Mike Waters: How to Grow an Audience if You Have Zero Subscribers

The video starts with this guy, Mike Waters talking about how he'd just started this YT channel a couple of months back and how he's surprised to have reached 6,700 subscribers.

A month after this video was uploaded, he now has 11.5K subs, so he might know what he's talking about.

Starting a YouTube channel and growing an audience from nothing. Ziltch.

Well, he's grown his own subscriber base fairly quickly maybe he has some pointers you could use to increase the views on your own videos. "Grow an audience", as I heard someone say once.

It turns out that Mike has had several YouTube channels in the past and this one is more of a personal challenge to help people, "to serve, on the highest possible level" his audience as he tries to make this into a business.

He started by relating he had been reading subscriber comments when one struck him as important because the person had become a bit bored with his content and when Mark prompted him with the question "What do you want?", the subscriber asked for more detail about the first step in building an audience. Flesh it out in a bit more detail.

There are a million ways to take that first step and he wanted to know how not to screw it up.

He said "That's what this episode is going to be about" before spending some time explaining his new setup and camera angle and his new mic but he'll "go back to the old one if you want", stuff.

He turned the conversation back to the main topic of creating an audience for someone with less experience but immediately talks about how there are "twp types of youtubers", the Gardener and the Engineer. One is kind of loosey-goosie, with more of an artistic nature, while the other is more focused on getting expect results from uploading.

Most people just starting a YT channel would probably fall more or less into the Gardener category. A lot of people haven't learnt the minutia of writing, creating, editing, and uploading videos to all the different websites and platforms. That fun stuff can wait.

Most just want to make sure that when their video plays, the audio lines up with visuals. All the complicated, numbers stuff can wait until after they get some more videos uploaded.

But the numbers are the bread and butter of the 2nd type, the Engineer. This is the guy who's always testing everything and knows what niche he should be working on right now. Most of these guys usually have an extensive knowledge of video filming along with writing and editing skills.

Personally, I think you need to be a bit of both types.

Mike mentions that made this channel along the lines that his second type, the Engineer, would build this channel. He plans to make this channel into a revenue stream that is sustainable and longlasting.

And I guess giving you this look at his channel and what he does will help you with your own channel. As mentioned, his audience has almost doubled in size in the one month since he posted the video above.

"Never mind the numbers, what do you want your YouTube channel to do for you - personally."

He says this is an important question that other youtubers, gurus or influencers don't bother answering. Mike mentions how many want to build a business with their videos on YouTube while others might see this a way to "break free" from their boring or unsatisfying 9-5 job. There can be any number of reasons for starting an online business like a YT channel or Twitch streaming.

I liked how he emphasized all the different skills that can be developed with creating online content, like talking in front of a camera, which camera works best in different situations, how to use lighting properly or learning just the basics of video editing.

All of these skills are helpful, and you should always be learning new things to help transform yourself into being a better content creator.

Mike talks about his plan to help people learn how to film, how to do lighting and editing, as they try to develop their online businesses into something longterm and sustainable.

The way to do it seems to be by watching his videos as he plans to create and show to do it, step by step.

Here's a couple of Mike's most popular videos if you want to take minute to watch them:

1. How I Cracked YouTube Monetization in 90 Days: Start With Intention

2. Don’t Pick a Niche. Build a Movement and Be Free

He also mentions there'll be "programs" and "lessons" and suchlike provided by links in his doobalee-do. He doesn't say he'll have courses for you to buy but also didn't rule them out. (Everyone's got a course you HAVE to buy).

Mike also mentioned this good quote:

"The best way to escape competition to get away from the spectre of competition with is not just stressful and nerve-wracking which will drive you to the wrong answer the way to escape competition is to just be authentic to yourself. If you are fundamentally building and marketing something that is just an extention of who you are and no one can compete with you on that." Quote from Naval Ravikant

This quote basically summarizes what Mike says are his plans on doing with this channel. He also mentions how looking elsewhere online he sees jobs disappearing but that having an online presence will help buffer from what he forsees as potentially turbulent times of increasing scarcity. Not a "Doom and Gloom" tinfoil hat assessment but more like someone with an eye on the approaching storm.