Quick Start: Launch Your YouTube Channel in Just 10 Minutes a Day!
If you want to create a YouTube channel that attracts paying clients but you are a total beginner and don't know where to start, I’ll show you how to start a YouTube channel from scratch in only 10 minutes a day!
In only a week, you will have a YouTube channel that is primed to start bringing you clients. You don't need to be a tech Wizard or have a marketing degree. I don't care how busy you are. You can find 10 minutes a day, can't you?
This update for 2024 will show you all of the latest settings so that you don't waste any time or overlook anything important. Believe me when I say that it is possible to create multiple six—or even seven-figure businesses using YouTube as your primary method of getting in front of potential clients and getting them to call you. So just do it already!
Let’s create your channel right step by step every day. Let's go!
Day #1: Create the account.
On the first day, we are setting up your YouTube channel. I am assuming that you don't have an account at all, but you do want a Gmail account. If you already have a Google account, sign out. You should see the sign-in in the top right corner. Click on sign in and then go down to create account.
We're not going to log in with your existing Google account. We're going to create an account for my business because your plan is to use your YouTube channel to get clients; therefore, you are using it for your business. Type in all of this basic information.
As we go through the screens, you can either use an existing email address or create a brand new Gmail address. This is what I recommend: do not use the email address given to you by your brokerage! If you ever change companies, you will lose your entire YouTube channel. Don't do it! Give it a name - something that you will remember, that you can use just for logging into your YouTube channel.
After you create your password, it asks for a backup email address just in case you forget how to log in or you can't remember your password, all that good stuff last. But not least, here comes the privacy and terms. Make sure you read through all of this stuff, and as long as you agree, hit I agree, hit Confirm. Now, we don't need to set up a whole Google account right away, so hit the now button when prompted. We're mostly worried about the YouTube channel, not the Google account.
Next, we're going to click on your brand new little Avatar in the upper right-hand corner and go to YouTube Studio. This is the name that the YouTube channel has chosen for you. On Day #2, we're going to be going through an exercise where we decide what your entire channel will be about, and you may very well end up changing this right now. Why don't you just leave it as your name or whatever you came up with the first time? We can always change it later. So let's just hit create a channel and move along.
Congratulations! You have created a YouTube channel – YOUR channel! You are now inside YouTube Studio! See? That wasn't so hard.
Day #2: Conduct market research.
Now, we're going to move on and do a little bit of market research. I am a firm believer that you need to have a niche for your channel. If you are a real estate agent and you say, I do all things real estate covering my entire metro area, it is too broad. You need to go deeper than that.
I gave a presentation on this topic wherein I mentioned that really fast niching down helps you YouTube and your viewers. It's a win-win-win for all parties. It helps them find you because there are so many videos on YouTube. There is a sea of videos on YouTube and there are hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of hours of videos that are literally uploaded every minute on YouTube. It helps them be able to find your content. It helps you know what to be able to talk about and what you should talk about in your videos so that people will not only watch them but will call you and say, hey, I need your services. It helps YouTube understand who is the most likely person to enjoy watching your video.
Your niche makes you different! We all know that the general practitioner doctor makes far less money than the brain surgeon. However, if you have a specialty, you typically make a lot more money than a general practitioner.
Every time you go to a networking event, you know there are several other real estate agents there, right? So, normally, I would say I'm a real estate agent. And then their eyes glaze over, and they're like, oh look, there's Joe! Gotta go! And this person, after she said I was a condo specialist, suddenly they were all engaged in what she was saying, unlike the others. This one lady said, I want to buy a condo; and the guy said, my mom wants to buy a condo. It actually turned into conversations about real estate, whereas normally, when she just said, I'm a real estate agent, they were like out of here, right?
So, having a specialty sets you apart. It could be your farm area. Now, that does not mean Savannah. It means a very specific Geographic Farm area. It could be distressed sales, REO listings, or short sales. It could be a type of property. It could be a beach home. It could be log cabins. It could be tiny homes. It could be condos in the city right downtown. It could be luxury. It could be investors. It could be a type of client. So maybe an empty nester, a senior, or a first-time buyer. It could be people in the military, teachers, or First Responders. It can literally be anything that you want it to be.
It is not too specific. It just makes your marketing message unique, cuts through all of that noise on YouTube, and goes like a laser beam to the person who is the most likely to want to hear it.
Now that you know why you need a niche, you'll do this next: In your 10 minutes, start brainstorming what type of consumer you want to reach most.
Are you looking for buyers? Are you looking for sellers? Are you looking for first-time buyers? Are you looking for a military location? Are you looking for downsizers? Are you looking for luxury listings? What is your channel going to be about? And then I want you to really write down what type of topics you would talk about on this channel. Who is the person most likely to watch these videos? What are the questions they have? What are the problems they're trying to solve? And start making a running list of ideas for videos that you will make to put on this channel.
DO NOT skip this up because it sounds like work. THIS IS THE WORK. This is what will make your channel successful or not.
I am telling you now. If you skip this step, you may as well not make the channel at all. It is that important.
Day #3: Work on the visual components of your channel.
It's day three, and now we are going to move on to the visual components of your channel. We are looking at your profile photo, which is your channel icon, and your channel Banner, which is basically the cover image. You want to Brand your channel so that if somebody arrives on your YouTube channel, they can tell exactly where you are located and what your channel is about and quickly decide if this content is for them and if they should subscribe to the channel.
If they don't understand what they're going to get by watching your channel, then they're probably not going to. You've probably heard that saying: if you confuse, you lose. We don't want to confuse anybody, so make it readily apparent what this channel is about. What is your unique value proposition that you are delivering to the viewer - not you as a real estate agent - and your value proposition or the Channel's value proposition. Why should someone watch your YouTube channel versus one of your competitors? What will they get by watching this channel?
It doesn't really matter what you use to create your channel banner, but I use Canva because it's very affordable, and almost everybody has it. In fact, I have a channel Banner template that you may use. Just use my template so that you're not starting from scratch. Open it in your own Canva account. It will save you a ton of time once you have created your channel, Banner. You've downloaded it from Canva or from Photoshop or whatever you use to create it. You're going to save it as either a JPEG or a PNG. Sorry, at this time YouTube does not allow you to upload anything with animations on it. So that really cute Channel Banner that you made in Canva that has all of these animated Sparkles and stuff is not going to work. You got to save it as a JPEG or a PNG.
Now, we'll go to YouTube and upload it. We'll click on your little profile image in the upper right corner, and this time, we'll go to YouTube Studio. This will bring you to the back end of your YouTube channel, where you can do all of your customization.
We're going to do a lot more of this over the coming week, but for right now, let's just go to customization on the left-hand side and then click on branding. When it comes to the profile photo, if you are a solo agent, it's just going to be your face – a very big closeup because, remember, that thing is tiny on a phone. If it's showing up in various places throughout YouTube, it is so tiny. We need your face to be very, very zoomed in. If you are a two-person team, you might be able to get away with a photo with both of your faces on it. It's probably going to be so small we won't be able to see what it is. So, I'd say just use your logo instead.
Let's upload your headshot. Pick a headshot that is a close-up of your face. This is a very, very tiny photo, and we do not need an itty bitty picture of you where we can't even tell what you look like. Once you pull it up, you can move it around. You can zoom in and out a little bit and be cropped in fairly tight on your face. We can absolutely see what you look like. It's not super formal. You look friendly. You look like someone would want to hire you.
And then we can hit publish now.
Day #4: Optimize your channel for search.
It’s day four, and we're going to ensure that your videos and Channel show up in search results.
Okay, here we are on the channel dashboard again. This time, instead of the customization tab, we're going to go down to where it says settings, then click on the channel. Here, you get to put in keywords that tell YouTube what your channel is about.
I would mention the area that you service, anything to do with real estate, real estate in Savannah, Savannah real estate. Savannah real estate agent, Savannah realtor - all kinds of keywords such as that. I would put in my name. I would put in any common misspellings of your name - ask me how I know - my channel name as well. You can have up to 500 characters in here. So put as many in here that make sense, that describe what you're going to be talking about on this Channel.
Then, I like to click on upload defaults now because the title of every video is going to be different. I never put anything in the title but the description box; you absolutely can. You can put in how to contact you, any licensing information, who your brokerage is, and where they are located. Do you have to put in your license number? Your blog post? Your Facebook? Your Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn? Anything like that. So you can put all of that stuff down in here.
And now below every single video, this will be in the description box underneath your video. You do not have to copy and paste. It will go in there for you automatically. Huge timesaver!
Day #5. Write the About Me section.
We are in the home stretch. We are on day five. We're going to write the About Me section. This is your little bio. This is where you get to tell the viewers a little bit about yourself, why they should watch your channel, why they should subscribe, and most importantly, how they can contact you now.
We go back to the channel customization tab, but this time, we're going to click on basic info.
Let's start with the channel name. I recommend that we either choose your name or the niche that you've decided to service. Make it short and sweet, easy to remember, easy to spell, something catchy. But don't obsess over this. People make this channel name life or death, and you can change it anytime you want. So if you name it Georgia Coast Homes and you later move to Alaska, you can change it if you decide a year or two down the road to change your niche.
You can change your channel name. Don't spend too much time on this. I've seen way too many people obsess over the channel name, and they come to a screeching halt and take no action for months at a time because they can't decide what to call their channel. Give yourself half an hour to brainstorm a million different names. Pick one. Move on.
When it comes to the handle, it's basically just a way that someone could search the @ sign plus the name of your channel and find you on YouTube. It's usually the same as the name of the channel or maybe an abbreviated version.
We move down to the description which is essentially the About Me section, your bio. So I had chatGPT write me an amazing bio, and this is a great example of what not to do. You don't want to make this one giant commercial all about yourself, your accolades, your designations, your accomplishments, the many, many houses that you have sold, the awards that you have won - all of that kind of thing. Don't do this.
Tell them what this channel is about, why it is relevant to them, what's in it for them, whether they should subscribe and watch all of your videos, how they can contact you, do you want to put a link to your website or to Instagram Facebook any other platform where you are active. And remember, everybody who watches your channel is thinking, what's in it for me? At this point, they don't really care about you, and they certainly don't care that you've sold $50 million worth of properties in your career. So don't lead with that, please.
Day #6: Plan your channel trailer.
We are getting down to the wire. On day six, we are going to plan what your channel trailer is going to be.
Your channel trailer is a video that starts to automatically play on your YouTube channel homepage whenever somebody comes to see it, and they are not already subscribed to your channel. This little video is just a big call to action that says, hey, you should totally subscribe to this channel cuz it's freaking awesome!
In making the trailer, it doesn't need to be long. it doesn't need to be drawn out. It certainly does not need to be you telling them why you are an amazing agent and all of your awards and designations. Don't do any of that stuff. Instead, tell them what's in it for them if they watch your channel, what you're going to talk about on these videos, and why they would want to subscribe. Then, tell them to subscribe. It is super easy. Don't overthink.
If it's not very good, this is just a placeholder. We can change it anytime. We plan to make something, and we're going to get it up on the channel. A couple of months from now, you can always swap it out for something better.
Congratulations! You have completely set up your YouTube channel from start to finish!
Now, the only thing left is to start making videos. Today, I want you to decide on the first four videos that you are going to make for this channel. You know who you are trying to reach, what your niche is, and what you're going to talk about on this channel.
Now, it's time to start making some ideas for videos and pressing records. And hey, if you're thinking that you're too old to start this whole YouTube Journey, now, I didn't start my channel until I was in my late 40s it has given me a business that has far exceeded my wildest dreams. If you want to see how I did it, watch this video.