How To Make Your FIRST YouTube Video In 2026 (Complete Beginner’s Guide)

So, you want to start a YouTube channel. First of all, congratulations, but now you're stuck. Making your first video seems daunting. There's a lot of unknowns, and you may not feel ready. But, here's the truth. You do not have to be ready. My brother Zach is 50 years old. He never recorded anything before. He didn't know how to edit, barely knew how to use his phone, but he made his first YouTube video anyways. Less than a month later, he was making $214 in a single day, and he was monetized on YouTube. Because your first video doesn't have to be perfect, it just has to exist. And today I'm going to be breaking down the exact nine steps that he used to make his first YouTube video in 2026. So, if you like this type of content, gently tap that like button, and let's jump into it right now. Okay, step one is to pick your preliminary niche. Now, I want you to think about a younger version of yourself, maybe 5 years ago or 10 years ago. What did you struggle with back then? What cost you time, money, and energy? What do you wish that someone had told you? What problems did you have that you were able to overcome? Now, once you've picked your niche, you need to clearly define who you're helping and what problem you're helping them solve. This is what's called a niche hypothesis statement, and it goes something like this. I help X overcome Y, or I help X do Y. So, in the case of my brother, he helps younger people choose the right trade career for them. Now, this is a very important step, but realize it's preliminary. You're not stuck here forever, but it's important that you actually do this step. That right there is your niche. You're not starting from zero, you're starting from experience. And there are thousands of people out there who are exactly where you used to be. They need what you already know. Now, there's one important thing. This is your preliminary niche, not your final one. For instance, I switched my niches at least 15 times. You're just picking a direction to start moving. So, don't overthink it. Just pick something and keep going. In the case of my brother, he'd been working in the trades for 30 years. And so, it made a lot of sense for him to talk about getting into the trades and which trade would be best depending on you, your situation, and your personality. Step two, get your keywords. Now, we need to find out what people are actually searching for. So, the tool we're going to use is called VidIQ. It's free. What you want to do is go into VidIQ, and you actually get five free questions to ask the VidIQ AI every single month. So, you're going to put your niche hypothesis statement into VidIQ, and then ask it what keywords are related. It's going to spit out a few keywords, and you want to copy these and save them. So, when you write down my brother's niche, these are the keywords that pop up. Step three, find three muse videos on YouTube. This is the most important step that most beginners skip. Before you create anything, you need proof the topic already works. So, go on YouTube and search the keywords that you found one at a time. You're looking for videos that hit all three of these rules. One, the channel that posted the video has less than 100,000 subscribers. Two, the video has at least 100,000 views. And three, the view to subscriber ratio is at least five to one. Meaning, if the channel has 20,000 subscribers, the views have to be at least 100,000. And if the channel has 100,000 subscribers, the views have to be at least 500,000. Now, why does this matter? Because it means the topic is bigger than the channel. The algorithm pushed that video to people who had never heard of that creator. And then, when they saw that it was a small creator, they watched anyways. Even though that creator didn't have a big audience or social proof, they still chose to watch the video. And by finding these types of videos, it makes it much more likely that your video can do well, too. So, find three videos that hit all three of those rules, then pick your favorite. That's your muse video. Here's some examples of videos that we found for my brother. And here's the one that we picked. All right, quick break. I'm hanging out with my brother Zach right now. He's not a tech guy at all, and he made $214 in a single day on YouTube. And I just wanted to let you know that this week we are hosting a free live one-time workshop. So, one thing that people struggle with the most is finding their niche, and that is why we actually created an AI called the niche validator that's going to help you find your niche or help you dial in your niche if you already have one. And we're going to be giving away this niche validator this week at a live workshop, and it's called Make Money with YouTube 2026 Secrets. If you're struggling to find your niche or you don't want to commit months or even years to a niche that ends up not being profitable, then this is for you. So, click the link in the description and the pin comment below. And once you register, hit add to calendar so it shows up on your Google, Apple, or Outlook calendar. And if for whatever reason you're watching this in the future, still check the link in the description and the pin comment below cuz we may be doing another live workshop in the future, and it'll tell you when. Now, you'll also be able to ask me questions live, so I look forward to meeting you. And you'll also get an update on how this guy is doing on YouTube as well. So, see this week, and back to your regularly scheduled programming. All right, step four is to generate your title. Now, here's the rule for your first video. Keep the title 90% the same as the original. Don't reinvent it, don't try to be clever. Just swap out small details to make it fit your niche. So, the creator you're modeling already did the hard work. They tested that title. It worked. Your job right now is not to innovate. Your job is to execute. Learn the rules first, then you can break them later. Now, the only thing you're going to be copying here is the idea of the video. But, the idea is expressed in the title, so your title needs to be very similar, 90 to 95% the same. If you change your title up too much, it might end up being a completely different idea. So, don't do that. So, here's the original video, and here's my brother's title. You can see that they are very similar. Just a few words are swapped out. However, everything else about the video is completely different. And this leads us to step five. Generate your thumbnail words. Most thumbnails need text on them. So, you want to have text, but keep it short, three to four words maximum. You can see that in my brother's thumbnail, he has four words and one number. Also, the words need to be bold and easy to read even on a small phone screen. And it needs to match the energy of your title. Think of it this way. Your thumbnail gets them to look, and your title gets them to click. But, both of them need to work together. Step six, write your scripts. Now, here you have two different options. Option A is the outline method. You write bullet points of what you want to cover, and you just talk about it naturally on camera. This is what I recommend to most people that are doing their first video. It keeps you sounding like a real human being because most people, if they try to read the script word for word, sound kind of like a robot. Option B is the full script method. Write out every single word, then read it on a teleprompter or from your screen. Now, this is better for some people, especially if you freeze up on camera or if you lose your train of thought easily. Neither option is wrong, just pick the one that fits you and move forward. Now, you can either have your script very close to your camera, like you can elevate your computer right next to your camera, maybe even above your camera, and just look at it. Or, if you want to get really fancy, you can use a teleprompter. Now, when you're writing out a full script, you can definitely use AI for this. My most recommended method is to basically just have what's known as a yap session with AI, where you kind of just tell it what your thoughts are on the subject, and then have it fill in the rest. We actually have an AI that we created for our clients that's designed to do exactly this, where you literally just talk to it and it writes the script for you. And that's exactly what my brother did. The script writing process took him less than 15 minutes. And he decided to use a teleprompter to read the script in his first video. Now, I know there's more to script writing than that, and if you're interested in learning more about that, again, show up to my live training this week by clicking the link in the description and the pin comment below. And by the way, afterwards, I will literally be doing a Q&A where you can ask me any question you possibly have, and I will answer every single question. Okay, so step seven is record your video. You do not need a fancy camera, you don't need a studio, you don't need any of that stuff, okay? You need your phone and decent lighting. That's it. And honestly, phones are so good now that you barely even need the decent lighting part. You also want to record in landscape mode. That's horizontal. YouTube, of course, is a horizontal platform. And if you mess up mid-sentence, just pause, collect your thoughts, then keep going. And you can always cut it out later. Or don't. Some of the best performing videos on my channel have mistakes in them. Because right now, authenticity beats perfection every single time. Now, I recommend just recording with your phone. However, if for some reason you don't have a phone, you could also use your laptop webcam. And in that case, if you want to record, I highly recommend using Descript. Descript is a free recording software. It also has a teleprompter feature on it. So, if you're writing your entire script with a teleprompter, you can use that feature, and it actually is built into Descript. And you basically just want to put the box for the teleprompter towards the top of the screen, right next to your webcam. And it'll look like you're looking directly at the camera. So, if you're recording off-the-cuff content where you just have an outline, use your phone. If you want to record everything word for word, use Descript and your webcam. And this is assuming that you don't already have a camera set up and a teleprompter, etc. All right, step eight, edit your video. Most beginners spend days editing their first video, and that is a mistake. Your goal right now is simple, get it done, get it published. All you need to do is cut the big mistakes and remove the long pauses. That's it. You should be done in under 10 minutes. So, use Descript or CapCut if that's what you're already using because both are beginner-friendly. Descript even removes filler words like um and uh automatically, and it has a really amazing AI feature that does 80% of the work for you. But, whatever you do, keep it simple and don't over-edit. Now, Descript, if you use the free version, is going to have a watermark when you download the video. CapCut, I believe, is completely free. I do slightly prefer Descript, and I do slightly prefer the paid version of Descript, and I believe it costs about $25 a month. But, you can use whatever you want. Step nine is to upload, optimize, and publish. So, upload your video to YouTube. And in order to do this, of course, you have to create your YouTube channel, which this video is not about. That's a subject for a separate video. However, there are lots of videos on YouTube about how to create your channel, and I believe we even put one out on our channel as well. But, if not, we will be putting one out in the very near future. So, you upload your video to YouTube, you add your title, add your thumbnail, write a short description that naturally includes your main keyword, then hit publish. Now, by the way, with the thumbnail, what I highly recommend doing is just taking a still shot from your first video, and then adding the text that we talked about before with the thumbnail. And you can do this with a tool like Canva. Now, with the text, you want to make sure it's bold, and typically white text performs the best. But, yeah, you'd upload a thumbnail like that, then hit publish. Now, here's an example of my brother's thumbnail, highest pay trade jobs. And here's an example of one of my clients, RJ, who did a video like this, where he just recorded it outside with zero edits and then he just used Canva to add some text to a still shot of the video and it says life-changing accident. Don't overthink this, keep it simple. Then, since this is your first video, you can keep it on YouTube for a little bit if you'd like to, but eventually you want to hit publish. Don't wait for the perfect moment, don't sit on it for a week, just go ahead and publish it. Now, is this the absolute most ideal way for you to create a video? No, it's not. There are lots of other things you could do that would make the video better, but you know what's better than a perfect video? A done video. Because if you try to make a perfect video, it's going to take you months or years. And if you just simply publish consistently starting today with your first video, then you're going to rapidly get better at YouTube and you're going to have a way higher chance of success. Now, there's a lot more to publishing on YouTube. Of course, I highly recommend that you click the link in the description in the pin comment below to attend my live training. But look, I know 99% of my viewers just want to consume my free content, attend my live trainings, and that's it, right? And that's why I make sure my videos are as valuable as possible. And it's why I also do the live trainings, like the one I'm doing this week. Click the link in the description in the pin comment below. So, you get the value completely free and I give way more value than I receive. But, if you're that 1% who wants their hand held and guided through YouTube success, just like my brother, then go ahead and book a call with us now by clicking the link in the In this call, we're going to figure out where you are right now, where you want to be, and we'll see if we're a good fit to work together. And if so, we'll build a plan to get you there fast. The types of people we typically work with are people who are beginners, but they want to take YouTube seriously, right? They want to treat it like a business, treat it like a pro, and they want to get started fast. But also business owners that want to use YouTube as a way to grow, YouTubers who are crushing it, but they want to crush it even harder, or YouTubers that are getting views, but they're struggling with monetization. So, if you're in any of those categories, go ahead, click the link in below, and we look forward to talking to you. And also, check out this video right here to see more about how we helped my brother Zach get results.