As well as doing shady Blackhat marketing I also do Whitehat. There's a thousand ways to skin a cat. I skin my cat with my bare hands. This is my experience in the legit side of YouTube marketing and how to get real numbers ... fairly quickly.

I create videos in a music niche. I'm also a music producer that has had the pleasure of being in the same studio, working on tracks alongside musicians such as Ed Sheeran.

I've literally spent hours on my videos, and I've never used any shady tactics on this channel. I was granted access into the partnership program and also make a number of sales from selling audio equipment as an affiliate from my videos. This is what I do ...

Firstly, I create a video. I do a bit of research before I create the video to see what keywords I can hit, check out the competition. My aim is to hit the first page of the YouTube search results for my chosen keyword/s. I don't mind heavy numbers at the top of the search results, so long as theres some room for me somewhere on that first page.

I've found from my experience that if you're video has the numbers, you'll hit the front page. Simple as that. Keywords and views. That's all it is.

The good thing with music production related videos is people don't stop at one video. They will watch a number of videos. What I have noticed is if my video hits the first page of search results and a user watches the first video on that search results page, my video will appear as related at the end of that video. I get a lot of natural traffic this way.

So, I create a video. For example I'll do "How to create a Skrillex Bassline". I picked this of the top of my head just, as an example, because it seems to be very popular on YouTube.

I would then create the video using a synthesizer, and record the screen. I usually get some notes on paper before I record the video. I'll record the video straight, no pauses. Once recorded I go through the video and remove errors, and parts of the video that are not relevant. I'll then dub some audio over it using a microphone.

Once recorded, I'll upload. I will make sure my keyword is the exact search term I want to go for. In the description I will also repeat the title at the top, then some text with the keywords in it. I'll use the title in the tags, and add some tags that are related. I don't rush this step, without proper keywords scattered around the video details you can fail to hit the front page.

Once that's all done and it's upload it's time to get some numbers.

I'm a member on a lot of music production forums. So the first thing I will do is go around them all, there's around 30 I'm a member on. I have a good post count, so my posts never really look spammy. The users on these forums are used to seeing quality videos from me, so as soon as I post the videos they want to check them out.

Whatever niche you're working under forum traffic can bring in a lot of hits. On some forums I've had over 10,000 views on my posts in less than a week.

When posting on the forums I will use titles such as "Making Skrillex Basslines - Insider Info! Full Tutorial!". I play about with the titles. Do this on 30 forums, and you will start to get natural traffic instantly.

Now, I do the usual. I social bookmark the videos in the right categories. I've hit good numbers from Digg alone.

I then go around Facebook pages. I'd go to the Skrillex page, all the top producers Facebook pages. All the music production pages. I'd drop a link somewhere. Whilst Facebook is not the main source of traffic, I do get hits.

I will also post the video on my site. Sometimes I will transcript the video for the sake of hitting keywords for SEO purposes. I will get some articles knocked up and get some backlinks from my blog network. I can generally rank high on page one for most of the videos I do. Again, this isn't really my main source of traffic, it's very little on most.

I'll also spend a couple hours a day hitting regular forums, or closely related forums. Forum traffic is my main source of traffic. I can get a s**t load.

The idea here is to get the views needed, and the interaction needed, to hit the front page for my keyword. Once I'm on the front page, natural YouTube views take over and the snowball starts rolling and the income generating.

I never really followed guides on YouTube, or ebooks from other marketers. I've been a producer for a long time and one day I just thought about utilising the traffic on the forums I use because I noticed my regular posts on these forums were getting thousands of views.

Having a decent post count on the forums helps. But, even if you create a topic with one post count, so long as it look interesting people will open it. I think having a good post count helps though because you get the forum fans saying "Thanks" which keeps your post at the top of the forum.

I thought I'd share a legit method for traffic. People tend to be hunting for the BH method and ignore the fact you can get good numbers naturally. BH is good for the quick money, I've been in BH for 4 years. BH never lives long, so make sure you have WH stuff running alongside your BH. When the BH methods fail your income stream is still rolling nice until you find/develop another.

The important part to YouTube videos is ...

Your videos must contain something of value!

... do that, and you'll get traffic for years and years. People are always looking for tutorials on "How to master a track". They've been asking the same question for 50 years, and will continue to ask for another 50. It's a principle of music production.

This niche for me is brilliant. I'm good at it. Use a niche you're good at. If it's programming, do that. If it's tutorials on how to increase MW3 skill, do that. If it's DJing tutorials, do that. Limitless possibilities.

Just sharing my experience with YouTube. As I said, you may have head something similar before, but I've never read an ebook or guide from a marketer on YouTube. I just tired something and it worked, so if you've heard this from another YouTube marketer ... it's because it works.

Enjoy.

Note: Forgive typos and spelling errors. I've had 2 hours sleep. Was woken up by our 4 year old banging at 7am in the morning! I think I'll be living on coffee today! Joys of working till 5am in the morning!

Good stuff. Thanks for sharing. Also doing alot of videos on youtube all whitehat and there's some really good niches out there that will bring in a ton of views if you do proper research first and check out the competition!

Youtube vids also tends to appear on the front page of google.

Very interesting read, rep given

A very nice tutorial. thank you