YouTube Art channel ideas
How do I make a successful art channel on YouTube?
Whether you make painting tutorials or studio visits, planning your channel helps you get to monetization faster and easier. Do remember that your plans only work if you stick to them!
Here are some important steps towards building a successful art channel:
1. Find an audience
- Are your audience artists who want to learn new techniques?
- Or collectors who you want to sell to?
- Do they speak English or another language?
✅ Cater your content for a specific group of people
Compared to other people on YouTube, the reason artists make art videos may be more emotional than pragmatical. If so, you can reverse engineer the way you find your audience. Just follow your heart and publish videos consistently.
❗ Stick to that type of content for a long period
Once you build an audience base, get to know them. Interact with your viewers and ask them personally what they like about your channel.
2. Bring value to your audience
- Which problems do you try to solve for your audience?
- What benefits does your audience get from watching your art videos?
- Do you like teaching? Make some tutorials and share your insights.
- Enjoy hanging out with your artist friends? Make some studio visits.
✅ Search for a kind of content both you and your audience enjoy
There should be a sweet spot somewhere.
❗ Avoid just self-promotion
Probably the reason you started making videos was to promote your art. Unfortunately, if your channel is all about self-promotion, it won’t grow. No one wants to spend time watching ‘ads’ all the time.
3. Learn from your competition
✅ Whatever you make, there must be someone else making similar videos
Sometimes your competition isn’t the channels in your niche, but the ones that serve the same target audience. In order to find it, just search the title your use for your videos on Youtube.
❗ Don’t see competition in a bad way
Instead, you can even contact them or suggest them in your content especially if your channel has a similar influence
4. Get your audience attention
Not enough views and few subscribers?
There are several ways to get attention and traffic.
✅ Ads:
The faster way is through Google ads, YouTube ads, Facebook ads… but they are not cheap. It can be a good solution if you have something to sell, so you can have a direct return investment (e.g. Print-on-Demand art prints).
✅ SEO:
The freeway. When a potential viewer searches a term, your video would show up on youTube’s first page. The higher you rank on search results, the more likely you get visits. I advise using apps like Tubebuddy for every video you upload.
✅ Suggested videos:
When you have a fair amount of audience, YouTube will start suggesting your videos to potential viewers. Until someone clicks on that video, you still can’t benefit from it.
5. Define your art channel difference
How are you different from your competition?
✅ The “unique selling point”
Your unique selling point could come from your education, experience, language, on-camera presentation style, or a combination of several different factors. Ideally, you point out your uniqueness in the intro.
❗ You can publish similar content as your competition.
It is okay to do that, as long as you show that you bring added value to your audience, and make it your own way (hence, not being a copycat).
6. Find your drive
- What drives you?
- What are your core values?
- What’s important to you?
- Or in other words, what are you living for?
✅ Follow your own vision
Instead of the projection others lay on you. Be transparent and communicate about it in your videos.
❗ Don’t forget why you started.
It’s hard to not chase subs, likes, and views for instant gratification.
7. Point out your weaknesses
- Are you ready to run a successful YouTube channel?
- What are some YouTube skills you lack?
- Do you feel like you need to get better in certain areas, such as on-camera presentation, video editing, or SEO?
✅ Growing a YouTube channel also means growing as a person.
Get out of your comfort zone by making a self-improvement plan and committing to it.
8. Prevent your channel from failure
- What factors could potentially make you fail?
- What are the potential problems you might encounter in your journey?
✅ Believe in hoping for the best but planning for the worst.
Try your best to keep up with your weekly uploads while facing those challenges. Sometimes things won’t get better as you wait. Try to cope with the difficulties.
❗ Avoid any wishful thinking
Don’t plan on the condition of a better future. Be positive about the action, this is the only thing you can control.
9. Gather a team
- Can you make videos and grow your channel alone?
At the start of your art channel, you are likely alone. But as your channel grows, you’ll need to delegate your work to avoid burning out.
✅ Start small
a nice first step could be outsourcing some tasks such as buying motion graphic templates for your videos or hiring a designer to make your thumbnails.
✅ With time, you will know some trustworthy professional freelancers to work with.
When you are fully monetized, you will be able to afford an assistant or an in-house designer.
❗ Your team can only be joined by people who are at least as good as you in their area of competence.
Coaching: YouTube for Artists
with Mo Li
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Easy YouTube channel ideas
-> The Poke Method
If you are new to making videos on YouTube, the first question that comes to your mind is probably this one:
‘What kind of art videos should I make?’
There is no right or wrong answer. It depends on what kind of art you make, and what kind of personality you have.
Essentials parts of a YouTube Art Channel
To make it easier, let’s think of your art channel as a cooking process. Today we are making a delicious ‘poke bowl’. As a Poke, your YouTube Art Channel has 3 essential parts below:
- Art technique
- Channel type
- Video style
The PDF we join to this article can help you have a clear view of your choices. It is easy to print on a A4 paper ->
Art channels on YouTube
With the Poke Method
Liron Yanconsky how tos
Liron Yanconsky has 931 videos and 117K subs. The base is ‘fine art’. His primary content is ‘how to tutorials’ and his secondary content is live streaming. He is energetic and educational, and very positive!
Art Prof critique channel
Let’s have a look at this channel called Art Prof: Create & Critique. It has almost 1000 videos and 113K subs. The majority of their videos fit into the ‘art critique’ category. Some videos were made by several art teachers via a zoom meeting, so they can also fit into the ‘remote interview’ category. They are educational and objective.
Drawholic speed painting channel
Let’s have a look at drawholic with 355 videos and over 3 million subs, the language is Korean. It’s a speed painting channel with mainly fan art (drawing celebrities). Because their language is Korean, I am not sure of the emotions they try to convey. I think they are very calming because the voice was soft. The channel name also suggests that they are very passionate about what they do.
Good Information.