
An honest, effective and efficient class.
A hidden menu of Youtuber I wish I had when I started six years ago.
Discusses:
SEO, thunbmail and title
Simple equipment that does the job right
Haste makes waste, and lots of them
Significant changes to Youtube happened on 2026. Notably:
1. The shorts format is becoming more and more prioritized and volume increases. However, it is much harder to monatize on shorts format.
2. Many channels with traditional PC format is reporting reduced visit
3. The number of ads in each seems to be increasing.
These all seem to suggest perhaps Youtube is changing in the age of AI, and it is important especially for new video makers.
After six years and over six channels, I had one video with 1.8 million views, and yet I still make zero view videos now and then. Let me share the real deal.
Use your human voice, tell a short and sweet lesson, and close. You don't need any fancy AI generative tools.
AI voice, still can be recognized as AI voice. Humans have made tremendous progress making AI sound very real. But it is still mechanical, and sometimes makes low level mistakes. This can make people instantly turn you off.
3 mental blocks.
People spend too much time fine tuning videos.
People don't spend enough time hand shake with Youtube.
People follow random ideas and don't know how to use official path.
People have some fantasy about "viral". They give up with it is not instantly viral.
Here is a website to check how much money a Youtuber you know really make.
socialblade.com
For example, here is one. The page screen shot is attached.
北美程序猿的生活's YouTube Statistics - Social Blade
https://socialblade.com/youtube/channel/UCY_3GT_YAhas2ZEFmhn8faQ
Make video.
Submit your video.
Market your video.
Stay for long.
too long and too short are both not good.
Youtube use automated recommendation. If you make a bad channel, start again. If you have views, try to grow it.
Comparison with regular job, rental business, Uber driving, and others.
Your personality counts.
Your clickability matters.
Your retention matters.
If you don't care, then you will have a small channel.
A "great video" will not get you exposure.
Exposing to the right people will get you exposure.
So, don't spend too much time making "fantastic" videos. No one will be impressed.
Make good enough ones and enter the application process.
•Your videos
•Your watchers
•Match makers
•
•Match makers test
Match makers give up
It evaluates you, test connections, find your niche
Nothing happens suddenly, even for good deserving videos.
You both wait for breakout moment
Step by step submission and tweaking.
People don't find you.
Unless Youtube shows impressions.
Impressions to views
views to subscribers
There is no humans in the loop. It is all computers figuring out through complex AI algorithms and matrix optimization.
It takes time, and it needs data.
If you publish a video in Chinese criticize the Chinese government, the Youtube won't know it should send recommendations to people who love to bitch about China. It does not even know what "China" is.
Timing is bigger than your talent.
Every great idea takes a long time to work.
You see many great videos and channels, but that is all results of disciplined hard work. Your idea is equally good - it would take time. Be patient.
Here are how youtube collects info about each video, and how you can improve quickly:
1. impression click through rate, you can improve with better thumbnails
2. Average view duration. You can improve with engaging materials.
3. Retention rate - what percentage of people view to the end. You can use retention hooks.
4. Drop rate. People drop after six seconds. Make sure there is a hook. A hook is something that pique the interests, sometimes shamelessly.
5. Like button.
6. Dislike button and percentage of people hitting the dislike button. I don't know how this number affects Youtube's impression of you.
7. Engagement such as comments. This typically happens after good match is found.
8. Subscription rate. To be honest, a "subscriber" is really not that important. Someone can still pass your future recommendations without unsubscribing.
Youtube knows, that of 1 million subscribers, about 1 person will buy something from you.
Your video won't be accidentally discovered.
It would not be "instantly loved".
You must must play the match maker. However, youtube algorithm does not even understand the difference of United States and China. They are all just "words" in a math algorithm.
So you must tell Youtube many times about who you are and what you do.
And Youtube must experiment with your videos.
If you don't have views, then no data, then no views. It is a death spiral for most videos.
Once I made a video about stock market behavior and the Youtube caught some keyword like "lac stock". It consistently draws a lot of people. But my next video is not about LAC STOCK.
A channel should not have unlimited number of videos.
A channel should have a theme.
If you can not do this, then people will be bored by your channel anyways.
•Thumb
•Hook
•Length
•Retention hook
•Contents and flow
Valuedelivery
At some point channels can not go on forever.
After your channel is there, it may not grow forever.
•Your audience base is small, and you can not be number 1
•You are not number one, period
You are often “mis understood” and burned reputation
Always catch waves.
Willing to be sensational under control.
If a channel is bad, it may not be worth keeping ... although the cost is low.
You see videos with 100K views in a day, but making one yourself is very hard. Here are some ideas that are hard for beginners.
•Contents tied to everyday and have no rebroadcast value
•Great historical contents that got moved from persons
•Too long that you need talent to sustain to end
•Too short that you do not accumulate view hours
•No channel is watched by all people all the time. The subscribe is only a “book mark”
What a newbie has to learn … but no one can teach.
It is after all, business, it is fighting. Everyone is cunning, including Youtube, your competitions hidden in shadows.
Ten steps and repeat
•Make ten videos
•Publish on weekly basis, at same time.
•Tell Youtube about you
•Wait for Youtube to find your audience
•Make your audience like your videos
•Improve fast: clickable, relatable, valuable
•
•Did the channel grow after 3 months?
•Do it organically, don’t tell anyone about it.
•Repeat
Steps by steps
•Think of a channel
•Plan a video: thumb, hook, value, retention, length, vlog or faceless, long or short format?
•Make a video
•Upload a video – unlisted, time, best chance to
•Watch feedback – if no review, you won’t get feedback …
•Zero view?
•Check: #, quality
•Make a couple
•Inject 1 short for five long ones
•Use promotion once
Make a safe channel with mediocre view counts, moderate length
Youtube runs on volume. If your channel does not have 200 views a day, it is not even there.
What it means is this. If your view is less than 200 a day, break it!
Here are reasons why it is low. It can only be one of these.
•Google does not know what you do
•Your test group feedback is bad
•Low retention, low click to impression rate
•Bad thumb, bad sound, bad delivery, bad value
•
•You publish videos too often
•You publish videos too infrequently
•Your subscribers won’t be there waiting for you
How first timers shoot themselves in foot
•Make something too long
•Advertise too much
•Never advertise
Anything that cause
- low click
- low retention
- early departure
will give Youtube wrong signals.
You don't need that long arm boom mic.
You don't need that fancy studio at home.
You don't even need a camera to have a working channel.
Everything you need is already in your computer.
Start experimenting.
What I use, after spending all the time:
a 4K vlog camera
a wired mic with USB C cable. Don't use the bluetooth.
Capcut (it has noise canceling, enhance sound, normalized sound). The narration function has echo reduction.
Powerpoint recording (it has recording function and export). Use capcut to fix the video after.
Ai features are growing rapidly. Learn them. Use them with common sense, but don't over use it.
AI can be used for:
1. giving you ideas that may sound interesting and good
2. make pictures and images
3. make videos
4. make narrations of videos
5. even automatically generate entire video from scratch.
However, AI generally has low quality. AI voice is still apparent, despite the progress made. AI can make mistakes. AI can give you suggestions for trends, but sometimes it is fake.
I used AI trends to make entire shorts video - and got exactly zero vices. The video is nice. But still.
Easiest Formats:
PPT talk, no face.
PPT talk, face.
Full entertainment with face (low editing)
Full entertainment, with a lot of editing
Use human voice or robot AI narration?
Look up good channels, find in description whether there are #
Type in #topic and see how many people follow
In Youtube video search bar, type in topics and get a list of auto completed suggestions
Repeat the SEO and tag word 3 times in your title at least. This will make sure Youtube knows.
Viewer count of videos does not grow monotonically. It is not really predictable. Sometimes you can use the following methods to try to light up the fire bigger:
1. Use promotion, moderately. It maybe ending up just a sugar high.
2. Use a short to spice up your channel
3. Change up on thumbnail and title for existing viceos.
Be sensational.
Be click bait.
But back it up ...
After Nanobanana you can try to use AI go generate thumbs for you. Try it.
Prompt it by saying something like what you want.
The following attached are made by AI GPT (capcut or nanobanana) in less than 2 minutes. They are better than my own work.
https://youtu.be/Q5-kOGAdBmI?si=xhVI_tnEuHcEfFdP
Do them all: good ideas, relate, bait
You may finish up your video on thursday afternoon, ready to go. But you know your viewers comes in droves after 5 pm on Friday eastern time. What do you do?
For the first ten videos, set your release time as scheduled. Experiment with them. Watch when the count becomes heaviest. You want to release just about 30 minutes before the peak time.
People on the east coast for example have time before they go to work, and after they are done working. Some even watch at 3 am in the morning.
Publish once a week as a new channel.
Too often, your videos will be skipped.
Too long hibernation, it may be forgotten by the algorithm.
In the AI era, there is no real "AI magic" that makes fool proof start or pool proof growth.
But the improvement to voice is what I care the most.
Everyone has talent, and everyone knows something others don't. Basically anyone can have a channel. However, you can only learn on your own and learn by active practicing.
•Get high quality but not perfection
•
•Ideas count … consistency counts more
•
•Like startup, most people fail. But that is OK.
•
•Be relatable.
•
•Make clickable.
You can have a financial education channel, or a funny cat bits channel. Which one will earn more for thousand views? which one will have more views?
•Don’t put in unrelated things
•Don’t woo unrelated audience
You are not learning how to chance on luck .. you are doing real business here.
A good name should instantly tell a stranger about something:
The outdoor boys.
The beast.
If people can not figure out what you do after 2 or 3 words, you have already failed.
People have bad memories. Make your name memorable. A good way to do this is
1. Repeat patter (tik tok)
2. Add letter "t", like "starwars", "tik tok"
Another trip, is to embedded your keyword in the title. Say "Liu Chinese School", and the keyword is "Chinese lessons". Or "Liu Chinese Lessons", with the keyword "Chinese lessons".
There are too many people with dedicated Youtube channels teaching - but they never teach you the core. They keep on giving you "top 13 list of common mistakes", and then ask you to subscript, like, and hit that bell button.
No you don't need Hollywood style scripts and image'sound.
No it is not SEO. It is just common sense and humbleness.
If you have to spend too much money just to start, don't. You don't need to do that.
Repeat what you want Youtube to know, 3 times.
Don't be afraid to be sensational. If you don't, no one will notice your good stuff.
Ironically, once you are a established vcannel you need to pay.
I have seen people stuck at certain viewship.
Catching wind is very important.
Future add
Equipment list
Viewer count of a channel to see historical trend
Ways to fix low view channels
Ways to fix low view videos - promotion
Topic on channel data
It's a campaign to get started
no such thing as viral
zero view zero worry
Build a channel with 200 views a week, confidently.
Start building and experimenting with 100-200 dollars minimal equipment.
Learn to confidently build a channel with steady views, on any topic!
Is AI your friend or foe in building a channel in 2026? Youtube is changing big time in 2026. Among the changes, two are noticable:
1. Shorts are becoming more dominant over horizontal formats
2. More advertising are being integrated into videos, often using AI features.
It is both opportunity and challenge.
How much money do Youtubes you know make? Check out our website link in Lecture 5. I include both website (no nonsense) and screenshots of Youtube sharing their income. The numbers are trustworthy.
I have been building channels for six years. Some video got 1.8 million views in one day, and it shocked me. Many times videos get zero views, and I no longer worry. I will show real stats, real screen captures, and real income figures. This class does not pretend to be guru master class that gives you instant six figure passive income over night. I will tell you what the real grind is like.
How is SEO totally disrupted and how to use it to your power?
Learn how to build multiple successful channels on Youtube and earn side income.
Welcome to Youtuber University 2026, where I show how everyone can have a 200 view/week channel and enjoy, rather than suffer in silence. My name is Dr. Chang Liu. I have spent 6 years living in Youtube world and learned through the many channels I built - some with modest success and some failures. Failures teach me more than success. One video got 1 million views - I will tell you what I learned.
I am just like everyone, except I really wanted to share and teach. I spend six years (including Covid years) building several channels. I learned everything on my own. When I listen to a Youtube tutorial, I feel a lot of them are just asking you to pay. I want to talk out my experience holistically and honestly.
I have a single video who made 1 million views in one day, but I also had channels that I built with passion receiving zero views in a month. I learn, I adjust. Eventually I figure out the name of the game. The things no one will teach you. Youtube won't teach you, because it does not care. It has so many contributors and 150 million videos in vault. Other Youtubers can not teach you, because unless you learn on your own, no one can correct you.
Many people can use a channel. It is good for boosting your confidence and sense of value. It is good for marketing. A teacher can build a channel to sell course. It is your voice and platform, if you have followers. You are not alone. You don't need to spend a lot of money!
Anyone who teaches you how to upload on the internet, how to make perfect videos, and to buy this and that software are all lying. Today, you can use basic equipment and no more cost than what you already have.
Significant changes to Youtube happened on 2026. Notably:
1. The shorts format is becoming more and more prioritized and volume increases. However, it is much harder to monatize on shorts format.
2. Many channels with traditional PC format is reporting reduced visit
3. The number of ads in each seems to be increasing.
These all seem to suggest perhaps Youtube is changing in the age of AI, and it is important especially for new video makers.