After Grok recommended it, I started a dedicated author channel on YouTube.

I already have a channel with 13K subscribers, and at first, I thought I could simply add my author content there as well. However, these videos didn’t perform very well. My existing channel is focused on video and photo editing tutorials, so my author content doesn’t really fit the channel.

Since Grok recommended creating a dedicated author channel, I decided to start over. It’s tough to start from scratch once again with zero subscribers, but does it really matter if you have 13K subscribers and none of them are interested in your author videos because it’s completely off-topic?

Once I had made that decision, the next question was: What does Grok recommend when it comes to starting a YouTube channel as an author?

Consistency on YouTube

Try to connect your YouTube channel to your overall author platform. Look at your X, Instagram, website, and other platforms and make sure your YouTube channel fits in with them.

That specifically means:

• Use the same name on YouTube that you use everywhere else.
• Use the same design style for your profile image, header, and thumbnails that you use elsewhere.
• Consistency is key. All your content across all platforms should contribute to a bigger picture that is recognizable from the beginning.

How to Start for Free on YouTube

Don’t spend money in the beginning—you don’t have to.

Use your smartphone camera, a free screen recorder, and edit your videos with CapCut, which is free in its basic version. Use Audacity for audio editing, which is completely free, and design your thumbnails with Canva, which also has a free tier.

If you have some money to spend, invest in a good microphone first. You can already get a decent one for under $100.

What Content Can Authors Make for YouTube?

• Book trailers for your novels
• Reviews of books by other authors
• Your author journey (for me, that’s currently my Grok project)
• Behind-the-scenes content / Day-in-the-life vlogs
• Writing and publishing tutorials (these will attract other authors rather than readers, but they can be useful for networking)
• Livestreams are great for community building, but they are much more effective once you already have an audience.

YouTube SEO Basics

Video Titles | Focus on clarity and honest value. Titles should be specific. Numbers often work well. Examples:

• 5 Habits That Help Me Write Every Day
• My Top 3 Sci-Fi Books in 2026
• Grok Recommended These 5 Ways to Find Readers

Keywords | Use YouTube Keyword tools and Google Trends to find relevant keywords. Apply the same basic principles on YouTube that you would use for blogging SEO.

Keyword Stuffing | As with blogging, think about the audience first. Don’t stuff unrelated keywords into your videos. It can only hurt your platform in the long term.

Clickbait | Finding long-term readers is about building a good community, especially for indie authors. So be honest and authentic. Never lie to your audience. Clickbait is one of the worst things you can do when you’re trying to build a community.

Collaborations | Search for other indie authors, review their books, and then reach out to them. If they are legitimate authors, you’ll often find their email address on their channel’s About page. Aim for people with a comparable audience size who write in the same genre as you. In general, give something to these authors before you expect them to give something to you.

Lead Magnets | If you have a freebie to offer in exchange for email subscriptions, add a link to it in every YouTube video description. Mine is a link to the free book I offer to my newsletter subscribers.

Are Other Video Platforms Worth It?

Currently, I don’t think so. You can use Rumble or Odysee as backup platforms, but the audience for fiction authors is on YouTube. It seems that the alternative platforms currently attract mainly people and audiences interested in non-mainstream political content.

YouTube Expectations

From my experience, YouTube is a marathon.

I published content almost daily for three years on my tutorial channel until I had more than 1K subscribers. If you publish weekly content on a fresh author channel without an existing audience elsewhere, it’s probably going to take years to build a channel that can become a meaningful asset.

Only a few people achieve overnight success on YouTube. Be aware of that before you start.

To Conclude

YouTube is the most important video platform, and it will probably remain that way for the foreseeable future. If you have some time to spare, it’s worth getting into.

But weekly videos are not going to make you famous overnight. Use YouTube as a supplement to your overall author platform. Writing novels and running your own website and mailing list are still the most important outlets.

I made a promise to myself to follow Grok’s advice wherever it leads me.

Before consulting the AI model, I simply uploaded my author videos to an existing tutorial channel that I’ve been running for seven years. But Grok suggested creating a dedicated author channel—even though I currently have no audience at all.

On my tutorial channel, the author videos get buried anyway, and it simply doesn’t look very professional to have my writing-related content mixed in with video editing and graphic design tutorials.

So, a new YouTube channel was born: Author Michael Brig.

The goal is to post weekly videos about:

• My 5-year Grok project
• Books I’ve read
• My AI comic projects
• Book trailers
• Writing tips (possibly in the future)

The channel will be exclusively about my writing hobby and the books and comics I publish.

If that sounds interesting, check it out and subscribe!

More than 15 years ago, I started watching YouTube regularly. It quickly changed the kind of entertainment I consumed. YouTube felt different — more authentic, more novel, more real.

I remember stumbling across a guy who called himself Durianrider. He might have been the first YouTuber I ever subscribed to. His videos are funny, direct, and thought-provoking.

Soon after, I discovered other interesting creators talking about fitness, nutrition, making money, crypto, politics, and philosophy. Some of their videos genuinely changed the way I thought about life — and even influenced my behavior. The dynamic was great. YouTube felt like a real connection with someone. Some YouTubers made me change careers, helped me make money, improved my health. One YouTuber even made me pick up a Bible and read it for the first time in my life.

Today, YouTube feels different.

There are still real people, authentic videos, and thought-provoking ideas on the platform. But over time, shaped by corporate decisions and executives like Wojcicki, the algorithm has been adjusted in a way that no longer naturally leads you to creators you might genuinely connect with. Instead, it directs you toward corporate-style content to sell you stuff that you don’t need.

Instead of creators simply showcasing themselves, YouTube now pushes content designed to connect viewers to corporations and products — much like TV did in the ’90s, just on demand.

Whenever I discover a new channel, I like to check the creator’s oldest videos. The truly authentic channels often have early uploads that are completely unrelated to their current videos: Someone talking about crypto today might have posted a video about cooking ramen noodles ten years ago. A fitness channel might include random travel vlogs from Bangkok. Those channels still feel real. They still feel human. They still feel like they’re about the YOU.

But many newer channels seem hyper-focused on a single niche from day one. Not because that’s who the creator is — but because they see YouTube as a branding tool. And brands perform best when positioned in a tightly defined niche.

It’s sad to see what YouTube has become — a platform that once felt like it belonged to all of us. It was an entertainment space built by people, for people. And now, increasingly, it’s just optimized TV for corporations and consumers.

I’ve always wanted to try this. But for the longest time, I hesitated, procrastinated—and eventually forgot.

A simple rule for life is: if you really want something done, you have to start as soon as possible. And you have to start where you are. Of course, there are exceptions to that rule, but most things grow best when you just begin and allow yourself to make mistakes.

Mistakes will be part of my project—maybe even a big part. But with each video I make, I hope to learn and improve.

My goals for this channel:

• Improve my English
• Learn more about video editing
• Build an audience (and hopefully find some readers for my books)
• Have fun talking about my favorite stories

The plan is to release a new video every week, diving into the movies, shows, books, and comics I love. Hopefully, I bring some fresh perspectives to the video essay space—ideas that haven’t already been talked to death.

I’ll try to share my progress openly on this blog, showing what worked and what didn’t. If you’d like to check it out, you can find my channel here:

• StoryLines on YouTube
• StoryLines on Rumble

So far, Rumble has actually brought my video to more viewers than YouTube. I’ve seen this before with my tutorial channel—I suspect YouTube has sandboxed my account. Years ago, I talked about German politics on another channel with the same account, back before that sort of content could get you flagged or (shadow-)banned.

It’s out of my hands now. YouTube does shady stuff that I can’t fix. And I’ve long given up trying to fix it. But the good news is: it led me to explore alternative platforms like Rumble. Maybe there’s an audience out there that I wouldn’t find on YouTube anyway. We’ll see.

Whatever the outcome, I’ll be uploading a new video every Tuesday—until either YouTube dies… or I do. Whichever comes first.

Today I reached a big milestone on YouTube: 10,000 subscribers.
It only took me six years to get here—some makeup influencers manage that in six days. But hey, they say it’s about the journey, not the destination.

If you haven’t checked out my channel yet, it’s all about graphic design, photo and video editing, coding, and a bit of AI. I create tutorials for both Adobe and open-source programs, and I document my personal learning projects—like using AI to make comics or diving into new programming languages.

I remember exactly when I started: January 2019. I wanted to learn something new and maybe build a side income. I saw a few people on YouTube doing Photoshop tutorials and thought, why not? I could improve my Photoshop skills, practice speaking English, and pick up some video editing along the way.

Fast forward six years, my English has improved a lot, my Photoshop skills are bordering on advanced, and I’d say my video editing is at an intermediate level. I’ve also explored the world of AI, which was an unexpected but exciting bonus. And I’ve tried open-source alternatives to Adobe that I probably never would’ve looked at if I hadn’t started the channel.

As for the income stream… let’s just say there’s plenty of room for improvement. The money I make covers the cost of the software I use to make my videos and leaves a bit of spare change for books and vide games I rarely play.

Back when I started, I had high hopes: 1,000 subscribers in six months, 10,000 in a year, 100,000 in three, and eventually a million.

Yeah… not quite. Growth was slow and sometimes painfully so from day one. For a long time, nothing happened at all.

What kept me going was the fun and the drive to keep learning. That’s what’s kept me going for six years, and that’s what will keep me going for another six. I don’t really expect to ever hit a million subscribers—heck, even 100K seems far off—but I’m deeply grateful for everyone who joined the channel. Wherever it goes from here, I’m happy to find out without any expectations of hitting it big.

Thanks to everyone who’s subscribed—and welcome to those just jumping on board. Onwards to a full decade on YouTube.