How To Start a YouTube Channel

“You don’t have to be great to start, but you have to start to be great.” – Zig Ziglar

Note: This is part three of a series of extended posts updating my no-longer-available YouTube Book. For the first installment, click here. This backstory is important because it lays the groundwork for everything that comes later. In this issue we pick up in early 2010 as we start production for the first season of Hilah Cooking.

You’ve no doubt heard this a million times, but it’s true: Consistency is critical to building a successful YouTube channel.

As a creative person, you’re going to be tempted to reinvent the wheel on the regular. Trust me - you don’t have time to do that. To build a loyal and engaged audience, you have to produce and publish on a consistent schedule.

Consistency is critical in both your video format and your publishing schedule. I’ve found that they go hand in hand. If you can’t produce videos quickly, you’ll have a hard time hitting a regular schedule.

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Developing a Format for Hilah Cooking

In the last issue, I wrote about how Hilah and I were eager to start a new project and had been kicking around ideas for a YouTube channel.

After a few weeks of brainstorming ideas for our internet cooking show, we had:

1. A list of 100 episode ideas (with keywords we thought would bring in good organic traffic

2. A general concept for an instructional cooking show that was also funny. It would also be simple to produce, so we could release episodes every week.

3. A shared commitment to produce 100 videos. After 100 episodes, we would evaluate whether the project was a success or a waste of time.

Now, it was time to stop talking and start creating.

We got started by playing around in the kitchen.

We had a video camera (Canon HV30), one light, a rickety photography tripod, and a wired Lavalier mic I got from Amazon for $12.00. By wired, I mean the microphone had a wire that had to be physically plugged into the camera. It was attached to Hilah at all times. Old school.

This wired Lavalier was always connected to the camera, which created some interesting logistical issues during production.

We shot two test episodes that were never publicly released. These were experiments to find out what was working and what wasn’t. Knowing that they would never be seen took some of the pressure off both of us. We were free to experiment.

During the test shoot, I was in “filmmaker” mode. I spent a lot of time exploring elaborate angles and camera moves.

Shooting a cooking show with one camera is not much fun. I found a wide shot that worked for Hilah to address the audience and demonstrate her cooking. When we needed a close-up of the food, I’d turn the camera off, walk it in to get the shot, then turn it off again and return to the wide shot. It reminded me of making movies as a kid where I had to edit them “in-camera” while I was shooting.

To complicate matters, the kitchen set was very challenging to shoot in. It had a dropped ceiling, orange countertops, some weird cabinets, and it was small and a little dark—not ideal shooting conditions.

This is from a very early Hilah Cooking shoot. We used a floor lamp for lighting. We found a shower curtain in the garage and taped it to the ceiling for diffusion.

Shooting these two videos took almost an entire day, but we had a lot of fun, and I was excited about the footage.

Until I got it into Final Cut and started editing.

It wasn’t working.

Some of the shots were cool, but none of it really flowed together. The video felt like it was jumping all over the place, and there was no sense of connection between Hilah and the audience.

I quickly realized that these videos weren’t a showcase for my filmmaking skills. Instead, the camera’s job was to showcase Hilah’s personality. We needed her to be on-screen as much as possible. I was also looking for a format that I could replicate every week. It had to be as simple as possible.

I found three shots that worked. They weren’t great, but they were good enough. I decided to use only those shots. Over and over and over again.

By our third video, we had figured out a simple format that we could use for each episode. This format allowed us to show up and make videos even when we felt tired, burned out, hungover, or just didn’t want to make videos. Sometimes, the energy and inspiration just aren’t there, and you need all the help you can get.

We launched the show in January 2010. We didn’t set any world records for number of views, but people responded to it – for better or worse! – from the very first episode.

Publishing the first few videos was very rough for me. I thought they looked terrible, and I was embarrassed. I thought these would expose me as an utterly incompetent failure as a filmmaker. I didn’t want to release them at all. But we had committed to a schedule and were determined to stick with it, so we kept going.

And little by little, we got better at it. It got easier.

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Our ultra-simple format looked like this:

1. Cold Open (30 seconds)

This is a quick introduction that teases you about what’s coming up in the video. We found the first 7 seconds to be particularly important. Ideally, we end it with a joke or something that is a good lead-in to the intro music.

2. Intro/Title (7 seconds)

An introductory sequence with some music and the title. In 2024, I would advise eliminating a title sequence unless you have an excellent strategy for it.

3. How To Section (7-10 minutes)

Time has been of the essence in everything up to this point. Now, we can slow down and get into the video itself. The subject matter determines the pacing. Towards the end of this section, I like to use a spoken call-to-action to ask the viewer to subscribe, check out another video, sign up for the email list, or maybe even purchase a product. I’d rather have them jump to another one of our videos than search for something else. Then we cut to the:

4. Outro (20 seconds)

This bookends the branding we established in the title/intro but has at least one call to action, if not several. If someone has made it this far into the video, they are either already invested in your show or interested in seeing more. This is a great chance to give them something to do next. 90% of the time, I like to send them to another related video to keep them on YouTube and increase the session time. But if there is a good reason to send them elsewhere, I’ll do it here.

This is about as simple as you can get it. But this was just the starting point.

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Once we started getting data for the channel, we began optimizing each segment. I obsessively studied our analytics to optimize the cold open. I realized I could dramatically increase view duration by tweaking this segment. For example, getting great food shots in the first 7 seconds made a huge difference. Also, if we teased something coming up later in the video, people watched longer. Our retention rate went up.  

In the Outros, we noticed retention dropping when Hilah took a bite of the finished recipe. Our format up to that time would have her finish the recipe, take a bite, and then talk a little more (usually including a Call To Action). When we noticed people were bouncing after she took a bite, we rearranged so that she did the CTA after she completed the recipe but before she took a bite. This moved the bite to the VERY end. This increased audience retention on every video and increased click-throughs on our Call-To-Action (CTA).

I guess people really like to see her taste the food.

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Determining a Schedule for YouTube

There is no perfect publishing Schedule.

I’ve tested almost every conceivable variation of an upload schedule: weekly, three times a week, once a month, and even daily (during the multiple 30-day yoga series).

Based on this testing, the most important factor seems to be consistency.

We always intended the Hilah Cooking videos to be released weekly, like a TV show. When the channel started to take off, we scaled it up to three times per week. This increased overall revenue and watch time (more videos) but didn’t speed up the channel's growth.

If you can pull it off, I highly recommend designing a show that you can produce weekly. Communicate this schedule to your audience and commit to releasing the videos at the same time every week. Pay attention to your analytics, and once you have a solid baseline of data, you can make an informed decision on how to optimize your schedule.

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Numbers Worth Your Attention

Before jumping to conclusions, give yourself at least 8 weeks of analytics. That’s enough time to start seeing genuine patterns instead of knee-jerk reactions to one-off spikes or weird outliers. With two solid months of data, you’ll get a better sense of what’s actually working and where you should pivot.

Once your data starts to accumulate, it can be overwhelming. In your early stages, zero in on these areas:

• Click-through rates – Optimize those thumbnails to boost this.

• First 30-second retention – Refine your openers to keep people watching.

• Average View Duration – A great pulse check on how well your content is holding attention.

Use these metrics to guide your strategy and adapt. Not every video will crush it, and that’s okay. Focus on the long game—steady improvement, smart adjustments, and creating content that genuinely connects.

The numbers are a guide, but they can only measure what’s already happened. Don’t let them distract you from what got you here in the first place.

Your creative instinct is what will truly take you to the next level.

Chris

PS - Thanks for all the great feedback on this series so far. As always, feel free to respond to this email or leave a comment below (if you’re reading this on Substack). I read all of them and try to respond to as many as possible.