8 Free Tips To Reach 4000 Watch Hours Faster

In order to start earning from YouTube, you must qualify the criteria for YouTube Partner Program. To do that you need at least 1000 subscribers and 4000 watch hours for your videos in the past 12 months. If it’s difficult for you to comprehend, I must tell you that 4000 watch hours is equal to a single person watching your videos constantly for 6 months!

Now it’s not necessary for me to say that it is actually a difficult task, particularly if you are a beginner. But I am not here to demotivate you. In fact, the truth is that with correct techniques, the path to success on YouTube becomes a lot clearer. Let us discuss the best techniques and measures that we can adopt to speed up our journey on YouTube up to making money.

1. Improve Look And Feel Of Your Channel

First impression of your channel must be good upon the viewers. It must represent to the viewers that you are a capable person who is serious regarding his work on youtube.

You channel’s cover art, logo, and description must be of high quality and should represent you and your channel correctly.
Content on your channel should be adequately organized into a playlist so that viewers can find relevant videos easily.

Try to develop a niche for yourself, master that niche and make most of your videos on topics relevant to that niche only. It represents to the viewers that you are an expert in that particular field.

2. Decide Topic For Your Videos Smartly

It’s important to make videos on topics that can help you gain more views. First thing to note here is to be aware of things and events that are in trend and make videos related to them. It is also important that there are not a lot of people making videos on the same topic, otherwise being a beginner, your video will not show up in search results.

To ensure this, you have to be quick and make a video as soon as a new trend, news or rumour emerges. Considering that there won’t be a lot of videos on the topic that early, your video should feature in search results. You can also look for high frequency – low competition keywords and make videos on those topics.

3. Make Better Videos

There are certain aspects of videos which are related to how you make them and these must be given good attention. Let’s discuss them one by one.

Length & Frequency: If you are a beginner, don’t make very short (say 1 min) or long (say 20 mins) videos. Optimal length of the videos for a beginner can be around 5-10 mins. And in this manner, you can start with doing around 2-3 videos per month. Of course, if there is a need, sometimes you can make those short or long videos, but the general length and frequency of your videos should be as discussed, as these have an effect on overall watch hours of your channel.

Appearance: How your video appears to the viewer before they actually watch is something that eventually decides whether they will watch it or not. Write a good title that is eye-catching and a description that describes the video properly. Use a good quality camera and good editing methods. Also add an eye-catching and modern looking custom thumbnail. The video should not look like something done by an amateur. You can use tools like Canva for making professional thumbnails.

Content Quality: Make it a rule of thumb to never compromise on the quality of your videos. The content should make the user feel satisfied after watching. Also, it should be relevant to what the topic & description says as otherwise viewers might skip the videos before completing it.

Want to start smaller or receive more tips? Also read our blog post “how to get 1000 youtube watch hours quickly“!

4. Use SEO

If you are not optimizing your videos for search engines, it’s not going to ever show in search results. Then no matter how great your videos are, nobody is going to find and watch it and you may never reach 4000 watch hours.

SEO can be a very complex process, but to start with you just have to do a few simple things. Use a good keyword research tool, and find one or two high frequency – low competition keywords that people search for, and use them in the title and description. Link some related videos in the description.

Also add relevant tags to your videos indicating its type and topic. For detailed information on SEO you can refer to this article by Neil Patel.

5. Ask For Subscriptions

Always ask for viewers to subscribe to your channel. Many times even the viewers who like your content don’t subscribe as they just don’t pay attention and by asking them you might just remind them of this. Also, remember to never pay for views, likes and subscribers as this may hurt the reputation of your channel in the long run, unless they are real or the provider is reputable.

You can use youtube features like cards during videos and end screens to recommend related videos to the viewers. You should also recommend related videos by adding links in the videos’ description. Some of them might watch a few of them, giving you more watch hours.

7. Go livestream

Try using the livestream feature of youtube as it’s a good way to add to your watch hours. Call all your friends and family to join. Once you have few loyal viewers and subscribers they may also join the livestream and give your watch hours a small boost.

Use social media regularly and gather a following. Connect to your viewers and engage with them. It is the best platform to promote your upcoming and released videos. You can share your videos with all your friends and followers and remind them to watch it. You can also share it on relevant groups and it may help you find some new viewers.

Final Words

A beginner’s journey on YouTube is rather difficult as you have to prove yourself better than thousands of already occurring channels and compete with them for watch hours. But above-mentioned are some of the best and easy methods that a beginner can adopt without much difficulty to improve his YouTube performance and get 4000 watch hours. So if you use these methods properly, you are not a long way from your first earning from YouTube. Good luck!