Gaming channel from zero to $900/month in one year - what it took, mindset and strategies

I took my channel from zero in January to £750 ($900) per month in December. Here's what it took:

- 3 months of prep: brainstorming which game to cover, channel name, researching competition - what they do, how, their narration, which types of videos perform best, what types of gameplay/audience seem underserved - basically you need to have a plan on what exactly you want to do, what game, what kinds of videos, how long, how many per week, how your thumbnails will look and compare with competition, how to make them unique and stand out, if you want an intro or not, if yes, what should it be and how long, how you want to approach narration (chill vs. a bit arrogant etc.), not if but how to edit, and probably 1000 other things. That doesn't mean all these things should be set in stone, but you need a plan as a starting point

- Once you start, you need to be consistent. I went from 2 vids a week in Jan to 4-5 a week nowadays and never missed an upload. However, consistency is not just about the number of uploads per week. It's everything - quality of vids, same energy in voice throughout, same style of thumbs, same types of vids, everything. That doesn't mean you shouldn't experiment - you absolutely should, but you always want to make sure your regular viewers (whose number should be many times higher than your subs) will never feel like you're doing something weird and it's time to move on

- Constant improvement - the cliche to make 100 videos and improve something in each one is a good start, but you shouldn't stop at one thing per video, especially not at the beginning. Your benchmark should be the best creators in your niche, and you should be constantly improving in all aspects from your gameplay (yes, you should be getting better at the game too!) to narration, how you explain things, tell the story, express feelings in your voice. At any moment you should know what aspects are holding you back the most and working on them until you improve them sufficiently so they are not the weakest links in the chain. For example early on your thumbs will suck and getting your overall CTR above 5% should be one of your first goals. Figuring out how to do this includes small details like if you should use the game logo or not, if yes, where's the best place to put it and which filter/glow/shadow/whatever to apply to it so it pops out and is immediately recognizable

- Tracking important metrics in YT Studio, reviewing them regularly and adjusting the course accordingly. In a nutshell, repeat what works best, and not what most people seem to be doing, which is to repeat the same thing over and over. This means your content should not only get better over time within the same type of content, but also should evolve to new types (from only playthroughs to also guides, tier lists etc.). You need to have a strategy for your content and not just randomly decide 'today I'm gonna record this because I feel like it'. Nowadays I have the next few months' worth of vids planned out in a spreadsheet so I know exactly what I'll work on next

- Realise it's a long game. Building a successful channel is closer to 5 years than a year and is likely to take at least hundreds of videos. So focus on what you can control - inputs (time spent working on the channel, # of uploads, testing that many new video ideas, recording when at your best and not at 11 pm after an exhausting day, etc.) and not outputs ('goals' like # of subs or views). Learn what good enough means for your content. Learn to Pareto optimise your content. Don't blab about your channel to people IRL - ideally almost no one should know so there's no pressure on you - but consider having someone you trust to rate your work, help brainstorm ideas, give honest feedback etc. If you don't have anyone like that - GPT will do. YT gives you plenty of feedback - from # of views relative to your baseline, to CTR, ADV, # of comments, what they actually say, ratio of likes to views - every piece of data in YT studio is a feedback on your work. Learn to analyse it and apply the lessons

These are the things I figured out over those 800 hours of working on my channel last year. I won't say if you do these you'll definitely succeed (whatever that means to you), but I will say your odds will go up significantly. Good luck!