Reading news about YouTubers making six figures off toddlers really makes you question yourself about a lot of priorities and life choices. One of these questions is definitely along the lines of how to start a YouTube channel for kids.
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8 Tips To Start a Successful Kids Channel On YouTube
Follow the money
YouTube is an amazing platform. It encourages creativity, quick thinking, and timely decision making while rewarding its users with actual money for the content they produce.
How?
Ads and affiliate campaigns. Yes, those very pesky advertisements you have to muster through before enjoying the next cool video. An average YouTuber will make as much as $10 from every 1000 views. Doesn’t seem like much on first sight?
Well, if you have kids, you probably know they enjoy watching the same thing over and over. They don’t seem to get tired of the repetitiveness. Multiply these views by the number of 3 to 7-year-olds on the platform, and you’ll see where the millions are coming from.
To top things off, most popular channels have vlogs and review videos where the host is paid by a number of companies for the additional coverage. The larger your following, the more you’ll earn from it.
On a side note, many young YouTubers, such as the seemingly forgotten Justin Bieber, or Pew Di Pie have raised millions of dollars before they turned twenty. Talk about saving up for the college fund!
Now that we’ve dealt with the “why”, let’s talk about how to make a YouTube channel for kids in great detail.
Content
There are many specifics of the content created for kids and/or by kids. YouTube has done a nice job explaining this.
The most rational reaction after reading these lines would be to hop on the hype train and upload several gigabytes of engaging content.
Well, if YouTube fame was so easy, everybody would become a millionaire by now.
Here’t the thing: YouTube audience is spoiled by now. They demand content of the highest quality with a load of special effects, scene transitions, cool cuts, and animations.
This is even more true when producing content for children. Kids enjoy flashy lights and they definitely love themselves a great show.
If you are really serious about launching your channel, consider the following options:
- Investing in a professional video editor
- Learning to edit the videos on your own
The earlier option is actually simpler than it seems. You can find a lot of aspiring talent on platforms such as UpWork or Fiver. That said, the services of a professional editor will cost you a pretty penny.
Then again, professional editors will save you a lot of time and effort.
Or will they?
You’d be surprised, but modern video editing applications are now simpler, more intuitive and accessible than ever before. Take Animotica as an example. With it you gain access to a professional video editing app filled with both the basic and premium features for the price of a cup of coffee. Though it’s free to use if you’re ok with watermark. You can download it here. ?
You’ll be able to cut, trim, add effects, stickers, audio, Chroma Key, and much more in a super-convenient drag-and-drop interface absolutely free.
Privacy
We live in 2019. Internet safety is a thing. The web connects us to millions upon millions of people. Some of them are bitter, others point blank crazy.
If you’re going to start a kids channel on YouTube, it is essential that you educate your children on Internet Safety before uploading any video featuring them to a public platform for the world to see!
Using nicknames should be your rule of thumb. Never tell the internet your last name, your city or address, as well as any other information you consider sensitive.
The internet is a big place so it’s best if you were to be safe than sorry from entering it.
Editorial
You are making content designed to entertain children. As much as you’d like to, you are not an expert in the niche. Pay a close eye to what your children are watching.
Are there any similar patterns in the content they like? Can you borrow some ideas to change and/or integrate as your own?
Create an Excel sheet and map out content suggestions, themes, buzzwords, and trends. Compile them into a handy-dandy content marketing plan. Or download one for free and save yourself the trouble. We’ve got you covered;)
By the way, Animotica is free for schools and education institutes. Teachers and school administrators can apply for free licenses for their schools here.
Lastly, don’t forget that you have a couple of experts of your own. Allow them a seat in the director’s chair. Listen to their feedback.
Don’t turn your kid’s channel into their day job. Allow them to have an actual, authentic, childish fun. The audience will appreciate the sincerity.
Here are 100+ tools that can help you start.
Education
YouTubers, just like any other community, share a very special language filled to the brim with buzzwords and jargon. All of the “cool kids” are fluent in YouTube talk and so should you.
Here’s a nice, newbie-friendly glossary by the way. These words are already set in stone and serve as pillars for the digital creators community.
This doesn’t mean, however, that you can’t come up with your own terms. YouTube talk, after all, doesn’t have a dictionary. Not that we heard of in any case.
Develop your own narrative. Creating a story for kids on YouTube, a story that shares familiar themes and elements they can get acquainted with will get you an additional boost of authenticity.
For example, most YouTubers use very specific intros and outros. They use the same words to greet their audience and they have a separate word for their fans. All of these neat little tricks help build a community around your channel.
They are essentially how you make a YouTube Kids channel.
Language!
As captain America once said to Tony Stark, “Language!”. Why’d he mare a quirky remark like that during a full-blown war against the agents of Hydra involving actual tanks and machine gun fire?
Avengers are a movie kids will be watching. Disney can’t afford to drop any F-bombs. And neither can you.
But you already knew that, so what’s the point of even mentioning the improper language in this guide?
Some of your viewers may not be as modest and decent as you give them credit for. Foul-mouthed or simply troll comments are the bane of the internet nowadays. It’s best if you were t lock the comment section below your videos from day one.
Yes, you’ll be missing out on the bitter-sweet engagement revenue, but a locked comment section will keep your videos safer in Search, and it will definitely protect your child’s self-esteem.
Video quality
If making millions on YouTube was simple, everyone would be a millionaire by now. That said, nothing is stopping people from trying.
You’ll be competing against thousands upon thousands of established kids channels.
In simpler words, you need an edge. Superior video quality will give you the competitive advantage you were asking for.
Think about creating animated shorts for video intros, or editing the content with breathtaking pop-ups, sweet stickers, and funny effects. How? Check out Animotica’s guides for inspiration!
How to set up YouTube for kids?
YouTube Kids app is an interesting solution the video giant rolled out a couple of years ago to satisfy the growing demand in safe, kid-oriented content.
The app has quaint elements and features such as safe search or parent control. As such, most of the kids nowadays are using it to view their content.
Long story short, your channel should be a part of YouTube kids. You can’t create one in the app per se though. You’ll need to create an original channel on YoTube and then, if your content is both popular and kid-friendly, it will be featured in the YouTube Kids app. And below are actually the first practical steps you need to follow to start a channel on Youtube.
Here’re the steps on how you create your channel
- Sign into your existing YouTube account in the app.
- Click on the user icon on the top right corner of your screen.
- Click on the icon that looks like a gear to access the settings.
- Pick ‘See all my channels or create a new channel’ option.
Writer’s block is as dangerous to a YouTube channel manager as paying attention to constant nagging in the comments. Both can be extremely intimidating and discouraging.
The thing is, once you start, the process will flow like butter. All it takes is a little push. Thus we thought that these 10 delightful ideas will give you the inspiration needed to get started.
And that, dear friends, is how you set up a YouTube channel!
YouTube kids channel ideas to take your channel off the ground
- Arts and craft: Not only will you teach your kids to do something cool with their hands, but you’ll also educate thousands of your happy little viewers.
- Lifestyle: Grab a camera and follow your kids around for a day. You’d be surprised to the amount of cool stuff they are up to on a daily basis.
- Hulk smash: kids get angry sometimes and they don’t know how to deal with their emotions. They are only grasping the concept of tranquility. Let kids be kids. Let them smash some stuff, and better yet come up with creative means of destruction and film the process. Edit it in slow motion afterwards.
- Handyman videos: Now that you’ve blown off the steam, show a couple of ways to fix things.
- Embrace the mad scientist inside you: there are dozens of amazing scientific experiments involving colorful foams, various smokes, and cool physics effects. And you already have all it takes to pull them off in your kitchen!
- Cooking: bake a cake, make a salad, grill some cheese. Teach your viewers a couple of simple, yet delicious recipes.
- Performance: Can your children sing or dance like it’s nobody’s business? Perfect! Bieber mania has proven that there are ears willing to listen.
- Toys: Toys are the bread and butter of every kid’s YouTube channel so if you are willing to incorporate reviews or games into your routine, think of shooting something creative. Add post-effects like flames, gunfire sounds, and explosions on the background. Those are bound to attract a lot of attention.
- Gaming: Video games are awesome. Sandboxes like Minecraft or competitive shooters like Fortnite are the reason for YouTube’s recent renaissance. Be sure to capitalize on the trend! You’ll need a powerful PC to play, record and/or stream though.
- Challenges: everybody loves challenges. The best part about them? 9 out of 10 go viral in a heartbeat
That’s pretty much everything you should know to start making a kids channel on YouTube. Good luck!
Learn how much it can cost to start a video channel.
