Mistakes We Made When Starting A Gaming Channel (And What We Can Learn From Them)

We've all made mistakes during the first phase of running our YouTube channel, and to prevent others from making the same mistakes, I asked for the ones others committed on the /r/letsplay sub.

Here's what they said!

The Quotes

My biggest mistake was uploading too much too often, early on in my channel I would upload 5 - 6 videos daily, all of different games, and a few co-op games, I over loaded my channel with too much content too quickly. (We now upload 3 videos daily, 1 main, 1 co=op and 1 secondary) -- Cadacis (TheCatalyst)

This isn't the most common mistake amongst beginners, but it still happens sometimes.

The problem is usually the fact that as you post that many videos per day, the quality of your videos will often degrade. And even if you're able to record and post that many videos every day, it's bound to get tedious sooner or later...

It wasn't when I was starting out, but I did fuck up pretty badly. I started making Let's Plays in August of 2013. Until about late December, I was gaining a few subscribers each week, usually like 3 or 4. In January that tripled. I was getting like 15 per week. It went up to around 20 per day for a few days in February. I was getting as many views per video as I had subscribers. Then, for whatever reason, I lost all will to record and edit and do all of that stuff. I took what I thought was going to be a 1 week break. That turned into 3 months. I started making videos again in late May. It took until early November to get back to where I was in January.
Moral of the story; Unplanned Breaks can seriously fuck up your channel. -- iAmMitten1 (MittenSquad)

If your channel starts experiencing growth, not posting videos for a week or more can really hurt you.

People might not unsub, but once you come back, your view count will drop and it will be harder to get back the momentum that you might've had going before.

If you do have to take a break, you can explain it to your subs and pre-record one or two videos and schedule them to go up once a week while you're taking your break.

My biggest mistake was my attitude at the beginning. I treated this like something I needed to stress over and succeed with. I did make sure I had fun, but there was too much focus on "gotta get noticed!" and "have to upload NOW!" -- HookedOnAnAnchor

The mindset with which you start out YouTubing is very important.

Focusing on money or becoming famous is bound to demotivate you because unless you get extremely lucky or you have something truly different to offer, your channel won't grow very fast.

Hooked later said, "I realized I was thinking this all wrong. Having fun is the number one thing. Stressing about getting noticed and growing my channel isn't something I need to aim for. I need to aim for making fun videos, and hope I can brighten someone's day." 
This is one of the best mindsets you can have when just starting out on YouTube. Having fun and not focusing too much on the numbers is the best thing you can do.

WORST MISTAKE: Tried to specialize in one game (Warframe) from the beginning of the channel. It was fine and gained a fair amount of subs because of it, but as I moved on I stopped playing warframe and the channel has taken a different direction. Because of this, I do lose subs fairly regularly because many of them came from my warframe videos (which I dont produce any more), but luckily my gains from my newer videos still out weight the lose. -- Aldershot8800

This seems to be a mistake that many gamers make when just starting their YouTube channel. (I actually made the same exact mistake with Alliance Of Valiant Arms).