About a year ago, we started our YouTube channel, The Endless Adventure. And like every other YouTuber, we started with zero YouTube subscribers.

Starting from zero is very tough. Since we had no viewers (other than our moms), we posted videos on our channel just for ourselves! And it was up to us to learn how to gain YouTube Subscribers to our channel. But, through much trial and error, we've found some guaranteed techniques for gaining YouTube subscribers. We used these techniques to seed our channel and grow to our first 100 subscribers, then on to 1000 subscribers, and now to over 2000! (EDIT: Now almost 10k!)

Since passing 1000 subscribers, it's been much easier to gain new subscribers. YouTube starts to reward you for things like gaining consistent subscribers, having high watch time and having a consistent upload schedule. Now most people are finding our videos via search and recommended videos.

That's why these tips are so important. Channel growth is like a snowball effect. The more you grow it, the more it grows itself!

So here are the techniques we've been using to grow our channel and consistently gain new YouTube subscribers.

1) Comment on other popular, but similar YouTubers videos

This is a technique we've used from the very beginning with great success. Since we're all about travel, we watch other travel channels like funforlouis and mrbenbrown. We've enabled alerts for these channels so that we get notifications immediately after they post new videos.

When we receive a notification, we immediately drop what we're doing to watch their latest video. Then we leave a thoughtful comment. And since our comments are early and usually the only ones with substance, they usually get a lot of upvotes and replies.

This is basically free advertising for your channel. Every person going to this video page has the chance of seeing your comment and checking out your channel.

Believe me, this technique works:

2) Comment on smaller YouTube channels

You can also comment on smaller YouTubers that are around your same subscriber count or lower. The hope here is that the owner of the channel will see the comment, click through to your channel and potentially subscribe!

We've gained legitimate, long term viewers using this technique:

But, whatever you do, don't ask them to subscribe. Instead, watch the entire video and provide a constructive, positive comment to help them out. Trust me, these types of comments will give you the best odds of gaining a new subscriber. Also, you get to help people out with their channel. Win win!

3) Grow other social media outlets and point those followers to your YouTube channel

If you're like us, you started with zero YouTube subscribers and zero followers on every other social network.

Just like with YouTube, you've got to work to gain followings on these other social networks. The main ones we use are Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. We don't have crazy huge numbers, but we post pretty much every new video on each of these outlets, and it has become a steady stream of YouTube views and new subscribers.

Plus, you have the added benefit of creating a community. If you only post new videos once a week or once a month, then your audience can use these other networks to keep up with that you're doing!

4) Post your videos on Reddit

This one you have to do with caution. Reddit is a pretty salty place and it's easy to piss redditors off. But, if you do it right, you can gain hundreds of subscribers by posting your videos on Reddit.

The key is finding the right subreddit where people are most likely to receive your content well.

If we upload a YouTube video that's about a specific city, we'll sometimes post it on that city's subreddit. For example, we recently created a video highlighting fun and free things to do in St. Louis, Missouri. We figured our video could be helpful to people browsing the St. Louis subreddit, so we decided to post it there.

As you can see, it was received fairly well and got us a bunch of views as well as new subscribers!

Keep in mind, this can be hit or miss. Sometimes we'll be sure a video will be received well in a subreddit, only to see it have one or two upvotes. I think the most important thing is to make sure the video is actually helpful or interesting to that subreddit before posting. And make sure you read the rules on self promotion and follow them!

5) Create a blog

This is a longterm strategy but can result in huge traffic to your YouTube channel and, in turn, more YouTube Subscribers.

We actually started our blog before we even started our YouTube channel! We mostly blog about travel tips and stories, but we also share a lot of YouTube tips and tricks. And it turns out our YouTube related posts are our top performers! Which is great because the primary purpose of our blog is to drive traffic to YouTube. Since many of our readers are already YouTube viewers, that means they're very likely to subscribe to our channel!

Here are some great platforms for getting a blog up and running easily:

Check out some of our other articles for more help growing your YouTube channel:

When used properly, these tips can help you grow your YouTube subscribers even when starting from zero! If you have any questions about these techniques, leave us a comment. Also, feel free to share some tips of your own!

Thanks for reading.

If you want to follow along on our journey, you can subscribe to our YouTube Channel or subscribe to our blog. Thanks for reading, we'll see you on the road!

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