Top 5 Common Mistakes Small YouTubers Make (AVOID THESE)

If you're watching this, chances are almost 100% that you are making mistakes that are killing your channel's growth right now. And the reason that I know this is because I've seen it thousands of times. I've reviewed thousands of small YouTubers channels and almost all of them are making the same mistakes over and over again. And the worst part about this is you probably don't even know it. I'm talking about mistakes that are keeping you stuck near zero views. mistakes that make you feel like YouTube just doesn't work for you, your niche, or the video ideas that you want to make content on. But here's the thing, YouTube actually does work incredibly well if you do things the right way. But the problem is, you're doing a few things wrong. And these few things are costing you everything when it comes to your YouTube growth. So today, I'm going to be breaking down five deadly mistakes that small YouTubers make every single day. And these are the exact same mistakes that I see over and over and over again. And I'm going to show you real examples of creators who fixed these mistakes, how they went from zero views to thousands of views consistently, sometimes much more than that, and how you can avoid these mistakes starting right now today. By the end of this video, you'll know exactly what's holding you back, and more importantly, you'll know exactly how to fix it fast. So, if you like this type of content, gently tap that like button, and let's jump into it right now. All right. Mistake number one is that people treat YouTube like social media, right? So they treat it the same way they would treat Tik Tok or Instagram or X, right? So they might post casual rants or diary style vlogs. Then they expect growth, but it never comes. And here's the reality about YouTube that changes everything. YouTube is not a social media platform, or at least it's not a pure social media platform. YouTube is the world's number two search engine right after Google. And guess who owns YouTube? Well, Google owns YouTube. And that means that videos that are clear and searchable get recommended more often. Videos that provide value are the ones that blow up. Aka videos that solve people's problems because typically when you go to search for something, you are looking for a solution to your problem. You're not necessarily just mindlessly scrolling. And when you do that, Google and YouTube knows and they share data with each other. So, even if you just search something on Google, once you go to YouTube, Google knows that you're interested in that topic and they're going to serve you videos related to the topic. And specifically, YouTube is valuable because of its long- form video. In fact, when it comes to long- form video, YouTube even passed up Netflix as the leading video streaming service. So, here's the lesson for understanding how YouTube actually works. Think like a publisher, not like a social media poster. Every video should have a clear purpose before you film it. and ask yourself who is this video for exactly and ask yourself why would they click on this video and then ask yourself why would they stay and watch till the end and then finally you want to ask yourself why would some of them end up buying my products or services that I'm offering on my channel make sure you answer those questions before you upload anything to YouTube and also make sure you understand that YouTube is not a pure search engine and it's also not a social media platform it is both and that is what makes YouTube fundamentally different and honestly a lot better than any other platform out there. So, one thing that I almost always like to tell people is to make educational content, meaning make content that solves people's problems. Now, this is not to say that you can't make entertaining content. Lots of educational content out there is entertaining. Just as an example, Scotty Kilmer, he's a very funny and entertaining YouTube mechanic that teaches you how to fix your car, how to maintain your car, how to buy a better car so you don't have to do the first two. and he is super funny and super entertaining while he's doing it. Now, the next dumb thing I've seen people do is running a car out of gas. So, he is making educational content. He is solving people's problems, but he's doing it in an entertaining way. Now, by the way, before we get to tip number two, which is going to be very controversial, I have a free workshop this Tuesday, 9:00 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. All right, guys. in the editing process right now. And I just wanted to mention that if you're struggling to grow on YouTube, you're having trouble getting views, subscribers, making money, or even picking a niche. I'm going to be hosting a free one-time live workshop that goes over exactly how to help with that make money with YouTube 2026 secrets. So, make sure to mark that down and also make sure to click the link in the description and the pin comment below so you don't miss out. And if you attend live, you'll also have a chance to be the one person I pick for a realtime channel audit once we move into the interactive portion of the workshop. And if you feel unsure about what niche to choose or you're worried that your niche might be too broad or it's not profitable enough, then this workshop is for you because I'll be giving away the niche validator pro completely free. This is the latest and most optimized version of my GPT powered niche validation tool. And it helps you instantly test and uncover profitable YouTube niches before you waste time creating content that doesn't bring in leads, sales, or money. It's smarter, faster, and trained on even more data from real profitable channels. And I'll be giving it away completely free, but only at this live workshop. And just a heads up, this might be one of the last times I give this tool away for free because I'm planning on making it into a actual software. So, if you've been on the fence, this is definitely a good time to pick it up. Now, during the workshop, there's a full presentation on how to grow on YouTube, followed by a Q&A where you can ask me questions directly on Zoom. And people do ask a lot of questions, the majority of the time about niche, and many people walk away with niche clarity during the session itself. And the same strategies I teach are the ones that help clients like Nicole, who went from 85 subscribers to $85,000 in a single month. Seth, who went from years without a viral video to immediately getting 300,000 views right after starting working with us, or Davis, who scaled from a 100K a month and was able to remove himself from recording. And even people who aren't clients, like Isaiah, were able to make $20,000 only using the free content and live workshop strategies. So, make sure you show up, click the link in the description or the pin comment to register, and add it to your calendar so you don't miss the chance to grab the niche validator AI. And if you miss the date, that's okay. Check the link still to see when the next workshop is happening or to sign up to a list that will tell you when the next one does. So, see you Tuesday at 9:00 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. Now, back to the video. Okay, mistake number four is following random YouTube gurus. Now, what exactly do I mean by this? Well, what I mean is if you want to create a gaming YouTube channel, you should follow people that give advice on how to grow a gaming YouTube channel. If you want to create a prank channel or some sort of challenge type video channel, you should follow the advice of people who make that kind of entertainment content. Because the truth is, if you're following random YouTube advice, the stuff that works for some types of content doesn't necessarily work for all content. And if I'm being completely honest, a lot of YouTube gurus really aren't that good in the first place. But of the ones that are good, oftentimes they mean the best, but they're giving advice for very specific types of content creation. And so, just as an example, my sort of YouTube niche is teaching people how to make content that solves people's problems and therefore is much easier to monetize. Just as an example, most entertainment channels make maybe $2 to5 per 1,000 views. Most education channels make $10 to $20 per 1,000 views. This channel makes $20 just from AdSense alone per 1,000 views. And overall, it makes $300 to $500 per 1,000 views. So, I'm making 40 times more money with this channel with proper monetization than I make just from the ads that show up on my channel. And that is because I make content the right way. I don't need to get a ton of views to make a ton of money. And that is the way I teach people how to do YouTube. And a lot of people have come to me and they're transitioning from either entertainment content or mass market kind of education content or faceless channels etc. where they're having a ton of problems actually making money. Some of them are getting views, many of them aren't getting views, but some of them are getting views but they're not making money. Others aren't getting views and they need help getting views but they want to do it in such a way where it's sustainable and they can actually make money with a smaller channel. And that is exactly what I teach them how to do. Right? So, that's the main thing I teach is actually making your passion, your hobby, your channel, your niche sustainable by being able to make a full-time income from it even with a smaller channel. And that's exactly what I've helped literally hundreds of people do. And you just scroll down, you're going to see basically an endless page of people that have gotten results and have been able to make a full-time income from YouTube. And many of them are making six, seven, even eight figures a year. And I've even worked with nine and 10 figureure companies on their social media and YouTube strategies. And I'm doing a completely free training this Tuesday, 9:00 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. It's a totally free workshop. Click the link in the description, the pin comment below. Then after the workshop, I will be answering any question that you have about YouTube. Now, by the way, when it comes to following random gurus, I just want to tell you like a little bit of a cautionary story. My brother Zach, who we actually started off on YouTube less than a year ago, was doing amazing right when we started him off. And less than a month later, he was making $214 in a single day. But then he started randomly watching some of these YouTube gurus. And one of them told him that he should turn on what's known as player for education. And he turned this setting on and it absolutely crashed his channel. Now, maybe this will change in the future, but at the time, Player for Education setting is meant for classroom videos only. So, it's designed for teachers showing videos to students in school. And when you turn this on, it drops your AdSense revenue and it makes it less attractive to promote your video because the YouTube algorithm thinks that your video might be intended for younger people and therefore there's going to be a lot more advertiser scrutiny. And so whether YouTube or that other YouTube guru intended to do this or not, they caused my brother's AdSense to absolutely drop and his views to drop as well. And by the way, we were able to recover my brother Zach's YouTube channel. Uh he's still absolutely crushing it. Last time I checked in with him, he was making over $500 in a single day from AdSense. He's also making money from like affiliate marketing and all that kind of thing. And by the way, he might actually show up to the training Time. So click the link in the description, the pin comment below to check that out. The very least, you'll see an update from him. Now, here's the lesson from all this one. Make sure you're following someone who's actually good at what they do. Most YouTube gurus out there have never grown a channel outside of the channel that they grew by talking about how to grow on YouTube. So, it's kind of like coaches coaching coaches to coach coaches. So, they're basically learning as they do it. And two, when you do listen to a YouTube guru, make sure they're giving you advice for the type of content you want to make. For instance, I would never tell people how to make challenge videos. You should probably listen to somebody like Mr. Beast on how to do that. Same thing goes with gaming videos. I don't really make gaming videos. What I do is I teach people how to make sustainable YouTube channels where they're solving other people's problems. They're making educational content that can be entertaining and they can make a full-time income even with a smaller channel. That is my thing. That's what I do. So, if you're interested in that type of content, then make sure you subscribe to the channel and keep watching the videos. And that brings us to the next mistake, which is trying to reinvent the wheel. So small creators think that they need to be completely different. They think they need to stand out from everyone else immediately. So they spend too much energy trying to invent something new. They try to create a brand new format or style. They try to talk about topics that nobody else has ever talked about. But here's the reality of growing a small channel. As a small channel, you need traction first before anything else. And proven formats and trending ideas show you what the audience wants. And reinventing the wheel works way better once you already have a massive following of people who know, like, and trust you, and they'll watch just about whatever you put out there. Because once you have a large following, they'll support your experiments. However, on the other end of the spectrum, the second most common mistake that people make is basically just blatantly copying big YouTubers. Now, this is also something that you shouldn't do. You shouldn't just blatantly copy big YouTubers, especially for the same exact reason, because big YouTubers have a big audience of people that know, like, and trust them, and that audience will watch their stuff whether or not it's good because they just like the person. So, what should you do instead? Well, let me show you an example. This guy made a video titled, "You've consumed enough, it's time to start creating." This video got hundreds of thousands of views despite the channel having only a few thousand subscribers. And all these creators took the same idea format. They added their unique voice and story to it. And they all got success with the same idea. So here's the lesson you need to take away. Don't be afraid to copy the homework at first. Find video ideas that are already working in your niche. Make sure these video ideas come from smaller channels, not big channels that already have a massive, you know, million subscriber audience or hundreds of thousands of subscribers audience. Then add your unique voice and perspective to those ideas. Then once you build an audience, you can innovate more. All right. So the next mistake is maybe the most common mistake that I see people make. Okay? And that is basically not being consistent. And another way of saying that is instead of coming up with excuses for why you can do something, you come up with excuses for why you can't do something. Now, one of the common ways that people do this, a lot of people that I see do this, is they think that they need fancy gear before they can start on YouTube. So, a fancy camera, fancy lens, really good lighting, an amazing set, amazing studio, a way better mic, soundproof panels, or whatever other excuse they come up with. The point is in many cases people's brains will literally come up with any excuse possible to stop them from taking action and being consistent. Like your brain can literally be a genius at coming up with excuses for why you can't do something. For instance, another really common one is editing, right? Oh, your videos aren't doing well because you aren't editing well enough. So, you have to learn how to edit better. Well, I'm here to tell you that editing makes such a tiny little difference in the video's chances of success. Really, it doesn't make much of a difference at all. So, if you're spending 20 hours editing or if you're spending 20 hours writing your script for a video, it makes very little success. And chances are, again, you're coming up with excuses for why you can't do something instead of coming up with excuses for why you can't. Let me give you an example. This lady right here, Emy's Existential Zone, posted this video right here. Stop avoiding what you fear and practice existential courage. Now, Emmy is obviously an older lady. She's probably not super tech-savvy. She probably doesn't know that much about YouTube when it comes to making thumbnails or editing or anything like that. But guess what she did? She came up with an excuse for why she could do something. She recorded this video right here with a smartphone. That's it. That's all she had to do is just like record the video with the phone just like this. Like imagine this is my phone. It's not, but imagine this is my phone. Just like that. The video had zero cuts, zero edits, no thumbnail. And the title was relatively simple. Stop avoiding what you fear and practice existential courage. Oh, and it was also 3 minutes, very short video. And that video blew up and got over a million views and made her channel blow up. Enjoy the sense of freedom in life. This is an example of somebody coming up with excuses for why they can do something, not excuses for why they can't. This video probably took her about 10 minutes of total effort to make and it got her over a million views. Whereas, I see people that will spend 40 hours on a video and then they post it and it doesn't do very well. I will see people that will delay starting their channel for months or even years because they haven't picked the right niche. or they'll delay uploading a video for months or even years in some cases because they think that they need a better camera or a better lens or a better this or a better that. Please stop doing this. Stop coming up with excuses for why you can't do something. Stop coming up with excuses for why you can't upload a video. Stop coming up with excuses for why you can't be consistent. And instead, come up with excuses for why you can be consistent. Like for instance, let's just say you had a meeting at work and that meeting got cancelled. Maybe you have time to write a script for a YouTube video or maybe you have time to pick out a YouTube video or maybe you even have time to record a YouTube video during that time. Let's just say you find yourself with a little bit of free time in the evening. Record a YouTube video. Let's just say you have long lunches at work and they're not that productive and you're kind of just eating and not getting anything done. Record a YouTube video. Let's just say you walk your dog in the field every single morning. Kind of like what Emy's doing here. I don't know if she's walking her dog, but she's in a field. Record a YouTube video. Let's just say you drive to work every single morning. As long as you're driving safely, record a YouTube video. Oh, yeah. That's exactly what this guy did right here. Steven Nin, FarmD, MPH. He drives to work every single morning. And often times, he will record a video and upload it to YouTube. And in many cases, those are related to the pharmacy profession or they're related to real estate. There's a huge demand for pharmacists, and it shows because so many pharmacy schools opened up in California specifically. and he's been able to build a really good following because of this. So yeah, like I said, please start coming up with excuses for why you can do something. Don't be a perfectionist. Don't be a completionist. Just good enough is good enough. You're going to win or you're going to learn. And learning is always winning. So as long as you're taking action, you are winning. Internalize this. Understand this on a deep level. And I guarantee it's just a matter of time before you're going to be successful. And by the way, I'm going to show you so many examples of people that have been able to overcome this in the live training this Tuesday, 9:00 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. Click the link in the description and the pin comment below to check that out. Also, I'll be able to answer any questions you have, and I've heard the same questions over and over again. So, it'll be easy for me to help you overcome these things. So, do not miss out on it. Tuesday, 9:00 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. Look forward to seeing you there. All right. So, the last mistake that I see people having over and over again is having the wrong mindset. So, one of the reasons that people don't have the right mindset is because they don't have a proven repeatable system, right? You need a process, a system that you trust in that you know with nearly 100% certainty is going to get you results. It's just a matter of time. Once you have that, the mindset stuff kind of takes care of itself. Now, some people are a little bit more emotional and some people are a little more logical, right? So for the logical ones, you need to understand on a logical level that the system that you're using for YouTube is going to work eventually, right? It might be the first video, it might be the 10th or the 20th or the 30th or the 50th or the 100th, but you know that if you follow the process, eventually you're going to have a video take off. And when you have that video take off, it's probably going to send a lot of views to your older videos. And also, when you have that video take off, you're going to build this new audience. You can make similar videos for them, and that's just going to blow your channel up. So you need to know that on a logical level. And I'm just going to tell you right now, if you are trying YouTube from scratch and let's just say you're the average person, right? If you're average and you really don't know what you're doing, but you're also, you know, pretty smart. So let's just say you're 50th percentile. You're exactly average, it's probably going to take you 100 videos or more to have success on YouTube. Now, if you use a good, proven, predictable system, it will likely take you less than 30 videos to have success. For my brother, it was literally his very first video that blew up. For many clients I've worked with, it might be the fifth or the 10th or the 15th, the 20th, the 30th, etc. But most of them, when they're following the system, when they're following this method, they blow up within their first 30 videos. And they do those videos a lot faster than if they were just doing them on their own. So you can almost think about this like rolling a dice. You could be rolling a hundsided die or dice, whatever. And if you don't know what you're doing, that's probably what you're going to be doing, right? You're going to be rolling aundsided dice. So it could take you a 100 times, but it could also take you a lot more than that. It could take you 200 or 300 for you to hit number one, which is a video blowing up. Then let's say if you really know what you're doing and you're following the right system and you're following it the way it's supposed to be done, you're rolling a six-sided die. So that means you still need to hit one, but you could hit it the first time, the sixth time, the 10th time, the 20th, etc. But it's just a matter of time before you hit that one. So deeply understanding on a logical level that if you are following the right system, you will get results is the first step of having the right mindset. That's the logical side of things. But then the second step is the emotional side of things. Because a lot of people will get really hyped up. They know that they have a good system, but then you know they'll post their first five videos or they post their first 10 videos, they don't have success yet, and then the emotions start coming in. They start getting frustrated. They start getting sad or angry. And the emotions start coming in. And a lot of the time, especially if you have this mindset of you need to get results right away, this is what's going to stop you from being successful. So what I recommend paradoxically is to expect it to take over a 100red videos even if it only takes one. This is exactly what I did when I started my YouTube channel. This is the mindset that I had. I literally had the mindset that I am going to try to make this YouTube channel work for 10 years and if it doesn't work after 10 years, then I'll finally be allowed to give up on it. But I am going to consistently post for 10 years come hell or high water and I'm going to make it work. And only after 10 years do I have the permission to stop trying. And paradoxically because of the fact that I had such a long horizon and I was thinking about it in a such a long period of time I was able to get results very quickly almost right away. And that's because I didn't have a lot of emotional conflict of me uploading a video and then getting super disappointed when it doesn't immediately do well. I knew that it was all going to be a learning experience. And if one of my first 10 videos I upload and it happens to do well, that's just extra credit. I expected to upload hundreds of videos before one of them did well. And this is the mindset that I want you to have. I want you to have a long-term mindset, but in the back of your mind, know that there's a very good chance that one of your first few videos or 10 or 20 videos is going to blow up. And honestly, there's a lot more to this mindset stuff, but the mindset of a winning YouTuber, of a successful YouTuber, is almost always different than the mindset of an unsuccessful YouTuber. And that's something I'm also going to be going into in the live training this Tuesday, 9:00 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. Click that link in the description in the pin comment below. And honestly, mindset might not be the thing that you want to hear about, but it might be literally the most important thing. And this is whether you're a beginner, uh you've already had some success on YouTube, you're a business owner who's trying to start on YouTube, basically anybody. Mindset is still incredibly important. Mindset is something that I have to remind myself of as well. Here is a video from someone that we worked with recently and we helped them absolutely blow up their channel and their business. And you can check that out by clicking right here.