Four Ways YouTube Beginners Can Get More Views
If you’re struggling with a small channel, low views, and few subscribers, you’re not alone. A big part of the problem is social proof: viewers tend to trust and click on channels that already look popular, which makes it harder for beginners to get a fair shot.
The good news: you don’t need a huge audience to start turning things around. Here are four practical strategies to gain initial traction and help YouTube send you more of the right viewers.
1Find and Embrace Your Unfair Advantage
Your unfair advantage is a unique trait, skill, experience, or circumstance that sets you apart and can’t be easily copied.
Channel what makes you different
Leaning into this unique angle through your content is one of the few ways to truly stand out. For example:
- A medical student sharing study techniques and productivity tips (like Ali Abdaal).
- An experienced accountant breaking down personal finance and tax strategies (like Nisha).
How to identify your edge
- Look at your background and experience – jobs, education, hobbies, or side projects.
- Leverage your natural strengths – maybe you’re funny, analytical, great at storytelling, or extremely organized.
- Use your personal story – challenges you’ve overcome, career switches, or unique life situations.
- Consider your resources and network – access to interesting places, people, or tools.
When you build your content around that unfair advantage, you stop competing with “every channel” and start owning a clear niche.
2Feed the Algorithm Better Data
YouTube works best for you when it knows who your videos are for and how people respond to them. Instead of posting 100 rushed uploads, aim for ~50 well-planned, tightly focused videos around your niche.
Optimize your video structure
- Use searchable titles, keywords, and tags so YouTube instantly understands your topic and ideal viewer.
- Keep your thumbnails and titles aligned with the actual content to avoid bounce and low retention.
To speed this up, you can use tools like the TunePocket YouTube Video Title Generator and YouTube Tags Generator to quickly test stronger, keyword-rich titles and tags before you upload.
Maximize retention
- Open with a strong hook that clearly promises a result or payoff.
- Keep your pacing tight – remove long intros, repeated points, and unnecessary tangents.
- Use stories, patterns, and visuals to keep people interested all the way through.
Encourage engagement
- Ask viewers specific questions instead of generic “comment below.”
- Invite likes, shares, and subs when it feels natural and tied to the value you just delivered.
Use Shorts to amplify good data
Clip the best moments from your long-form videos and repost them as Shorts. This lets you:
- Reach new viewers quickly.
- Send more positive signals (watch time, likes, subs) back to the same core topics.
3Upload Proven Winners
If a small channel keeps posting videos that get no views, the algorithm “learns” that viewers don’t respond to that channel – which can drag future uploads down too. To break this cycle, you need to publish more proven winners.
What are outliers?
Outliers are videos that performed far better than the creator’s usual view count or subscriber base. These are your best clues about what the audience and algorithm already like.
How to find outliers for free
- Subscribe to 10–15 channels in your niche.
- Visit each channel and sort recent videos (last 6 months) by popularity or manually compare view counts.
- Look for uploads that dramatically outperform the channel’s average.
Recreate, don’t copy
- Watch those videos carefully and note the topic, angle, title, and thumbnail.
- Ask why they worked: Was it a strong hook? A trending topic? A bold promise?
- Create your own version with your voice, your unfair advantage, and your audience in mind.
The goal is not to clone their content, but to ride the same proven demand with your own twist.
4Make Your Titles and Thumbnails Impossible to Ignore
On a crowded home feed, viewers see dozens of options in a split second. Your title and thumbnail must clearly outshine everything around them or they’ll simply be ignored.
A simple “stand-out” test
- Take a screenshot of your YouTube home feed.
- Take a screenshot of your channel page.
- In a tool like Canva, crop one of your videos (title + thumbnail) from the channel screenshot.
- Paste that cropped video over any slot on the home feed screenshot.
Now look at the image and ask honestly: does your video immediately stand out against everything around it? If not, viewers won’t pick it over stronger options.
You can use the TunePocket Title Generator to craft multiple title variations and test which one would draw your eye fastest in that mock feed.
Think of your data like a credit score
Your channel’s performance profile works a bit like a credit score:
- If you keep uploading weak, confusing, or misleading videos (bad data), your “score” drops. YouTube becomes less confident about recommending you.
- If you consistently publish clear, high-retention, well-targeted videos (good data), your “score” rises. YouTube is more willing to push your content to new viewers.
Instead of trying to game the algorithm, focus on feeding it better data: strong ideas, clean titles, clickable thumbnails, and videos that actually deliver on what they promise.
Do that consistently, and even a small channel can earn YouTube’s trust and start seeing steady growth in views and subscribers.
