Q&A: "How to grow a YouTube channel with 121,000 subscribers?"

This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.

[Music]

How can you grow a YouTube channel that already has 121,000 subscribers? I love questions like these. Today we're gonna hear from an Australian listener who has, who has started and operates, maintains, creates all kinds of content for this very popular home cooking channel. As noted, more than 100,000 subscribers, more than 120,000 in fact, and he wants to expand his reach further, which is a great question, right? And as I say all the time, it's easier to grow something that's working a little bit than to start something completely new.

So we've got a lot of listeners who are starting out for the first time, but I also think it's cool when you hear from somebody who's a little bit further along. In fact, I just, I love making this show because I hear from people in all different stages. We've got seven figure side hustlers out there, along with people who are just making a thousand or $2,000 a month from their projects. So got a range of folks. Let's talk about, let's hear from this Aussie listener, hear a little bit more about his channel.

I'll tell you exactly what it is at the end so you can check it out for yourself. And hopefully we can give him some helpful advice as well. All right, gonna pass the mic in just a moment to Gabe, but first a quick shout out to our sponsor. [Music]

Hey Chris, this is Gabe from Melbourne, Australia. My side hustle is my home cooking YouTube channel, where I create and share videos with myself, prepare my favorite meals in a relaxing way.

I have recently passed 100,000 subscribers and also landed a partnership with a brand. And I'm now looking to further expand my reach. My question is, how do I expand this type of business without losing my channel's identity? I've read about SEOs and have studied the data from my analytics, but the data is telling me that in order to grow quickly, that I need to be making the same popular dishes that are also being featured by larger channels. And this gives me adventuring into already saturated spaces, which in my opinion, kind of increases the risk for each video line best timing resources into producing.

I don't want to sell out too much and lose my OG viewers, but I would also like to grow my numbers, I guess, other than any business. So what direction do you think is best to stream a project towards? Thank you so much, Chris. [Music]

Okay, first of all, congratulations. What a tremendous accomplishment.

The business is called Food for the Gabs. You can check it out at youtube.com/foodforthegabs. And so let's talk about some growth here. Whatever you do, first of all, don't stop doing it. Like when things are working well, that's the first thing to remember.

You got to this place because you did something right. So before you just think about what are all the other things I can do, don't lose your core competency. And I have made this mistake myself before, especially in my like early days of running online businesses. I would think, well, I've done this, but now I need to move on to something else. And it's like my next idea might not be as good or might not work as well as the first thing.

And if I just double down, then I might see a lot more success. So if listeners or viewers, I should say on YouTube, are enjoying these videos, first thing is, can you make more of them, right? Can you make more of the content that they already like? And these days it's even easier to make content than it used to be. Production has sped up a lot.

AI helps with a lot of things. Can you make different kinds of episodes? So before you kind of branch out to something totally new, I would do more of what's working. Next, like are you trying to cross populate your strong YouTube numbers with other platforms? Like how much are you posting, posting and reposting and clipping, as they say these days, clipping on Instagram and TikTok.

So if you're making long form videos on YouTube, you want to clip short segments for reels and TikToks. I think it also might be good to experiment. And maybe one experiment is LinkedIn. And so you might think, well, wait a second, why is a cooking show gonna do well on LinkedIn? Isn't that just about professional stuff?

LinkedIn is pretty big, okay? So there actually are non-professional topics that are working well there. It doesn't guarantee that it will, but I think that's the kind of example I would encourage you to pursue. Because you've already figured out how to make content that is attracting viewers and attracting repeat viewers, which is so great. So do more of what's working, consider cross posting, and then think about some experiments that you can do to kind of push things in a new direction.

Gabe, congratulations again, listeners, food for the gabs. I took a look, it looks like he hasn't actually posted in a while since we first featured him. But here's the cool thing about YouTube, even though he hasn't made new videos in a while, he has 200,000 subscribers now since we last featured him. So from 120,000 to 200,000, again, seems like he's doing something right. It also shows you can build this kind of project over time and then step away.

And if he's still getting views, he's still earning some income. So, well done, listeners. Let me know what you're up to, what's going well, what you're struggling in. Let me know if we can help, sidehustleschool.com, access the resources pages there for every single episode and more. And of course, new episodes out every day.

You know how it goes, seven days a week, always free. My name's Chris Guillebeau. You are listening to Side Hustle School. [Music]