It can be easy to forget that YouTube hasn’t been around for that long. Founded in 2005, YouTube is a little over fifteen years old at the time of writing this post.
That means that even people born at the same time as YouTube are still children, and, if we’re being honest, it would be another few years before the service was anything like what know and love today. Factor in that parents are generally dissuaded from letting their children watch television for the first two years, and you can start to see why children’s content is such big business on YouTube.
Today’s children—those of around thirteen years old and under—are the first to grow up with YouTube.
No waiting until Saturday mornings for cartoons, or begging parents to pay extra for Nickelodeon or the Disney Channel—children today are the first to have access to a practically endless supply of entertainment in the form of YouTube. And studies show that most of them make full use of it.
So, there is plenty of incentive to start a YouTube channel for children. The audience is there, without a doubt, and making fans of children can be relatively easily translated into an older fanbase later down the line. After all, that’s how people like Miley Cyrus and Ariana Grande were able to transition from acting in a children’s TV show to being a global pop star.
Of course, having good reasons for starting a YouTube channel is only part of the battle. You still need to have ideas for what you will put on that channel. And, if you’re reading this, we can safely assume you’re looking for a little inspiration in that area. So here are our top ten kid YouTube channel ideas.
General Advice
It can be useful to think outside of the box from time to time. To that end, you shouldn’t consider the following suggestions as a definitive collection.
There will always be room to innovate, and ideas that haven’t been thought of, or have been thought of but never successfully executed, will always be out there for you to discover. That being said, there are some fairly fundamental aspects of making YouTube videos for children that apply regardless of your idea.
Be Parent-Friendly
Remember, the parents and guardians are the gatekeepers when it comes to what their children are allowed to see. Parents are very unlikely to sit down and watch your content before deciding to allow their children to do the same. More often, a parent’s first impression of a YouTube channel their child is watching will be in passing—walking by when their child has the channel on, for example.
Parents can be very reactionary at times, and if they catch even a glimpse of inappropriate content, they could shut your channel down in that home. In many cases, this might be an unfair reaction, but you have to understand that it is ultimately their decision, so it’s best to steer clear of things like innuendo, and grown-up jokes.
Don’t Abuse Your Power
Children are impressionable; it’s how they learn about the world around them. Putting on their parent’s shoes and pretending to go to work, dressing up as their favourite superhero.
They imitate the things they like, and if you become successful at this, you will be one of those things.
Do not abuse that power.
Think long and hard about what you do in your videos, and how your impressionable audience might react to it.
Set Realistic Expectations
Due to various legal implications, videos that are considered “for kids” are excluded from targetted advertising. While this doesn’t mean that you can’t monetise these videos, it does significantly reduce the amount of revenue potential they have.
Of course, there are many ways of monetising a YouTube channel outside of YouTube’s own system, just be careful—if you’re seen as attempting to exploit your young audience, you could lose your channel.
1. Crafts
Though children sometimes need a little nudge to get started, crafts are a timeless way to keep them entertained. Ask any English child of the 90s about the Blue Peter’s Tracey Island episode, and there’s a good chance they’ll know what you’re talking about.
Be sure to focus your ideas around things that your audience will use. Making a pencil holder out of empty toilet roll tubes is very practical, but not necessarily something a young child would be interested in. A lot of this will depend on the age of the children you are making content for. For example, younger children prefer things they can play with, like making an aeroplane out of an old box. In contrast, children on the older end of the spectrum are more likely to be interested in practical things, like the pencil holder mentioned above.
2. Activities
Activities are a great option because they can be something that the parents can join in with. If you can not only entertain their children for a time but also give them ideas so that they can entertain their children, you will be a firm favourite with the parents.
Making your activities fun should be fundamental. However, if you can make them educational or developmental—or both—then you will be on good footing to succeed and grow as a kid Youtube channel. Things that involve fine motor skills, such as using drawing tools, are particularly useful for a child’s development. Also consider mental exercises, such as playing detective games.
3. Young Health
Child fitness is an ever-present concern in the developed world, where obesity is regularly cited in statistics regarding health conditions.
If you are into your fitness and have a flair with children, a fitness channel aimed at youngsters could be an excellent way to go.
This is another idea that will likely garner support from parents, who will probably be happy to see their children getting active. Of course, the trick to this kind of video is to make it fun for the children. If you just have them doing a series of different exercises, they’ll soon get bored. Make games of your activities, and try to come up with exciting variations on established exercise routines.
4. Lifehacks
It may sound like something that would only be useful for adults, but children love a good lifehack, too. That being said, what a child considers a lifehack is very different from an adult.
Thinking up lifehacks that the parents will like as well is a surefire way to get support from the grown-ups. For example, coming up with smart ways to keep a room tidy so that the children don’t get in trouble will also go down very well with the parents.
Other examples of child-orientated lifehacks might involve school-related things, such as personalising school bags or making secret compartments inside of pencil cases.
5. Gaming
Gaming is a tried-and-tested kid YouTube idea, with some YouTubers amassing tens of millions of subscribers in this niche.
It should go without saying that you will need to keep things like profanity off of your channel, and games with a more adult theme are out of the question.
Beyond that, try to make the content enjoyable beyond the gameplay itself. YouTube gaming is a very competitive space, and it is unlikely that you will be alone in whatever game you decide to play. For that reason, the more you can do to stand out from the crowd, the more likely children will want to watch your videos rather than one of the other YouTubers.
One of the most successful examples of this kind of video is DanTDM, who initially became popular making Minecraft videos in which he would act out a story in the game. Other examples include YouTubers playing video games with their own children. Be sure to do your research and see what games children are interested in.
6. Unboxing Videos
Unboxing videos are popular with many demographics, and children are no exception. Of course, the contents of the box needs to be tailored to your young audience.
Children probably won’t be that interested in an unboxing video of a subscription food box. Toys are the obvious route to take, and you can add an extra level of engagement for your viewers by giving away the things you unbox. After all, if you are going to post regular videos and unbox something in each one, you’re going to end up with a lot of stuff!
A variation on unboxing videos involves making the items to be unboxed part of a game and having your own kids play that game. HobbyKidsTV is a particularly popular example of this.
One example might be putting the toys to be unboxed inside of a giant paper mache model of a villain, and having children dressed as superheroes beat the villain up to get to the toys.
7. Reaction Videos
Reaction videos are seemingly popular across many different audiences, including children. The key to reaction videos is you. There are plenty of reaction YouTubers out there, but the differentiating factor between each of them is their own personality. If two YouTubers react to the same movie trailer, the trailer won’t change, only their reactions will.
What this means is that, if you decide to go down this path, you need to put your whole personality into your videos. This is not a genre for reserved, camera-shy YouTubers. As always, be sure to keep your content child-friendly. Even one errant curse word making it onto your channel could ruin your credibility as a kid YouTube channel.
Also, remember your audience when reacting. Children most likely won’t care about the latest Christopher Nolan film, but the next Sonic the Hedgehog movie is a different matter. You might react to the latest Fortnite announcement or a big scene from a Marvel movie. Just be careful not to fall afoul of any copyright infringement.
8. Character Analysis
If there’s one thing children are good at, it is obsessing over things. A child might only be into Spiderman for a few months, perhaps a year, but during that time they are all in!
You can produce content that gives them a much desired in-depth look at their favourite characters. Sticking with our friendly neighbourhood Spiderman example, you could do a detailed history of the web-slinger, stretching all the way back to his comic book roots in the early 1960s.
This area of YouTube is particularly fertile as there is a lot of ground to cover. Once you’ve covered Spiderman, for example, you could cover Venom, or Green Goblin, or any of the many other prominent characters in the franchise. You could move on to other Marvel characters, or branch out to DC. You could leave comic books entirely and tackle videogame characters.
As long as you can make it entertaining and you focus on popular characters, you’ll have an interested audience.
9. Narrative Videos
If there is one area you can get away with low production quality, it is YouTube for children. Children have a beautiful lack of cynicism about things like production value, combined with a vivid imagination that is ready to fill in the blanks.
This means you can tell any stories you might want to tell without worrying about whether your video looks professional enough. A particularly popular variation of this is superhero crossovers, where characters from different franchises meet. Many of these videos are acted out by children, with the adults handling the writing and filming.
10. Educational
Of course, we couldn’t make this list without including educational content. If you can entertain children while educating them, you will have a very bright future as a YouTuber.
Consider making games out of your lessons, and set your viewers fun activities based around the lessons you are giving. Have a clear idea of who your videos are for—maths questions for a six-year-old are very different to maths questions for a twelve-year-old.
This type of video can be especially rewarding, as making learning fun for children will increase the chances that they will pick things up when they go to school. It can also be a good idea to throw in an occasional fun video that might not necessarily have much educational content, just to break things up.
But as a general rule, try to make each video as entertaining as possible. Remember, they don’t have a choice about going to school, but they don’t have to watch your videos.
Conclusions
And that’s our ten kid YouTube channel ideas. Is there something you feel should be on here? Why not leave a comment and let us know?
Top 5 Tools To Get You Started on YouTube
Very quickly before you go here are 5 amazing tools I have used every day to grow my YouTube channel from 0 to 30K subscribers in the last 12 months that I could not live without.
1. VidIQ helps boost my views and get found in search
I almost exclusively switched to VidIQ from a rival in 2020.
Within 12 months I tripled the size of my channel and very quickly learnt the power of thumbnails, click through rate and proper search optimization. Best of all, they are FREE!
2. Adobe Creative Suite helps me craft amazing looking thumbnails and eye-catching videos
I have been making youtube videos on and off since 2013.
When I first started I threw things together in Window Movie Maker, cringed at how it looked but thought “that’s the best I can do so it’ll have to do”.
Big mistake!
I soon realized the move time you put into your editing and the more engaging your thumbnails are the more views you will get and the more people will trust you enough to subscribe.
That is why I took the plunge and invested in my editing and design process with Adobe Creative Suite. They offer a WIDE range of tools to help make amazing videos, simple to use tools for overlays, graphics, one click tools to fix your audio and the very powerful Photoshop graphics program to make eye-catching thumbnails.
Best of all you can get a free trial for 30 days on their website, a discount if you are a student and if you are a regular human being it starts from as little as £9 per month if you want to commit to a plan.
3. Rev.com helps people read my videos
You can’t always listen to a video.
Maybe you’re on a bus, a train or sat in a living room with a 5 year old singing baby shark on loop… for HOURS. Or, you are trying to make as little noise as possible while your new born is FINALLY sleeping.
This is where Rev can help you or your audience consume your content on the go, in silence or in a language not native to the video.
Rev.com can help you translate your videos, transcribe your videos, add subtitles and even convert those subtitles into other languages – all from just $1.50 per minute.
A GREAT way to find an audience and keep them hooked no matter where they are watching your content.
4. Learn new skills for FREE with Skillshare
I SUCK reading books to learn, but I LOVE online video courses.
Every month I learn something new. Editing, writing, video skills, how to cook, how to run a business – even how to meditate to calm a busy mind.
I find all of these for FREE with Skillshare – Sign up, pick all the courses you want and cancel anytime you need.
5. Shutterstock helps me add amazing video b-roll cutaways
I mainly make tutorials and talking head videos.
And in this modern world this can be a little boring if you don’t see something funky every once in a while.
I try with overlays, jump cuts and being funny but my secret weapon is b-roll overlay content.
I can talk about skydiving, food, money, kids, cats – ANYTHING I WANT – with a quick search on the Shutterstock website I can find a great looking clip to overlay on my videos, keeping them entertained and watching for longer.
They have a wide library of videos, graphics, images and even a video maker tool and it wont break the bank with plans starting from as little as £8.25 ($9) per month.
