I'm from Egypt making AI automation content in Arabic with n8n, about 50 days in with 811 subscribers on 37 videos. Is that a good number, or am I doing something wrong? I'm also torn between prioritizing my YouTube channel, marketing my Arabic-language school community/course, and shorts — what should I focus on?
You have almost 1,000 subscribers off 37 videos — that's genuinely great, nothing wrong with your content. A few concrete critiques: don't reuse the same face photo for every thumbnail, it makes videos hard to tell apart; watch your title length, going over roughly 60 characters gets it cut off in feeds; and make sure thumbnail text is actually legible in a small feed view (some of the small/green text wasn't readable). On prioritization: you have a strong roadmap already because you can adapt content that's been pre-validated to work in English into Arabic — that's roughly an 80/20 opportunity. I wouldn't start marketing the school community yet though; I didn't start marketing mine until I was over 10,000 subscribers, and you're at about a tenth of that (though the Arabic and English markets differ). Beyond that, I don't build big strategies — I just do the same thing every single day for a long time until it becomes illogical not to make money eventually.
I'm about to publish a video on my main channel covering this topic. I can see you're just starting with about five videos, experimenting with thumbnail templates and using AI for images—pretty accurate. Keep doing what you're doing; if you scaled up to 100 videos or 25 times your current output, you'd easily surpass 3,000 subscribers. I'll soon release a video detailing exactly how I approach this in the automation agency space, because lots of people want to replicate my growth. I've noticed channels copying my Instagram content outright, so I might as well share my secret sauce and monetize it.
Well, I wouldn't be in your situation in the first place. It doesn't make sense to start a YouTube channel or talk about stuff until you've actually delivered value in the past. If your revenue is less than $20,000 a month, you shouldn't be running this channel right now because lead volume will be too variable and there's nothing to build a business around. Spending time just touching up your content and trying to make it really high quality completely defeats the purpose—believe it or not, your content doesn't have to be very high quality as long as you're somebody worth listening to. For example, I'm just in my room in a tank top after a shower; I might not know what I'm talking about when I started this video, but it's still worth listening to because I've achieved outcomes that a lot of people here want to achieve, and I've consolidated a lot of knowledge. The two are valuable together, but the actual quality of the content aside from that knowledge and the perceived value of being associated with me isn't anywhere near as high. So the hack is: you need to do good first. Don't start a content business and then run another business side by side. Start the other business, crush it, achieve massive success, and then make videos talking about it. If you do anything else, you're really just putting the carpet before the horse and wasting your time.
My recommendation is to first grow the SaaS a bit before you start a YouTube channel. Instead of advertising $2 K in MRR, frame it as a $100 K‑a‑year business. That kind of headline is more interesting to viewers. If you’re still early and don’t have impressive results, people won’t be inclined to spend time on your content. The key is to focus on what you’ve achieved that’s better than 99.9 % of the world. When you have a tangible outcome—say you’re consistently making $8‑10 K a month—you can use that as the hook for your videos. Spend time improving the SaaS, develop strong skills, and once you have a modest success metric, start talking about it. Use that achievement as the basis for your content and you’ll be able to attract an audience.
I’m about to publish a video on my main channel covering this topic. You’re just starting with a few videos, experimenting with thumbnail templates and using AI for images—keep doing what you’re doing; if you scale up (e.g., 100 videos or 25× your current output) you’ll see great results.