How Amy Serrano Grew From 0-200k YouTube Subscribers in Only Two Years: The YouTube Power Hour Podcast 160
“It doesn’t matter if you mess up, every first video is SUPER cringy, just keep progressing and keep going.”
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What do you think it takes to go from 0 to having 200k subscribers, influence, brand deals and doing what you love, all in record time? The rules to the game are simpler than you might imagine! In this episode, Fashion and Beauty YouTuber Amy Serrano makes it look super easy as she shares her secrets on her enormous growth in less than 2 years!
Amy was working as a freelance wardrobe stylist and assistant when she first decided to make videos on YouTube. She wasn’t experiencing much growth or control in her job, and she was looking for a place to share her love for all things fashion. So in 2015, she put up her first video and thought nothing of it. But in August 2016, her cousin challenged her to go all in and give YouTube her best try. She said, “if you don’t like it after 3 months, quit”. The rest is history. Now she has over 270k subscribers and over 15 million video views!
“If you’re creating content that you love and you’re feeling very proud about, then you’re gonna be happy overall.”
Amy is a 28-year-old super charismatic lady boss living in LA, California. If you’ve watched any of her videos, you’d be drawn to her energy that is always turned way up to 11. She’s really embraced YouTube as her creative outlet and has connected with her ideal audience of millennials who’re trying to figure out who they are and trying to be happy in life. Her drive and passion is to make everyone who watches her channel to feel good about themselves
“A lot of people say I want to be a YouTuber, but you have to really do it and see if you like it.”
5 Key Interview Takeaways
- Use a content calendar to keep organized. Amy has a pretty aggressive release schedule. Plus she juggles that while shes networking with the YouTube creator community at events. To ensure she doesn’t go crazy she creates a content calendar which will tell her when to edit and what content she needs to release when. That might help you stay organized and not go crazy too.
- Evaluate if you will enjoy the work. Before you dive in with both feet into YouTube and the niche you’ve identified, put yourself through the paces first. If it is a drag for you now, it will not get better when you need to release a new video every single week. If you’re already breaking under the pressure of your current release schedule, maybe scale it back to something you can manage and also enjoy. Making it big on YouTube starts with a very simple question: do you even enjoy making videos?
- Say no to a lot of brand deals and yes to the right few. Unless you’re only doing YouTube for the brand deals, you don’t want to give your audience that impression by saying yes to every brand deal that comes your way. It might send a stench of scarcity, desperation or only being in it for the money to your audience and they can smell it through your videos. A good rule of thumb is to pick the brands you like and actually use. Amy gave the example of doing a makeup tutorial for a concealer that she doesn’t even use, and just thinking about it makes her cringe. Don’t put yourself in that position, say yes to only the brands that resonate with you
- YouTube video quality standards have been raised. I know I’ve said this many times on the show but its something I’ll keep repeating: though you can record your YouTube videos on your iPhone, it doesn’t mean you should. Sure, if an iPhone is all you have, it’s better to record your video and get your foot in the door than not. But YouTube standards are all the way up, and the audience has grown accustomed to the next level quality so if you even want to pass as watchable nowadays, you’ll need to invest in a decent camera.
- Create the kind of content you’d want to watch. If you were a different person, and you were skipping through your video feed and you stumbled across one of your videos… would you watch it, or would you say “pass”? If your answer was “pass”, we need to have a serious talk. You may have already found the answer to the question of “Why isn’t my channel growing?” You want to be 100% you in every video you make, but also keep in mind you’re making videos for other people to watch. So ensure it passes the test of quality, valuable information and entertainment.
Amy’s Favorite Items Mentioned in The Podcast!
Canon EOS Rebel T6i Digital SLR Camera | Blue Yeti USB Microphone | Canon PowerShot G7X Mark II
Amy’s Holy Grail Products Mentioned in The Podcast!
Glossier Boy Brow | Fresh Sugar Lip Treatment | RMS Beauty Un Cover-Up Concealer
Resources
My favorite free SEO tool for YouTube: TubeBuddy
(Discount code ErikasBuddy for 20% off the paid version)
PR Guide: How to Get onto PR Lists and Get Lots of Free Product
Getting Started on YouTube: The #1 Downloaded Free Niche Discovery Workbook
Connect with Amy
Facebook Group:
Podcast Music Credit: Boop by x50 @x50music
Music provided by Free Music for Vlogs youtu.be/o52xQkQWzyU
