How Do You Get Your First 1,000 YouTube Subscribers?

How do I get 1,000 subscribers on YouTube fast?

The fastest way is either a viral piece of content people want to share and engage with, or running YouTube ads to drive visits to your channel. As I said at the start, the honest way to do it is to actually ask for the subscribe, make sure it's clearly in the video while people are watching, not the nefarious version of asking. We took a channel at the end of last year from a thousand to twenty thousand subscribers in two months just using ads, without a massive spend, so ads are probably the easiest route. Ranking your videos properly is another route, and you can even buy a channel that already has 1,000 subscribers, which is the fastest option of all if you go down that path.

How do I monetise my YouTube channel?

There are two requirements: 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 watch hours in the last 12 months. Once you hit those, you go into your YouTube settings and enable monetisation, which lets you start earning when people see ads on top of your videos. Beyond that, you can get partnerships and collaborations with people wanting to promote products through you once you're known, but the best and most controllable way is still to sell your own products or services. You also need a Google AdSense account, and you have to wait for Google to approve you, so you don't get monetised the moment you hit 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 hours, you have to wait for that approval.

How do I get more subscribers for free?

If you don't want to spend money on ads, the best way is still to rank your videos to the top of search, and to create content with the potential to go viral, which is easier said than done. Another strategy is asking other people for interviews, so you can tap into their audience, since their viewers are likely to watch the interview and subscribe if you ask them to. Saying "subscribe, like the video, comment below" consistently throughout a video is part of how you build subscribers for free. Once you're over 1,000 subscribers you can also enable the community tab, which is a bit like Google's version of Twitter. There isn't a massive uptake on it yet, but the content that goes into it does get shared quite widely at the moment, which can bring more people to subscribe.

Should you buy fake YouTube subscribers?

No, because bought subscribers are mostly bots and can get your channel penalised. People do search for how to get fake subscribers, and the honest answer is that services on sites like Fiverr and Upwork, or channels like QQ Tube, will sell you subscribers, but they're not real, they're bots. It's tempting when you need monetisation quickly, but subscriber count is really just vanity: the question is what real effect your content is having. Google knows where the bot networks are, and buying subscribers will penalise your channel, so the advice is simply don't.

What is the best way to get subscribers on my YouTube channel?

The best way is real subscribers gained through great content matched to the audience you actually want to attract, so there's a genuine message to market match. You also need your videos found at the top of the search results, because only the first five results in a set of search results tend to get watched. If you're outside the top five, you're very unlikely to be seen at all.

Why does it take so long to get subscribers on YouTube?

Because it's genuinely hard to get someone to press that button, and content that isn't good enough won't do it. Think about your own behaviour: how often do you actually subscribe to something? People are mostly just watching, rarely being asked, and even when asked, deciding whether they can be bothered. You need thousands of views to get a handful of people to subscribe, and outside of extreme cases like a Donald Trump or an Elon Musk, one view rarely means one subscribe. Get the right audience and a good message to market match, though, and the subscribe percentage goes up. I've only ever subscribed to a couple of car channels and a couple of interesting people myself, which is a fair illustration of just how hard it is to get somebody to subscribe.

Is channel engagement rate important?

Yes, but the single most important ranking factor is total watch time. Vince explains that we've proved repeatedly that a brand new YouTube channel's videos can be ranked to the top of search regardless of how new the channel is. What matters most is making sure people watch a video, ideally to the end, because the longer people stay on the platform, the more advertising YouTube can show, and the more money YouTube makes. So engagement matters, but only to an extent, because a new channel can still rank well with the right strategy.

How do I find out how many people are watching my channel?

Within YouTube Studio, the analytics tab shows this at both a channel level and an individual video level, letting you see exactly what's going on daily, weekly, monthly, or across all time.

What should I do if people aren't watching my channel?

Consider that you're either not making the right content, or not making it engaging enough, and revisit the type of content you're producing. The honest answer is to look again at what you're making rather than giving up.