How do I differentiate the sound between the word year and ear

I went to youtube and search for videos that teaches me how to pronounce the "y" sound but so far I have failed miserably. My pronunciation of "year" sound like "ear". I am pronouncing the consonant y as a vowel /i/. This is a big problem for me if I want to learn other languages like Mandarin.

I thought that by searching youtube, I will get a clear answer, but unfortunately each of them has different ways of pronouncing "y".

"y" or /j/ (as represented by in IPA) is a palatal approximant consonant. It uses the mid/back tongue as the active articulator and the soft palate as the passive articulator.

For example in this video , she says
The mid front part of the tongue raises and presses against the roof of the mouth. The tip of the tongue comes down and lightly touches the behind the bottom front teeth while the throat closes off to give the "y" quality.

However, In this video, , he says
It's made by folding your lips back like this and the tongue stays under.

Finally the last video, , she says
The easy way to say this consonant is to position your mouth so your teeth is closed, lips are opened and the tongue is flat but the sides of the tongue go up to the top over of your mouth.

As you can see, their explanation is not the same. Up till today, I still can't pronounce /j/ properly.