How to Start a YouTube Channel in 2026

Creating the channel takes about ten minutes and none of it matters. What decides whether the channel works is the niche, the format you can sustain, and getting through roughly thirty videos before judging results. Most channels that fail do so because the person quit at video eight, not because of anything they set up on day one.

Setting the channel up

1. Sign in to YouTube with a Google account, click your picture, then Create a channel.
2. Use a Brand Account rather than your personal one. It lets you add managers later and hand over access without giving away your Google login.
3. Pick a name you will not outgrow. Naming a channel after one narrow topic is the most common regret.
4. Add a profile picture and banner. Legible at small sizes beats detailed.
5. Write the description with the search terms someone would actually type, then verify the account to unlock custom thumbnails and longer uploads.

The niche decision

Pick something you can make a hundred videos about and that advertisers pay for. Those two constraints together rule out most ideas, which is the point. YouTube RPM varies by roughly ten times across niches: finance, software and B2B pay at the top, while entertainment, vlogs and gaming pay at the bottom for the same view count.

That does not mean chase the highest RPM. It means know which trade you are making. A gaming channel needs several times the views of a finance channel to earn the same amount, and if you cannot sustain finance content, the higher rate is worth nothing.

Long form, Shorts, or both

• Long form earns far more per view because it carries real advertising, and it builds an audience that returns. It is slower to grow.
• Shorts grow subscribers quickly and pay very little. Shorts subscribers also convert poorly to long form viewers, which surprises people.
• Both works when the Shorts are genuinely derived from the long form, not made separately. Doing two unrelated content operations at once is how people burn out by month three.

If monetisation is the goal, long form is the answer. Shorts are a discovery channel feeding it, not a business on their own.

Monetisation thresholds

The YouTube Partner Programme requires 1,000 subscribers plus either 4,000 valid public watch hours in twelve months or 10 million Shorts views in ninety days. There is a lower tier at 500 subscribers that unlocks fan funding features like memberships and Super Thanks before full ad revenue.

Ad revenue is rarely the main income anyway. Most channels earning a living do it through brand deals, their own products and affiliate commissions, with AdSense as a base layer. Treat the threshold as a milestone, not a finish line.

The first thirty videos

Your early videos are practice, and treating them as anything else leads to over-editing and quitting. Publish on a schedule you can hold at your busiest, which is usually less often than you think. One video a week that ships beats three a week that stops after a month.

• Title and thumbnail decide whether a video is watched. They deserve as much time as the edit.
• The first fifteen seconds decide whether it is finished. Cut the introduction entirely.
• Make videos about things people search for. Search traffic compounds; feed traffic does not.
• Watch retention graphs, not view counts. The graph tells you where you lost people; the count does not.
• Do not redesign the channel art. It is the most popular way to avoid making video eleven.

What to ignore for now

Expensive cameras, complicated lighting, intro animations and a posting schedule spanning four platforms. A phone in daylight with clean audio is enough to reach monetisation. Audio is the one place where cheap equipment genuinely shows, so if you buy one thing, buy a microphone.