If I Started A YouTube Channel In 2026, I’d Do These 6 Things

Most YouTube advice comes from YouTube gurus that never actually started a successful channel outside of the channel about them talking about how to start a successful channel or people who got lucky once, built one channel years ago and then never did it again. I do something different. I start a brand new YouTube channel every single year. And two years ago, I started my own channel from scratch. Last year, I started my brother's channel. He's 50 years old, never made a video in his life. And in month one, he was already making $214 in a single day from AdSense alone. And who knows what it's going to be next year. Maybe my sister or my dad. I don't know. But the point is, I know exactly what works in 2026 because I'm still doing it. And today, I'm showing the six things that I would do if I started from zero right now. And if you like this type of content, let me know by gently tapping that like button. And let's jump into it. So, the first thing I would do is ignore almost all of the conventional advice, at least at first. Here's some things that I wouldn't waste time on. A fancy camera because a phone works fine. Perfect lighting, natural lighting is more than enough, especially if you have a newer phone camera. Complex editing, you don't need them. Simple cuts only or no cuts at all. Being super entertaining, you don't need to be super entertaining. Just solve people's problems. SEO optimization, helpful, but not critical. Posting shorts, totally useless if you don't already have long- form content down. studio setup. A simple studio background like a gray bed sheet, which is what I used when I started my channel, works just fine. And also falling into the what camera should I buy or what's in my bag tech rabbit hole. Please don't do that. One thing you need to realize is the single most important thing both when it comes to your channel as well as individual videos is the idea. And when you first start your channels, you want to find winning ideas. And that should be your singular focus. All of this other stuff is optimization. Meaning, once you've already found something that works, you make it a little bit better. However, if you try to optimize something that doesn't work in the first place, you're completely wasting your time. And that's what I see everyone doing all the time. Optimization is kind of like putting salt and pepper on an egg. If the egg is rotten, it doesn't matter how much salt and pepper you put on it. It's not going to make it any better. But if the egg is already good and it's well cooked, putting a little bit of salt and pepper on it might make it even better than before. It's the idea that carries your channel. So, why spend six months on gear when you could be uploading proven ideas and find out what works faster? So, let's talk about my brother's first video. A phone, camera, a couple hours of work, and 800,000 plus views. What's up, everybody? Back in the office today, but we're not getting our hands dirty. At least not yet. Think of it like this. You don't need a $100,000 kitchen renovation to beat the restaurant with overcooked pasta. You just need the proven dish. Their line provides demand, decent execution, your pasta doesn't suck, and consistency. Open your doors daily. Nobody cares about how fancy your kitchen is. All they care about is how good the spaghetti is. Number two, I'd help the younger version of myself. So, let's talk about the starting point for your channel. And the point here is you need a direction. Now, what I recommend you use is the I help X with Y framework. For instance, I help accountants become financial controllers. I help stay at moms use AI to create passive income. I help trades workers negotiate higher salaries. So, what you want to do is take out a piece of paper or you can type this and write down I help who with what problem. The who you got to know the who and the what. Now, you can run it through Chat GBT, but we also have an AI that we created that's called the niche validator. You can see it on the screen right now. And you want to aim for a score of at least eight out of 10. And then you want to move forward once it's validated. Now, by the way, we will be giving away the Niche Validator this week when we do a live workshop, which is completely free, called the Niche Validator Pro 2.3, which you can check out by clicking the link in the description and the pin comment below. And in this workshop, we're going to teach you all the most important things when it comes to starting and growing a profitable YouTube channel and treating YouTube like a business. So, definitely do not miss out on this onetime live workshop. Click that link in the description, the pin comment below to attend, and I look forward to seeing you there. Now, once you have your niche hypothesis statement validated, you want to move forward. So, just as an example, my brother Zach helps the younger version of himself by making sure that he knows everything he needs to know about trades jobs so he can get in quickly and get the right trades job for himself, like the younger version of himself. So, basically, he's helping other younger people who are thinking about getting into the trades figure out which trades job is best for them. And I would say well over 80% of successful educational YouTubers I know started their channel with this in mind. They're essentially just helping the younger version of themselves because anything you've accomplished in the past could be something you could talk about on YouTube. Any problems you've had in the past could also be something you could talk about on YouTube. So, you can monetize the bad and the good parts of your life. In fact, in many cases, it's better to monetize the bad parts. Number three, I'd find winning video ideas. Now, here's the biggest mistake. People guess what videos to make. I think this topic would be good. Nobody's made this yet. Wrong. Find ideas that are already proven. Now, this is how to find winning ideas and it's with what I like to call the icon method. Not icon in the finance industry. So, you want to look for videos that have a lot of views, 100,000 views and above, which basically proves that the idea works from a small channel under 100,000 subscribers, which means they don't have a built-in audience, and a minimum of a 5:1 view subscriber ratio. Meaning, if they have 20,000 subscribers, the video needs to have at least 100,000 views. And if they have 100,000 subscribers, the video needs to have at least 500,000 views. And then finally, you want the video to either be bad or at least mediocre. If it's some sort of Netflix style documentary, you probably don't want to take that video as your idea. And then what you do is you take the idea of the video and make a completely new one. So what we did is we found this video, highest paying trade jobs no one's talking about. almost the same title, but definitely the exact same idea. And then we moved on to step four, which is packaging your videos properly. So, you want to make sure that your thumbnail, title, and intro are delivering the same message. Now, notice that my brother's very first video, the title is delivering the same message as the thumbnail. And if you listen to the intro, it says the same thing. I'm giving you the trades that are actually paying the most right now that nobody's talking about. This is so key and it's incredibly important and something that a lot of people mess up. You need to make sure that the title, thumbnail, and intro are the same as the idea of the original video that you found. And you need to make sure that the title, thumbnail, and intro are congruent with each other. Basically, it's a good idea to do those three things at the same time. Now, by the way, you can join my live training by clicking the link in the description and the pin comment below this week. And I'm going to be showing you everything I taught my brother about YouTube called Make Money with YouTube YouTube Secrets. And in this live training, you get to ask me questions live on Zoom. So people are getting their niche questions for instance answered on the spot and many people walk away with their niche completely figured out. Now everyone who shows up live gets access to a special GPT and this GPT is designed to help you lock in the idea or the niche of your channel called the niche validator pro 2.3. And me and my team have been building this specifically to help small YouTubers grow. So links in the description in the pin comment below. Go ahead and click down there and make sure you put this in your calendar right now so you don't forget and I'll see you there. Number five, I would upload consistently and that means at least once per week. So, here's a study. A ceramics teacher split his class. Group A got to make as many pots as possible, so they were graded on quantity. And group B had the assignment of making one perfect pot, graded on quality. The result, the best pots came from group A by far. Why? While group B was theorizing, group A made a 100 pots and learned from each one. So, here's what I do. One video per week minimum. I would use the icon method from step three to get proven ideas. I would use a simple setup. my phone is completely fine or even the webcam of my laptop. And then I would learn from each upload and I would double down on what works and I would stop doing what doesn't work. So for my brother Zach, he's 50 years old. His first video ever, literally his first video barely took any time to make at all and got him over 800,000 views. And last time we checked with him, he had a $520 day from AdSense alone. How? He uploaded consistently with proven ideas. And many of his videos are flops. And that's completely fine because the winners make up for the flops. Now, here's a pattern you'll see that we see with a lot of people. This is typical. Week 1 to four, you'll be figuring out the basics. Weeks 5 to 8, this type of video does better. Weeks 9 to 12, when I frame it this way, engagement spikes. Weeks 13 plus, I know exactly what my audience wants, and I am ready to scale this channel. And you can't learn this from making one perfect video. You learn from putting in the reps. Imagine someone went to the gym and they worked out one time in a 3-month period, but they had the best workout ever. They worked out every single muscle on their body and they just worked it out completely to exhaustion and then they ate a perfect amount of protein and they had the best bodybuilding coach in the world. Then another person went to the gym once a week for 3 months and they had an okay workout each time. Who do you think is going to be stronger at the end of 3 months? Obviously, it's going to be the person who consistently went to the gym. Finally, number six, I'd monetize simply. So, I would just sell what I already know. And the truth is, you're overthinking monetization. You do not need a fancy course platform, a school community, an elaborate funnel, a 17 module program. You just need to sell what you already know. So, for my brother Zach, his monetization is of course AdSense. He's also got affiliate links. And now he's starting to promote high ticket coaching. And that's it. Now, the secret here is what feels elementary to you is completely unknown to your audience. You think everyone must know this already, right? No. They don't. That thing you figured out five years ago that feels obvious now, someone is desperately googling it right now, trying to understand it better. And your channel and the products or services that you sell could be the answer to their problems. Now, by the way, if you want to make money out of your boring idea, make sure you click the link in the description to join my free live workshop this week because we're going to give a bunch of examples of people that have actually done this and tell you exactly how you can do it as well. But if you're serious about growing on YouTube, then go ahead and just book a call in the description and the pin comment below. And that way, you can work one-on-one with a coach, just like my brother did. We're very picky about who we typically accept. The types of people we work with are business owners that want to grow and make money on YouTube. YouTubers who are already crushing it, but they want to crush it more. YouTubers that are getting a lot of views, but they're struggling with monetization, and beginners that really want to treat YouTube seriously and just treat it like a business, and they want to start right now. So, if any of those apply to you, go ahead and click the link in the description to book a call. And also check out this video right here that goes over exactly how we grew my brother's channel.