How long it takes to get to 10K subs on YouTube

Here are some stats that people were sharing on Twitter about how long it took YouTube creators to get followers (averaged):

 1M - 3,873 videos

 100k - 1M: 1,171 videos 

 10k - 100k: 418 videos 

 1k - 10k: 151 videos

The problem with these stats is that they take into account all the channels on YouTube, and that’s around 37 million. Not everyone comes to YouTube to become a creator!

When you are serious about the channel, I would assume it take a lot less to build your initial audience. 

By serious I mean:

• Posting at least once a week for a year

• Talking about a niche topic, but presenting information as if the audience were 5th-graders

• Taking titles, thumbnails and optimization seriously

Here are some stats on how long it took me to grow with three of my channels.

(1) Marina Mogilko (Russian channel). Started in December 2014. Had no idea how YouTube worked. 

Took me over a year and 39 videos to get to 10K subs.

The market is also smaller because of the language.

(2) Linguamarina (teaching English in English). Started in February 2016. My fastest growing channel right now (growing by 80K subs monthly)

Key reasons for that:

• Big market

• Expertise

• RELATABILITY (!) - I am not a native-speaker and a lot of people tell me it’s easier for them to learn from me

• ‘Hacked’ the algorithm by using the right thumbnails and titles

(3) Silicon Valley Girl - the growth has been crazy at the beginning. I decided to start a channel with a video titled ‘Buying a Lamborghini after selling a company to Microsoft’ with me and a Lambo on the thumbnail. I knew it would work. It wasn’t me who sold the company, it was my friend Matt and it was his Lambo. The whole video was about him.

And wow! It took me just 14 days to reach 1000 subs and just 44 days and 4 videos to reach 10K subs.

Key reasons:

• Started with a clickbaity video (questionable approach since the audience wasn’t exactly entrepreneurs, an that was the goal for this channel initially)

• I had my social media to announce the first video on my new channel, in addition to that the algorithm recommended it to my existing followers

Optimizing for views with clickbait titles was a good start, but now I am looking to build a more engaged audience on that channel (will keep you updated on how it goes).

Key takeaways from all of the above:

• Make sure first videos are searchable (people are actually looking for things you film about), and clickbaity (‘Buying a Lamborghini after selling a company to Microsoft’ vs ‘A story of successful entrepreneur’)

• Aim for a bigger market, but start with niche videos (I started my channel about English language with videos about a language exam - TOEFL, that helped me build the initial audience)

• Learn how YouTube works, learn about SEO, thumbnails and titles. This will help you take advantage of the algorithm.

Join my Discord server to discuss!