Do you think a homepage is good for a YouTube channel?
Does anybody have experience?
My thoughts:
I don’t think a homepage will drive a lot of traffic to YT but maybe it’s good for YT’s algorithm.
And, maybe because of that it could be worth the time and effort?
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Great question Stephan, I believe creating your own website on your own domain is great for a “professional” place to present yourself, your brand, your services/products. But I don’t think it is worth it for YouTube to be honest.
Just for clarity, my website/blog (professionalcomposers.com) gets around 75000 page views per month. That is considered quite a lot for a website. But the amount of views that drives to my YouTube channel (at least from checking YT analytics) is less than 0.1%. I hope that gives you some perspective on this.
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Thanks Mikael!
0,1 % isn’t much. I guess you’re right. It takes a lot of time to do a homepage. Better time spent is probably inside YT than outside.
Very good stats for your homepage! 
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Thanks, yes I am very happy that my blog has grown as big as it has. But I have been publishing articles for 2,5 years and first year was pretty much cricket sounds haha.
What is your goal on YouTube? I mean, your focus of your channel. I believe that is the most important question you need to ask yourself. People subscribe and come back, if you provide content in a field that are interested in. As you probably know, my main content has been tutorials and education, both in Logic Pro, as well as music composition.
My goal is to have a music channel with soft music for relaxation, sleeping, studying, meditation, yoga and so on and to make a little money from it.
Ah, well that is probably the hardest niche of all. Posting your music on YouTube I mean. Because honestly, that is what we all want to do most of all!
I’m not saying it is impossible, I mean that it is way harder to get views and subscribers with a channel focusing on music tracks only.
Rather listen to the string that burst than to never stretch a bow!
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Touché, and good luck!
Thank you!
I’ll let you know in the future what became of my project.
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If you @StephanLindsjo really consider a website, you should present there your service, what you do and how people can contact you if they are interested to work with you. The easier the website looks like, the better for you. What do your clients want?
- They want to know what you do and your service is and
- They want to contact you…
What they don’t want is to know what tools you use, what awards you have won, etc.
So the ultimate goal for that type of website is really just to focus on two things: Your service and your contact form.
YouTube should be used backwards, meaning that it’s your free golden ticket to drive traffic to your website, so people get maybe a little more information about you and your services.
As Mikael has said, if you want to do YouTube only for money, your focus should be a totally different one, as YouTube is not the best platform to earn money with music. 80% of people come there to learn something and be entertained, music is just one part of that and if to look at the statistics, I guess music is more and more an outsider there. The biggest music channels are the most famous ones, huge stars etc., and when you know that per 150.000 streams you get around + - $300, you just need to be realistic and honest with you in terms of how high your personal expectations are.
The last thing I want you to be is being sad because you didn’t achieve the numbers you wanted to.
So my recommendation for you would be this:
First, you need to ask yourself, where are your potential listeners and/or people who will 100% be interested in your music? If you think that’s YouTube, fine, start to place your tracks there. But I can guarantee you, that your type of listeners are on other platforms like: Spotify, Apple Music etc., why? Because they have specialised in music only, so they are not a trashcan like YouTube, where you need ages to find something useful, even if it’s the second biggest search engine in the world. The bigger the platform, the more junk people put out, as nobody cares.
The second option, which I believe should be your first one, because you will exceed much higher % of income from your music are platforms like Pond5, Audiosparx, AudioJungle, etc. Those are the easiest music production libraries to get into and start earning much more money compared to YouTube, Spotify and Co. (of course you can put everything out at the same time, so chances are higher, so people can find you and your music.)
Just an example: I placed the same track on YouTube and on Audiosparx roughly at the same time. Result: After two month YouTube has showed my that my track was heard 30 times from 20 different people. Audiosparx has showed me that my track was heard 7000 times, as it has an online-radio-platform build in, so people pay some money to have that option for their bars, cafes, restaurants etc. I have made around $16 with only that track. Yes, it’s not a lot of money, I know, and will never be able to live on that, however, I don’t see it like that, because I made $0.00 with YouTube and $16 with AS during the same period of time.
So it tells me two things: (1) It’s better to find a platform where you already know that the kind of listeners who really search for that type of music are there and pay you. Your job is find these platforms that would work for you. (2) As the outcome of number one, your chances of success are much higher in terms of % you will earn with these sites that concentrate on your genre, or at least don’t give people 1000s of more options like watching cats and dogs videos and other crap.
The last point would be, you never know who is hearing your music, as that could be people who work in the industry and could licence a specific track of yours, meaning that you suddenly can make $50, and sometimes even $5k, as your track was used in a movie or advert. (And what are the chances with YouTube? Only that people will come to your website, if ever.)
Everyone can succeed everywhere, but the point is, that your first job and priority should be finding and researching the platforms that will instantly give you a higher % of winning in the long run. These is what people don’t do, not with music, not with other things, so after many years they give up, because they see no results. Answer yourself, how far you really want to go and how high you set your bar. The higher you set the bar, the bigger the chances that you will be really sad if you fail. The lower the bar, the higher the chances that you will be happy continue making music, even if you make some extra bucks. Be honest and realistic with yourself and start doing your research first, at least if you set your bar so high, that you want to achieve 1 million of streams every single week.
I hope that helps!
To your success,
Alexey
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Thanks a lot for your long engaging answer, very nice and kind of you.
The main goal with my MindLight project is to be able to do the music I love to do right now and hopefully also get a little money both from YouTube, Spotify etc, and licensing from Pond5.
Try to make MindLight to be one of the eggs in the basket, you could say.
The main question is more of a SEO thing for YT.
Will it be worth the time to make a homepage linking my YT videos to get higher ranking on youtube?
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If I would say if I compare to my website, no. As Mikael said, as long as you don’t provide people with information they want to know and hear aka. putting out content people want, nothing will change with the algorithm, not on YouTube, not on Google.
Tones of examples out there that go in both directions. There are people out there who make 5 videos and their channels blow up. There are people who do 7 videos per week for years and still have 5000 subs. As long as people are interested they will stay, watch, listen. Of course it’s better to spread the chances to many sites etc., but at the end of the day, it’s still on you to decide whether you put that amount of work in it or not.
I always say: Do it because you love it, as you love the process of whatever you do. If you focus on money first, you will fail, because you don’t go with the right intention into that thing. Passion first, money second. My goal is build a solid foundation with the things I love doing every single day without asking myself, “why I am doing all of that s***?”, because the worst case scenario is when my answer will be: “Oh, I do it for the money actually…”. I already answered that question for me. And I can tell you that there are far easier ways to make passive income on the side, more money in less time, than doing music, but the question will always be the same: “Are you doing it for money, or for passion?”
The best way is to find a hobby that brings you joy, and then you start figuring out how to potentially make money with it. From my experience, as I am friends with a millionaire, I can tell you that these people are not happier than you are, in fact, these people have sometimes far worser life quality (mental) than you, as they have FAR more problems than we “normal” people have, believe me that. Real stories don’t lie. I am a big believer in finding a passion that I love, brings me money or not, I don’t care, as I just have this joy inside of me that gives a huge motivational drive, and finding your place on this earth that’s called purpose. It’s a really tough one, as too many people never find it, because they focus on money first or never ask that question at all because they think that life is only work and paying bills.
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answers a lot of questions… worth having a look …
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Thanks a lot Michael!
Very inspiring!