How to Start a YouTube Gaming Channel in 2022

We are obsessed with creators just like you, and today I'm speaking specifically to gaming creators, and I have a question for you before we get started. Did you start a gaming channel in 2020 or were you thinking of starting one soon here in 2022? We'll be talking about a lot today, and whether you already started a gaming channel or you're about to start one, these tips should apply in either case. First, we're gonna start with some just general advice. How often you should upload, how many games maybe you should play on your channel, and some of the biggest mistakes to avoid. 

Once that's out of the way, I'm gonna help you come up with some ideas that will fuel your gaming channel throughout the entirety of 2021 because it could be really demotivating to run out of content ideas and I want to help you avoid that at all costs, So I've been at VidIQ now for about a year, and in my first video to you guys, I told you to play just one game in your channel. Now, from a YouTube algorithm perspective, this is pretty solid advice, and to prove that, I asked some of our community members to share their experiences throughout the year of 2020. 

These are all channels that grew pretty quickly in 2020 following the strategy of covering just one game. It's not just about the YouTube algorithm. It's about having a strong focus and resisting the urge to follow all of your passions at once. Now, most gamers enjoy more than one game. However, I encourage you to focus on just one of them, your favorite one, in 2021. Then I want you to take all of your other favorite games and simply use them as a way to unwind. 

As content creators, we only have so much creative energy, so having a focus will make sure you spend that energy in the right places. Not only should you reserve that creative energy for as few games as possible, you should also be reserving it for the rest of the YouTube creation process. So let's talk about how often you should upload videos. YouTube rewards quality content, and the algorithm has only gotten better year after year at serving that content to the right audience. That said, there's no need to upload daily gaming content. As long as you're making well-researched, high value videos, people who are looking for that information will find you. So to start, I would aim at uploading at least one video a week and give yourself some time to relax, time to focus on your school or your job and also time to come up with more creative ideas for your channel. Yes, of course, making more videos does cast a wider net, but you don't want to spread yourself too thin. 

So it's up to you to find a balance. Now, playing multiple games or games that are just too dissimilar from one another or killing yourself with a crazy busy upload schedule are just a couple of the mistakes we see new gaming channels make all the time, and on top of those, there are also a few common ones we see quite a bit. A lack of research in your titles, templated thumbnails that make your channel look like thumbnail wallpaper, and intros lacking a strong hook. 

Before we get into the titles and thumbnails, let's talk about those intros. Do your retention graphs generally look anything like this? Low retention is a key indicator to YouTube that your video may not be delivering on its promise, and therefore it shouldn't be recommended over someone else's video. Your introductions should be strong.So titles and thumbnails, the thing that gets your video that click in the first place. A good title will help your video pop up in the search results, and once there, the thumbnail will help you stand out amongst the crowd. We actually have a tool here at VidIQ that I want you to start using for every single video you make. 

Before you publish your video, you can try out different titles and even different thumbnails and compare them against everybody else's. In the case of my video here, let's try baby Yoda in Minecraft. If we hit preview in search results, not only do you get to see your thumbnail compared to some of the other competition you have, you also get to compare some of these other titles. It's also important to look at when these videos were posted and how

Tube. (upbeat music) So you came up with an idea, you shot your video, you did the editing, and now I'm telling you that you need to spend all this time doing research on your title and your thumbnail. If that sounds like a lot of work, that's because it is, but I have a tip for you to make it a little bit easier. 

The next time you're about to start a new video, I want you to think of the title before you hit record. Get the title research done early. This method will force you to make a video that has a better chance of appearing in search. Because you're keeping your video focused, it puts you in the shoes of your viewer who read your title and is seeking that specific value that you promised upfront. So if your video's called Minecraft Cow Farm, for example, and you go into the recording session knowing that's what you're promising the viewer, you're going to be focused as you record that video on making sure they know when they get there they're going to learn how to make a Minecraft cow farm. This simply feeds into the concept of quality over quantity. All of this research is going to help you get discovered. 

Yes, this does represent a lot of research a

nging part of YouTube. This is why so many gaming channels resort to just picking their favorite game and playing it over the course of several videos, a let's play series with titles like Minecraft Survival Episode 12. So I'm gonna share with you some of my methods for coming up with video ideas so that you have content throughout this entire year, not just after watching this video and getting a couple of little bits of inspiration. 

First things first, I want you to join the Discord community of the game you've chosen to play on your channel. A lot of games will make their own official servers. However, you may elect to even join some unofficial ones. Don't forget about the communities within Reddit and Steam and places like that. Try to find all the places fans of your game hang out. Doing this will help stay in the loop. Not only will you be the first to know about big updates c

 constantly looking to incorporate into your channel. A good trending pop culture topic that you can jump on is something you want to keep an eye out for. I, myself, managed to do this with great success when I saw that Minecraft released a Star Wars mashup pack for their marketplace. 

Had I been paying closer attention to t

or in this tool. You can filter any of your searches by the amount of channel subscribers you want the results to come up with, the views per hour, the views themselves, of course, the category, in this case for me, gaming, the country, and you can even filter by our own VidIQ score. So let's pretend I'm making my Minecraft baby Yoda video for the first time, but I haven't made it just yet. I want to see how well it ranks. So I'm gonna type Minecraft baby Yoda, and I'm gonna hit get results. When nothing pops up in the last 48 hours, I'm getting a little nervous, but why don't we try the last seven days? Hmm, nothing there either. Just for fun, let's see what it's done in the last six months, and this is where we get an idea of just how important it is to follow trending topics on YouTube. In the last six months, this video's been doing fantastic. Now, this Star Wars mashup pack came out just a couple of months ago, so it makes sense there hasn't been a lot of traction. However, you may also decide that you like to see some of these view-per-hour numbers here, and the fact that no one's made a video in a while is actually a positive thing and maybe you can compete with some of the ones that have been around for a couple of months. (upbeat music) Now, I did say I had one final tip for you that will help you get a lot of views in a very short amount of time. If y

nes and those folks want to get a quick laugh or some quick information without the time commitment of a longer, traditional YouTube video. These have been perfect for the gaming community. Playing games often leads to interesting or hilarious moments that anyone can share and enjoy, not to mention the value you can bring by making a quick tutorial for somebody. My advice to gaming channels right now of any size is to incorporate Shorts somewhere into your strategy. We've already seen gaming channels all over the place exploding from doing this. Oh yeah, remember my baby Yoda video I showed you from before? You may or may not have noticed the run time. Yep, that's a Short. (upbeat music) These are all things I wish I had known when I started on YouTube as a gaming channel. I would have these moments where my channel was focused and it was doing really well..

lay series where it's just you and your audience enjoying a game, no research, no headache, and that's fine. However, if you're looking to stand out on YouTube, it's really important to take at least some of this advice to heart and apply it to your strategy somewhere in the mix, whether it's for every single video you do or just every so often you make one that knocks it out of the park and invites a whole bunch of new eyeballs to your channel for the first time. This video had to end somewhere but if you are still looking for gaming channel advice, we have a ton of videos in the playlist over here.