David is a high school teacher from Melbourne, Australia. Aside from teaching English and History, he is a gamer and an archery coach. His YouTube channel, NUSensei, has been internationally recognized as one of the most popular and recommended sources for archery. Originally covering the niche of modern Olympic archery, the channel has expanded to cover numerous aspects of archery in traditional, historical and sporting contexts. Through his work, David has built opportunities to network with bow manufacturers, top athletes and coaches, researches and publications, and has inspired many newcomers to give archery a shot. His YouTube channel has been around for 4+ years and has grown to nearly 140k subscribers, with over 27M total views. In this episode, you’ll learn a ton on advanced strategies for how to grow a niche hobby YouTube channel, to include small things that can help you out of the gate, techniques that can help you scale, and a plethora of income techniques that you can apply. The big takeaway that you’ll get from this episode is the opportunity that comes with having a niche YouTube channel and being an authority in that niche. 

Traction: In the early days of David’s channel, he just created content that he thought was useful and educational, originally teaching about bows and arrows. Once he realized that he wanted to take his hobby more seriously, he began prowling forums and social media, embedding himself in the archery community and looking for questions that people were asking. When he would find a question, he would answer that with his content, and then post it on that forum. This gave him very quickly early traction because he was answering the questions that people were asking, not trying to overcomplicate things by creating something that no one wanted. 

Growth: As David’s channel grew, he got to the point where people were starting to approach him. He was offered brand partnerships, collaboration opportunities, and sponsorships. One thing that he identified as something that really helped grow his channel, though, was figuring out which content resonated best on each social media platform. For Facebook, he recommends highly shareable content that is easily consumable in a period of seconds. Facebook then acts as lead generation for wherever you want those audience members to go. Once he realized this, he started making viral content in collaboration with other big YouTubers, and that started getting him tens of thousands of views at a time. 

Income: David had many recommendations for income strategies, but the strategy that seemed to make the most income for the time was the sponsorships. They can come in all shapes and sizes, but David was able to choose the ones that worked best for him. From the beginning, David knew that he didn’t want to do YouTube full time, and that this channel was strictly for him to gain authority in that community. With that in mind, he could be very selective about who he took sponsors from. That also means that he sets the price. That leverage makes his position very strong.