How To Get 1000 Subscribers On Youtube Fast

Getting your first 1000 subscribers is a very important milestone when it comes to joining the YouTube Partner Program to finally monetize your YouTube videos.

As with most things in life, getting your first 1,000 of anything is usually the most difficult part. The same is true on YouTube.

If you want to grow your YouTube channel fast, you have to hustle hard!

But you have to be smart about it too!

It's a lot more important WHO your subscribers are than the total number.

In this article, I am going to explore some of the best recommendations on how to get more subscribers on YouTube.

And then we're going to talk about YouTube strategies and tactics that actually work.

So buckle your seatbelt Dorothy, 'cause Kansas is going bye-bye! 😉

What doesn't work
- Don't buy YouTube subscribers
- Never join YouTube sub for sub groups
What you should do instead
- Pick a niche for your YouTube channel
- Optimize your videos for YouTube SEO
- Optimize your video titles, description, and tags
- Optimize your video subtitles
- Optimize for keyword cluster match
- Pass the YouTube channel relevancy pass
- Build your YouTube channel authority
- Maximize your video authority score
- Share exclusive content on YouTube that people can't get anywhere else
- Be the first to make a video about something
- Optimize your video call to action
  - How to promote your channel at the start of your videos
  - How to promote your channel at the end of your videos
- Share your videos far and wide
  - What to do, if you already have an audience.
  - What to do, if you don't have an audience yet.
- Build an email list
Conclusion

What doesn't work

If you google how to get YouTube subscribers, you'll see a lot of rubbish recommendations.

Buy subscribers. Join sub4sub groups. Spam random Facebook groups with your videos. Ask your mum to subscribe to your channel. The list goes on and on.

Most ideas are completely useless. Let's talk about why:

Don't buy YouTube subscribers

Some people have no patience. They want to have their cake and eat it, and they want it now!

These people always look for shortcuts to how they can *trick* the system.

And there are plenty of dubious websites that are offering online services to buy YouTube subscribers.

But is this a smart idea? 🤔

Hell no!

Here are some of the things that might happen, and that will happen!

YouTube might permanently ban you. YouTube doesn't allow anything that artificially increases the number of views, likes, comments, or subscribers. YouTube's Terms of Service state that "You are not allowed to cause or encourage any inaccurate measurements of genuine user engagement with the Service, including by paying people or providing them with incentives to increase a video's views, likes, or dislikes, or to increase a channel's subscribers, or otherwise manipulate metrics in any manner". Channels that don't follow this policy may be terminated and removed from YouTube. That's bye-bye monetization forever!
YouTube might deny your YouTube Partner Program application. Arguably not as bad as losing your YouTube account. But if your goal is to create a profitable YouTube business, you might just as well delete your channel yourself.
YouTube will not recommend your content to new viewers. Since your subscribers are not real, they're not watching any videos. If they do, they probably do so because someone bought views for their videos. Because there are no views or completely random, fake views, there are no patterns that would allow YouTube to recommend your content to similar subscribers.
You will not make any money on YouTube for the foreseeable future. Even if you got accepted into the YouTube Partner Program, you will not make any money. Why? Because you don't have any real subscribers who would watch your videos. Let's say you have 1,001 subscribers and 1,000 of them are fake. That means you only have 1 real subscriber. And how many hours of your content would they realistically watch, for you to earn money from your ads? Not many. You actually have to grow to at least 2,000 subscribers (1000 fake + 1000 real) to start earning money.

Never join YouTube sub for sub groups

One of the worst pieces of advice you could ever follow is to join "Sub For Sub" groups, sometimes also written as Sub4Sub.

The idea of these groups is simple. You get 1,000 YouTubers in one room. Each person will subscribe to every other channel. And as the result, 1,000 channels have 1,000 subscribers each.

That's the theory!

In reality, it works like this. Of the 1,000 YouTube channels, 999 or more are awful and create horrible content. That's why they don't get any subscribers.

If you followed all 1,000 channels, you wouldn't be able to enjoy YouTube anymore, because your entire video feed would be cluttered up with crappy videos.

For the same reason, you wouldn't get 1,000 subscribers back. Most of these channels will only temporarily subscribe to another channel and then unsubscribe an hour or a day later.

But the most important reason of all, YouTube will not give you any organic reach! Why? In YouTube's eyes, you would have 1,000 random strangers with no recognizable watch pattern.

Think of it like this... If you like to watch cooking videos. What do you do? You probably subscribe to a bunch of other cooking shows.

If you enjoyed 15 cooking shows, chances are you might also be interested in watching cooking show number 16. Because of that, YouTube will occasionally recommend similar channels that might be interesting to you.

With 1,000 random strangers who are interested in everything and nothing, there is no pattern. YouTube doesn't understand the common denominator, why all of them subscribed to you, so it wouldn't be able to recommend your channel and YouTube videos to people with similar tastes.

It's a million times more important to build a solid foundation, with like-minded subscribers and watchers for long-term growth.

What you should do instead

Now that we talked about all the things that you shouldn't do you might look at me, sigh and then ask me: "But Tim, there is nothing left! I am a lost cause! Maybe I should just delete my YouTube channel and do something productive with my life?!"

Hold your horses there, will ya?

It's not all doom and gloom!

In fact, there are so many strategies and tactics on how you can get your first 1,000 YouTube subscribers that are super effective.

And not only that, but they also work for your first 10,000 and 100,000 subscribers too. So once you understand them, you have all the tools you'll ever need to grow your YouTube channel to the sky and beyond!

Full disclaimer: This requires hard work and a good work ethic and won't happen overnight!

Pick a niche for your YouTube channel

The first thing that you want to do is to make a strategic decision about the positioning of your YouTube channel.

You might not realize this, but advertising on YouTube is a very complex machine.

Advertisers on YouTube have very clear ideas about whom they want to show their ads to. If you want to sell baby products via video ads, you want to show these to parents and soon-to-be parents.

How would YouTube know this? Because of the 100 baby videos, they watched last month!

That's one of the reasons, why it's so important to pick a niche for your channel. YouTube has to understand what your videos are all about.

Ideally, there should be a pattern. And they have to understand your viewers. If your channel's theme aligns matches one of your viewers' favorite themes, YouTube will start recommending your channel to others.

This way YouTube can then sell more targeted video ads!

Optimize your videos for YouTube SEO

So what's the solution?

The only reliable way for anyone to grow a small YouTube channel organically from 0 to 1,000 subscribers, is by optimizing your YouTube videos for YouTube search.

Let's have a look at how the YouTube search function works.

Simplified, there are 10 main components that YouTube uses to determine which videos are displayed in which order on the search results page.

Title (Check out this article on how I come up awesome title ideas for my own videos and this article on how I regularly optimize my YouTube titles on an ongoing basis.)
Description
Tags
Subtitles
Keyword cluster match
Channel relevancy match
Channel authority
Video authority
Exclusivity
Recency

Optimize your video titles, description, and tags

Let's say you search for how to make money on YouTube.

YouTube will take your search phrase and crunch it with their AI system in an effort to understand what the user is looking for.

Next YouTube will look through their vast database of millions of videos to find all the videos that are relevant for this particular search.

YouTube's number one goal at this stage is to make sure that each video that says it's a good match, is actually a good match.

Why wouldn't it, you might ask? And the answer, as most of the time, is because of spammers who are trying to game the system.

In the early days of YouTube, some clever people figured out, that they could use extremely clickbaity titles, that had nothing to do with what the video was all about.

This allowed them to trick people to click on their videos. And boom, they received thousands of views.

Imagine clicking on a video with the title "How to make anyone fall in love with you in three seconds or less" and then, finding something else entirely. Go on, click the link, and see what happens! I'll wait... 😉

That's kind of how it worked.

To prevent this, YouTube developed several algorithms to prevent this kind of mischievous behavior.

How does this work?

YouTube takes your search term and then compares it with various attributes of your video such as your video title, description, tags, and subtitles.

YouTube will not perform an exact match. It will use its AI to understand its meaning.

The following four search phrases might have identical search intent.

Making money on YouTube
Earning money on YouTube
How to make money on YouTube
How to make a living on YouTube

Similarly, if someone searched for phrase 1, a video with phrase 4 might be a perfect match.

I use TubeBuddy to find YouTube video titles ideas, descriptions, and tags. You can also check out my YouTube title optimization article for more details.

Optimize your video subtitles

Next, YouTube will compare your video titles, description, and tags with your video subtitles, to see if there is a match.

In order for this to work, you have to actually mention your intended keyword phrases throughout your video.

I recommend writing a cheat sheet for your next video and read it before you start filming. This way you'll remember to mention important keywords for your YouTube SEO efforts later.

YouTube automatically transcribes all of your videos with speech recognition software. This allows YouTube to identify, if your title, description, tags, and spoken words are in alignment.

The problem is that this doesn't work all the time. Especially, when your audio quality isn't great, YouTube will make transcription mistakes.

In the Best case, you're missing out on potential keyword matches, and you're getting less exposure in YouTube search.

The Worst case, YouTube accidentally believes that you're using unwanted phrases that might impact your ability to monetize your video such as curse words.

Because of that, I always create my own video transcriptions and upload them to YouTube.

My weapon of choice? Otter! It has an even better voice recognition algorithm baked in, and it is great at detecting sentences and punctuations.

I can upload the audio track of my video, or add the entire video. Within minutes Descript will create an almost perfect transcript if the audio quality is good. All I have to do is to read it, and correct the occasional word here and there.

Once I'm done, I copy the entire text and visit the subtitle section of my newly uploaded video. I select "Transcribe and auto-sync" and paste my transcript into the text field.

YouTube will now take each sentence and compare it with my audio file and align and match each of my sentences. I can't tell you how many hours this workflow has saved me over the years!

Optimize for keyword cluster match

YouTube will also take keyword proximity and cluster matches into consideration.

Huh? Cluster what?

Think of it this way. When you talk about "how to make pizzas", you'll typically mention the words "dough", "sauce" and "cheese".

That's a keyword cluster. When talking about "how to make pizzas", these are expected keywords. If they're missing, chances are high, that your video won't meet a viewer's expectations.

How does YouTube know which keywords form a keyword cluster?

By comparing thousands of their videos for a particular topic and searching for similarities.

How can you make sure that you pass the keyword cluster test?

By watching some of the best-ranking videos on the topic of your video.

Write down notes and identify important keywords that you might have missed in your video script. And then mention them in your video.

Still not sure how keyword clusters work?

Learn more in my article: The YouTube Content Cluster Strategy: Cracking the YouTube Algorithm.

Pass the YouTube channel relevancy pass

Besides the video itself, YouTube will also take the theme of your YouTube channel into consideration.

Do you regularly create videos about a specific topic or theme?

Do your channel description and tags contain some of the same keywords as your videos?

The more videos you make about a specific topic, the higher your topic authority. The lower the risk for YouTube to recommend videos of someone, who doesn't know what they're talking about.

Besides channel relevancy, you also have channel authority. That's your overall social proof on YouTube, so to speak.

If your video has a good track record in terms of engagement, YouTube is more likely to recommend your videos to new viewers, because they know that it's a low risk.

How do you get there? By consistently creating videos with a high-authority score.

Maximize your video authority score

When you're just starting out, your videos have no authority. In other words, YouTube doesn't know if your new video is any good and if people will like it.

The more time users spend watching your videos, the higher your video score.

A video with a proven track record in terms of watch time for a specific search phrase will rank higher in future searches.

The key is to be the first.

If your channel has no authority you'll have a tough time. YouTube will be reluctant to suggest your videos to new users because it doesn't know if it can trust you yet.

You have to earn this right first!

The best way to accomplish this is by having no competition in video searches. If your video is so unique, that nobody else has made a video about your topic in the past, YouTube might just as well recommend your video to a user. What do they have to lose?

That's why I am using TubeBuddy for all of my videos. It allows me to identify those keywords that users are actively searching for, but there is little to no competition when it comes to matching videos.

As more people watch your videos, YouTube will get more and more data points and learn who are the people who enjoy watching your videos.

This allows them to recommend future videos to similar people.

Be the first to make a video about something

Besides exclusivity, it's also important to take advantage of recency whenever possible.

In other words, be the first to make a video about something. If you're the only one talking about X, and there are thousands of people interested in X, you'll get a ton of free and relevant views and boost your YouTube watch time.

And what does this do?

It creates video authority! The next time someone searches for X, your video will show up at the top. Other creators have to work twice as hard to beat you.

I call this an unfair advantage! 🙂

Optimize your video call to action

To get to your first 1,000 subscribers fast, you can't just sit there and hope for the best.

Yes, some people will subscribe to your channel just because they enjoyed your videos.

But if you want to get more consistent results, faster, you have to remind them to subscribe to your channel!

I recommend picking either one of these strategies (or both if you want to be sure).

Promote your channel at the beginning of your videos.
Promote your video at the end of your videos.

How to promote your channel at the start of your videos

The logic is simple. Most videos lose the majority of viewers within the first minute.

That's just how it is.

People are often looking for something very specific, and if you don't give them the confidence within the first few seconds, that your video will be able to deliver, they'll click away.

How can you capture some of these people that will be gone at the beginning?

By giving them your 10-seconds elevator pitch right at the start!

Here is how you can do it.

Option 1: Skip on the intro music, most people don't care about it. For the first 10-15 seconds tell them what your video is all about and what tangible benefits they'll gain if they stick all the way till the end. Then give them your 10-15 seconds channel pitch. You might start with "If you're new to this channel, I make videos about ... If you want to learn how to ... make sure that you hit the subscribe button, so you don't miss my next video, where I talk about ...
Option 2: Give your 10-15 second video pitch why they should stay around and what they'll learn. Then deliver your first of several value bombs to prove to your viewer that you mean business. Then, remind them to subscribe to your channel. Ideally, mention a content upgrade that you'll cover in a future video, related to value bomb number 1.

How to promote your channel at the end of your videos

Always keep your best-kept secret till last. This will increase the overall watch time percentage of your video and will ensure that your videos will receive an extended organic reach on YouTube.

It also allows viewers to get to know you. If they only watch 60 seconds of you speaking, they might judge you too quickly. But if you get them to listen to your charming voice for 5 to 10 minutes, they get a much better idea of who you are.

Start your video with a big promise of why it's worth watching your video all the way till the end. Then deliver on your promise and share massive value bombs.

In your viewers' minds, you made a promise and you delivered on it. This allows them to trust you more.

Then at the end, when you ask them to subscribe, they're much more likely to listen to your recommendation.

I recommend two approaches on how to remind viewers to subscribe:

Option 1: Summarize what they learned. Then give them your 10-15 seconds channel pitch in the form of an IF question. Example: "If you want to learn more about X, Y, and Z (focus on attractive goals and tangible benefits) make sure that you hit the subscribe button and turn the notification bell on.
Option 2: Pre-plan your future videos. Then create a value bridge between your current video and a future video. Example: "If you enjoyed this video about X1, you'll love my next video about X2, where I share how to A, B, and C. If you want to get an email notification, once X2 is up, make sure that you hit the subscribe button and turn on the notification bell!"
This option is the most powerful way of asking viewers to subscribe to your channel. It uses your knowledge about your viewer against them and creates a very attractive value proposition! Now, how would you know what your viewers want?

Because they just watched your video all the way till the end! So they are very interested in your topic.

Just ask yourself.

If someone is interested in this topic, what else would they be interested in? Or what would be the logical next step?

And boom! There is a great video idea! And a powerful call to action to get viewers to subscribe to your YouTube channel.

Very early on in your YouTube career, YouTube doesn't have any data about you, your channel, and your video.

In other words, they don't know who would enjoy watching your video.

Now here is where sharing your videos comes in.

You can kick start YouTube's algorithm and give YouTube all the data points they need to understand who would love your videos by sharing them far and wide with your ideal audience.

So, how would that look like in practice?

There are two ways, depending on whether you already have an audience or not.

What to do, if you already have an audience.

In this case, you have an unfair advantage when it comes to building your YouTube channel. Good on you! 🙂

The way to share your videos is by using exclusivity.

One of the biggest mistakes, many content creators who already have audiences have, make is to share their content everywhere.

If you share your video both on Facebook and on YouTube, why would any Facebook user watch your video again on YouTube? It's extra work and most people prefer to stay in their favorite social media network.

The trick is to only share your video on YouTube and then "forcing" your Facebook fans to watch your video on YouTube because that's the only way to get your videos. If they want to see it, they have to click.

The second thing that you want to keep in mind when it comes to sharing is content types.

Most social media networks punish the sharing of external links with diminished organic reach.

Try to explore how you can use native content types to promote your videos and then share the video link in the description or pinned comment of your post.

What to do, if you don't have an audience yet.

The first thing that you want to do is to set yourself some ambitious goals to grow yourself an audience across all of social media. It will become an invaluable asset in the future.

Let's see what you can do without a fan base. There are two main strategies to follow. Utilizing other people's audiences. And using video ads.

Borrow someone else's community. For the first approach, you have to find online communities that already have an audience of your ideal audience. This could be a Facebook group, a Reddit Subreddit, or someone else's YouTube channel. Once you have compiled a list of suitable audiences, it's time to start engaging with your top community. I have created several videos about how to promote your YouTube videos on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter.
But here is the short form. Focus on building trust first! You can't just post your videos unless you want to get blocked and banished from the community immediately. That means engaging with other people for an extensive period of time.

Sharing exclusive, native content within the community that is not your own! Self-promotion will always get you into trouble. As you build a good reputation in the community, your trust increases, and moderators are getting more agreeable to sharing some of your own content.
Pay for video ads. This approach is not for everyone, but it can be very effective both to get your first 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 hours of video watch time. I recommend using a tool such as Viralstat. It allows you to quickly compile a list of similar YouTube videos that are already watched by people from your ideal audience. You would then film a short 10-60 seconds channel trailer, upload this to your YouTube channel as an unlisted video and then create a video ad campaign in Google Ads.
For placement, you upload the list of videos that you generated in Viralstat. This way you have laser-focused targeting and the probability that someone who is watching one of your competitors' video will react to your ad and subscribe to your channel is very high.

The key is to give YouTube enough data points to learn that viewers of your ideal audience are interested in your channel. Once that happens, your organic reach will grow massively.

Build an email list

What else can you do to get more subscribers faster? Making sure that your subscribers watch all of your future videos!

Now, here is the thing. Subscribing to your channel doesn't mean much when it comes to video notification.

Unless someone activates the notification bell, YouTube will take the "subscription status" just as an indicator of interest.

Imagine you subscribed to 1,000 channels. Which new videos would YouTube display at the top of the front page?

YouTube will try to figure out what kind of content someone has recently been watching, and if your video category doesn't match, you wouldn't show up.

The first way is to get people to activate the notification bell. The best way to do this is to remind your viewers to do so when you ask them to subscribe.

A much better and more reliable way is to get people on your email list.

This way you can send out an email whenever you upload a new video and don't have to rely on YouTube's notification bell. (Which has been known to fail sometimes)

I recommend signing up for a free ConvertKit account to build your email list. It's a very lightweight, yet powerful email marketing software with a ton of features, aimed at YouTube and other content creators.

If you cover more than one topic in your channel, try to set up a different sign-up form, so you can assign tags based on interest.

The best way to incentivize people to join your email list is by creating a lead magnet that's very valuable and highly related to the theme of your videos.

Conclusion

In summary, pick a narrow niche for your YouTube channel and stick with it. At least until you have your first 1,000 subscribers.

Optimize your videos for YouTube SEO with TubeBuddy.

Focus on title, description, and tags. (To learn more about TubeBuddy, read my in-depth TubeBuddy Review where I reveal how I used the tool to grow my YouTube channel from 0 to 3000 subscribers.)

Use Otter to create subtitles for each of your videos so YouTube can turn each of your videos into a full-text search engine.

To increase your overall YouTube channel authority score, think about niche-specific keywords as keyword clusters that span over every aspect of your video from title, description, tags, subtitles, to spoken words, all the way to the keyword density of related keywords across all the videos of your channel and your YouTube channel description.

Take advantage of the first-mover advantage and prioritize recency over quality if your channel focuses on time-sensitive and news content.

Always remember that people don't want to change.

Anything that's extra work will be avoided at all costs. If you want to move people from one platform to another, you have to give them an incentive.

For YouTube, exclusivity is the most powerful strategy to achieve this.

In order to get people to subscribe to your channel, you have to ask them to subscribe to your channel and turn the notification bell on.

I recommend either do this at the end or twice at the beginning and the end of your videos.

Don't rely on YouTube to notify your subscribers via email whenever a new video is out.

They might change that in the future. Instead, start your own email newsletter with ConvertKit and promote it with a very attractive lead magnet related to the niche of your YouTube channel.

Last but not least, share your videos in as many relevant places as possible. If you have a relevant audience, share it on your social media and email list.

If you are starting from scratch borrow other people's audiences without being spammy or promotional. In doubt, just pay for a video ad campaign to promote your channel.

Once you fulfill this YouTube monetization requirement of 1000 subscribers, up next is to clock up 4000 watch hours to be fully eligible for YouTube Partner Program.

If you want to learn more about YouTube, have a look at these articles: How to get more views for your YouTube videos, how to design click-worthy video thumbnails, how to increase your video click-through rate.

You can also read my in-depth TubeBuddy review to learn how I grew my channel from 0 to 3000 subscribers.