How do you collaborate with someone on YouTube?
What does collaborating on Youtube mean?
Youtube creators collaborate on youtube to publish a video featuring other creators from the same niche or topic his/her channel is about.
This helps both the creators to expose their content and channel to fresh new potential subscribers.
Also, this helps them to get more views, more reach and credibility for their content.
Collaborating with fellow creators on Youtube helps you to build a good and strong relationship within the creators’ community.
How many subscribers do you need to collab?
Well, there’s no such threshold as the minimum number of subscribers needed to be eligible for a collab on Youtube, but it’s advisable to have at least 500-1000 subscribers on your channel.
The main thing here is to have a good number of videos uploaded on your channel before you approach any creator for a collab, as no one will be willing to do a collab if you are very new or not serious about posting content on your channel.
In short, the number of views and videos on your channel is more important than the number of subscribers when it comes to collaborating with other Youtubers.
How to find Youtubers for collaboration?
You can use websites and apps like Channelcrawler and Collabspace to find Youtubers who create content for similar niche or topics as yours.
On these platforms, you can search Youtubers based on the filters like country, region, number of subscribers, number of views, niche, language, etc.
Also, you can use community forums like FB groups, Instagram, Reddit communities, Youtube meetups and events to find potential collaborators.
Always select creators who have similar niches and topics as yours otherwise it won’t make any sense for your viewers to watch those collab videos which don’t have anything in common with your channel’s main theme or topic.
Your viewers will start bouncing back or unsubscribing from your channel, which is something that you don’t want to experience even in dreams.
Reach out to your potential collaborators
Once you gather the list of potential Youtubers for the collab, it’s time that you start interacting and engaging with their content and work.
Comment and appreciate their work on Youtube and other social media platforms like Instagram and Twitter.
Also, provide constructive feedback like how they can cover the untapped audience, and point them to topics which have great potential for their channel’s growth but they miss out on it often.
This will make them feel that you genuinely care for their growth and thinking here from a long-term professional relationship perspective.
The goal here is to build a friendly and mutual relationship with them even before you start reaching out to them for collaborations via DMs and cold emails so that there will be a good response rate from them.
You can find their email address by visiting their Youtube channel -> About section -> Details -> For business inquiries.
Tell them how this collaboration will benefit them
In case you are reaching out to a bigger Youtuber, you need to pitch to them very clearly what’s in it for them.
Since they have a comparatively greater number of subscribers than you, there’s a high chance that they might reject your collaboration proposal.
You need to do some heavy lifting for them, pitch them 3-5 great and well-researched topics which have good search volume, and provide a brief description of all the topics you mention.
Point out topics that you are an expert on and they haven’t covered on their channel yet, tell them the whole video shoot plan and how you will take care of the scripts, shooting, editing and thumbnail part end to end.
This will make them feel that they don’t have to put much effort from their side as you are handling almost the whole process from ideation to production, hence making it a low-hanging fruit for them.
If your channel is not monetized.
Then buy a monetized channel. So that your collaborators can have faith in you.
Different ways to collaborate
There are different ways to work on a collaboration shoot.
Creator A and creator B meet in person and shoot together: They shoot two different videos, and the first video will be published on creator A’s channel and the second video will be published on creator B’s channel. However, both creators appear in the first video as well as the second video.
Creator A and Creator B shoot their part separately: Both creators shoot their part separately and upload the raw recording to the cloud (via Google Drive, Dropbox, etc) and share its link. They merge, edit and add new clips to those shared recordings to produce a single video out of it.
Creator A and Creator B do a video takeover: Creator A makes a video for creator B’s audience without involving B and then it’s published on B’s channel and similarly, B also does it.
Creator A and Creator B collab via online meeting: Both creators get on an online meeting and one of them predominantly discusses 50% of the planned topics and then the second creator predominantly discusses the remaining 50% of the topics.
They split the whole video into two parts and publish the alternate parts on each other’s channels.
Release and Promotion: It’s very important to set up a realistic timeline for the whole process starting from ideation rounds to final production. Make sure you both get sufficient time to edit, review and publish the video.
It’s advisable that both of you publish the videos at the same time so that they would be available to viewers if they wish to watch the second part.
Now that the major task i.e., publishing the collab video is done, make sure that both of you get the maximum of your efforts by sharing and promoting each other’s video on your social media account and email newsletter.
