How To Grow On YouTube: Our Journey

When we entered the YouTube cruise arena in October 2015, I could count on two hands how many cruise vloggers that we knew. I'm not talking cruise news channels, but vloggers focusing on cruise content. The oldest I could find was Jim Zim, who posted his first cruise vlog in 2009... Sean & Stef followed in 2011... Sal Pitera in 2012... Cruise Tips TV in 2013... Cruising With Wheels, Mr Traveler, and Visit With Us in 2014... Sea Cruisers, Josh Hocum, and ourselves in 2015. That's TEN cruise creators that I'm aware of on the entirety of the YouTube machine by the end of that year, but I'm sure I've missed some folks along the way.

In the beginning, it wasn't too hard to get noticed in such a small pool of creators.

Over the years, the field continued to grow and some of the now-larger channels entered the game... 2016 brought EECC Travels, Ben & David, Don's Family Vacations, Sharon At Sea... 2017 introduced La Lido Loca, Griff & Alyssa, Life With Favor, Emma Cruises... more and more folks were joining team cruise creator. These days, there are hundreds if not thousands of cruise vloggers out there, all with unique voices, looking for an audience with which to share them.

So how does one grow on the YouTube machine?

To answer a question with a question... is your goal is to grow your *subscriber count*, or to grow your *audience*?

Subscriber count is the easier of the two, but it might generate more problems and less reward in the long run... here are a few ways that we've seen folks growing their subscriber count...

(1) Give away a large prize, contingent on reaching a certain number. Folks will line up from all over, share your giveaway with their friends, make fake secondary accounts, anything to get your subscriber number to that goal so that you'll give away a gift card, a camera, a cruise, who knows!

What's the problem? Sure, some of those friends of friends might continue watch your videos, but the bulk of them probably didn't have a genuine interest. They saw "giveaway" and that's all they ever had an interest in, and may likely never watch another thing you post.

Those fake accounts that your subscribers made? There's nobody there to watch your videos either. One danger of racking up a high subscriber count without the views to back it up is that YouTube may suddenly deem your channel irrelevant and stop recommending you. If you have 50,000 subscribers but only get 500 views per video, why would YouTube want to push that?

While it's certainly an admirable thing to want to reward your subscribers by giving something physical back to them, in my mind, doing it only in conjunction with reaching a specific goal can have more negative consequences to your channel than intended.

(2) Join community groups and post things like "subscribe to me and I'll subscribe back".

Technically, this one goes against the terms of service of some platforms. We've heard it said that YouTube can terminate your account if they catch you engaging in "sub4sub" as it's called.

But this one just doesn't make much sense in general. If your only goal is to get a higher subscriber count, and you find 1,000 creators who will subscribe to you if you subscribe back, how many of their videos are you realistically going to get invested in and watch on a regular basis? Probably not many. That's about how many of them will have a genuine investment in your channel as well.

(3) Pay to have your posts or videos promoted to people who are interested in your type of content.

At first glance, this one seems like a valid way to get your content in front of eyeballs, and we've tried it... but more on that later...

The problem is that a lot of times, these new followers are robots, click farms, or some sort of firm that gets paid to pretend to like your stuff. They'll keep on liking as long as you're paying, but once the money runs out, so does the love. Once you stop the promotion, you're again sitting with a large subscriber number and a small amount of genuine interaction, so YouTube decides you're irrelevant and essentially buries you.

We tried this back in our parody video days and it pretty much ruined our Facebook page. After trying what sounded like a legitimate Facebook-sponsored promotion to get one of our songs out there, we got a lot of interaction that later turned out to be fake. I eventually went back and manually deleted all the fake likes from our page to try and regain some relevance with the algorithms.

(4) Try to create a viral video that isn't in the style of your typical content. If you've never made a news video, try to get the scoop on that next big story. If you're a cruise channel, how about going for a viral video about the latest big TikTok dance craze?

Here again, if you manage to pull off the ultimate viral video, you're going to gain followers who want more of that content. If you go viral on a news video, be prepared to become a news channel. When you have a smash hit with that dance number, it's time to become a dance channel. If you make content that isn't in line with that viral smash, most folks won't care about it.

Content works best when it's consistent, and this is a rule that we break all the time. Yes, we mingle cruise videos, songs, cooking videos, dance videos, and all sorts of nonsense together. We didn't start off as a cruise channel, and aren't trying to limit ourselves now, so we aren't playing "the game" to the best of our ability, ha ha...

The bottom line? Pretty much every "gimmick" to gain subscriber numbers could have a negative impact on your channel. Sure, you could probably use some of these tricks to get yourself to that first milestone so that you can enable monetization or other features on your channel, but I'm not personally a fan of any of these ideas.

So, how about growing your *audience* instead?

(1) Get involved with the cruise community.

It's a great big digital world out there. Facebook groups, livestream marathons, premier events, watch parties... there's a lot going on in the community, especially as of late. Join Facebook groups, ask questions, meet & mingle with folks, share experiences. Don't just join to promote yourself and leave. It's definitely a two-way street, and you have to give and receive. Take the time to get involved, create genuine interactions, build friendships, collaborate, and grow together.

(2) Be yourself.

One of the things that turns me off from a video is when it just feels forced. Either the person doesn't look like they want to be doing what they're doing, they lack enthusiasm, sound super scripted, etc. It's understandable to be nervous when starting out, because talking to a camera is a strange concept to most. You'll get funny looks in public. Practicing in the privacy of your own home can help with getting over the jitters. Let your personality shine through, be genuine and true to yourself.

(3) Make the content that you enjoy making.

This goes hand-in-hand with being comfortable in front of a camera. If you're having fun while making content, that will shine through. If you hate news videos, but feel like you should give it a shot just because other people are having success with it, I'd say don't do it. If that's the only reason people find your channel, then that's what they start to want from you. You'll be stuck in that rut forever in order to maintain that audience, and you'll burn out. Make the content that you love and that makes you happy.

(4) Stay engaged with the audience you have as much as you can.

Everyone appreciates feeling important. No matter the size of your current audience, reply back to those comments, answer questions, chat with folks in livestreams, as much as you possibly can. If you show your audience they're genuinely appreciated, they'll keep coming back and supporting you in your creative efforts.

In the end, there's no real trick to it, other than keeping at it. From a technical standpoint, YouTube does love consistency. Schedules. Reliable view counts. You play by their rules and they'll put you in the "suggested videos" section the next time someone watches a cruise video. We get a decent amount of traffic and discovery by playing that game, but when we ask how people most commonly find us, it's because they were researching a specific ship that they planned to sail. If you sail one ship ten times on your channel, you probably won't have as much success as someone who sails ten different ships. The more variety you have on your channel, the more folks tend to find you.

Growing an engaged audience is definitely more difficult, but in our opinion, genuine organic growth is the most rewarding in the long run. We see lots of channels with double or triple our subscriber count that get the same views or less views on their cruise vlogs. We try not to concern ourselves too much with numbers as a measure of success, but we try to value and appreciate the audience that we have and thank them in as many ways as we can for choosing to spend their time with us.

That's just my two cents based on our experiences, so take it as you will. We are by no means experts on YouTube growth, having been passed by a good number of folks over the years, ha ha... but we enjoy what we do and the family we've grown, and that's about all we could ever hope for!

Until next time... rock on!!
~ Jay