How to (Really) Get Thousands of Free YouTube Subscribers

If there is one thing I learned during the ten years I spent in affiliate marketing, it’s that it is never too late to enter a new niche.

From casino gambling to loans, from binary trading to health products, I made money in some of the most competitive niches in the world. Even if I never entered any of these markets at the right time.

To win the attention of YouTube’s algorithm, you need lots of subscribers. Today, I’ll show you real ways to get free YouTube subscribers. No tricks. No hacks. Just tactics that work.

Over the last few years, Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat have stolen the social video spotlight. But YouTube is still an incredible marketing channel, receiving over 30 million visitors per day and 5 billion daily video views.

According to GlobalWebIndex, one in four YouTubers watched a branded video last month. It’s not just millennials using YouTube, either. Google shows that YouTube reaches 95% of online adults age +35 in a month. And according to new demographic data from Google, YouTube’s reach continues to expand to older audiences.

In this post, you’ll learn some ways to start getting YouTube free subscribers. If you’re just starting to build your YouTube channel or looking for some ways to optimize existing content, this post is for you.

Study Your Enemy

As Sun Tzu puts it, you can’t win your battles if you do not understand what is that makes your competitors good at what they do.

The key to getting free YouTube subscribers is simple: go to YouTube, look for the best ones in your niche, and try to understand what makes them special.

Don’t just copy them. Watch their videos, find out what makes them stand out, and figure out a way to best them at that.

If you don’t know how to do that, you can use my YouTube Competition Cheatsheet. It’s a simple template I use every time I need to enter a new niche.

Before you come to any conclusions, make sure you fill the sheet with at least ten different videos. If you want to get free YouTube subscribers to your channel and earn new views to your videos, you need to find out if there is any correlation between the videos that are getting all the traffic today.

Here is where most gambling affiliates fail. Check out the twenty most popular gambling videos on YouTube, run them through my YouTube Competition Cheatsheet, and see what happens.

I am sure you will find that the approach, the length, and the tone of those videos are similar.

Do the same for twenty videos that were posted at least thirty days ago and earned 100 or fewer views since then.

You shouldbe able to identify what is that their producers have done wrong in a snap.

Prepare For your Videos

Now that you know who your competitors are and what makes them special, it’s time for you to put on your strategic hat and plan a deadly attack.

Don't leave everything to improvisation. While you might not want turn the camera on just to follow an hyper-detailed script, you need to have a clear picture of what you are going to do and say before you do it.

The only way to get free YouTube subscribers through your videos is to be entertaining, original, and informative at the same time - and unless you are a professional actor already, you might have to spend some time working on a script before the actual shooting begins.

Define a clear goal, identify the keywords and the power-words that will help you get your message through, and build a storyline.

Rehearse to make sure you are not giving confusing or superfluous information.

When in doubt, check out this brilliant eight-minute video by Salma Jafri on how to plan and structure your YouTube videos to keep viewers engaged and get more free subscribers.

Let The Shooting Begin!

I am not going to say much about this - except that, if you want to be taken seriously by your audience, you need to have the right tools.

In 2017, you need to have a decent HD camera and a proper microphone. The good news is that a full setup shouldn’t cost you more than $150, unless you decided to go super pro.

I use the Snowball USB Microphone ($56.99) for the sound and the Microsoft LifeCam Studio HD ($67.99) for the video and I find this a great setup.

How to Get People to Click on Your Videos

No one is going to know how interesting your video is, if you don’t get people to click on it and watch it.

While Salma Jafri’s tips are great to make people stay on the page after they hit on the 'Play' button, you need to get people to click on your video to let the magic begin.

To do this, we are going to use two tools.

1. Canva (Free)

You don’t need to spend your hard-earned cash on Photoshop to create a great looking thumbnail that will make your video stand out.

Canva is a fantastic tool every marketer should use to personalise the content on their sites and on their videos.

Once your video is ready, head to Canva.com, sign up for a free account, and let your creativity run free.

If graphic design is not your forte, feel free to start with one of the many free (great) templates available on the platform, adapt it to fit your message, and upload it as your video’s main thumbnails.

I have seen cases where switching from the default thumbnail to a Canva-produced one increased CTR by 150% overnight!

Mangools KW Finder (From $12.42)

SEO is the foundation of everything I do, videos included.

While I believe aHrefs and SEMRush are unbeatable at keyword research, you don’t need to break the bank to look for the right keywords to get free YouTube subscribers.

Mangools KW Finder sign up

Although Mangool’s KW Finder isn’t built for YouTube, this keyword research tool gives you amazing insights and stats on all the keywords you can think of.

search for a term you want to target with your video and use the numbers on the screen to help you pick the best ones to include in your title and description.

In general, you want keywords with a growing 'Trend', a high number of monthly 'Searches', and a high 'Cost per Click' (CPC).

No need to look at the 'Competition', since those numbers refer to the organic Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs), not to YouTube.

How to Promote Your Videos The Right Way

Here’s where the hard work begins.

If you thought the production phase was going to be the hardest one, you might have just discovered what kept you away from getting free YouTube subscribers and from making money through your channel.

YouTube organic traffic can do wonders, but your videos are not going to make you rich if you don’t work hard enough to promote them.

The safest way yo get free YouTube subscribers through your videos is to share everything through your social channels.

Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ are a must, but once you learn the fine art of playing with Canva, you can plan to hit hugely popular visual platform like Pinterest and Instagram, too.

Going the Black Hat way, you might also consider using a Private Blog Network (PBN) to give your videos an extra push and an extra amount of inbound links.

You could also pay a visit to the dodgiest SEO forums out there to use one of the services that promise you thousands of free YouTube subscribers for free. Just, be sure you know exactly what you are dealing with before you let others deal with your work.

Black Hat techniques are extremely risky and are against Google guidelines.

While some of the services you can find on the most popular forum can boost the number of visits to your videos and get you a number of free YouTube subscribers.

These strategies can backfire and do more harm than good - especially if you have long-term plans and you are not after the quickest bucks you can get.

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