For earning money from a YouTube channel,
you need 1000 subscribers and 4000 watch hours. Nowadays, everyone manages to get a thousand
subscribers, but it can take people months, even years, to complete 4000 hours of watch
time. I asked my audience, and you can see that
almost 90% of channels still don't have 4000 hours of watch time. So, because I monetized my channel with just
four videos, I have a clear roadmap that anyone can follow to reach from 0 to 4000 hours easily. In fact, if I were to monetize a new channel
today, I would follow every step outlined in this video. But first, let's break down 4000 watch hours
and understand how big this number actually is. 4000 hours equals 240,000 minutes of watch
time. Assuming your videos have an average view
duration of 2 minutes, you'll need a total of 120,000 views to complete this milestone. Similarly, if your average view duration is
3 minutes, you'll only need 80,000 views (which is 33% less). And if your average view duration is 4 minutes,
you'll only need 60,000 views to achieve the target. So, it's clear that the longer people watch
your videos, the fewer views you need to monetize your channel. However, you know what the sad part is? Even achieving a 2-minute average view duration
is a challenge for 81% of channels. To increase our average view duration, let's
take a look at this: If you analyze the audience retention graph
of any YouTube video, you'll see a pattern where there's a significant drop in viewership
within the first 30 seconds. In this graph, you can see that almost 50%
of the audience has dropped off during the intro. Of course, the audience continues to decrease
gradually, but it's significantly less compared to the first 30 seconds. So, if you're smart, you'll learn from this
graph that the most effort to retain viewers should go into the intro. And the more viewers you can hold in the intro,
the more likely they'll stay until the end of the video. And that's why all of YouTube's top creators
invest the most time and effort in creating the first 30 seconds of their videos. Even when I write a script, I spend hours
crafting the perfect intro. To create a good intro, there isn't a specific
format that works for all channels. In my videos, I generally use a 3-step framework
for writing intros: First, I talk about what's mentioned in the
title and thumbnail, which is the viewer's goal. Then, I discuss the challenges the viewer
might face in achieving that goal, inducing emotions like fear or frustration. Finally, I offer a solution to the problem,
sparking curiosity in the viewer's mind about what the solution might be. If you
still don't understand, let me play the intro of this video again and show you how I applied
this 3-step framework. For earning money from a YouTube channel,
you need 1000 subscribers and 4000 watch hours. Nowadays, everyone manages to get a thousand
subscribers, but it can take people months, even years, to complete 4000 hours of watch
time. I asked my audience, and you can see that
almost 90% of channels still don't have 4000 hours of watch time. So, because I monetized my channel with just
four videos, I have a clear roadmap that anyone can follow to reach from 0 to 4000 hours easily. As you saw, in the first step, I mentioned
the monetization criteria, which is the viewer's goal. Then, I induced fear in the viewers' minds
by telling them how difficult it is to complete 4000 hours and finally, I assured them that
I have a solution because I myself monetized my channel with only 4 videos... And this 3-step framework isn't just used
by me, but also by big creators like Ali Abdaal and Iman Gadhzi in their videos. They address your needs, tell you what the
problem is, and promise a solution in their videos. Of course, not every niche requires such intricate
intro formats. For example, in cooking videos, simply showing
the final dish in an appetizing shot is enough to hook viewers. Similarly, if you have a vlogging channel,
you can showcase the best scenes from your vlog in the first 30 seconds, acting as your
intro hook. While creating an intro, you can also use
another strategy that can increase watch time by 50%: setting up an end reward. This means offering something to viewers at
the end of the video. For example, in MrBeast's video titled "Train
Vs Giant Pit," although there are a total of 5 experiments, he ensures that the train
vs giant pit experiment is highlighted in the title, thumbnail, and most importantly,
in the first 5 seconds. After building hype for this experiment, he
places it at the end of the video as an end reward. So even if a viewer gets bored at any point
during the video, they'll remember that the end reward is yet to come, reducing the chances
of them quitting the video. I did something similar in my recent editing
tutorial where I covered 8 editing techniques. I knew beforehand which technique would be
most popular, so I saved it for the very end of the video. Now, some of you might be wondering why I
included timestamps in this video? Won't timestamps allow viewers to skip directly
to the last technique? Right? Well, that's because my video's watch time
would significantly decrease if I didn't use timestamps. Some people think that timestamps decrease
watch time, but it's actually the opposite. Let's say you've made a 10-minute video on
"How to make a birthday cake." You have two options: either include timestamps
or don't. For those who don't know how to make a cake
at all, they'll watch the entire video from start to finish regardless of timestamps because
they want to learn the whole process. However, some people might already know how
to make a cake and just want to know how to make the frosting and decorate the cake. In that case, if there are timestamps, they
can easily skip to the part where frosting is being made... While if there are no timestamps, they'll
have to manually skip through the video to find that part... It's obvious that not everyone has that much
patience... so there's a chance that many viewers will
leave your video and find another one on the same topic that's shorter. That's why I highly recommend using timestamps,
especially if your video is lengthy and falls under the educational or how-to category. So we've learned a lot about increasing watch
time for a video, increasing its average view duration. But let's say even if your videos get a 5-minute
average view duration (which is a lot), you still need 50,000 views to complete 4000 watch
hours. And making so many views with the kind of
videos you're making right now won't happen. So one strategy that I recommend to new creators
to complete 4000 watch hours is to Niche Down. Niche down means finding a sub-niche within
your main niche. For example, let's say you have a gaming channel. Now gaming as a whole is a very broad niche,
right? So let's say you decide to narrow down to
one particular game like Minecraft. Still, that's a broad niche. So now you can think about the different categories
of videos in Minecraft like Tutorials, Let's plays, PvP, Roleplay... Maybe you like making tutorials, and you decide
to make Minecraft Tutorials. So now we've narrowed it down a lot... but
we can go one step further. So think about what type of tutorials you
can make in Minecraft... Maybe you're good at building, maybe you have
a lot of knowledge about redstone, or maybe you're really good at PvP... So you think and think and think, and finally,
you decide to make Redstone Tutorials. This, my friend, is an example of how to niche
down... Let's take another example of a Cooking channel. We know cooking as a whole is a very broad
niche. So you can think about what type of cooking
you like the most... Maybe you like baking a lot, so you can decide
to make baking tutorials. You can go one step further by targeting a
particular group of viewers, for example, vegans... So we have the niche: Vegan Baking. There are many benefits to niching down, like
establishing your channel's authority in that particular area, which leads to more credibility
and trust from viewers. You'll also see that engagement is higher
on such channels. Viewers comment more in the comment section... they interact with each other. Because they know that other viewers with
the same interests are also there. It feels like being part of a community. And MOST IMPORTANTLY, channels like these
have higher overall watch time, meaning session watch time. Now, what is session watch time? Let's say there's a viewer who watched only
2 minutes of your 10-minute video... then they watched another of your videos for only
2-3 minutes... Finally, they clicked on another of your videos
and watched it for 2 minutes... In this case, you might think it's not good
because the viewer is only watching your videos for 2-3 minutes... But think again! 2 minutes is the watch time that you are getting
per video... Whereas if you add all of these, you'll get
a total of 7 minutes, and this is your session watch time. Meaning your channel kept that viewer on YouTube
for 7 minutes. And YouTube will love you for this, which
means your content will be recommended even more. So what happens when you niche down is that
viewers binge-watch your content... the chances of this happening increase. Like if you have a vegan baking channel and
there's a viewer who is vegan and loves baking, for them, your channel will be like a treasure
trove. This means if they watch one video from your
channel, then they will watch another and another and another one of your videos. In short, that viewer will binge-watch your
channel, which ultimately means more watch time! But whether you niche down or not, the next
thing you must do is to Study Your Data. Recently, I was studying the retention graph
of different videos on my channel, and there's one video about title, description, and tags
where I got a major spike. When I clicked on that spike, you can see
that's the part of the video where I explained about tags. Meaning many viewers came to this video just
to learn about tags. This is an indication that if I make an individual
video about tags, there's a good chance it will get views. And you can't imagine how much data we can
get by studying analytics in YouTube Studio, which will help us in completing 4000 hours
of watch time. As a quick exercise, if you go to the content
tab in YouTube analytics, you'll find a section called 'content suggesting you'. This is basically a list of videos that YouTube
recommends under your videos. In most cases, the starting videos in this
list will be from your own channel... but if you scroll down a bit more, you'll find
videos from other channels too. Like here you can see a video titled 'Don't
Start YouTube in 2024' which is not from my channel. And YouTube has suggested my videos a lot
under this video because I got 1.9K suggested views from here. Similarly, there's a video about gaming video
editing, from which I got 1.8K suggested views. The reason why I'm showing you this is because
these are great sources for video ideas. If I make videos on these topics, the chances
of being suggested under these same videos multiply. Which means lots of views and lots of watch
time! Similarly, if you look to the left of the
'content suggesting you' section, you'll find a section called 'YouTube Search Terms'. Here you can find a list of terms that people
use to find your videos. So here you can see which search terms you
haven't made videos on yet and use them as video ideas. Another thing that I highly recommend you
to do is to go to your channel and find videos with low views and then separate out those
videos whose AVD and retention are good but CTR is low. Even though these videos have low views at
the moment... but they have a lot of secret potential. If you feel that the topic of a video appeals
to a good number of viewers but still has low views, then go ahead and change its title
and thumbnail now. Because its topic is good, people are watching
it for a longer time... so most likely, due to a low click-through rate, YouTube isn't
promoting your video. Remember that you can only upload a video
to YouTube once but you can always change its packaging. You can always try your best to keep your
video alive. Alright! So if you've made it this far then comment
"Getting More Watch Time is Now Easy" and also make sure you follow me on my new Instagram
account whose link is in the description and pinned comment. And as I'm leaving, if there's one more tip
I have about getting more watch time, it would be to do engaging editing in your videos like
me. If you want to learn video editing like me,
click on the playlist on the screen. And yeah, I'll see you there. Bye!
