is just a logo and the colors that you use in your videos, but branding is a lot deeper than that. What branding actually is, is branding is what you are doing in your content that makes people think a certain way about what it is that you do, even when they're not watching your content. 

It's the way you communicate, it's your editing style, it's those quirky things that you do that are a part of your personality. It's your strong opinions or your lack of opinions. It's the way that you tell stories. It's what your videos look like, it's what your videos sound like. 

It's the information about yourself that you've made publicly known in terms of things that you stand for, the things that you like or don't like. There's so much that goes into branding that can help you as a content creator grow your channel and just grow your brand overall online. 

So if you're a new creator, it's important to learn about branding as quick as you possibly can. There are two books that I recommend to give you deeper insights on this one. 

One is called, "Primal Branding," by Patrick Hanlon, and you'll hear everybody recommend this book when it comes to branding, especially around YouTube. 

The other is, "Superfans," by Pat Flynn. The difference between the two, is one is based on companies that have grown cult-like followings, and the other one is more related to how things are currently on social media and creating a deeper connection with your fans specifically. 

But read or listen to them both, and you're gonna learn a ton about branding just in those two books. 

Next, is storytelling. Now, when it comes to YouTube, you're making videos, you're entertaining people, you're teaching people things. So because of that, learning story is important. 

Some people even say that storytelling is the most important thing, and the reason for that is very deep. 

There are a lot of creators out there that kind of fly under the radar for some people to where they don't even use custom thumbnails, they hardly edit their videos at all, but because they're good at telling stories, they have huge view counts and huge followings that are super into what it is that they're doing. 

For me, storytelling is my weakness, because I don't wanna tell you stories. I wanna just give you the information that you need so that you can take that information, apply it to what it is that you're doing, and start getting better results, or start learning a new tool or whatever other video of mine that you watch, so it'll help you do that. 

But it's also something I'm working on, I'm in the process right now of hiring a coach to help me with my storytelling so that I can use that type of thing in order to help you better understand the nuance of all of this creator-related stuff. 

And so I can be more fun at parties and just general conversation with people. But there's a book that MrBeast recommends called, "Save the Cat!" On the initial call that I had with my coach, he also recommended that book, as well as a couple of others. 

But that would be a great place for you to start of learning how to tell better stories through your content. And if you're a new content creator, learning how to tell stories is gonna help you thrive much stronger in the future. 

Networking and collaboration can be really helpful for you as a content creator. So, if you're somebody that is a solo creator, meaning that you're doing all of these things yourself. 

If you are somebody that is doing all this yourself, it can be isolating. 

But when you start networking with other creators, or maybe even collaborating with other creators, then it starts opening the doors to these conversations with others who are living a similar experience to you when it comes to creating content. 

And there's tons of value when it comes to having friends that are doing similar things that you are. They can give you feedback, they can help you notice if you go off track somewhere, if you're not paying attention for some reason. 

You can compare stats. You can share things that you learn along the way, which will help you learn at double speed if you just have one creator friend. 

And networking as a content creator, is from my experience, where the biggest opportunities come from as well, because when you're meeting people and they're doing cool stuff, and you're doing cool stuff, then when opportunities come up, they might think about you and send that opportunity your way. 

In 2024, influencer marketing alone is set to be an $18 billion industry. Crazy, right? And that's just influencer marketing. That does not include ad revenue. 

That doesn't include affiliate marketing, it doesn't include your own product sales. It doesn't include any of the extras that's specifically influencer marketing. 

It is a reality that if you take this seriously, that you can have life-changing experiences, and you can have life-changing amounts of income come your way from making content on YouTube. 

In fact, you know the old thing where parents are like, "Oh, I want my kid to grow up and be a doctor. I want my kid to grow up and be a lawyer." Some doctors and lawyers are stopping being doctors and lawyers, and they are being content creators. 

That's how big the opportunity is here if you choose to take it. But, when you start making money from YouTube, or really from anything, your brain is going to trick you into thinking that it's going to always be there and it's gonna last forever. 

And it might last a really, really long time, but it's not gonna last forever. And because of that, it's important to educate yourself on managing your money and investing your money, and figuring out what to do with that money as it comes in. 

And really, even if you're not making YouTube money, it's important to know this information. 

But if you're somebody that doesn't know what you would do, if you started making an extra several hundred thousand dollars a year, or an extra million dollars a year, even an extra $50 or $1, then I recommend this book. 

It's called "Simple Path to Wealth," by JL Collins. It explains the long-term impact of big spending, and it can help you get a handle on what to do with all that money as it comes in, if you need that information so that you can use your experience as a content creator to set yourself up very comfortably for your future.