How To Create A YouTube Channel (2025 Guide For Beginners)

Summary

This 2025 guide from Make Money Matt offers a comprehensive step-by-step walkthrough for beginners on creating a YouTube channel, focusing on optimization and growth strategies. Matt shares his expertise on account setup, channel customization, and feature unlocking, alongside practical tips for naming and securing your channel. The guide stresses the importance of optimizing your channel to increase views and rank better in YouTube's algorithms. Additionally, it covers essential settings for monetization and security, aiming to help new creators successfully launch and maintain a prosperous YouTube channel.

Highlights

• Creating a YouTube channel is a fantastic way to grow your business online in 2025. 🌍
• Start by setting up a Google account and use bit Warden for password management. 🔑
• Get creative with channel names using ChatGPT and check for uniqueness. 🧠
• Design eye-catching profile pictures and banners using Snappa. 📸
• Unlock important features by verifying your phone number on YouTube. 📞
• Utilize keywords in channel settings to enhance visibility and reach. 🌐
• Learn how to manage permissions for team collaborations effectively. 👥
• Auto-subscribe links can help increase your subscriber base easily. 📈
• Stay secure with YouTube’s two-step verification process. 🔒
• Prepare to meet YouTube's monetization requirements for earning potential. 💰

Key Takeaways

• Starting a YouTube channel in 2025 is a smart move for growing an online presence. 🚀
• Creating a Google account is your first step towards YouTube stardom. 🌟
• Use tools like Snappa for slick channel graphics and ChatGPT for unique channel names. 🎨
• Make sure to verify your channel for unlocking all features, like custom thumbnails. 🔓
• Optimize with the right keywords and settings to rank better in the algorithm. 📈
• Don’t forget to set up email notifications for partner program eligibility. 📬
• Permissions help collaborate effectively; invite team members wisely. 🤝
• Use auto-subscribe links to boost your channel's subscribers. 🔗
• Security is key—enable two-step verification for added protection. 🔐

Overview

Creating a YouTube channel in 2025 is an exciting venture! Start by setting up a Google account, unless you already have one. Follow Matt's expert tips to ensure your account is optimized from the get-go, using tools like bit Warden for password management and ChatGPT for generating catchy channel names.

The guide offers insights into customizing your channel using tools like Snappa to create professional-looking profile pictures and banners. Once your channel is active, it's crucial to enable features like custom thumbnails by verifying your phone number, which can drastically improve your video engagement rates.

Optimize your channel's reach by tweaking settings like keywords and upload defaults. Matt emphasizes the importance of securing your channel with two-step verification and setting permissions for team collaboration. Lastly, aim for YouTube's monetization criteria to start earning through ads—an achievable goal if you follow these steps meticulously.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 01:30: Introduction and Account Creation The chapter provides a step-by-step guide on creating a YouTube channel in 2024, focusing on the latest optimization techniques to maximize viewership. It emphasizes key features that are often overlooked and highlights YouTube as the premier platform for starting and growing an online business, sharing insights from a successful creator who has made millions from multiple channels. The first step in channel creation is introduced.
• 01:30 - 04:00: Setting Up Your Channel The chapter 'Setting Up Your Channel' provides a step-by-step guide for creating a Google account, which is necessary to start a YouTube channel. It instructs users to create an account, choose the option for work or business, enter their first and last name, and provide basic information such as their birthday. It also mentions that users might need to verify their phone number and select a Gmail username. Once these steps are completed, the user will have a Gmail account set up.
• 04:00 - 07:00: Customizing Your Channel The chapter "Customizing Your Channel" provides a step-by-step guide on creating a new YouTube channel under a Google account. It starts by instructing users to click on their profile picture in the top right corner, navigate to settings, and select 'Create a new channel'. It explains that multiple channels can be created under one Google account. The chapter also includes a practical example where the narrator creates a channel named "Kayla's C" for their younger sister who is starting on YouTube.
• 07:00 - 10:00: Unlocking Features and Verification In this chapter titled 'Unlocking Features and Verification,' the text discusses how to create a YouTube channel by checking a specific box and clicking 'create.' It provides a bonus tip on using a password manager, specifically recommending Bit Warden, for storing Google account passwords. Additionally, it suggests using the website Chat GPT to generate YouTube channel name ideas, providing a prompt for those needing help with naming a channel about making money.
• 10:00 - 15:00: Optimizing Your Channel for Views and Subscribers This chapter focuses on optimizing your YouTube channel for increasing views and subscribers. It provides a method for generating unique channel name ideas using Chat GPT. The process involves generating 30 different name suggestions, followed by verifying these names for uniqueness using resources like the WIO Global Brand Name Database and checking YouTube to ensure no large channels already use these names. By doing this, one can generate hundreds of potential channel names, providing a high likelihood of finding a unique and suitable one.
• 15:00 - 19:30: Monetization and Security The chapter titled 'Monetization and Security' details the process of customizing a YouTube channel. It begins with accessing the channel by clicking on the profile picture and selecting 'view your channel'. The chapter provides a guide on updating the profile picture by hovering over the current one and uploading a new image. For a professional-looking profile picture, the chapter suggests using a recommended website for design.
• 19:30 - 24:00: Additional Features and Conclusion This chapter discusses additional features of using Snappa, an online image creation tool, with a focus on creating images for YouTube channels. The author provides a tutorial on setting the correct size for a faceless channel banner and offers guidance on using Snappa to add a background image, emphasizing its utility for creating customized graphics.

How To Create A YouTube Channel (2025 Guide For Beginners) Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 here's how to create a YouTube channel step by step in 2024 with all of the latest optimization techniques to make sure that your channel is optimized to get as many views as you possibly can including a lot of the key optimization features that most people miss and by the way congratulations if you're starting a channel on YouTube because it is the best place on the internet to start and grow an online business and this is coming from someone who's made millions of dollars from starting dozens of different YouTube channels so you're making a fantastic choice and let's start with step number one which is to
• 00:30 - 01:00 actually create your account and if you already have a Google account you can skip this part right here but if you don't simply go down and click create account and then select for work or my business if you're going to be treating YouTube as a business then from here you can put your first and last name in Click next and from here enter some basic information like your birthday a couple other things they may also ask you to verify your phone number and then they'll ask you to put in the name of the Gmail you'd like to secure and then from there you will have a Gmail account
• 01:00 - 01:30 in which you can create your YouTube channel with and now once you already have a Google account what you can do is click on your profile picture in the top right and then go down here to settings from here then we're going to click create a new channel and you can have many different channels under one Google account if you'd like then you can simply click create channel from here you can give your channel a name this is going to be a channel I'm creating for my younger sister who is recently starting YouTube so we can simply type in Kayla's C what we're going to call
• 01:30 - 02:00 the channel check this box right here and then click create now one quick bonus tip for creating your YouTube channel make sure to use a password manager for saving the password of your Google account it'll help you so much and the one that I recommend is called bit Warden and it is completely free and if you need some help coming up with a YouTube channel name you can simply go on over to a website called chat GPT which is completely free and type in give me 30 YouTube channel name ideas for a Channel about making money and
• 02:00 - 02:30 then click enter right there and then you can see that chat GPT will go ahead and give you 30 different great channel name ideas now with all of these ideas that you get right here make sure that you run these through a website like the wio global brand name database to make sure that it's not already an established company and also double check on YouTube that there's no huge channels using one of these names but you can get hundreds of name ideas from here and I almost guarantee you'll find a one doing this and now it's time for
• 02:30 - 03:00 step number three which is customizing your Channel Once you have your YouTube channel created you can get to it at anytime just by simply clicking your profile picture and then clicking view your channel it'll bring you right to it right here and in order to add a profile picture it's very easy simply just hover over your profile picture click it and then it'll let you upload a new profile picture right here and in order to create a profile picture that looks very professional I recommend using a website
• 03:00 - 03:30 called snapper.com and I'll leave a link down below where you can check it out but it's basically a fantastic Image Maker where you can create images directly online and we're just going to use a photo for my sister right here for her Channel but if you're creating for example a faceless Channel what I recommend doing here just go to custom graphic or size and put in 1080x 1080 for the size and click create then you'll want to add a banner image which is the image that shows in the background of your YouTube channel in order to do that all you simply have to do is go to back to snappa and they have
• 03:30 - 04:00 a built-in YouTube Banner template right here which is 2560 by 1440 for the dimensions and you can just click that right there if you're using snappa and it'll give you tons of templates that you can use to create that channel banner and here's a good one right here that we can use for my sister's channel right there we can just click it and it'll open it up and then you can simply edit any text that's on here since we're going to be calling her Channel Kayla's cache just like that right there I want to get rid of this Twitter and Instagram logo right there and instead I just
• 04:00 - 04:30 basically want this right here and then I can upload a photo of her right here if we want to we can resize it a little bit and what's cool about snapa is we can even remove the image background if we wanted to right there I'm going to keep this simple because I want to keep this fast for you guys for this tutorial so we're just going to click save and then click download and then click web optimize jpeg go back to YouTube Studio click upload for Banner image select your banner image click done and boom now we have a background image for our channel for video Watermark this doesn't
• 04:30 - 05:00 matter that much you can literally just put some text that says subscribe I see some people do that but you can just leave it blank as well and then if you click view your channel you can take a look at the changes that you made and see what it looks like step number four now is unlocking all of the features for your channel some features for example adding custom thumbnails on your videos to entice people to click them do require some additional verification I'm going to show you exactly how to do that right now from your YouTube channel page click your profile picture in the top
• 05:00 - 05:30 right and then select YouTube Studio your YouTube studio will be your hub for checking analytics changing settings and basically getting into the behind the scenes of your YouTube channel and from your YouTube analytics you can go to the left-and side right here and go all the way down to the bottom to settings and then from settings go to the side right here and click Channel and then click feature eligibility from here in order to unlock for example custom thumbnails which is an absolute must I highly recommend doing this before you upload a single video on your YouTube channel all
• 05:30 - 06:00 you have to do is just verify your phone number so click verify phone number put your number in right there it'll send you a text message verify it click that and then you'll be able to put in your phone number and then click get code from here then they're going to text me a six-digit code real quick then I'm going to enter this code right here and then click submit and boom now my phone number is verified with YouTube and now all of these features are enabled now there are some additional features which require even additional verification as well for example being able to upload
• 06:00 - 06:30 more videos every day being able to apply for monetization to put ads on our videos and make additional money that way and this is a big one putting external links in our video description this is very important if we're selling something like affiliate products or our own product this is very important to do and it does require some additional verification and you have two options for this number one you can do something like upload a video of yourself submit a valid form of identification to YouTube and it usually takes a couple days and
• 06:30 - 07:00 they'll verify you or you can get some Channel History which simply means having your YouTube be active for around a month meaning uploading regular videos and then they will go ahead and enable these features on your channel I usually just go the video history route but if you do have some links that you need to put in your videos from the very beginning make sure to go in here and do this now it's time for step number five which is optimizing your channel these are some additional settings that are going to help your channel get more views and rank in the algorithm faster so let's dive straight into them
• 07:00 - 07:30 starting with going back into our YouTube Studio from here we're going to go to the left hand side and go down to settings and then from here go to channel and first of all select your country of residence for me I'm living in the United States so I'm going to go down and select United States and directly under that we can add keyw that relate to our channel so my sister's channel right here is going to be about making money online so I'm going to put in keywords like make money online earn money and if you need any help with this you can use something like chat GPT give me 30 keyword words about making money
• 07:30 - 08:00 online click enter let's see what they give us right here as you can see it's given us a couple good ones for example passive income that's a good one right there I wasn't thinking of and then also side hustle side hustles make money and then also put the name of your channel so my sister's channel name is Kayla's cash and then we'll also just put Kayla in right there as well so that way we're just putting a couple extra keywords that relate to our Channel and if you want to go even a step further with this and find the absolute best keywords to
• 08:00 - 08:30 put here you can check out a tool called vid IQ I'll leave a link down below where you can get it basically for free for the first month and that'll help you find the best keywords to use from here then we want to go to advanced settings and select if our channel is made for kids or not this channel is not going to be made for children all you simply have to do is ask yourself is the intention of this channel to be shown to people under the age of 13 if that's no then we click no this channel is not for kids right there and then simply click save
• 08:30 - 09:00 the next step is to select our upload defaults so we just go down here to settings and then go on up to upload defaults and then from here go to advanced settings and then select your video language this channel is going to be uploading videos in English so we're going to scroll down and just select overall English right here and if you know all of your videos will be in a single category as well for example my sisters are all going to be howto videos I'm going to select how to and style right there and then I'm also going to select the title and description language which is also obviously going
• 09:00 - 09:30 to be English right there and then we can simply click save this will save us a ton of time in the uploading process when we upload every new video now what we want to do is customize our channel to get as many views as possible and this is very easy to do go to the leftand side down to customization going on over to the featured sections of your channel click add section and I recommend adding a popular video section because your popular videos are that way for a reason because they're typically performing good within the algorithm so so we want to push people to those
• 09:30 - 10:00 videos that land on our channel so that will help you get more views and you can add some playlists here if you want as well as feature channels if you'd like for example um we could add a section that says check out these channels and of course we'll leave a link back to make money mat right here from my sister's Channel thank you Kayla shout out and once you've made these changes you can also even add a channel trailer if you want but in the beginning we don't have any videos on this channel yet we're just going to click publish and we can add things like that channel trailer as well as a featured video for your returning subscribers later and I
• 10:00 - 10:30 would just recommend choosing one of your better videos for both of those two right there next up we want to click basic info right here and this is where you can do things like change the name of your channel if you would like you can do that every 14 days on your YouTube channel or also change your YouTube handle so your handle is different than your username your handle is basically the URL of your channel so in this case we got the handle Kayla's cash not every handle is going to be available so you you can always double
• 10:30 - 11:00 check that prior to choosing which handle that you would like to do just by typing in one you're thinking about and it'll show you if it's available right there if it shows that little check mark next to it but we just want to keep kless cache right there for the handle for it and you can add some additional settings right here if you like as well as a description for your channel this is something that I do recommend filling out and you can use something like chat GPD to help you with this if you'd like write a 250w description about a YouTube Channel
• 11:00 - 11:30 called Kayla's cash which teaches people how to make money online and different tactics for doing so click enter and then from here it's going to give us a description that it wrote straight for us so as you can see it wrote welcome to Kayla's cash the go-to YouTube channel for anyone looking to dive into the dynamic world of making money online hosted by Kayla season entrepreneur mirrored ways of earn income in the digital age and as you can see 250 words was quite a bit we're just going to use the first parag from this right here so
• 11:30 - 12:00 we'll just copy that over put that right there in the description from here you can scroll down you can add some links to for example other social media you have or if you have links to affiliate products or your own products you can put those right there and then also I do recommend adding some contact info so you can just simply put in your email right there so people can reach out to you if they need to and this is very important if for example sponsors wanted to reach out to you or other business dealings that you may want to know about and now I know everyone here wants to make money from their YouTube channel
• 12:00 - 12:30 and I don't blame you I've made millions of dollars from YouTube it's completely transformed my life so make sure when you're setting up your channel go over here to the earn tab on your YouTube studio and then scroll down here and as you can see it requires 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 hours of watch time in order to join the YouTube Partner program and after you're a part of that you can start getting those regular paychecks from YouTube so I recommend selecting email me right here so you can get emailed once reach the requirements for doing this so you don't
• 12:30 - 13:00 forget about it you don't want to forget to join the partner program and start making that YouTube money and then also go down here and turn on twostep verification this is going to help keep your channel more secure just click turn on right here and then you can simply put in your phone number and do that and also it's going to allow you to join the partner program which will in turn let you get monetized when you hit those requirements now another very cool feature that you may want to utilize is permissions and in order to do this simply go to your YouTube Studio go down to the left side to settings and then
• 13:00 - 13:30 click permissions and from here you can invite other people who have a Google account in order to access your channel and you can give them different roles for example you can give them the role of moderator to just answer questions and stuff and then you can also give the role so people can help edit your channel as well like I'm doing right here for my sister I'm helping her get set up and everything now one thing you can do if you'd like is add an auto subscribe Link in order to get more subscribers for your channel and in order to do that simply go to the URL bar of your YouTube Channel and then put
• 13:30 - 14:00 this text after it question mark subcore confirmation equals 1 and I'll show you what that does so if we copy that over right here and click enter on this link it'll direct people to a link where it will confirm if people want to subscribe to your channel this intern will help you get a couple extra subscribers I think it's worth doing simply click customize your channel in order to add this link onto it and then go to basic info go down to Links right here and then just simply put subscribe right there and put that link click publish and now if you click view your channel
• 14:00 - 14:30 you will see that subscribe link showing up right here it just gives people one more option to subscribe to your channel there along with if you want to put some links to your other social media and now it's time for step number six which is to start uploading and potentially even making money from YouTube and if you want to discover exactly how to make money on YouTube without making videos feel free to check out this video next to me right here it goes over this exact process step by step in fact I give you four specific secrets for doing this in this video right here including the best niches to do this and how to generate
• 14:30 - 15:00 tons of content quickly and how to get a ton of views and subscribers fast so you're not just leaving this to luck check this out right here my name is Matt par hope you got value from this and I'll see you there