How’s It Poppin: Building a YouTube Channel from Scratch

It was a packed house at the Improving office for this month’s meetup! We also welcomed a new community partner, the Houston Stripe Community, who provided food and drinks for this event!

Our speaker this month was Nishant Kelkar, a UX/UI designer and digital marketing specialist who moonlights as Nishquick Pops, a YouTube channel covering Nintendo, JRPGs, and pop culture. Nishant has been a member of Side Project Society for almost two years, and after hearing so many tech and business side projects shared in the elevator pitch circle, he realized his YouTube channel counted too. He walked us through his journey from a shaky Zoom recording during the pandemic to a channel with a real, engaged audience, and shared the strategies that got him there.

Nishant started the channel in 2021 with a laptop, a webcam, and no editing experience. Growth was slow at first (nearly two years to reach 200 subscribers), then picked up quickly on the way to 1,000 as he leaned into consistent uploads and experimented with Shorts, live streams, and podcasts. Along the way he upgraded gear gradually rather than waiting for the “right” setup, and eventually collaborated with one of the creators who first inspired him to start.

Nishant shared some advice on practical growth strategy: niching down hard, treating “your audience as your algorithm,” and packaging every video like a book, where the title and thumbnail are the cover, the first 30 seconds are the hook, and the rest is storytelling. Nishant also showed how his UX and digital marketing background maps directly onto YouTube: avoiding cognitive overload in thumbnails, writing for SEO discoverability, and using analytics like click-through rate and audience retention to learn what is and isn’t working.

He closed with a look at his production workflow (ideation, flexible scripting styles, simple recording setups, and editing for retention) and how he uses AI tools like Claude, Gemini Notebook, and YouTube’s Ask Studio to speed up scripting and strategy, while being careful not to let AI replace his own voice and judgment.

Key takeaways:

1. Just get started with what you have.: Nishant’s first videos were recorded on an underpowered laptop over Zoom. A smartphone, decent lighting, and free editing tools are enough to begin. Gear upgrades can come later.

2. Your audience is your algorithm.: Growth doesn’t come from chasing a mysterious algorithm, it comes from niching down on a specific topic, building a loyal audience around it, and doubling down on what resonates with them.

3. Package your content like a book cover.: Your title and thumbnail earn the click, your first 30 seconds earn the watch time, and good storytelling keeps people through to the end. Less is more, especially with thumbnail text.

4. Let analytics guide your next move.: Click-through rate, audience retention, and engagement all tell you what’s working. Underperforming content isn’t wasted, you can revisit old videos and improve the title, thumbnail, or story to give them a second life.

5. Diversify and protect your brand.: Ad revenue alone isn’t much, so consider memberships, Patreon, affiliate links, and vetted sponsorships. Build a consistent, authentic identity so your audience always knows they’re in the right place.

Thank you Nishant for sharing your journey and for showing how applying your professional skills to a side project can help it thrive.

Thanks to community member He Zhu, you can view a full recording of this session below: