If you’re just starting out as a YouTube creator and your goal is to earn a full-time income from the site, then avoid these common mistakes that new creators make. They’ll make it difficult for you to grow your channel and eventually reach your goals.

There are a lot of YouTube creators out there who would love to turn their effort and their energy in this platform into their full-time career, and maybe that is you. But I see a lot of them making three big mistakes that are usually holding them back from actually reaching that goal. Let’s talk about what they are here with you guys here today so that you don’t make those mistakes and your channel can grow. We’ll talk about that coming up right after this.

#1 – Focusing on Production Value over Content

I see a lot of creators focusing more on production value than on content value. And what I mean by that is, a lot of creators will get started, they’ll go out, they’ll buy all this camera equipment, all these lights, and microphones. And they’ll spend tons of time editing and crafting this perfect video, thinking that what I see on television is the same as what’s going to perform online.

And that is not true. Actually in my free e-book called, “The Secret to Building Your YouTube Audience” goes into more detail about the differences between web video and television and how you should not make content for television.

What you should really be focusing on is the content value.

So I would recommend, if you have the time to put into this, put less into making like a really high-production value video, and more time into studying how audience development works on YouTube so that you can actually get the audience and the exposure that you want on that video in the first place.

#2 – Missing a Clear Target Audience and Value Proposition

You have to have a clearly defined target audience, that’s who your channel is for, and you need to also have a clearly defined value proposition, which is what value does your channel propose to deliver to that target audience.

There are a lot of reasons for that, and I’ve done many videos in the past that get into a lot of them. But basically, you need to make someone feel like “This channel’s for me. I have been looking for this.”

And if you’re not clearly targeting and going after that somebody with your content, it’s really hard to make anybody feel that way. And then you have to consistently deliver the value that you want to give and that you’re claiming to deliver, and you need to do that consistently in every single video that you publish.

#3 – Giving up too Quickly

Now, sometimes this makes sense. They come to YouTube hearing, “oh, you can make money on YouTube. Oh, you can be popular on YouTube”. So they come to YouTube pursuing money and popularity.

And then they quickly discover that it’s really a lot easier to make money doing something else and that there’s other ways to feel popular than on YouTube, and so they give up. And honestly, maybe this sounds bad, but I kind of am glad that those people give up.

But there are other creators who come to this platform with a mission of like, “this is what I want to do. This is what I want to accomplish. This is the type of community I want to put together”.

And yes, there is money, and yes, there is popularity, but those things serve as tools for this greater mission, this greater cause, right? To make this possible.

And those are the creators that I don’t want to give up. Those are the ones I would say, keep going. Growing on YouTube is tough. It takes time. It takes a lot of hard work. It takes a lot of energy.


That’s why I have created resources, like my free ebook, “The Secret to Building Your YouTube Audience“, but also my other one, “30 Days to a Better YouTube Channel“. It’s really designed to make that growth process and the learning curve a lot shorter.

It’s like every day you go through a teaching, something you need to learn, you go through a task, something you need to do on your channel right then. And then also further resources, if you really want to dig into it and learn more about that teaching and that thing on your channel.

So that is an invaluable resource to really avoiding a lot of these mistakes and really making it so that you don’t feel like you’re going to give up as easily and as quickly.

For the rest of you guys, I’d love to hear from you in the comments. What other mistakes do you see new creators making? Because I know we have a lot of veteran creators around here, which is awesome. So share your information, share your knowledge and wisdom with the rest of us as well. Even myself, I’m looking forward to reading that. And if you are a new creator, read what other people are recommending for you down there. You will learn a lot from the other creators in this community, as I always do.

FREE EBOOK: “The Secret to Building your YouTube Audience

EBOOK: “30 Days to a Better YouTube Channel

SUBSCRIBE to learn how to grow your YouTube channel!

PATREON: Let’s support each other!