What ACTUALLY Works for Small Channels in 2026 transcript

There are three common mistakes that are probably destroying your YouTube channel if you're a smaller creator and you're just struggling to get views. In this video, I'm going to tell you what they are and how to fix them. My name is Gabe Bolt and for the past 7 years, I have been a long- form creator on YouTube and I've been able to grow my channel past 600,000 subscribers. And I've also helped a lot of smaller creators who were really stuck in this place where they're putting a lot of effort to get videos.

They're think they're doing everything right. And then with just a few small changes, they're able to actually see impact with the same amount of work. It's just a few slight tweaks. And I just want to save you the headache and tell you what those are. First of all, there is a lot of competition when it comes to YouTube. Like the chances of your video getting seen are like 0.00001%. Like there's so much content being uploaded every day, it's really hard to find like a droplet in the ocean.

So, you really have a higher chance of getting discovered if you understand kind of a little bit about how the algorithm and just like people's viewerships in general work and a little bit of their psychology. So, I want to start off talking about impressions. When you open up your YouTube studio and you look in the analytics, you're going to see impressions. Now, an impression is when somebody sees your thumbnail. They don't click on it.

They just see your face. We look on my main channel. That has been 7 million people in the past month. And lifetime of the channel, it's 555 million people have seen my face. That's a lot. My goodness. Now, the goal is to get somebody from just seeing your face for like a split second to actually clicking on the video and watching you for 10 minutes or however long you're talking. But the thing is, if they don't find your thumbnail catchy in some way, then all of the effort you put into coming up with a name, making a banner, making a YouTube video, the the shots, the editing, the music, all the stuff that you put in literally does not matter if you cannot earn the click.

And that brings us to the first mistake that a lot of small creators make is not spending enough time on the titles and the thumbnails, the packaging of your video. As a creators, we put our heart and souls into videos. We'll think about ideas. We'll we'll get ideas in the shower. or we'll write them down like, "Oh, this would be so cool if I got the shot like this." We put all this effort into making the piece of art itself, which is the video.

And then a lot of us neglect the thumbnail. We put it up afterwards. We don't even really think about it all that much. If you audit your time, and I have a free auditing tool down below where you can see how long you spend on everything, I'm going to guess for you it's like 5 to 10 minutes. If it's wrong, let me know after you've completed that. But normally, like I would spend 8 hours editing a video, a couple hours shooting it, couple hours writing and coming up with an idea.

So like you know 10 15 hours in at that point and then it would probably be 10 to 20 minutes on title and thumbnail and that was about it. And in reality you're simply wasting all that hard work and you have almost no chance of success if you do not really prioritize title and thumbnail over pretty much everything else. You're almost guaranteed failure. And while I am definitely not perfect here. This took me years to find out where I was doing that.

I was putting all this effort in and I just never ever thought of the title and thumbnail. And it wasn't until I started taking that seriously that my channel started to succeed. So, the first thing that you can do is start planning your title and thumbnail before you ever write or shoot your video. And just a couple of rules for thumbnails real quick. If I were to show you this thumbnail and this thumbnail, which one would you click on?

This one, right? But why is that? Well, first of all, you can tell a little bit about what I'm doing. It's a clear, appealing picture. You can also read the text and it's simple to understand. Whereas in the other picture, you can't even tell what's going on. You can't really read the text. Simplicity is actually key. You want to have like three elements of your thumbnail where for me I have like me as a person and then like some type of comparison or some type of words and generally those words are only like 3 to five words long.

As short as possible is generally ideal because people when you think about it are scrolling through and they're hardly even seeing your thumbnail. So you have to spark that curiosity within like a quarter of a second. In order to do that it needs to be clear and simple and easy for people to understand. So take an example of a title. This was lessons from Rich Dad Poor Dad that we all missed. So, first of all, I had rich on the bad car and then poor on the good car.

It's very easy to understand what's going on in this thumbnail, but it does make people curious of why the expensive car is on the poor side and why the cheap car is on the rich side. And the only way to find out why I put it that way is to watch the video. And then also saying lessons from Rich Dad Poor Dad we all missed. Well, even if you've read Rich Dad Poor Dad, you might still be intrigued and and wonder which ones that you did miss. and I was able to get the keywords in there and just kind of keep it clear and simple as possible.

Another one was how to actually get ahead of 99% of people financially. Again, this sparks curiosity cuz a lot of us do want to be better than everybody else financially and you're curious about what that thing is that you have to do different in order to get there because you realize that what you're doing is not working and this is just very basic to understand. And the same thing with the thumbnail on this where you see everybody else and then you see that person in a color and this really intrigues you on to what everybody is doing that again you are kind of doing wrong.

And another one of my favorites is 12 middle- class money habits that are keeping you poor. A lot of people in the US are middle class and you kind of wonder what are those common things that you're doing that are making you struggle financially. And then also the thumbnail here is just a very basic picture of me with sad with boxes. You understand probably bought something whatever. And then 78% can't do this. Well, what is it that 78% can't do?

It's purposefully slightly vague. And then also four words or three words in a number. And and that is on purpose to keep it simple and spark intrigue. So that's one. And then let's say you got an impression, people are scrolling through. You finally earned the click cuz they're curious about the video. Now they're watching the video. Where are you failing? Well, probably 30 to 40% of your viewers are clicking off within the first 30 seconds.

This is the steepest graph that you're going to see on YouTube. and your main goal with a video. First, earn the click cuz it doesn't matter what your video is like if nobody clicks on it. Second of all, hold that number. Hold the line as much as you possibly can because if you can get them past that like 30 seconds to a minute mark, you got them for most of the rest of the video. There'll be a slight trickle off, but for the most part, depending on how that first 15, 30, 45 seconds of the video is, that's going to determine if your video is a success or not after you earn that click.

Then you can kind of analyze, was it title and thumbnail issue or was it video issue based on this? So, if we know that that is where we lose most people, then this is where a lot of small creators struggle. They don't put enough effort into the intro and the hook of their video, that first 30 seconds. They put a lot of thought into the overall video, maybe even the idea, but they don't work on the packaging and they don't work on that hook and intro enough.

The one thing that I really hate is an intro that's like 2 minutes long. They're just rambling on and on and on. or you click on the video and they're talking about something that's not super related to the video or it's just not intriguing. There's no text, there's no cuts, there's no nothing and it's just like a very basic plain simple shot with no intrigue. So before ever shooting your video, never just sit down and start talking.

You should really think about the intro of your video and if this is going to be intriguing enough to get somebody who's like just clicked on it to actually commit and watch that video because once they're here, you pretty much have them. if they're still here, which is the first 5, 10, 15, 20 seconds, you haven't earned it yet. Again, it doesn't matter how good the rest of the video is if they don't get to see it. So, when you're thinking about this, first of all, don't say like, "Hi, my name is Gabe Bolt.

Welcome to my channel. Today, I'm with my dog Scruffy here. Man, I like this coffee." All right, here we go. Okay, let's jump into it, guys. Like, okay, you lost me at the beginning or I skipped through. Sometimes you might see some really large creators do that because they have such a fan base that they could literally just upload a black screen and get a million views. you are not them and therefore you have to respect the time of your viewer.

So kind of ask yourself what benefit will my audience get from this video. So to kind of make this easier to understand I broke this up into three sections. First of all you want to validate the click. So you want to kind of like reassure them that what they clicked on that video for they are going to get. You see Mr. Beast do this a lot where he'll be like smashing this car and then immediately he's like I'm about to smash this car.

And it's just validating and kind of reaffirming what the person clicked on that they're going to get what you promised them. So, like even at the beginning of this video, I kind of said, you know, there are three common mistakes that are probably holding you back. And I'm also kind of promising that I know the solution to those. And I also gave myself credibility because I've been doing this for 7 years and I've helped hundreds of creators grow their channels.

So, that's why you should listen to me. And that's the second point to give yourself credibility cuz ultimately, especially if you're teaching something, why should somebody listen to you over anybody else when they have the option between you and somebody with 3 million subscribers who's written a book on the subject? Why should they listen to you? A lot of times it's not because you've written a book. It's because you're going through it personally.

You can relate to them better. And that's actually a lot of times better than some multi-millionaire with a book deal who's traveling around constantly. Instead, you're just a normal person who's struggling, who's sharing, is being vulnerable, whatever. You learned it last week. All of those things are are totally good, but you need to share why somebody should bother listening to you. To go back to mine, I I mentioned that I had 600,000 subscribers and I've been doing it for multiple years, helped hundreds of creators.

All that is just proof that I know what I'm talking about. By the way, if you want to take this more in depth, I have a 7-day free miniourse you can check out down below. It's really helpful. Actually, a lot of sick people have said they got more out of that than courses that they paid for. So, maybe I should charge for it, but well, it's still free. Check it out. There's a link down below. And then the last part of the intro is to tease the solution.

So, you affirmed what they're going to get. You told them why they should listen to you. And then again, you're going to tease that solution that they can only get through watching the entire video. Because you don't know, the third mistake might be the one that is holding your channel back. It's hard to tell unless you watch find out what the third mistake is. Now, this one might not be your favorite thing in the world to hear.

I understand that a lot of us start YouTube channel to make money or at least some type of business or or, you know, get famous for some people. As an introvert, that was definitely not my goal. But I think the third biggest mistake is actually obsessing about the wrong numbers. It's really frustrating when you put a lot of work into a YouTube video and it doesn't really get many views. You don't have that many subscribers.

Maybe you feel like your content is good enough. uh it's as good as the bigger people, but you're just not doing it and you're shadowbanned and the algorithm hates you and all this different stuff which I hear constantly. But I also want to tell you that if you only focus on numbers, it's probably just not going to happen for you. Especially metrics like subscribers, even views occasionally, most of the people who I know who are actually successful on YouTube, it's actually because they are very, very passionate about what they do and therefore they can do it for a long time. because there's going to be times where it's incredibly hard where you're putting in work and you're just not getting views, you're not getting subscribers, you're just not getting any reward for your hard work.

And I kind of look at this like compound interest or starting up some type of passive income, right? So if you look at compound interest, you put a lot of money in up front and then eventually that money grows and it compounds on itself and the the growth becomes exponential, right? Same thing with like maybe passive income, which there's very few things that are passive by the way. YouTube is not passive unless you stop posting in which case your income mostly goes away unless you've built funnels which is a whole another story.

But for the first three years when I started on YouTube, I lost money. And if my only goal was to gain subscribers, then during the 6 months where I lost subscribers every time I posted a video, I would have quit if that was my goal. If my goal was to get views, during that 6 months, I didn't get any views. I was like they they were just going down. And this happens every single year on YouTube. you have some great months followed by some months that are like a quarter of what the other ones were.

And that's just the cycle of YouTube. And if you're super attached to just the views, just chasing, you know, subscribers, just that side of things, you're probably going to burn out before too long. But if you are passionate, this is what you believe, this is what you love to do, and you have the work ethic into looking at the correct numbers, which is the click-through rate, average view duration, that type of stuff, and you're, you know, getting feedback off of that, then you have that power to kind of keep going because you're enjoying the process and you're learning from it.

But if you're just checking your YouTube studio every day like, "Oh, I got three views today. Oh, I got six views today. Oh, I got a new subscriber." It does not matter. Especially if you're a smaller channel, I just want to tell you this, not going to be fun. I have a channel with 300 subscribers, so I feel like I'm a good person to say this. It doesn't matter. I don't look at the subscriber count. I don't care because what's going to take you from 20 subscribers to enough to actually like make a living and do stuff like that is not five subscribers.

It's not three subscribers in a day. It's not 100 subscribers in a day. You're going to need to change things and do them for a long time. You're going to need a hundred videos over the course of the next 2 years. And that's where you're going to get growth. not from one video, even though it will be one video that makes a significant jump in your channel, but it's not going to be just that one. You need a follow-up to that.

You need a follow-up and a follow-up and a follow-up, follow-up, follow-up. As somebody with three separate channels that have videos with 100,000 plus views on them, I do not have YouTube Studios on my phone right now just because I get caught in this trap of checking analytics constantly and then my day will be worse if a video underperforms and I'll look at them like 15 times a day like I'm checking email. It's just a complete trap.

That is not what is important. What is important is like putting your best foot forward, actually making good videos, making good titles and thumbnails and all that type of stuff. Putting it out there, getting realistic feedback and moving on to the next thing and just keep your head away from everything else and don't get trapped in that because you'll get discouraged. You'll give up. You'll waste hundreds of hours and that's just a trap.

If you don't want to be trapped, you can subscribe to this channel. It's absolutely free and it makes me smile every time I see a subscriber. Just kidding. I don't see them, but I do uh see comments. I I read most of those. So, comment. You can also watch this video right here and I'll catch you next another