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BUSINESS TIPS HOW TO MAKE MONEY ONLINE SOCIAL MEDIA TIPS & TRICKS YOUTUBE

4 Books for New Entrepreneurs That All YouTubers Should Read

They teach many subjects at school, but one that I think is missing from the syllabus is entrepreneurship.

Entrepreneurship is the art of turning muck into brass, the practice of taking an idea and nurturing it until it blooms into a money-making powerhouse.

Some people say that you can’t teach entrepreneurship, because you have to have a particular personality or an elusive ‘x-factor’ to have any chance of success. I think they’re wrong.

Entrepreneurship is a skill that can be learned by anyone, and I believe everyone should try to launch a business at least once. So, if you’re a new entrepreneur, and are looking for some help and guidance from those who have tried entrepreneurship and succeeded, here is a selection of books you should consider adding to your bookshelf.

I am much more of an audiobook “reader” as I tend to take it in easier – I even use Amazon’s FREE Audible trials to load up on 2 free books every month.

Book 1: Crushing It!

Author: Gary Vaynerchuk

Number of pages: 288

Published: 2018

Why should you listen to him?: Gary Vaynerchuk is a global social media superstar.

Known affectionately as Gary Vee, Vaynerchuk was born in Belarus in 1975 but emigrated to the USA with his parents at a young age. Raised in New York City, Vaynerchuk showed entrepreneurial spirit as a boy, buying and selling baseball cards at school. He joined his parent’s wine business at 14, and after he took over in 2003, he grew it from $3 million to $60 million a year in revenue.

Vaynerchuk spotted the internet’s potential early, launching a channel on YouTube in 2006 to promote the wine business. Famous for hard work and ‘hustle’, Vaynerchuk now owns a $100 million social media digital agency, VaynerMedia, and gives inspirational speeches internationally about entrepreneurship and social influencing.

Book Synopsis: The book is part motivational and part social media strategy manual. Vaynerchuk explains how personal branding over social media is crucial to success today as an entrepreneur.

The book is in two parts. The first part gets you pumped up for the road ahead and gives you eight foundational principals on which to build your business.

The second part delves deeper into different social media platforms, covering YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and a few others. Vaynerchuk shows you how to use each platform to gain attention and grow your entrepreneurial endeavours. Each chapter is illustrated with real-life case studies from successful small businesses who have followed his framework.

Even though the book is nearly three years old, it’s often found near the top of the charts. It ranks top 10 on Amazon Audible in the categories for Social Media, Web Marketing, and E-commerce. Many people consider it one of the first books to buy when you are thinking about starting a business.

The book is available in several formats. There are the usual hardback and paperback, plus Kindle too. The best way to absorb it is via Amazon Audible, though. Narrated by Vaynerchuk and two other colleagues, you get to understand and learn the book’s lessons via Gary Vee’s unique style of delivery.

Amazon Link To Book: Buy The Book Now.

Book 2: Primalbranding: Create Zealots for Your Brand, Your Company, and Your Future: Create Belief Systems that Attract Communities.

Author: Patrick Hanlon

Number of pages: 272

Published: 2011

Why should you listen to him?: Patrick Hanlon is a world-renowned branding consultant. He has worked with the likes of Levi’s, PayPal, and Shopify to help them develop their brands and connect with new audiences.

He gives talks and lectures internationally on the topic of branding, is a contributor to the major news networks, and owns several consulting businesses which offer advice on branding in the digital age.

Book Synopsis: How do some companies like Tesla, create a horde of devoted followers while other businesses, despite access to the same level of resources, struggle or even become objects of scorn?

Hanlon argues that companies like Tesla succeed because they build a following of people who become true believers and advocates for their brand.

Primalbranding identifies the seven pieces of ‘primal code’ that humans instinctively use to form groups. He then applies this to branding and shows you how you can use these hardwired human dynamics and apply them to shape your brand and attract a legion of followers.

The book is divided into three sections. The first section explains the seven elements of the primal code. Including concepts such as ‘the creation story’, ‘the rituals’, and ‘the leader’. Hanlon then shows how these parts come together to foster ‘primal belonging’.

Sections two and three then show how these immutable traits can be used by just about anyone or anything to market and promote their products.

The book is available in hardback, paperback, Kindle and also as an MP3 CD (hello 2011!). If you want to build a following that will shout your name from the rooftops and promote your brand freely, it’s an essential one for your reading list.

Amazon Link To Book: Buy The Book Now.

Book 3: Innovation from Desperation: The Unfiltered Failures & Successes of an OG Social Media Marketer

Author: Desiree Martinez

Number of pages: 234

Published: 2020

Why should you listen to her?: Desiree Martinez is an entrepreneur, YouTuber, and all-round social media guru. As a military spouse, a life moving from base to base with her Air Force husband left her with few career opportunities and forced her to act for herself and think entrepreneurially.

She was surprised to learn that Facebook, a platform she knew well from her college days, was becoming an essential platform for businesses. So she started a social media consulting firm and has since helped hundreds of businesses shape their social presence.

Book Synopsis:

My 5* review for this book which I posted to Amazon reads:

“A real heartfelt walk through the ups and downs of working in media and social media in this current age. Running a business, raising a family and growing a brand is not easy. This is a warts and all story sharing some truly inspirational lessons. Well worth a read!”

The book is part autobiography and part how to launch your own business. It provides an unfiltered account of the ups and downs of launching a business with little support and no roadmap.

There are many lessons to learn from the book. Desiree covers topics like becoming a better content creator, what to do when a new social media platform becomes hot, and how to keep on going when everything seems to conspire against you.

Released in 2020, it also contains a chapter covering the impact of the pandemic. It’s a book to read if you can’t see yourself in any of the thousands of books available about entrepreneurship. Desiree says that she was the girl at school you who would never think could launch their own business, never mind write a book!

If that sounds like you, then this is a book worth reading.

The book is available in paperback and on Kindle, and it’s one I really recommend that you read.

Amazon Link To Book: Buy The Book Now.

Book 4: The 4-Hour Workweek

Author: Tim Ferris

Number of pages: 416

Published: 2011

Why should you listen to him?: Tim Ferris is a writer, podcaster, investor, and entrepreneur. Many know him today for his podcast about lifestyle and smart working, but it was this book – The 4-hour Work Week – that propelled him onto the global stage.

He has advised or invested in many well know internet startups, like Evernote, Stumbleupon, and Uber.

Book Synopsis: One of the best books about entrepreneurship available to read.

Ferris argues in this now-famous book about how you should strive to avoid the 9-5 and instead choose to live life on your terms by building lifestyle businesses.

Ferris writes about how he started work after college and found himself working 80 hours a week for $40,000 a year. After a little experimentation with various business ideas and working strategies, he launched his own brand of supplements and soon started earning $40,000 every month, working just 4 hours per week.

Ferris achieved his success by working smartly. He used the 80/20 principle made famous by Italian economist Pareto and outsourced most menial tasks to cheap virtual assistants overseas.

The 4-hour Work Week gives you the tools and the inspiration to build a business of your own, and enjoy the benefits while you are still young by taking ‘mini-retirements’.

Essentially, you design and launch a business that can operate day-to-day without your presence. Something that earns money on autopilot so you can head out into the world and seek out unforgettable experiences.

The book is in four parts; Definition, Elimination, Automation, and Liberation. Each step in the framework guides you through his approach to building a lifestyle business and contains lots of real-life examples to illustrate the points.

The book is available in hardback, paperback, Kindle, and audio CD. It’s become a classic of the genre and regularly makes it into top-10s of books about entrepreneurship.

Amazon Link To Book: Buy The Book Now.

I hope you find this list of books useful.

Remember, if you sometimes struggle to find the time actually to sit down and read; there is an alternative. You can listen to a book when you are out and about—maybe travelling to work or out getting coffee.

You can download and listen to many useful books about YouTube and entrepreneurship using Amazon Audible. Every month for a small monthly subscription, you can listen to a book often narrated by the author themselves.

Educating yourself is the single best thing you can do for your career, so why not try listening to two of the books mentioned above with a 30-day trial of Amazon Audible.

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HOW TO MAKE MONEY ONLINE SOCIAL MEDIA TIPS & TRICKS YOUTUBE

Do YouTubers Get Paid if I Use AdBlock?

Ads can be annoying; there’s no avoiding that.

From the early days of the Internet, when pop-up windows could take over your screen, to the more recent iteration of in-site advertising which is suspiciously reminiscent of those early pop-up windows, it can be incredibly frustrating.

YouTube is not exempt from this, of course. Sure, they don’t throw annoying overlays and pop-up windows in your face, but there is a special kind of frustration that comes with clicking on a thirty-second meme video, only to be greeted with a twenty-second unskippable advert for a popular team management platform.

You know which one we mean.

It shouldn’t be surprising that more and more people are turning to AdBlock solutions to make their Internet browsing experience a little more palatable. It only takes one visit to a typical news site, with thirteen pop-up ads, a cookie warning, a request to send notifications, multiple unroll adds that slide the content you are trying to read out of sight, and unskippable pre-roll ads on the video content that the news site absolutely does not own the rights to, to make you want to install an ad blocker out of spite if nothing else.

But how does this affect your favourite YouTubers? We have reached a point where most of the people using the Internet are quite savvy, having either been born with the Internet already here, or having had decades to acclimatise to it. Most people understand that the adverts they are being forced to watch are supporting the content they are consuming. Granted, when it is a trashy tabloid newspaper whose abuse of advertising makes their product almost unusable, it’s tempting to not care that you’re taking some money out of their pocket. But when it’s your favourite YouTuber, especially if that YouTuber is an individual, and even more so if that YouTuber is a smaller, growing channel, it can give you pause.

If you’ve ever found yourself wondering “do YouTubers get paid if I use AdBlock?”, the answer is no… but also maybe. That’s right; this is yet another question with no clearcut answer. What we can say for certain is that if you are not seeing the ads being served on a video, the YouTuber who is responsible for that video is not getting any money from those ads.

However, there is more to earning money on YouTube than being served ads – assuming you don’t skip them, but that causes its own problems for YouTubers.

Keep reading, and we’ll take a deep dive into the likely impact your ad-blocking behaviour might be having on your favourite YouTubers, as well as ways you can assuage your guilt if you absolutely must keep your ad blocking software in action.

How Do Ad Blockers Work?

When talking about regular webpages with ads in the sidebar or the main content, it is not hard to wrap your mind around how an adblocker does its thing, because it can merely edit the webpage code on the fly, snipping out the advertisement. It can also block pop-ups and redirects.

But what about videos? YouTube’s builds its pre, mid, and post-roll ads into the video itself, so how can an ad blocker prevent the ad without blocking the whole video?

Ad blockers have a variety of methods at their disposal, with one of the most versatile ones being the ability to block certain domains and URLs. If YouTube attempts to load an ad from a blocked domain, it will encounter the error, assume there is something wrong, and allow you to skip to the content.

There are a few different metrics that factor into how YouTubers earn from ads, but generally speaking, if a viewer doesn’t see at least the first two seconds of an ad, the YouTuber does not receive anything for that attempted ad view.

Youtube Community Tab: What It Is And How To Use It To Grow Your Channel. 19

Statistical Insignificance

Google is a big company, and they’re smart enough to get around ad blockers if they really wanted to.

The truth of the matter is that people who use ad blockers are so statistically insignificant compared to the people who don’t use them that companies like Google don’t deem it worth the effort to get into what would essentially become an arms race against the people making those ad blockers. In fact, the number of people who even know ad blockers are a thing is an overwhelming minority.

If YouTube were to start combatting ad blockers, it would lead ad blockers to find new ways to get around YouTube’s solutions, which would prompt YouTube to come up with new methods, and so on. As the world of DRM (digital rights management) has taught us time and time again, this kind of situation rarely ends well for the consumer.

The most likely outcome would be regular YouTube users who are just trying to watch content being inconvenienced by broken and unintuitive systems designed to stop ad blockers; meanwhile, the people using ad blocker would likely be unaffected as there will always be another workaround. There is also an argument to be made that Google getting into an ad block war would only draw more attention to the existence of ad blockers, thus increasing the usage of them and making it less of a statistically insignificant prospect.

One take away from this from the perspective of YouTube users who is worried about their ad blocking hurting their favourite YouTubers is that YouTube does not suffer from you blocking ads due to the small number of people who do it. But, the individual YouTuber who’s videos you are viewing may suffer, if they have a relatively small audience with a relatively high proportion of ad blocker users.

Am I Too Old to Start a YouTube Channel? 3

How Much Do Ad Blockers Impact YouTubers

Okay, here’s the truth; ad blockers don’t really harm YouTubers that much at all. Wait! We’re not suggesting you shouldn’t feel a bit guilty about this; you are undeniably preventing YouTubers from earning money when you block ads on their videos.

There’s no blurred edges or uncertainty about that, and you’re going to have to make peace with that if you want to continue blocking those ads (but we have a few ways to make things up to your favourite YouTubers below).

But the truth is, people who use ad blockers are so few, and individual ads are worth so little, that it just doesn’t make that much difference. For YouTubers barely making any money from their ads, missing a few cents they might have earned from you isn’t going to change their life. And for more successful YouTubers who make a small fortune from their ads, your few cents of ad plays won’t be noticed or missed.

Couple this with the fact that decreasing ad revenue from YouTube’s ads over recent years has led to a general shift towards other means of monetising content, and you have a growing argument for ads not being that important. Sure, YouTubers still use the YouTube Partner Programme to monetise their videos with ads, but it is rarely their only method. Things like Patreon, merchandise sales, and using YouTube to push viewers towards a product are increasingly more significant earners, and your ad blocker has no effect on those things.

Why Do YouTubers Ask for Likes?

What Can I do to Support YouTubers I Like?

No matter how we spin it, there is no getting away from the fact that using an ad blocker on a YouTube page is denying the YouTuber revenue.

It may be a small amount of revenue, but it is revenue nonetheless. It is natural—even expected—to feel a little guilty about this, especially for YouTubers you like and watch on a regular basis.

So, what can you do to make things right?

Turn Your Ad Blocker Off!

No doubt this will be the least popular suggestion we make, but it is the most effective. The truth is any time you block an ad; you are denying someone’s revenue. Even those news sites that go ridiculously over the top with their barrage of adverts are making content you must want to consume, so it’s only fair they get compensated for it. With YouTubers, turning off your ad blocker will ensure they earn the most revenue they can.

Selectively Turn off Your Ad Blocker

The next best thing is turning off your ad blocker for YouTube. Many ad blocker applications and plugins will allow you to “whitelist” some websites so that ads on those pages are still displayed. You may not want to let everyone in, but if you give YouTube the nod, you will be able to keep your ad blocker running while still supporting your favourite YouTubers. Unfortunately, the scope of this functionality is usually limited to domains, meaning you would have to allow ads for all of YouTube, not just the YouTubers you approve of.

Find Other Ways to Support Your YouTubers

As mentioned above, YouTubers these days rarely rely on YouTube Partner Programme money alone. If you are unwilling to budge on the ad blocker front, you could always seek out one of these alternative methods and support them that way. This could include becoming a Patreon and supporting them with a monthly contribution, buying their merchandise or a product they are promoting, or even just sending them a direct donation through something like PayPal.

How to Make, Edit and Upload a YouTube Video Without a Camera 19

Can I get in Trouble for Using Ad Blocker?

Though the legal landscape of the Internet is an everchanging animal, there are no realistic situations in which you would get into any sort of legal trouble for using an ad blocker. Of course, we are obligated to point out that this is not a legal blog, and nothing we say here constitutes legal advice.

Right now the consequences of using an ad blocker (when there are any consequences) are usually just a message saying that a site has noticed you are using an ad blocker and politely asking you to turn it off. In reality, those sites usually have no way of knowing you are using an ad blocker, and instead use other tricks to get that message in front of your eyeballs. The important part here is that if they don’t know you are using an ad blocker, they can’t “punish” you for it.

If you were discovered to be using an ad blocker on a random site, they would have to sue you to extract any compensation from you using the legal system. And, given the cost of a lawsuit vs the material losses you might have cost them, suing you is incredibly unlikely.

Internet advertisements are typically worth pennies per view.

For sites you visit more frequently, and services you might be signed up to, there is always a possibility of being banned from that site or service, though this also is very unlikely. It is not a particularly difficult task to have a website block access to the content for people using ad blockers (it is also not that difficult for someone who knows what they are doing to get around that block) so you may find some content out of reach.

For YouTube, as we mentioned, right now, they don’t seem to care, and that is unlikely to change any time soon.

Conclusions

There is no getting around the fact that, when you block advertisements from showing, someone is losing out on potential earnings.

How you feel about that is your business, but we often build a more personal relationship with our YouTubers than we do with a site like Buzzfeed, or Cracked, and that can lead us to want to do right by them.

Turning off your ad blocker is the best thing you can do, but we understand why some people are reluctant to do that. If you can whitelist certain websites, consider allowing ads on YouTube if nowhere else.

And, finally, if all else fails, you can look for a way to support your favourite YouTubers more directly, such as through their Patreon, or even directly through PayPal or a similar service.

Ultimately, the impact of ad blocker users on the Internet as a whole is not that significant, given how little individual ad views are worth, and how few people use ad blockers.

Still, it doesn’t hurt to be mindful about things like this. Support your favourite creators, or they might not be creating the next time you check-in.

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.

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TIPS & TRICKS YOUTUBE

How to Record YouTube Videos Outside

Any discussion about shooting a good video—or taking a good picture, for that matter—will inevitably come down to lighting.

Once you get beyond the quality of bargain-basement cameras, lighting is quite possibly the single most significant factor in making your video look good.

If you have the space and money to create a studio space for your videos, this can be a very easy task to accomplish, as you can control every aspect of your lighting with a fine-toothed comb. You can acoustically treat your studio to get the best possible sound, and sound-proof it to ensure your videos aren’t full of background noise from passing cars or people talking.

Shooting outside, on the other hand, can be a little hit and miss. It is much harder to control those environmental factors and, for the most part, you will often find yourself at the mercy of mother nature. Still, that doesn’t mean there aren’t plenty of tips and tricks for us to share with you!

Let’s get into how to record YouTube video outside.

YouTube Tips for Parents 3

Patience is Key

If you are relying on nature to provide you with the ideal conditions for your video, you will have to accept that you are on nature’s schedule. You won’t be able to make concrete plans, which can make recording videos that involve other people or time-sensitive components (equipment rental, for example) tricky.

Granted, if you live in LA and you need a hot, sunny day for your video, you most likely won’t have to wait long to head outside and record your video. I

f you live in Manchester, England, on the other hand, hot sunny days are much fewer and far between. Couple this with the unreliable nature of weather forecasts, and you have a recipe for frustration.

Of course, you can plan for bad weather, bringing lighting rigs and specialist audio equipment, perhaps even shelter from rain and wind. But you may reach a point where you have so much equipment working to cancel out the unwanted effects of being outside that you may as well just go back inside and record there.

We understand that not every video idea is flexible, and you should want to make the best possible video and if that needs it to be shot outside, you will just have to do your best to plan around what universe throws at you. If you do have some flexibility—such as you would with a video that doesn’t require other people or lots of setting up, then put the video on the back burner if you have to, and be ready to head outside and shoot the next time the weather turns out good. Or bad—whatever you need.

How to Record YouTube Video Outside

Top Tips for Shooting YouTube Videos Outdoors

So what about when that perfect weather lands, and you are ready to head outside with your camera and make that YouTube video you’ve been planning? Let’s go over some tips for shooting outside.

Sunglasses: When to Wear Them

Generally speaking, you should avoid wearing sunglasses as much as possible when shooting a YouTube video. Eye contact is an incredibly powerful tool in establishing a connection with your audience. It helps to build trust and makes it more likely that any given viewer might become a subscriber.

That being said, you may find yourself filming in harsh sunlight. If you are having to screw your face up and squint your eyes, it’s time to don a pair of sunglasses, since your viewers aren’t likely to build that trust while you are gurning at them.

To sum up; if the sun isn’t affecting your ability to function, try to avoid wearing the sunglasses, but if you are having to squint to prevent damage to your retina, put them on.

How to Record YouTube Video Outside 1

Look for the Right Kind of Light

If you have even a basic understanding of lighting as it pertains to photography, you will know that diffuse lighting is always better than harsh lighting.

Harsh lighting—such as you would get from a single bright light source—creates sharp edges and a stark contrast between light and dark areas. This can be great for certain cinematic effects and things like silhouetting, but not so much if you are just talking into the camera. Diffuse lighting, on the other hand, spreads more evenly over the subject and has much softer edges between light and dark areas.

Unfortunately, sunlight is the very definition of bright light from a single point, and on a bright, clear day, harsh light is unavoidable. So how do you get diffuse light when shooting outdoors? Well, if you consider how you would get it with indoor lighting—by having the light reflect off of or pass through a diffuse material, one solution springs to mind—clouds.

If you can shoot during an overcast part of the day, the clouds will act as a natural diffuser for the sun. Another natural diffuser is snow which works by reflecting the light back up, rather than obstructing it on its way down.

Of course, both of these options rely on certain conditions being true outside and, as we established earlier, that’s a risky game to play, especially if you live somewhere hot and dry, where snow and clouds are rare. If you are shooting at darker times, such as dawn, dusk, and night time, you can always use a typical lighting rig to get that nice diffused light, but if the restrictions you face force you to record during the middle of the day under a cloudless, blazing sky, you will just have to make the best of it. Consider shooting in the shade if you can, and if even that is not possible, just make sure the sun is not shining directly into the camera.

How to Record YouTube Video Outside 2

Make the Most of Your Setting

Regardless of the reason you are filming outside, be sure to take full advantage of your setting when you shoot.

There may be plenty of outdoor channels on YouTube, but the overwhelming majority of videos on the platform are still shot indoors. If you are shooting outdoors—particularly if shooting outdoors is unusual for your channel—make sure you incorporate your surroundings into the video in a noticeable way.

It could be something as small as framing a shot so that the backdrop is more prominent than usual, or something more grandiose, like filming on a rooftop in the evening with the bustling lights of a city behind you. It could even be something ridiculous, like filming while sitting in a tree (be careful!), but don’t go to the trouble of filming outside if you’re not going to take full advantage of the visuals that nature provides you.

Use Common Sense Regarding Other People

As is sometimes the case on this blog, we need to make it clear that nothing you read here should be considered legal advice. We are not qualified to give it, and the various laws across different regions and countries would make it impossible to give comprehensive advice in any case. Always check your local laws before doing something that could potentially land you in trouble.

There are two things to consider when recording in public regarding other people—what is illegal, and what is legal but might land you in a sticky situation regardless.

For many places in the western world, it is perfectly legal to record people in public. The exception to this rule is often some variant of them having a “reasonable expectation of privacy”, which is very hard to claim in a public place. As an example, gyms, while not technically a public space, can choose to allow cameras in the gym itself. If they did, a person would not be able to take legal action against you for filming them.

If you filmed then in the locker room, on the other hand, they have a reasonable expectation of privacy when they are getting dressed, and you could be in for some serious legal troubles, not to mention a reputation for some questionable behaviour.

How to Record YouTube Video Outside 3

There are also matters of harassment to consider. While you might legally be allowed to film someone in public despite any protesting they might make, if you follow them around all day against their wishes, you could end up in trouble for harassment.

The other side of this coin is what is legally allowed but could still be problematic. An example of this might be filming in a public park with children playing in the background. Parents are, somewhat understandably, wary of people filming their children without consent. Whether it is legal or not, they will likely ask you to stop, but it’s worth remembering that emotions can run a little high when you are talking about a parent and their child, so it’s entirely possible things could turn into a physical altercation. The point here?

If you want to film someone’s children, it would be a very good idea to seek permission first. And if you have no interest in filming children but there are children in your shot, maybe mention it to their parents, then they at least have the option to move their children if they don’t want them in your video.

It’s also worth noting that physical altercations are a possibility in any situation where you refuse to stop filming someone, even if you are legally allowed to do so. This may be a risk you will have to accept. Asking permission in advance can help avoid such situations.

The final thing to note here is the difference between public spaces and publicly accessible private spaces. The above example with the gym is a publicly accessible private space, whereas the park full of children would be a public space.

The vital difference here is that the gym may seem like a public space, but it is actually private, and thus it is entirely up to the gym owners what rules they want to set regarding filming and photography. So, if you are in publicly accessible private property, such as a store, gym, swimming pool, etc., and you are asked to put your camera away, do as they say.

In most cases, they will be required to ask you to stop filming before things escalate, but if they have to keep asking and you keep refusing, you will officially become a trespasser on their property, and that is a whole different bag of legal problems.

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Phones!

One of the most significant issues you face when filming outside is dragging your equipment around.

If you have a bulky (by today’s standards) camera, a tripod, a full audio setup, and a lighting rig back home, the thought of dragging all of that equipment outside will understandably be a little daunting. There is an alternative, however, and it is in your pocket.

Or, you know, wherever your phone is right now.

Few phone features have received quite as much attention as cameras in recent years, with every manufacturer from the big boys down to budget models placing a significant emphasis on what their phone’s camera can do. The end result of this little arms race is that you get to take advantage of some remarkably capable camera tech in a tiny package. Especially if you have one of the more premium models, like the latest iPhones or Samsungs, these cameras are not only far better than they have any right to be, given their tiny size, but they also make use of all manner of hardware and software trickery to make taking great photos and shooting amazing videos as easy as possible.

Can a premium phone shoot video that is as good as a high-end recording setup that cost a few thousand dollars?

No, of course not. But it can certainly shoot great video. And, remember, you’re not comparing your phone’s video capabilities to what you can achieve at home in your studio, you are comparing it to what you can realistically achieve outdoors.

High-end phones have plenty of tech to compensate for things like over-exposure and low light, so you could well find yourself deciding that your phone produces better video than just dragging your camera outside, and is also more practical than carrying your whole recording set up outside.

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Grow Your YouTube Channel’s Audience with THESE 4 Books!

Launched a YouTube Channel and it’s not going so well?

Perhaps you are not getting the clicks in the search results you think you deserve. Maybe you lay awake at night wondering how your competitors get recommended in suggested videos, and you don’t.

It just isn’t fair!

Well, it may be that they are doing things a little different to you. It often only needs a tweak here or a small improvement there to make the difference between failure and success for a video.

So if you think you have what it takes, but think you are missing a piece of the puzzle, here are four books that should have useful information to help you along. Information that turns the tide on your lacklustre performance and increases your subscribers and views.

I am much more of an audiobook “reader” as I tend to take it in easier – I even use Amazon’s FREE Audible trials to load up on 2 free books every month.

Book 1: YOUTUBE MASTERY MARKETING 2020

Author: Robert Grow

Number of pages: 114

Published: 2020

Why should you listen to him?: Robert Grow is an author who regularly writes about social media and marketing. His has written six books about optimising your online social media presence. This book is part of a series that also includes marketing guidance for Instagram and Facebook.

Book Synopsis: In this short book, Robert Grow looks at how you can optimise your YouTube channel for more views and subscribers. Grow argues that to become successful on YouTube, you need first to understand how the YouTube algorithm works, which he explains in a manner that all should comprehend.

Building on this knowledge, the book details the tools used by some of the most successful channels, and how you can use them yourself to give your channel a boost.

YouTube is a search engine, so the book covers the SEO rules you should be aware of and the tweaks you can make to optimise your content for ranking.

Unlike some of the more basic YouTube introduction books, YouTube Mastery Marketing addresses more advance YouTube concepts. Broadcasting live and promoting your own branded merchandise from your channel, both have their own dedicated chapter.

Robert Grow also provides useful information on the video quantity vs quality debate and underlines how important consistency is.

The book is divided into 18 easily digestible chapters and is available on Kindle, paperback, and Amazon Audible. The book has also been well received, rating 4.8 out of 5 on the Amazon store.

Amazon Link To Book: Buy The Book Now.

Book 2: YouTube Optimization: The Complete Guide

Author: Tom Martin

Number of pages: 116

Published: 2018

Why should you listen to him?: Tom Martin is a certified YouTube Growth specialist who previously managed the YouTube channel for BBC Worldwide for several years. He has managed YouTube channels that collectively have had billions of views.

Tom now runs a specialist consultancy firm that works with YouTubers to help improve their channels and expand their audience. You can consider Tom Martin as an expert on YouTube.

Book Synopsis: The books full title is; YouTube Optimization – The Complete Guide: Get more YouTube subscribers, views and revenue by optimizing like the pros. Which demonstrates the actionable information you can derive from this book.

Tom Martin has lengthened his book title for Amazon, containing benefits and keywords to make sure he appears in many different keyword searches. YouTube Optimization teaches you similar tactics the pros use on their videos to draw in the viewers and increase their subscribers.

Tom Martin argues that even small changes can have a significant impact on your channel. And the book sets out strategies you can learn and apply yourself.

Equipped with this knowledge, you can then make subtle changes to your content and reap greater success. Tom says that by applying his lessons, you can turn a video that gets 10 views into a video with 1000 – an exponential impact.

The book is divided into ten chapters, and each chapter deals with a YouTube attribute, like watch time or tags, and shows you how to improve on the metric or optimise the content.

From your title, tags, and thumbnail; to your intro, content, and outro; Tom shows you how to improve on your output. Don’t be put off by the age of the book either. The tactics Tom teaches are evergreen strategies. It’s an essential book for anyone looking to improve their channels standing.

The book is available in Kindle and paperback formats and is rated 4.5 out of 5 by its readers on Amazon.

Amazon Link To Book: Buy The Book Now.

Book 3: Vlog Like a Boss: How to Kill It Online with Video Blogging

Author: Amy Landino (nee Schmittauer)

Number of pages: 220

Published: 2017

Why should you listen to her?: Amy Landino is an American lifestyle entrepreneur who runs the website SavvySexySocial.com and owns the YouTube channel, Amy Landino. Amy has 388k subscribers and vlogs regularly on productivity and entrepreneurship. Her easy-going vlogging style has won her legions of fans.

Book Synopsis: When you see Gary Vaynerchuk’s name on the front cover giving a testimonial, you know Amy Landino is something special. It doesn’t end there, Tony Robbins’ social media manager also says she is ‘the most authoritative voice in the how-to vlogging space’.

So why is she so good at what she does?

Some skills come to some people easily, and it appears Amy Landino is a natural when it comes to speaking in front of the camera. But, presenting a vlog is a skill you can learn. Amy sets out to show you how you can improve your presenting style, and help make your videos more pleasing to watch.

You won’t find in-depth coverage of YouTube’s algorithm or the importance of tagging here; it’s not that kind of book. Instead, in a witty and engaging manner, Amy Landino explains how you can best develop the confidence and poise to present your content and how to promote it via social media.

Amy Landino dares you to step outside of your comfort zone, launch a vlogging business, and go after your dreams.

Vlog Like A Boss is available in hardback, paperback, Kindle, and Amazon Audible – narrated by the author. It currently rates 4.6 out of 5 from hundreds of Amazon reviews and is in the top 30 books for video production.

Amazon Link To Book: Buy The Book Now.

Book 4: Read This if You Want to Be YouTube Famous

Author: Will Eagle

Number of pages: 128

Published: 2020

Why should you listen to him?: This book is part of a series about creative endeavours. The main attraction of the book is that Will Eagle (a former brand strategist at Google) has interviewed 45 of the top creators on YouTube and distilled their wisdom and tips for aspiring YouTubers into a single book. Each creator also shares their favourite video and favourite other YouTube creators.

Book Synopsis: Don’t judge a book by its cover. The plain dull cover, criticised by many reviewers, hides a good treasure trove of informative tips.

The book’s central premise is 45 of the top, and influential YouTubers share actionable tips for you to make the most of the videos that you create. Included in the book are YouTubers with vast numbers of subscribers, like The Icing Artist (4.1million) and Gizzy Gazza (2.1million).

It’s a bit of an arty coffee table book in some ways, and the design and layout are modern and cool. But it takes you along the journey of some famous creatives, from their first videos shot in a dingy bedroom to the polished productions they make now.

It also reminds the reader that you have to commit to the process (many YouTubers take years to find success). While it can be a little repetitive, because each creator is asked the same questions, it does underline that vlogging is a learned skill.

All in all, it contains some valuable insight into the minds of successful YouTubers and is a source of inspiration for those still on the path to success.

The book is only available in the coffee-table paperback format, currently priced at just £8.99.

Amazon Link To Book: Buy The Book Now.

So that concludes the list of books for YouTubers who want to grow their audience. I hope you find some of the recommendations useful.

Remember, if you sometimes struggle to find the time actually to sit down and read; there is an alternative. You can listen to a book when you are out and about—maybe travelling to work or out getting coffee.

You can download and listen to many useful books about YouTube and entrepreneurship using Amazon Audible. Every month for a small monthly subscription, you can listen to a book often narrated by the author themselves.

Educating yourself is the single best thing you can do for your career, so why not try listening to two of the books mentioned above with a 30-day trial of Amazon Audible.

 

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Best Books for New YouTubers You HAVE To Read!

When you start a new YouTube channel, it’s quite easy to feel overwhelmed.

There is so much to do; perfecting your spare-room set, mastering the art of clip editing, and remind-me-again does the red light mean the camera is recording?

Growing a YouTube channel by yourself from zero can be a lonely place. So why not learn from those who have been before you? Many successful YouTubers have distilled their years of experience and wisdom into best-selling books.

It makes sense for you to read a few. Maybe then you can move your channel forward faster than your competitors.

I am much more of an audiobook “reader” as I tend to take it in easier – I even use Amazon’s FREE Audible trials to load up on 2 free books every month.

This post looks four of the best books I recommend for new YouTubers. Here we go.

Book 1: YouTube Secrets: The Ultimate Guide to Growing Your Following and Making Money as a Video Influencer

Authors: Sean Cannell & Benji Travis

Number of pages: 194

Published: 2018

Why should you listen to them?: Sean Cannell and Benji Travis are two friends who got into vlogging and video creation in 2003, before YouTube’s launch. With over a decades’ experience, each author can claim significant success from running YouTube Channels.

Sean Cannell has helped businesses generate $5 million in revenue. Benji Travis’s videos have had over 1 billion views. Between them, they currently run around five channels and collectively have over 2 million subscribers.

Book Synopsis: YouTube Secrets claims that video has changed the world and created a whole new entrepreneurial channel for ambitious self-starters to make an impact on the world.

Thousands of vloggers are making soccer-star levels of income running YouTube channels, and YouTube Secrets aims to give you the roadmap to launch one yourself.

When researching the book, Cannell and Travis interviewed 100 top creators and drew on their own experiences, then compiled the knowledge into an actionable plan.

The authors divided the book into two sections; Strategies and Tactics. The Strategy section covers the best way to plan your YouTube channel’s content and launch. The Tactics section looks at how you can grow your subscriber base and scale-up your channel.

The book is in the top 100 best sellers in the e-business category and is available in paperback, kindle, and audible format, which is narrated by the authors.

Out of 800 global reviews on Amazon, the book is rated 4.6 out of 5 by its readers. Many say that the price of the book is alone worth it just for the section of pro-tips from the top YouTube creators.

Amazon link to book: Buy the book now.

Book 2: Tube Ritual: Jumpstart Your Journey to 5,000 YouTube Subscribers

Author: Brian G. Johnson

Number of pages: 268

Published: 2018

Why should you listen to him?: Brian Johnson started a YouTube channel from scratch and grew it to 10,000 subscribers in under a year.

That was four years ago, now Brian has uploaded nearly 600 videos and has 137,000 subscribers. Brian knows what it takes to launch a channel from zero subscribers and make a success of it.

Book Synopsis: Tube Ritual states the problem facing new YouTubers quite plainly: when you start with your new YouTube channel, you have no videos, no subscribers, and no views.

Furthermore, every minute of every day, 500 minutes of video are uploaded to YouTube. How do you compete with all that? Beginning from zero can seem an overwhelming challenge!

Brain navigated this problem himself through researching, testing, and tweaking his vlogging methods. Until he landed on a set of practices – he calls rituals – that resulted in video content that drew in subscribers and views.

YouTube Rituals is a year-long case study of launching a brand new channel. Brian helps you to steer through all the roadblocks of camera settings, editing, and technical details.

The book is nine chapters which each deal with essential concepts and skills you need to master to become a success as a YouTuber.

Brain covers the importance of planning, playlists, and thumbnails. How to win clicks in the search results and turn viewers into subscribers. He also shares his opinions about the need for creating content of value. The book closes out with a 30-day challenge you can test yourself against and provides a 12-step program for ranking well on YouTube.

The book is rated 4.4 out of 5 on Amazon and is available in Kindle and paperback format. Many reviewers say it is the book to get for YouTube startups.

Amazon link to book: Buy the book now.

Book 3: Crushing YouTube: How to Start a YouTube Channel, Launch Your YouTube Business and Make Money

Author: Joseph Hogue

Number of pages: 164

Published: 2019

Why should you listen to him?: Joseph Hogue runs a channel on YouTube that focuses on personal finance. He started his channel in 2015 and has grown it to nearly 260k subscribers. He claims that as of June 2019, he is earning $3,500 per month from ad revenue alone from the channel – and a similar amount from sponsorships and affiliate sales.

Book Synopsis: The central premise of Crushing YouTube is that it provides you with the keys to growing a YouTube channel from 0 to 75,000 subscribers in 18 months.

Hogue says it’s not too late to start a channel. In fact, Hogue claims that with the rollout of 5G, it’s just the beginning of the ‘age of YouTube’ and now is the perfect time to launch a channel of your own.

Hogue underlines that he knows the zero problem. Zero videos, views or subscribers, and the frustration that it can bring competing against ‘million-subscriber monsters’. So he gives you the tools you need to grow your channel and start seeing results quickly.

The book covers how you can earn additional revenue streams in addition to YouTube’s ad revenue sharing program. Hogue shows you how these revenue streams can be as lucrative, if not more, than earning solely from ads.

The book is divided into 18 easily digestible chapters, covering a diverse range of topics. It covers the essential information for the beginner, like choosing a channel topic and equipment required to get your channel up on the air.

Later chapters deal with more advanced subjects such as using analytics for growth, channel promotion, and subscriber growth strategies. The knowledge contained in the book can save you months of trial and error, and it’s well worth the read.

The book is rated 4.6 out of 5 on Amazon and is available on Kindle and paperback formats.

Amazon link to book: Buy the book now.

Book 4: YouTube Channels For Dummies

Authors: Rob Ciampa, Theresa Go, Matt Ciampa, Rich Murphy

Number of pages: 400

Published: 2020

Why should you listen to them?: The authors are a blend of successful YouTubers and YouTube advertising and marketing consultants. Matt Ciampa is a video producer at Buzzfeed. Rob Ciampa is a global media consultant. Theresa Go and Rich Murphy both work at Pixabililty, a company that advises large brands on video marketing.

Book Synopsis: A recently released updated and expanded version of the 2015 original, YouTube Channels for Dummies promises to help you attract some of the 2 billion sets of eyes that use YouTube each month.

If you are looking for comprehensive guidance on launching a YouTube channel, then you can do far worse than buying a for Dummies book. Yes, sometimes they can appear patronising, but for Dummies books assume that you have absolutely no prior knowledge on a topic.

This is a good thing. While other books may assume that you know how to log into your YouTube account, YouTube Channels For Dummies covers everything, which is excellent, if you want to know how to navigate the home page properly but were too afraid to ask.

The book is divided into five parts. The first deals with getting started – how to set up your channel and planning your aims. The second section shows you how to make a good YouTube video, and has helpful suggestions for different types you can shoot.

The third section helps you with understanding and growing your audience. The fourth sections looks at how businesses can use YouTube to their advantage in the modern world. And the final fifth section covers copyright and improving YouTube search rankings.

Typical for Dummies features are present in the book, with helpful summaries and graphics to help you digest the most important pieces of information.

The book is available on Amazon in both Kindle and paperback format. As it’s only just been released, there aren’t too many user reviews in as yet. However, the early reviews are promising, and it should be an essential addition to your YouTube learning library.

Amazon link to book: Buy the book now.

I hope you’ve enjoyed reading about this curated selection of books for the YouTube beginner. Learning from others who have succeeded before you can help you when you are a bit overwhelmed at the start.

For some people, it’s hard to find the time to sit down a read a book. Well, why don’t you listen to it instead!

You can get an Amazon Audible subscription FOR FREE and claim your 2 FREE DOWNLOADS, plus one new audiobook every month. Enjoy a free one month trial here.

 

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YouTube Tips for Teenagers

Whether you are a parent with children who are just hitting those teenage years, or a teenager yourself, YouTube can be something of a daunting prospect.

Although we’ll admit that worrying about things like YouTube is typically more of a parent thing. And it shows by the number of posts and guides there are online aimed at parents.

While it’s not a bad thing that parents have ample resources to help them guide their children through potentially sticky areas of life, there comes the point where those children start taking on a little autonomy and making decisions without their parent’s input, and it is important that there are resources for those children as well.

For most people, that time is during their teenage years, when they are transitioning from childhood to adulthood. YouTube do have their own little section on staying safe as a teen, though “little” is the operative word there.

Now, teenagers are not necessarily known for their willingness to listen to older generations’ advice, something that has been true for teenagers throughout history. Still, there is advice to give, and it should be there when it is needed.

With that in mind, we’ve put together these YouTube tips for teenagers, both for teenagers who are going to start making videos and teenagers who are just watching.

YouTube Tips for Teenagers 1

The Standard Common Sense Talk

The chances are, you’ve had some version of this message through your life—or at least we hope you have—but it amounts to using your common sense when it comes to your own actions.

It can be easy to get swept up in things, whether its peer pressure from your friends or wanting to be part of a global Internet trend. It is crucial that you take a step back and ask yourself if whatever action you are considering taking is wise.

Could you hurt yourself? Could you hurt others? Are their lasting ramifications of what you intend to do?

Though it’s not a hard rule, it can help to ask yourself if you would do the thing you are doing without a YouTube audience. If the answer is no, explore all of the reasons why it is no, and try to judge if those reasons outweigh getting views on YouTube objectively.

A perfect example of this is the “Tide Pod Challenge“, where a concerning number of people—granted, not all teenagers—chowed down on dishwasher detergent pods for a ridiculous Internet challenge that, as far as anyone can tell, started because the pods in question look a bit like candy.

Unfortunately, the whole area of Internet challenges is one that requires you to use your judgement, and judgement is subjective.

For example, while it may be a bit daft, the Planking trend that swept across the Internet in the early 2010s—which involved people laying face-down in strange and unusual places—was relatively harmless… depending on where you chose to lay face down. Similarly, the “Cinamon Challenge“, while a little riskier than planking due to the possibility of choking, was more or less safe, if not a little embarrassing. We’ll get to embarrassment later, by the way.

From those somewhat innocuous examples, there have been far more dangerous trends that have involved eating corn on a cob using an electric drill, and the detergent chomping we mentioned above. These are not safe and innocuous examples of Internet challenges, and can (and have) caused injury, all for the sake of trying to get a viral video.

These are cases where judgement has failed people. Dishwasher detergent is not meant to be ingested, and can cause serious harm. Most people know this, and that is why they would not choose to do that outside of a silly Internet challenge.

As desirable as a high-profile YouTube career may be, it is not worth risking your health—and possibly your life—over.

YouTube Tips for Teenagers 2

The Internet Lasts Forever

This particular point is a hard one for younger people—not just teenagers—to come to terms with.

We, as a species, struggle to plan long term, and this is more evident among our young than anywhere else. It is why we feel invincible when we are young, and why we are willing to take risks that, as an older person, we would never dream of taking.

Unfortunately for the current generation of children, teenagers, and young adults, not thinking long term is a luxury they can’t really afford to have.

The phrase, “the Internet lasts forever” refers to the fact that once something has been posted online, you can never truly be sure that it can be removed.

Sure, if you post a video to YouTube that gets zero views and you delete it, you can probably feel confident that the video is gone. If, on the other hand, you post a video that goes viral, that video will never leave the Internet, even if you later come to regret it and take the video down, it will exist in hundreds of other places across the web.

And you don’t have to be a viral sensation for this to happen.

We talked about long term planning because it is difficult for teenagers to muster up the concern for how something like an offensive or silly video might affect their life ten or twenty years down the line, but that is exactly what you have to consider.

It is already hard enough to judge what is safe, given that things that were a bit “edgy” ten—and even five and sometimes less—years ago are now getting people cancelled, but there are plenty of things you can be sure are not going to play well at any time. For example, discriminatory content, even for comedic purposes, can come back to bite you, regardless of who the discrimination is against, and there are many examples of this happening.

There may be situations where risky content like this is not a problem, such as would be the case for someone who makes a career out of outrageous and offensive comedy.

But we humans are not traditionally very good at picking out a career path early on and sticking to it, and the number of career paths that an offensive video resurfacing wouldn’t harm is pretty small.

With that in mind, it is generally best just to steer clear of anything that might be considered offensive or particularly silly in a dangerous kind of way.

YouTube Tips for Teenagers 3

Viral isn’t Viral Anymore

Asking yourself if you would do something without an audience is a good starting point for making a sound judgement about whether something is a good idea.

However, we know that the Internet would be a boring place if people only ever made videos of them doing things that they would be comfortable doing alone.

For example, we can fully believe that the guys behind the channel How Ridiculous might be dropping things from great heights purely for fun if they weren’t making viral videos out of it, but it’s safe to say they probably wouldn’t be dropping cars onto giant axes were it not on camera.

However, the thing about viral videos is that “viral” does not mean what it once did. In the earlier days of the Internet—and of Youtube specifically—a viral video would take over the Internet.

It would be all people were talking about for a short period. These days, viral videos may rake in the millions of views that they used to do, but they are just one viral video in a sea of other viral videos, since lots of people and organisations are trying to make viral videos. Furthermore, they are not worth nearly as much as you might think in terms of monetary value.

There are instances of YouTubers having viral hits that get millions and millions of views, only to make a few hundred dollars from it.

The reason we are going over all this is that when you make those judgements we were talking about, you should have a realistic idea of the benefits. Internet fame can be incredibly fleeting, especially when it is off the back of a viral video.

Seriously consider if what you are planning is worth the potential rewards, even in the best-case scenarios. This is especially true for the trends we mentioned above. For something like the Tide Pod Challenge, lots of people (unfortunately) were attempting the challenge, which means that any boost the videos got would have been minor since they would effectively have been shared between all the other Tide Pod videos.

In other words, people were risking severe injury for what amounted to a relatively minor bump in viewership.

It’s also worth noting that a viral video alone does not usually translate into many new subscribers, so, for most of those people, it was risking serious injury for a one-time minor bump in views.

YouTube Tips for Teenagers 4

Mental Health

So far, we’ve been focussing mainly on teenagers who are looking to create content, but this section applies to both teenage YouTubers and teenagers who just watch YouTube.

Firstly, the comments. YouTube has a well-deserved reputation for not always being the most welcoming of communities. Some YouTubers actively work to keep toxic voices out of their comments and chats, but there are a lot of users on YouTube, and a lot of those users are not nice people.

The best-case scenario would be if you could mentally shield yourself from mean comments, or discriminatory language that affects you.

If you can dismiss those comments as the unsavoury ramblings of a troubled person, you will be safe from this kind of attack on your mental health, whatever platform you are on. If, on the other hand, you just can’t get that barrier up, don’t go looking for trouble.

There is no way to block people as a user, and YouTubers can only opt to hide certain users from their channel’s comments. If you are likely to be affected by offensive comments, it may be best to steer clear of the comments altogether, and certainly on videos where the community is known to be less than friendly.

As a viewer, it is also important to remember that what you see on YouTube is not necessarily real life.

If you are watching vloggers in their picture-perfect bedrooms with their faces perfectly lit and their hair looking immaculate, try to remember that regardless of how perfect their life looks on YouTube, they are real people with problems that don’t necessarily make it onto their channel.

Work to better your life in your own ways, and don’t compare it to unrealistic representations of Internet strangers’ lives.

Teenagers on YouTube

YouTube is not presently allowed to track children (those under thirteen years of age), so statistics on demographics aren’t necessarily comprehensive. That being said, in 2019, 81% of 15-25-year-olds in America used YouTube.

What’s more, YouTube is fifteen years old (at the time of writing this post in 2020) meaning that all of the teenagers alive today either grew up with YouTube or are too young to remember a time before YouTube.

What this may mean for the future is for smarter people to predict, but it is interesting to note that today’s children and teenagers will be the first generation of kids to grow up with YouTube. They will have significantly more opportunities to make their lives harder through unwise YouTube-use.

But at the same time, they will have a lot more examples of the consequences of misusing YouTube than anyone who came before they did. Millennials grew up in a proto-Internet world and were taken somewhat off-guard by the always-on nature of the modern Internet, that is mostly why we see YouTubers who became popular during the early days of the platform getting cancelled for things they did a decade ago.

Children today can learn from those experiences.

YouTube Tips for Teenagers Careers

For the first time in history, “YouTuber” is seen as a valid career choice. And, unlike actors and pop stars, it is something that you can achieve through hard work and smart decisions alone, rather than relying on luck.

There are no guarantees that you’ll become the next DanTDM or Zoella, but you can very realistically pay your bills with a moderately successful YouTube channel.

Just try not to live and die by the validation of your channel; there is more to life than YouTube.

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How to Make Money on YouTube With Fitness

Thanks to the wealth of information we now know about our bodies—and probably in no small part because of the ubiquitous presence of attractive social media stars all over the Internet—the general public has never been more concerned with their health as they are today. You only need to look at the sheer number of fitness products, services, gyms, and, yes, YouTube channels.

There is clearly a healthy demand for fitness content, and where there is demand, there is an opportunity to make money. That being said, just because the demand is there doesn’t mean that making money serving that market is straightforward or intuitive.

But fear not, we have put together this bumper post on how to make money on YouTube with fitness content just for you.

We’re nice like that.

How to Write a YouTube Title

1. Standard YouTube Advice Applies

The first thing to note is that fitness videos on YouTube are no different from any other videos on YouTube, and all the same rules for success apply.

This post may be on how to make money on YouTube with fitness content, but you should absolutely check out other more general resources on succeeding on YouTube. There are plenty on this very site, not to mention the YouTube channel.

There is lots to cover in the realm of fitness videos specifically, so we’re not going to rehash anything we don’t need to here.

Just be aware that all those posts and videos about YouTube success that don’t mention fitness in the title are still well worth your time.

2. Practice What You Preach

When you are claiming to be an authority on something—which is precisely what you are doing when you give any kind of advice on YouTube—there is an element of trust involved. Specifically, the viewer’s trust that you know what you are talking about.

Unfortunately, no matter how many times our mother’s told us not to judge a book by its cover, we always do. In other words, even if you have a wall full of qualifications in a host of fitness-related fields, the viewers are going to be sceptical about coming to your for fitness content if you are overweight, or you are out of breath after relatively mild activity.

Whatever it is you are demonstrating (weight loss, bulking up, improved cardio, etc.), make sure you can back up your words with actions.

If you can’t, your viewers might see it as a sign that your methods don’t work, and go elsewhere.

There is an exception to this rule, however…

How to Make Money on YouTube With Fitness

3. Take Your Viewers on a Journey

The exception to the above rule is if you are creating journey videos. These are videos where you are going on your own fitness journey and taking your viewers along for the ride.

In these cases, it would make no sense if you were already in great shape at the start of the series.

For example, a journey series on you getting your weight down to 160 lbs won’t hold much interest if you are starting off at 171 lbs. If you are starting at 230 lbs, on the other hand, people will be interested in your success.

Success is another important factor here. If you start this series and, ultimately, fail in your goal, it can leave a sour taste in the mouths of your viewers and may put them off of coming back for other content.

If you have unflappable confidence in your own ability to stick it out and reach your goals, by all means, jump in. If you want to play it a little more cautiously, however, consider creating the whole series first, then uploading the videos when you are done.

If for some unfortunate reason, you don’t succeed in your goal, you don’t have to release the series.

4. Align Yourself With Suitable Partners

The fitness boom we are experiencing is not limited to YouTube, and there is plenty of opportunity in taking advantage of that fact.

Whether it’s a trendy new protein shake, an innovative piece of exercise equipment, or the latest in high-tech fitness gadgetry, there is seemingly no end to fitness products and services.

When looking at potential partners, whether it’s for affiliate linking, a full-on brand deal, or anything in between, be sure to go with a company or product that suits your channel.

Try to avoid some of the more common partners, like Squarespace, and opt for a product or service that will appeal to your audience.

Similarly, if you are preaching the benefits of an organic diet, don’t promote processed protein powder!

How to Make Money on YouTube With Fitness 1

5. Don’t Promote Dangerous Diets or Unsafe Techniques

As much as we like to think a disclaimer at the start of our videos carries a lot of legal weight, they’re not as reliable as many seem to believe.

We’re not saying you shouldn’t put disclaimers in your video, but they won’t necessarily protect you from legal action if you advocate an exercise or recipe that ends up seriously injuring someone or adversely affecting their health.

The unfortunate reality of the legal system is that it is possible for anyone to take anyone else to court, even when there are airtight legal documents in place.

Granted, having said documents makes it far less likely such a case would ever see a courtroom, and even less likely that the complainant would win any resulting case, but the risk is always there.

All of this is to say that you should be wary of what you advocate in your videos. If something is extremely risky or highly controversial, it may be worth just steering clear of it.

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6. Find a Niche Within a Niche

If you’re reading this post, you clearly already have a main niche—fitness. However, as we mentioned at the top, fitness is a big niche, and there is a lot of competition there.

If you want to succeed at making money with fitness content on YouTube, you will benefit from drilling down even further to find a more specific area within the fitness niche to focus on.

You could focus on vegan nutrition for athletes or deadlifting technique.

You could even focus your content on how to get the best workouts without going to the gym, or retrospectives of famous athletes.

And, of course, there are more obvious options, such as reviewing fitness gear or posting short workout routines.

Don’t feel as though you have to appeal to everybody.

By zeroing in on a smaller subsection of the fitness niche, you shrink your potential audience, sure, but you also increase your chances of capturing that audience in the process.

7. Be Interesting and Unique

Such is the interest in fitness right now that even with a more focussed niche, you will still be facing plenty of competition for views.

To combat this, try to make your videos as unique as possible. If you have a lot of personality, you could achieve this by simply being yourself on camera, assuming that all that personality you have is likeable.

You can also give your videos a unique flair by adding a twist to your content, such as showing unconventional ways to get a great workout, or even something as seemingly minor as shooting your workout videos in interesting locations.

These factors do not have to be significant. Every touch of uniqueness you add to your content sets you apart from other channels, making you more memorable.

Of course, some viewers may not like your unique touches and see them as a reason to go elsewhere, but that is part of being a YouTuber; you have to accept that not everyone will like you.

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8. Sell Your Own Products

If your channel starts to really take off, you could look to leverage that success by selling additional products.

You could go the whole hog, and work with manufacturers to develop and market your own unique products or services, of course, but if that is a little too deep for you, there is another way.

Many companies provide turnkey solutions for merchandise in much the same way that YouTube’s own merchandise solution works. These services allow you to modify products with your own logos and designs, selling things like T-shirts and mugs.

Of course, mugs and T-shirts aren’t very fitness-specific, so you will probably want to look a little further afield than YouTube’s own merchandising solution. One option is Total Merchandise, who offer an enormous range of customisable products, including things like sports flasks and outdoor gear. It should be noted that you would have to buy a large quantity from a service like Total Merchandise, whereas YouTube’s solution would sell directly to your customers.

9. Consider Partnering With Other Fitness Channels

If you have taken the advice we gave above about drilling down into the fitness niche to find an area where you can flourish, then you might want to consider teaming up with other YouTubers in the fitness niche.

Of course, you want to partner with people who are not offering exactly the same kind of content as you. For example, if you had a channel specialising in cardio workouts, you might partner with a channel that focuses on weight lifting or a channel that covers nutrition.

You wouldn’t partner with another cardio channel, however, because you would then be competing with each other.

The goal of this kind of partnership is to help each other grow and succeed. Someone may come to your channel for cardio but then go looking elsewhere for weight lifting videos. In this kind of partnership, you would be able to direct those viewers to your partner channel, and vice versa.

This way, you and your partners get to provide your combined viewers with a total fitness package, while at the same time helping each other to grow.

How to Make Money on YouTube With Fitness 5

10. Motivate

Most of us mere mortals have motivation problems when it comes to exercising, and it is those motivation-deprived people that will likely make up the bulk of your audience.

Showing your viewers amazing techniques for getting toned abs or shedding that excess weight won’t count for much if they can’t muster up the willpower and interest to use those techniques on a regular basis.

In short, don’t neglect the motivational aspect of your videos.

We’re not saying you should don bright lycra and turn the cheerfulness up to eleven while you bounce around to upbeat dance music… unless you want to, of course. But put some thought into ways to help your viewers muster up the energy to do your workouts, or follow your routines.

Remember, the more success stories your channel creates, the bigger your reputation will become, and the more successful you are likely to be.

Final Thoughts

Ultimately, much of advice for how to make money on YouTube with fitness videos is the same as it is for any other video, and as such, hasn’t been included in this post.

Things like making eye-catching thumbnails and attention-grabbing titles, promoting your channel on social media, uploading regularly, all of these are crucial components to a typical successful channel, and it is worth taking some time to look over some of the other posts on this blog to learn more about that side of things.

For fitness specifically, the most significant piece of advice we can give you is to be good at what you do.

With other kinds of YouTube videos, the ultimate gatekeeper to success is the quality of the content. If the videos are poor, the channel won’t succeed. While this is just as true for fitness videos, there is the added dimension of the fitness content itself.

You could make the best videos in the world from a production and entertainment standpoint, but if they don’t help people lose weight or gain muscle or do whatever it is they are supposed to be getting help with, then the channel will ultimately fail.

And don’t be afraid to check out the competition. If you find a channel in your niche—or very close to your niche—that is incredibly successful, watch their videos, analyse their content, and see what they are doing that is leading to that success.

Please don’t steal from them, of course, but look for elements that you can incorporate into your videos.

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. PlaceIT can help you STAND OUT on YouTube

I SUCK at making anything flashy or arty.

I have every intention in the world to make something that looks cool but im about as artistic as a dropped ice-cream cone on the web windy day.

That is why I could not live on YouTube without someone like PlaceIT. They offer custom YouTube Banners, Avatars, YouTube Video Intros and YouTube End Screen Templates that are easy to edit with simple click, upload wizard to help you make amazing professional graphics in minutes.

Best of all, some of their templates are FREE! or you can pay a small fee if you want to go for their slightly more premium designs (pst – I always used the free ones).

5. StoryBlocks 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 StoryBlocks 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.

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HOW TO MAKE MONEY ONLINE TIPS & TRICKS YOUTUBE

How To Make Money on YouTube Playing Games

Given the enormous growth of video games in recent years, it is not surprising that it now forms the basis for a diverse range of careers.

Being involved with the creation of video games is no longer the only way to get paid in the gaming industry, with millions of gamers checking gaming media outlets regularly, an eSports sector worth hundreds of millions of dollars a year, and no end of opportunities to make content around video games, there has never been a better time to be interested making a career around video games.

Of course, YouTube has enjoyed plenty of growth itself during this time, so it only makes sense that a lot of people would look to combine the success potential of YouTube with the demand for video game content.

Still, getting started in this world isn’t always intuitive, and there is a lot of competition, but if you’ve found yourself Googling how to make money on YouTube playing games, you’ve come to the right place.

Get yourself a beverage and make yourself comfortable while we take a deep dive on how to make money on YouTube playing games.

How To Make Money on YouTube Playing Games 1

A Brief Note on the Legalities of YouTube Gaming Content

The legalities of gaming on YouTube (or any other video platform for that matter) are deserving of a post of their own; however, it would be irresponsible to not at least cover the basics here.

The specifics will change depending on the publishers and developers in question. It can range from studios like Devolver Digital—who actively encourage people to make content using their games—to Nintendo—who only recently started allowing gamers to create content using their games at all!

For the most part, the rules around video game content can be boiled down to this; you have to add something to the footage.

This could be a running commentary, a review, humorous editing, or any number of options. In other words, you can’t just record a playthrough with no commentary and expect to make money. For one thing, it is against YouTube’s policies to do that, but also it may result in the publisher or developer getting your channel struck.

This is because many larger studios have a similar policy to YouTube, stating that any content made using their games must be transformative. It’s also worth noting that there is a much smaller audience for videos that are essentially just watching someone else play a game with no additional input.

How To Make Money on YouTube Playing Games 2

Ideas for Gaming Videos on YouTube

Now that that’s out of the way let’s look at how you can make money playing games on YouTube. Before we get into specific video ideas, it’s worth taking a moment to say that, whatever you do, you should enjoy it on some level.

There is entertainment value in seeing someone who dislikes a particular kind of game playing that game, but if you don’t enjoy any part of the process, you will soon get burned out and not want to continue making videos.

And if there’s one thing that can guarantee you won’t make money on YouTube, it’s not making videos on YouTube.

For most kinds of gaming videos, on the other hand, you should enjoy the game you are playing. If you are forcing yourself to play something you have no interest in, that will come through in your video, and there is a very strong chance your viewers will join you in not being interested.

Now, let’s take a look at some ideas for gaming videos on YouTube!

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Let’s Play Videos

Probably the most popular kind of gaming video you will find on YouTube are Let’s Play videos, though the term “let’s play” is rarely used anymore since this is kind of the default state for gaming content on YouTube.

These kinds of videos involve the YouTuber playing a game while commentating on what is happening, often with a live feed of their face in a corner of the screen, large enough to see how they are reacting but not too large that it gets in the way of the game.

For the viewers, a large part of why they will tune in is for the YouTuber themselves rather than the game.

The most successful Let’s Play YouTubers have an entertaining persona, and the viewers are typically there more to see that persona than they are to see the game that is being played in the video.

This is how YouTubers like PewDiePie are able to transition from these kinds of videos into other types of content because their subscribers want to see them, not the game.

That being said, it pays to keep your finger on the pulse of what is popular in the YouTube gaming scene, even if you are trading on your screen presence.

It doesn’t hurt to have a go-to game or genre that you cover, but sometimes certain games become incredibly popular, and it can be an excellent opportunity for your channel to grow by capitalising on this kind of trend. The recent explosion of interest in Minecraft, a decade after it first came onto the scene, is an excellent example of this kind of thing happening.

On the subject of having a go-to game or genre, many YouTubers are incredibly successful in making videos playing a specific game. An excellent example of this is Glock9, a YouTuber who almost exclusively makes videos playing the popular survival game, 7 Days to Die, and has seen his subscriber count explode in the last year, gaining nearly 200k subscribers.

If you opt to focus on one game in this manner, don’t be afraid to try something new every once in a while.

You don’t want people to lose interest in your channel before you have had a chance to work through potentially new directions your channel can take. But that could very well happen if you stubbornly stick to the same content even when it is clear people are getting weary of it.

How To Make Money on YouTube Playing Games 4

Become a Streamer

In the not-too-distant past, taking this path to make money with gaming would have seen you heading away from YouTube and over to Twitch.

Fortunately, YouTube has started to make serious moves into the streaming arena, and they have seen lots of gamers choosing their platform for streaming as a result. Perhaps the most significant sign of changing times was the arrival of DrDisRespect—an immensely popular Twitch streamer who, after being banned from Twitch for unknown reasons, chose YouTube as the place to continue entertaining his millions of fans.

In a way, streaming content is a lot like Let’s Play content at first glance. The main difference is that streaming is live, so there is no editing of your videos before they go out. This also means you can interact with your subscribers in real-time, as they will be in the chat while you game.

Features like membership and super chat will allow your subscribers to support you in other ways besides the ad revenue that your streams generate, and, should you choose to enable it, your streams can continue living on your channel like regular videos when you are done, creating more potential for earnings with future watches.

One thing to note when starting a career as a streamer is that you will need to have complete control of yourself and your feed.

There are countless stories of people letting an incredibly offensive word slip out of their mouth onstream, or absently engaging in a bit of casual animal abuse.

Incidents like this might not be enough to take down some of the biggest streamers in the world, but they could easily stop your channel from growing.

How To Make Money on YouTube Playing Games 5

Reviews and Commentary

Though it’s not strictly playing video games on YouTube, creating reviews and commentary of games will require you to play those games, even though it isn’t necessarily on camera. That being said, you will probably want to use footage of you playing the game for visuals under your commentary.

The thing to remember about this kind of video is that people are not coming to watch you play the game, they are coming to learn about it.

With that in mind, you should tailor the gameplay footage to show the particular aspects of the game that are being talked about at any given moment in the video. And, as far as the talking goes, be sure to cover everything that might be important.

If people are going to come to you to get a sense of whether a game is worth buying, they’ll want to be sure they have a full picture by the time they have finished watching.

You might have noticed that this section is called “reviews and commentary“. True, reviews are a kind of commentary, but there other ways to approach this kind of video.

For example, retrospective videos on important games throughout gaming history, or breakdowns of why a particular game had the impact on the industry that it did. This type of video is incredibly popular in the retro computers community, as talking about games from the 1980s and 90s is right in that wheelhouse.

General Advice

Choosing the style of YouTube gamer you want to be is essential, of course, but there are some factors that are applicable regardless of what kind of video you intend to make.

Find a Niche

If you’ve spent any time reading advice on succeeding on YouTube, you will already know this one. Finding your niche might be the most significant key to success on YouTube (after making great content, of course). If you are one of a very small number of people serving a particular niche, you stand to gain a lot more views from that niche by virtue of there not being many other options.

In short, you reduce your competition.

Now, you may be supremely confident in your ability to bring in the subscribers, and perhaps you don’t worry about competition for that reason.

Unfortunately, given the sheer volume of YouTubers out there, it can be very difficult to get noticed, even for an extremely talented and entertaining YouTuber. But if that talented and entertaining YouTuber chooses a niche, they are more likely to be seen by the people with that interest, and from there the talent will take over.

Once that YouTuber is established, they can branch out into other areas.

In terms of gaming, your niche could be very specific—such as videos on one particular game—or a little broader in scope—such as a particular genre or style of game—but you should try to narrow it down to something. Just playing video games will likely get lost in the algorithm shuffle.

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Offer Something Unique

As important as finding your niche is, there will still be more work to do.

The chances of you finding a niche that is both dramatically underserved but also popular enough to attract the kind of numbers you would need to make money is very slim. In other words, you’re still going to have to get noticed in a crowded field of competition, even in a focussed niche.

Granted, a much less crowded field, but crowded nonetheless.

The way you get noticed is by offering your viewers something that other YouTubers aren’t. For personality-based YouTubers, they are the unique component. For other kinds of YouTuber, consider offering a unique perspective.

As an example of how the same niche can be approached in different ways, consider these three channels on computer keyboards.

  • TaeKeyboards is a channel that covers both reviews and modding of mechanical keyboards and is very analytical in approach. Keyboards are explored in-depth, and all the details are laid out for the viewer.
  • :3ildcat is similar in that it does reviews of a sort, as well as modding videos. However, this channel is considerably more aesthetic and does not feature any spoken word. Instead, the content of the video takes place over pleasant music with annotations.
  • Chyrosran22 focuses on keyboard reviews (often older keyboards) and often uses more… colourful language.

Granted, they are not gaming channels, but all three of these channels take a very different approach to what is essentially the same topic.

Conclusions

Gaming is a huge industry, and there is a healthy demand for gaming content on YouTube.

If you can get over the initial hurdle of attracting viewers, and you have something unique to offer them, you will struggle to find an audience with as much earning potential as gaming.

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HOW TO MAKE MONEY ONLINE TIPS & TRICKS YOUTUBE

How to Make Money Online as a Singer or Musician

The Internet has provided countless opportunities for people to make a living doing the things they love. Of course, it was always possible to become an A-list actor or a platinum-selling musician. Possible, but not likely.

If we’re being honest, it’s still not likely that you will be able to become an Ed Sheeran or Dua Lipa-tier global superstar, even with the Internet—which is not to say you shouldn’t try—but being able to make music for a living is far more attainable than it once was because of the Internet. Thanks to the ease with which people can discover your music, and your fans can connect with your content; it is possible to build up a healthy fan base that can support you as you live out your dream of making music.

Will you be selling out global arena tours? Probably not—though, once again, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try; prove me wrong!

But if your dream is just to be able to write and play music and have an audience that wants to listen to it, you can definitely achieve those goals.

Let’s take a dive into how to make money online as a singer or musician.

Understanding Audience Dynamics

The first hurdle to get over is one of outdated methods.

Traditionally, a musician would have to have built up a substantial following before they could start to make real money from their passion, and even then the majority of their money would come from live performances.

This means that to make a respectable amount of money, you not only would have to attract enough people to individual shows, you also have to have enough interest for multiple shows, since you can’t keep playing the same venue over and over.

There is only so much desire to see the same act repeatedly.

Even today, with digital distribution platforms cutting out the middle-men and allowing musicians to sell directly to their fans, the rates of pay are painfully small, and you would have to be getting hundreds of thousands of streams on a service like Spotify to make ends meet.

Fortunately, thanks to the ease with which the Internet makes connecting with people, there are new models for musicians to make their living. In particular, there is a general movement towards smaller, more invested audiences, rather than simply aiming to get as many fans as possible.

To explain how this works, consider an artist releasing an album on Spotify. The rate of pay for a single stream of a song on Spotify (assuming the artist is the full copyright holder) is around $0.00318.

That means that to make the equivalent of the minimum wage in America, you would need over four hundred thousand streams of your songs. That may be small fries for someone like Eminem, but it’s a substantial goal for unknown artists.

Now let’s consider an alternative approach.

Instead of relying on Spotify, let’s say that the artist above puts out a special edition physical copy of the album that can be bought through their website, priced so that they make around $10 profit for every sale. That artist would only need to sell around one hundred and thirty physical albums to make the same amount of money as nearly half a million Spotify streams.

Four hundred thousand streams is a daunting task, even when you consider that someone listening to a full ten-track album counts as ten individual streams. But having a little over a hundred people willing to pay a bit of a premium for your latest album is a very attainable goal.

This is the basic premise of choosing quality over quantity when it comes to your audience. Rather than trying to get pennies from a large number of people by keeping the costs low and releasing your music everywhere, focus on giving the fans that are willing to pay a premium as much as you can.

Give them extra goodies, signed merchandise, and whatever else they might be interested in. Make sure they get their money worth, of course. Nothing will turn a fan off quicker than the feeling that someone is trying to take advantage of them.

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Build An Audience

Before you can worry about the quality of your fanbase, you need to have a fanbase. It has never been easier to build a following, but that does not mean you won’t have some hard work ahead of you if you’re going to succeed.

Hone Your Craft

It should go without saying, but if you want to be successful at anything, you should strive to be as good as you can at that thing. This is even more true of creative endeavours in the Internet age due to the sheer number of people there are online who are looking to achieve the same things. In the days before the Spotifys and YouTubes, it was possible to succeed in music even if you weren’t the best musician. Things like the right look, good songs, and a bit of luck could lead you to success.

These days, on the other hand, there are so many budding musicians out there that it is not hard to find someone who has the right look, makes excellent music, and is very skilled at what they do.

Fortunately, looks are not as big a deal as they were in the traditional music industry models, and there’s no reason to go trying to change yourself in this regard. And as for the music, you should make what you want to make. In fact, these two points will be two of the more significant factors behind gaining that dedicated audience we talked about. You want your fans to be there for you.

The point is you can’t—and shouldn’t—try to change your style to appeal to different audiences. There are niches for everything these days; find yours. But when it comes to skill, that is something you can help. Practice makes perfect, and you don’t want to give music lovers a reason to choose someone else the next time they want to listen to your style of music.

How to Make Money Online as a Singer or Musician 3

Find Ways to Stand Out

Getting noticed on the Internet isn’t easy. As we mentioned above, there are lots of people out there trying to get noticed at the same time, and it is very easy for you to get lost in the shuffle.

A good way to start building an audience is to start off making cover songs. This gives you an opportunity to show off your style and ability while simultaneously piggybacking off of the popularity of an established song.

Try to stray outside your comfort zone with song choices, and only cover songs that you can put a unique spin on.

People aren’t interested in seeing a note for note replica of their favourite blink-182 song; they want to see something new, like what YouTuber, Alex Melton, has been doing with his “Country Version” covers of songs that are decidedly not country. Alex has enjoyed an explosion of popularity in recent months, even getting his videos shared by the very bands he’s been covering.

You can even release your cover songs as an additional way to make money through your music, though there are rights issues with cover songs that will need to be addressed.

If you use a reputable digital music distribution platform, such as DistroKid or CDBaby, they will be able to take care of that for you.

Another way to get noticed is to make tutorials. If you are making good music, you must have a skill, whether it is songwriting, producing, playing instruments, or maybe all of the above. We’ve already mentioned that there are lots of people online who are looking to make these same moves, and they are eager for any help in that department.

If you can put together good YouTube guitar lessons, or a podcast about songwriting, or perhaps a sample pack for electronic musicians, then you can start to build an audience that way and parlay the success of that into ears for your new music.

Stay Active

One of the most critical aspects of building an audience or fanbase is being active. If you release a fantastic song that takes the Internet by storm and then vanish for six months, you lose all of the momentum that success gave you.

Fortunately, this doesn’t necessarily mean putting new music out every week. Consider other avenues to connect with your fans. If you are touring, you could keep a video diary of the tour. If you’re not touring, you could make regular vlogs. Posting snippets from your latest project, live streaming and playing song requests, basically anything that gives your fans more.

The idea is to keep giving your fans a constant stream of what they want; you. That way, even when you are not releasing new music, you are keeping in touch with your fanbase.

How to Make Money Online as a Singer or Musician 4

Make it Easy to Support You

This is more of a general tip for anyone who wants to earn their living through creative endeavours on the Internet; make it as easy as possible for your audience to support you.

You might be surprised at how many people decide they will donate or buy a piece of merchandise on a whim to support an online personality they like, only to shrug and not bother because the process of getting to that stage was awkward or difficult.

Make your music and merchandise easy to buy, with clear links on any videos or websites you have. Consider starting a Patreon account to give your audience more ways in which they can support you.

And, while it’s not strictly a rule for success, it always helps to be gracious when people choose to send their hard-earned money your way.

How to Make Money Online as a Singer or Musician as a Non-Creative

Given that this blog is primarily a YouTube blog, it makes sense that we’ve focussed on making money online as a musician from the perspective of someone wanting to perform and release music.

There are other ways to make money from your music online, however.

For example, you can make music for other people, such as jingles, and intro stingers. You could do this as an out-and-out freelancer, though you would need to work hard to market yourself. Or you could use services like Fiverr.

You could also give personal music lessons over a video call, or, though we mentioned it as a way of building your audience, there is nothing stopping you from making tutorials and lesson videos and having that be the main thing that you do.

There are plenty of successful YouTube channels out there working from this model.

Another option is to make music and sell it as stock audio. This is where people making content who need music can come to certain sites and buy the rights to a song. If you have a flair for making music that is particularly suited for use in video clips and scores, this may be a good route for you to take.

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Final Thoughts

Ultimately, there is no real barrier to succeeding financially as a musician in today’s interconnected world. Sure, you may have to moderate your idea of financial success down to something a little more grounded than whatever Lady Gaga is making, but it is certainly possible making a living from it.

Try to remember that the key to success as a smaller musician or band is to build a strong, invested fan base, not necessarily a big fan base.

A smaller number of fans who like you and your music enough to buy albums and merchandise will be a far more reliable source than a huge audience that might only stream your songs a few times a week. But perhaps most importantly, because you are looking to build an authentic, invested audience, be you.

Don’t look to change your look, personality, or style of music to attract different fans. Make the music you want to make let the fans that like that music come to you.

One of the best things about the Internet for creative types is that there is something for everyone; you just have to let the people who want your music find you.

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DEEP DIVE ARTICLE HOW TO MAKE MONEY ONLINE TIPS & TRICKS YOUTUBE

Do YouTubers Pay Tax?

The question of do YouTubers pay tax is perhaps not the right question—we can’t speak for every YouTuber out there. Should YouTubers pay tax is a much better question, and, in many cases, yes, if you earn enough money through your YouTubing exploits, you should probably be paying tax on those earnings.

The exact rules surrounding whether you should pay tax or not will be entirely dependent on how much money you make, the laws in your country of residence, not to mention your personal employment situation.

For example, two of the biggest countries in terms of YouTube usage—the United States and the United Kingdom—allow a certain amount of untaxed income. For the United States, it is called deductions and is around $12,200 a year. For the United Kingdom, it is called Personal Allowance and is around £12,500 a year.

In practical terms is that if someone in the United Kingdom made £10,000 from their YouTube channel in one year and didn’t earn any other income, they would not be required to pay tax on that money.

On the other hand, if they earned £13,000, they would have to pay tax on the £500 over the allowance. None of the above factors in other sources of income, such as a regular job.

Do YouTubers Pay Tax? 2

Disclaimer

Now would be a perfect time to make it clear that nothing in this post should be considered financial advice.

We are only covering basic premises here, and the realities of accounting are far from simple.

The only financial advice you should take away from this post is that if you are not sure about anything regarding your taxable income, hire an accountant to take care of it for you.

Will YouTube/My MCN/Advertising Partners Pay the Tax?

No on all accounts. Unless you have a very unique agreement with your multi-channel network or advertising partners, you will be classed as a contractor, and responsible for your own taxes.

Also, though a relatively small detail in terms of practical importance, it’s worth noting that YouTube are not actually the ones paying you. YouTube is a video publishing platform, and nothing more, the money comes from Google AdSense.

Depending on your region, Google may be required to collect some tax-related data from you when you sign up for an AdSense account, but this is essentially to make it easier for your government to catch you not disclosing your income. You will have to record, disclose, and pay tax on your earnings yourself.

You can hire an accountant to do this for you, of course. And in many cases, that is probably the best thing to do. But an accountant acts on behalf of you and has no dealings with a company like AdSense or YouTube.

Can I Get Away With Not Paying Taxes on YouTube Earnings?

Again, this is a question of should, rather than could. You certainly can get away with not paying taxes on your YouTube earnings, but you really shouldn’t.

There is an ethical position to argue in that you are responsible for contributing to the society you live in. However, the more compelling argument for some would be the consequences if and when you get caught.

For the vast majority of YouTubers, it wouldn’t necessarily be a problem, since most YouTubers earn very little money from their channel.

This not to say there couldn’t be consequences, and again, we must stress this is not financial or legal advice, but governments aren’t usually in the habit of immediately putting people in prison over a few hundred dollars. In the case of the UK, there are very few tax evasion prosecutions for amounts less than £50,000.

Do YouTubers Pay Tax? 3

Given that the tax you pay is a percentage of your overall earnings, not to mention any allowances and deductions you are entitled to, you don’t have to do the exact maths to see you would have to have been earning a significant chunk of change to find yourself in prison.

That being said, it’s worth noting that if you get caught, even over a matter of a few dollars, you can still end up in a courtroom if you don’t cooperate. In other words, we’re not saying your government will turn a blind eye if the amount you owe is small; we’re just saying they probably won’t lock you up.

In general, though, various tax offices are happy to give you a slap on the wrist and let you just pay the amount you owe, rather than take you to court and put you in prison for it.

Where things can get dicier is if you repeatedly do not declare your income and pay your taxes. As an example, if you failed to report YouTube income that would have amounted to an extra £200 on your tax return, under UK law, the worst-case scenario would see you paying somewhere in the region of £500 after interest and penalties.

Granted, £500 is no small amount of money, but it’s not the end of the world, and it’s certainly better than going to jail. However, if you let that slide for a few years, it can quickly get into the thousands. And if your channel is enjoying growth over that period, which would imply your earnings are also growing, then things can really spiral out of control.

If you’ve ever wondered how these celebrities you see in the news manage to find themselves owing hundreds of thousands—even millions—in taxes, this is how.

Do YouTubers Pay Tax? 4

Keeping Records

The key to avoiding this kind of situation is to keep precise records about your earnings.

Granted, there will always be a record somewhere in today’s connected age, but if you want to avoid having to trawl through all your AdSense payments for the past year on tax return day, it helps to keep your own records. Anytime you get an AdSense payment, make a note of it. If you get a brand deal or a company sponsor one of your videos, record it.

You don’t have to spend money on expensive accounting software; a simple Google Sheets spreadsheet will do the trick. In it’s simplest form, such a spreadsheet might look like this;

Date Description Amount
21/4/2021 Adsense Payout $112.43
24/4/2021 Sponsored Video $250.00
2/5/2021 Patreon Payout $132.00

And that’s all there is to it. If you want to get fancy, you can tweak the spreadsheet to show you things like your projected earnings, the amount of tax you’re likely to owe, and more.

Now, you’ll have noticed that our sample spreadsheet doesn’t have any outgoings. You will need to check your region’s laws on tax deductions, but it is usually the case that “work” expenses can be deducted from your taxable income. How this works specifically in your country is something we won’t even attempt to describe, due to the many different rules from country to country, but regardless of how the deductions are calculated, you need to have a record of them if you want to take advantage of deductions.

It’s important to note that business expenses need to be justifiable as, well, business expenses. If you spend eight hundred dollars on a new camera for your YouTube channel, that can be justified as a business expense, even if you occasionally use it for personal things.

On the other hand, if you spend twenty thousand dollars on a car and your YouTube recording setup is in the spare room, you will have a hard time convincing anyone that you need the car for business reasons.

You may be able to deduct things like fuel if you used the vehicle to drive to a location to shoot a video, but the car’s primary use would have to be work-related if you wanted to class the car as a business expense.

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Mixing Incomes

When you are classed as a freelancer, or self-employed, or a contractor, or whichever term you feel best fits what you do, it doesn’t necessarily matter what you are doing.

The government wants you to declare your income and pay your taxes, and as long as you are earning your money legally, they don’t care if you are making YouTube videos, selling mop heads door-to-door, or any of the other seemingly endless ways of making a living that is available to you these days.

It shouldn’t be surprising, then, that people are increasingly diversifying their income streams.

While being a full-time YouTuber is a dream for many, the reality of that dream for an increasing number of people is that YouTube forms just one spoke in a whole wheel of income sources. Perhaps YouTube is only making a quarter of what you need to cover your living expenses, but you also do a little Uber driving on occasion and write for a blog from time to time.

All of this income flows into the same pot as far as tax collectors are concerned. From your perspective, you would simply be adding an “Uber” line to that spreadsheet we talked about (and you might finally be able to class your car as a business expense!) if Uber was one of your income sources. As mentioned above, the important thing is that you keep clear records of it all.

As a slight side note, we mentioned above about YouTube being one spoke in a wheel of income sources—this is a good plan for any YouTuber, whether you are making a few dollars a month or a few thousand dollars a month.

The old saying about not putting all your eggs in one basket is particularly apt for YouTube, as anyone who has fallen afoul of one of the many “Adpocalypses” will tell you. Even if your YouTube success is paying all the bills, it’s a good idea to spread your wings a little and make your money in other places. And definitely don’t rely on AdSense payouts alone.

Am I Too Old to Start a YouTube Channel? 3

Always Factor Tax into Your Decision to “Go Pro”

If you do decide to go full time with your YouTube channel, or you are planning to quit your day job in favour of being your own boss and YouTube will form a significant portion of where you expect your income to come from, be sure to take taxes into account when you are running the numbers.

Tax can be a little tricky to work out. For example, UK tax only applies after your personal allowance deduction has been applied. Getting £12,500 tax-free is great, but it can make working out your projected earnings a little trickier. For example, if you make £17,500 in one year, you are only paying tax on £5,000. The tax rate for that amount of money (currently) is 20%, which equates to £1,000.

It gets even more complicated if you make a lot of money. There are different tax bands in the UK, and each one only applies to money within that band. So;

  • £0 – £12,500 has a tax rate of 0%
  • £12,501 – £50,000 has a tax rate of 20%
  • £50,001 – £150,000 has a tax rate of 40%
  • £150,001 and above has a tax rate of 45%

This means that if you earned £150,400 in one year, you would get £12,500 tax-free. You would pay 20% on the next £37,500 (£7,500). You would pay 40% on the following £100,000 (£40,000). And, finally, you would pay 45% on the last £400 (£180). So your total tax on £150,400 would be £47,680.

Please note that these numbers assume a standard tax code, and were only accurate at the time of writing since they change every year.

All this number soup is to say that the amount of tax you will be paying is rarely intuitive, but you should make an effort to accurately calculate these figures before you hand in your notice at your day job. You don’t want to quit your job thinking YouTube can support you, only to find yourself struggling to pay a tax bill you weren’t expecting to get.

Remember, every nation is slightly different—and some are very different.

We’re using the UK tax system as an example because that’s what we’re familiar with, but be sure to check the specifics of your own region.

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5 Ways To Find the Best Tags for Ranking Your YouTube Videos

There are 720,000 hours of video added to YouTube every day. So the chance of your latest offering being watched by a large audience is pretty slim.

Building a following on YouTube can be a challenging task; so you have to use every tool at your disposal to promote your video.

When considering how to promote your video, it’s essential to understand that YouTube is a search engine. The second biggest search engine after Google, in fact. So the meta-data you add to your video when you upload it (title, description, and tags), can play a part in attracting some initial views.

This post looks at one part of the meta-data – Youtube tags. What they are, how to add them, and gives you five ways to find the best tags for ranking your YouTube videos.

Here we go.

What Are YouTube Tags?

In their help section for content creators, YouTube says the following about tags;

“Tags are descriptive keywords you can add to your video to help viewers find your content.”

YouTube is plainly stating that tags are keywords. Should your tags match with the keywords a YouTube user searches for, then you have a chance of appearing in the search results.

However, they then go on to say;

“tags play a minimal role in your video’s discovery.”

Hmm, it sounds like you don’t need to use them then?

Well, if you are a top YouTuber and receive thousands of views in the first few hours after uploading a video, then maybe tags aren’t as important for you. However, if you have a smaller channel, you need to seek every edge, no matter how slight, to drive initial traffic.

The right 4 or 5-word tag added when you upload new content, can kickstart your views.

Once you gain that initial traffic, metrics like watchtime and engagement take over, and YouTube can choose to suggest your video in viewer’s feeds.

Tags Help YouTube Categorise Your Video.

Tags also play a role in helping YouTube decide the precise topic of your video. The English language is a wonderful thing, but it can sometimes be confusing – some words have more than one meaning. So tags can be used to tell YouTube the topic and purpose of your video.

Here’s an example. The video below is about ‘irons’. An iron can be a household item or a golf club. But, the title of the video doesn’t convey to YouTube which kind the video is about.

Golf iron or steam iron

But, YouTube can use the tags and other video meta-data to help categorise the content. The tags for this video leave no room for doubt that it’s about a household iron.

steam iron tags

How Do You Add YouTube Tags?

You add YouTube tags in the video details section of your YouTube Studio. Navigate to your list of videos and click the ‘Details’ icon.

adding tags instruction

Underneath the ‘Audience’ section, there is a text entry box to enter your tags. Tags can be more than a single word; type in the tags hitting return after each one. Alternatively, you can paste in a list you prepared elsewhere.

adding tags further instruction

How Many Tags Should You Use on YouTube?

This one is a little tricky. On the one hand, YouTube permits entry of up to 500 characters in the video tag section. On the other hand, YouTube warns against adding excessive tags in their help section:

Youtube warning for tag misuse

A study conducted by briggsby.com concluded that ideally, you should use less than 300 characters. Which, assuming you are using 3-4 word keyphrases, puts the ideal number of tags at 30-40.

One of the key takeaways of the study recommended that as long as you stay relevant to the video topic, use as many characters as you can manage.

What Should You Use for Your YouTube Tags?

The tags you choose for your video should ideally be 3-word or more keyphrases that describe the overall topic of your video AND the content more precisely.

For example, if you uploaded a video reviewing steam irons, then some of the tags might be;

  • Best steam iron
  • Top steam irons
  • Best steam iron for clothes
  • Rowenta steam iron
  • Tefal steam iron for clothes

As you can see, these tags anticipate the kinds of phrases someone might use when looking for reviews of steam irons. It’s also a good idea to use some related brand names in your list of tags if appropriate.

Using some 5-word or more key phrases in your tags is recommended too. Unless your YouTube channel is a powerhouse with thousands of subscribers, you are unlikely to rank in the search results for shorter 2 or 3-word key phrases.

You can, however, appear in the top results for longer keyword search phrases, though these will have lower search volumes and drive smaller traffic.

5 Ways To Put Together a List of YouTube Tags.

So how do you put your list of tags together?

It’s best if you produce a long list of many possible tag key phrases first, then whittle it down to the best 30 or so. Start a new document or spreadsheet and as you collect potential tags, add them to the list.

You may be able to use some of the tags in another video you are planning; keeping tag ideas together in a file is not a bad practice.

As promised, here are five ways to find the best YouTube tags for ranking.

1.Brainstorm

One way to come up with a list of tags for your YouTube video is to brainstorm a list of keywords that someone might use to search for your video.

Imagine you know little to nothing about the details included in your video. What might a person in that situation type into a search engine to find the information?

It may sound like a silly idea, but you can come up with some out of the ordinary key-phrases using this method. Pretending you know nothing about your video topic can draw out some keywords that your competitors may not be using.

It’s worth a moment of your time before you use the same tag suggestion tools that everyone else uses.

2.YouTube Autocomplete

Autocomplete is a feature that predicts search terms when a user begins typing in the search bar.

It is there to save the user time. Google says that autocomplete reduces typing by 25% and collectively saves over 200 years of typing-time every day!

Because autocomplete predicts what users are going to type it also supplies a useful list of multi-word key phrases.

Here is an example using the steam iron keyword. Adding in extra words, or even a single letter, will reveal lots of keywords you can use in your tags.

youtube autocomplete example

3.Rapidtags.io YouTube Tag Generator

Rapid Tags is a YouTube tag generator that suggests a list of tags based on a seed keyword. You can copy all the suggestions with one click and add them to your list of possibles.

Rapid Tag does say in their about section that some tags may not be totally suitable for you purposes and you should remove any that don’t describe your video well.

rapidtags example

4.vidIQ

vidIQ is a tool designed to help creators build an audience on YouTube. The software has multiple tools for YouTube channels; one being their Google Chrome plugin. The plugin displays additional information about a video directly within the desktop version of YouTube.

Part of the information displayed is the tags used by a video. So, you can view some videos similar to yours and harvest the tags from those videos to add to your list.

vidiq example

5.Ytubetool.com

Ytubetool is a free tool you can use to harvest tags from a video if you don’t want to use vidIQ, or can’t install a Google Chrome plugin.

Simply add the URL of any YouTube video, and the tool will display a list of tags used by the video. With one-click to copy; it’s more potential tags ideas to add to your master file.

ytubetool example

Conclusion.

Using tags in your YouTube meta-data is not the most significant factor in ranking a video on YouTube. However, tags can play a small part in attracting initial traffic to your video.

Tags can also help YouTube to categorise your video, especially if the words in your title have more than one meaning.

YouTube themselves admit that tags only play a small part in your video discovery. So perhaps tags are best thought of as the finishing touches to your YouTube SEO. Necessary, but don’t obsess over it.

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. PlaceIT can help you STAND OUT on YouTube

I SUCK at making anything flashy or arty.

I have every intention in the world to make something that looks cool but im about as artistic as a dropped ice-cream cone on the web windy day.

That is why I could not live on YouTube without someone like PlaceIT. They offer custom YouTube Banners, Avatars, YouTube Video Intros and YouTube End Screen Templates that are easy to edit with simple click, upload wizard to help you make amazing professional graphics in minutes.

Best of all, some of their templates are FREE! or you can pay a small fee if you want to go for their slightly more premium designs (pst – I always used the free ones).

5. StoryBlocks 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 StoryBlocks 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.

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13 YouTube Video Ideas Without Showing Your Face

Do you cringe when you see a picture of yourself? Is it even worse when you watch a video of yourself moving and talking? Don’t worry; you’re not alone. Psychology Today says that you could be suffering from something called self enhancement bias.

A self enhancement bias means that it’s common to think that we are more attractive than we actually are. We’re used to our reflection we see in the mirror. But when we see ourselves on camera, our face isn’t mirrored – we get to see our actual face as others see it.

It’s the unmirrored image that makes us cringe.

This can be a problem for aspiring YouTubers. There is a bunch of money to be made on the platform. And you want in on the action too.

Well, there is a way for you, if you suffer from self-enhancement bias, to make a bundle of money from YouTube without showing your face on video. There are a whole host of channels with thousands of subscribers where the channel owner never appears on camera.

Here are 13 video ideas for YouTube you can steal, or use for inspiration, and launch your own YouTube channel without ever showing your face.

Meditation and Mindfulness Videos

Some people love to tune out of the world and take a moment with their own thoughts. The practice of mindfulness and meditation has been embraced widely over the last few years as a why to help people sleep, study or relax.

Make videos that people can unwind to, feel comfortable with or can meditate to like on the Meditation Mindfulness channel.

Origami

Crafts are a popular niche on YouTube, with lots of people looking for hints, tips, and tutorials on how to express their creativity.

PPO – Proud Paper Official – is a crafts channel that shows the viewers how to fold origami shapes and planes from paper.

PPO Origami YouTube channel

Social Blade (a social media statistics aggregator) says that they have nearly 5 million monthly viewers and earn as much as £12.9k per month from the videos.

social blade stats for PPO

Not bad for a channel that is seven years old but only has 77 videos uploaded.

Nail Art

Fingernail art is not a recent invention. The history of nail polish goes back over 5000 years, originating in ancient China. Today, nail art remains popular as ever.

The millions of potential combinations of colours and patterns mean there are always new nail designs you can demonstrate.

A nail art channel is ideal for top-down filming and only needs to show you applying the designs, plus a commentary explaining how to do it.

20 Nails is a channel that shows its viewers how to create all manner of nail art designs, from the simple to extravagant.

20 Nails Channel

With 59 videos uploaded in just under a year, 20 Nails has built an audience of 288k subscribers. Social Blade says that they get 2.33 million views per month and earn as much as £6.1k monthly from the channel.

20 nails channel stats

Drawing

Lots of people like to draw. Stephen Wiltshire, an autistic savant, can draw an entire cityscape from memory, and others struggle to make a stick figure look human.

Drawing is a skill, though, and can be learned with patience and practice. There are lots of people teaching the craft of drawing on YouTube using only the top-down camera shot.

Dan Beardshaw is one of those. Dan uploads short videos every couple of weeks demonstrating hints and tips on how to improve the different elements of drawing.

Dan Beardshaw Channel Page

He has uploaded 167 videos over four years and has grown the channel to 361k subscribers. Social Blade says he has about half a million views per month and earns as much as £1.3k per month from advertising.

Dan Beardshaw Social Blade Stats

Dan also supplements this income with nearly 400 Patreon members and affiliate links to art materials in his video descriptions, so is likely earning a full-time income from the channel.

Cooking

Cooking is an awesome niche for using the top-down filming angle. And while numerous channels focus on top-down cooking videos, there is also never-ending demand.

We all like to eat tasty food, and many want to try new recipes or improve their cooking skills.

You may need to find a unique angle to stand out in the niche. But if you can find a way to make your videos compelling, there is no reason you can’t make a successful cooking channel.

You Suck At Cooking has 117 videos that doesn’t do anything revolutionary with the cooking recipes but inject a large dose of humour instead.

You Suck At Cooking channel

The production quality is good, and the videos are well-scripted, but nothing that you couldn’t produce yourself with a bit of thought and planning.

Social Blade says that the 5 million views per month the channel’s 117 videos receive, earn £13.4k per month in advertising revenue.

You Suck At Cooking stats

The channel also earns money from sales of a cookbook and associated merchandise.

DIY

If you’re handy about the home, then one idea you could choose for top-down filming is DIY videos. YouTube is often the first place people go to when they have a DIY problem and need a quick solution.

It could be a simple as wiring a plug, or more complicated like changing a tap. Whatever the problem, your videos could help people save money by preventing the need to hire in a handyperson.

There is an endless amount of small jobs you can make videos about. Plus you could approach the niche with a different frame of reference. For example, how about DIY videos for people who don’t have a box of tools?

Ultimate Handyman is a DIY channel that has over 800 videos covering all manner of DIY tasks from big to small. While he does have his face in the video thumbnails, most of his content is simply the camera filming his hands.

ultimate handyman channel

Social Blade puts Ultimate Handyman on 1.7 million monthly views and earning as much as £4.5k from advertising revenue in the same period.

ultimate handyman stats

Unboxing

Everyone likes a good unboxing video. The idea is a simple one; buy a new product, wait for delivery, then film yourself taking it out of the packaging.

You get bonus points (and more views and subscribers) if you can make the process compelling. It helps if you can show some expertise with your commentary. Rather than merely stating what something is, as you pull it out of the box.

The Relaxing End is one of the more successful unboxing channels. Part of their continued success is that they can afford to buy in (or have a big-enough audience to get sent for free) some of the latest high-end products that people dream about owning.

Apart from the high-end products, the channel’s unique attraction is their use of sound. The host appears too shy to speak as well as not showing his face. Instead, he makes the most of every slash of sellotape or squeak of polystyrene, as he unboxes the item.

The Relaxing End Channel Page

The un-boxer also wears signature white gloves to add extra frills.

The Social Blade stats on this channel are impressive. With monthly channel views over 30 million, The Relaxing End pulls in as much as £78.8k per month in ad revenue.

The Relaxing End Social Blade Stats

TIP: Technology channels are some of the best earners on YouTube. The ad space is more expensive for advertisers to buy because of high competition for the slots.

If you want to get started on your own top-down videos, you need to make sure that you have some sort of rig to keep your phone and camera steady while filming. Check out Javier Mercedes’ video for how to film overhead shots.

Chest Down Video Ideas

A slight twist on the top-down video is having the camera facing you, but not showing your face in the shot. I’m calling these types of videos chest-down ideas. Let’s take a look at a couple of examples.

Cooking Part II

There are a significant number of cooking channels already doing top-down videos. To make your cooking channel stand out from the pack, why not try a different angle?

That’s what Binging with Babish chooses to do for his channel. The camera angle gives the impression you are sat in the kitchen with him, making the effect more homely. Yet you don’t see his face in the cooking videos.

binging with babish channel page

Babish also has a theme for his cooking channel apart from the unusual camera angle; he recreates food found in TV and Movies. If you fancy some Pollos Hermanos from Breaking Bad or some Twin Peaks pancakes, head over to the channel for some mouth-watering videos.

As you can imagine the 7.82 million subscribers of the channel help Babish earn quite a bit ad revenue. Social Blade reckons the channel gets 58.63 million views and makes a tasty £152K, every month.

binging with babish stats

Household Hacks

A different spin on the DIY channel is short-and-sweet tips to help with day-to-day household chores. ‘Hacks’ has become the byword for ingenious tips that help people accomplish usually tiresome tasks.

Many of us often turn to YouTube, looking for a quick way to solve a problem. Get rid of Ants or spend less on groceries. Hacks help us improve our lives, so it’s not a niche that will disappear anytime soon.

Household Hacker makes short videos to demonstrate various hacks for the home, often making use of the chest-down camera shot.

Household Hacker Channel Page

Household Hacker has also branched out to demonstrating those silly products-you-never-knew-you-needed from the TV shopping channels.

Social Blade puts Household Hacker on 1.2 million views per month, which it says brings in the channel owner as much as £3.3k in advertising revenue. The channel also earns income from affiliate earnings for the TV products he reviews.

Household Hacker Stats

POV Video Ideas

So far, we have looked at top-down and chest-down filming without showing your face. But there is another angle you can use in your videos too. The POV – Point of View – camera shot.

This camera angle shows the audience the view from your eyes and guarantees keeping your face out of the frame.

Here are some ideas you can try for POV YouTube video ideas.

Restoration Videos

Do you have your own workshop? Handy with a belt-sander and happy to mix up some caustic chemicals? You could launch a channel to show you restoring old rusty tools and other whatnots to their original state.

It can be therapeutic for viewers to watch someone restore an item; I firmly believe that these types of videos are beneficial to people’s mental health too.

It’s a content type which is very popular on YouTube.

Awesome Restorations has 2.57 million subscribers and is one of the better channels in the restoration niche. Restoring an item can take some time, so if you choose the restoration niche, you might only be uploading a video every couple of weeks.

Awesome Restorations Channel Page

Awesome Restorations has built up their massive following in just over a year, and with only 38 videos.

Their work has paid off too. Social Blade puts them on 14.5 million monthly views and ad revenue earnings of £37.8k per month.

Awesome Restorations stats

If you don’t want to go down the tool restoration route, there are plenty of other objects you can restore: vintage handbags, antique books, even early smartphones. Restoration is a hot niche and perfect for POV filming because the object of restoration, not you, is the star.

Stop Motion Animation

Stop motion animation is nearly as old as the invention of film itself—the earliest movie dated back to 1898 and was based on Humpty Dumpty. Stop motion is an animation technique where figures are animated by snapping a single frame, then moving the model ever so slightly and shooting the next frame.

As an animation medium, Stop Motion is still hugely popular today. The most well-known is the Wallace and Gromit series of films, which earned three Oscars in the 1990s and 2000s.

Michael Hickox Films is a stop motion animation YouTube channel that uses Lego for its animated characters.

Michael Hickox Channel Page

The animated films are short, wholesome pieces that appeal to a broad audience – and it’s a large audience too.

With 1.47 million subscribers, Michael Hickox films have 3.86 million monthly views and earn as much as £10.1k per month.

Michael Hickox Stats

POV Sports Channels

Thanks to GoPro cameras and associated body mounts, the popularity of filming outdoor activities is on the rise.

At one time, the only way you could understand what it was like to jump out of a plane or surf a twenty-foot wave, was to do it yourself. Now lots of activities are available for a broader audience to experience by viewing a POV video.

There are endless types of outdoor activities you can launch a YouTube channel about with a GoPro camera, chest rig, and perhaps a friend or two.

Ampisound is a channel that makes Parkour videos. Many of the Parkour runs are shot POV-style, placing the viewer at the heart of the action.

Ampisound channel page

Ampisound only releases videos about every month or so, but the content resonates and has built an audience of 2.32 million subscribers.

What kind of YouTube channel could you launch using a GoPro camera filming from your point-of-view?

Maybe you could grow it as large as Ampisound and get nearly 7 million monthly views and pull in as much as £18k in ad revenue.

Ampisound Social Blade Stats

Driving Videos

There is nothing like hitting the open road, dropping the convertible roof, and admiring the scenery of the world’s best cities.

But not everyone can drive. And most people don’t live anywhere near the world’s nicest cities.

So, if you are one of the fortunate ones who does, then how about making videos of scenic drives and tours of famous locations?

J Utah is a channel that specialises in only POV videos of picturesque drives. From L.A. to Boston (and a few overseas), J Utah likes nothing more than mounting a 4K camera on the car and driving about.

J Utah channel page

You really wouldn’t think this idea would work – it’s just driving around for goodness sake! But it works. Perhaps people enjoy the content because it’s a familiar place to them, or maybe they want to live there one day.

Whatever the reason, the channel has built up 366K subscribers and has 5.4 million monthly views. Social Blade put the ad revenue for the channel as much as £14k per month.

J Utah social blade stats

Hairdressing

Hairdressing is perfect for a POV video channel, and Health and Beauty is one of the top niches on YouTube.

Now, some of the highest earners are in the makeup category, which by definition is a showing-your-face kind of gig. But there is an alternative for the shy. You can create videos that demonstrate hairstyling using a POV camera shot.

You will need a model to work on who won’t mind appearing on camera. But as you are showing mainly the back and side of the head, they won’t have too much face-time on camera.

There are hundreds of channels I could use as an example for this particular idea, so if you choose this niche, be prepared for stiff competition.

Making a big success of your channel would probably mean that you have found an angle that makes you stand out from all the rest. Perhaps you can be first with new, unusual hairstyles, or dazzle viewers with your humorous delivery.

Nina Starck makes videos about hair braiding. She is so good at braiding that she uses herself as a model, but never shows her face on the videos.

Nina Starck Channel Page

With only 38 videos, Nina has built a subscriber base of 149k people. She gets 650k views per month and earns as much as $1.7k in ad revenue for those viewers.

Nina Starck Stats

Conclusion

YouTube is an education and entertainment platform, and you don’t need to be a polished presenter to make some great money on the platform. If you can present content in a compelling, engaging way, it doesn’t matter if you show your face or not.

Most of the ideas mentioned above cover day to day human life; cooking, home hacks, shopping, beauty, sports, and hobbies. And can be filmed in a manner that doesn’t require you to show your face.

The star of the videos is whatever the camera is pointing at – that’s what the viewers will be interested in.

So don’t let your dislike of showing your face on camera prevent a channel you launch from becoming one of the next stars on YouTube.

If you need more ideas for your faceless youtube channel check out my blog where 1 give you 12 more youtube channel ideas you can do without showing your face!

 

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5 Best Tools for YouTube Channel Keyword Analysis

 

YouTube might not be the first name that enters your mind when you try and guess who is the world’s second-biggest search engine.

But, when you learn that Youtube is owned by Google – the world’s biggest search engine – you won’t be surprised that keywords play a role in how videos rank on YouTube.

YouTube is so popular that 300 hours of video is uploaded the site every minute; way too much content for humans to watch and categorise. So, instead, YouTube uses the keywords in the video title and associated tags to help understand a video’s topic and rank it accordingly.

Keywords Are Important.

For SEO purposes then, you should choose the keywords you put in your title and tags carefully. Keywords could be the difference between success and failure for your video. It makes even more sense to perform keyword research first, before you plan and shoot your videos.

Understanding the content YouTube’s audience is searching for prevents you from wasting time making videos that no one wants to see.

But how do you find the hot keywords users are hunting for on YouTube?

There is no official keyword tool for YouTube like there is for Google Adwords with its Google Keyword Planner. But there are several third-party tools you can use to determine what is popular, and what topics should be left alone.

This post gives you five of the best YouTube keyword tools you can use to analyse the most searched youtube keywords. Some are free, and for some, you have to buy a subscription to access full functionality. Let’s jump into the list.

vidIQ

vidIQ is a free chrome extension which adds additional keyword analysis information directly on the page on the YouTube site. Search for any term, and the plugin displays keyword data on the right of the results, as shown below.

You can also toggle the plugin to display the tags used by the top ranking videos underneath each result.

picture of vidIQ in action

You can use the data to determine if a keyword has potential for using in a video title and if it’s worthy of a topic to add to your content planner.

vidIQ provides an ‘overall score’ for each keyword, rating them out of 100 and declaring how hard it will be to rank for them.

But you’ll have to take them on their word for this metric, as we don’t know the scoring system they use. It’s best if you use the score as an indication, then make your final keyword choice after further research.

vidIQ keyword stats display

Ideally, you will want to find keywords with high-volume and low-competition. But in reality, most of the high-volume keywords will already have lots of videos competing for the traffic, and should only be attempted by well-established channels.

Newer channels will have to seek out medium to low competition keywords, with correspondingly low search volume.

vidIQ also shows you the top-performing channels for the keyword, so you can dig into their content to see what’s working for them. Also displayed, is a selection of related keywords, which may contain ones that may be more suitable for you to target.

vidIQ alternative keywords

Only three ‘related opportunities’ display with the free version of the plugin; if you take out a subscription, you get to access hundreds more.

Video Tags

Underneath each video, you can toggle the display of the tags used by a video. You can use them for inspiration for other keywords, or steal them outright to use in your video with a one-click copy to clipboard.

vidIQ tags

Once you select a video from the results, vidIQ provides further information about the video and channel; daily views, country of origin and even displays the channel’s tags. So you can reverse-engineer a whole channel if you wish.

vidIQ keywords and tags

viqIQ provides plenty of helpful keyword suggestions for free, but so much more with a paid subscription. A monthly subscription of $7.50 gets you access to their full keyword research tool.

Google Trends

Google Trends is a free Google tool that shows the popularity of a topic over time. While it doesn’t show keyword volume, it is nevertheless helpful in narrowing down subjects for your video ideas.

Enter in any keyword, and the tool displays a graph showing the popularity of the keyword over the last 12 months. Here is an example using the keyword ‘selfie stick’.

Google Trends Graph for selfie stick

A scale between 0 and 100 is used to rate the search term, so you can see at which times of the year a topic peaks in popularity. Knowing when a subject is most searched for can help you time the release of your content.

You can see in the result above that interest in selfie sticks peaks just before Christmas. So if you were to review the top selfie sticks, it might be a good idea to plan your video for release in late September.

Before you commit to any topic, look at more than 12 months of data. From the drop-down menu, select ‘Past 5 years’.

google trends instruction to change date

Oh no! It looks like the selfie stick craze peaked in 2016 – perhaps this is not such a good content idea for a video.

google trend selfie stick 5 year graph

Google Trends also allows you to compare keywords to see which one is more popular. If you have two keywords that you are considering making a video for but can’t decide which one to go with, enter both terms.

The resulting graph shows you which is the most popular, and the peaks can help you time the video release.

google trend graph

You can also change the filter to show data from YouTube.

google trends graph

Google Trends also provides other related topics and keyword ideas for your seed keyword at the foot of the page.

google trends further details

Avoid using Google Trends as the only tool you use for keyword research – there is no indication of the number of people searching for the keyword. So it’s best used to compare topic ideas and time you release of content.

YouTube Autocomplete / Keyword.io

An excellent way to analyse keywords and identify content topics is by using the autocomplete results from YouTube itself. Start typing any words in the YouTube search bar, and a pop-down menu appears containing helpful suggestions.

It’s a typical search engine feature, designed to speed up the browsing process by ‘guessing’ what the viewer is searching for. It’s not a bad way to harvest keyword suggestions for video creators either!

In the example below, you can see the autocomplete keywords displayed in a pop-down menu for the broad term ‘pancakes’. Because YouTube wants to be a useful site, it only shows keywords that are relevant and will answer the searcher’s query.

YouTube is giving you keyword ideas that users are actively searching for.

I’ve underlined some long-tail keywords in the example below, which could easily be the topic of a video.

google autocomplete example

While a free method of performing keyword analysis for YouTube, it can be a lengthy process to harvest a bunch of ideas. Also, once you have your keyword list, you then need to check them individually using another tool like vidIQ.

Keyword.io is a tool that automates the process of harvesting keyword ideas from autocomplete search boxes. It covers more than just YouTube and Google, and scrapes autocomplete keyword data from other major search engines, as shown below.

keyword.io autocomplete search engines

Typing the same seed keyword of ‘pancakes’ into keyword.io and selecting the YouTube option returns 939 keyword ideas to analyse further.

keyword.io results

The free version of keyword.io only gives you keyword suggestions. To find out more information on the keywords, like average monthly search, you need to take out a subscription to their pro account. Alternatively, you can run them through another keyword tool that you have access to.

Understanding the average monthly search volumes can help you pick popular keywords and topics for your YouTube video content plan. Here is the sort of information the pro account grants access to.

keyword.io full results

Current pricing is $29 per month for a personal account. You could signup and do a mammoth keyword research session for your channel, so you’d only need to pay for a single month.

Morning Fame

Morning Fame is a Youtubers tool that links directly with your YouTube account. It provides enhanced analytics of your existing videos and suggests keywords it thinks you have a chance to rank for.

As we’re talking about keywords here today, I’ll skip the analytics part of Morning Fame and focus only on the keyword research capabilities.

Like most keyword tools, you can start by entering a seed keyword to work from. But Morning Fame has an alternative possibility as well. You can paste in any video URL from YouTube, and it will suggest keywords based on the topic of that video.

On the next screen Morning Fame presents it’s keyword suggestions in a unique and helpful way. It divides them into two lists based on the competitiveness of the keywords; one list it considers suitable for larger established channels; the other more appropriate for smaller channels.

If you are just getting started with your YouTube channel, then trying to rank for ultra-competitive keywords is likely to end in frustration. It’s unusual for a new channel to rank for popular keywords quickly, because of the way the YouTube ranking algorithm works. Your channel simply won’t have the sufficient authority that YouTube demands.

So a list for small channels, where you can compete for initial views and start to grow your channel, is a great feature.

morning fame keyword lists

When you select a keyword from the list, it goes to the next screen and displays a further analysis of the term. You can see in the screen below, that while the keyword scores an ‘A’ for relevance, it rates an ‘E’ for views, which means its a low-traffic keyword – probably best to try another suggestion.

morning fame results

At the time of writing, Morning Fame is still in the early days post-launch. Access to the tool is by invite-only, but if you hunt around on Google, you should be able to find an invite. Look for reviews of Morning Fame on blogs and on YouTube itself.

Ahrefs Keyword Explorer

If you want to really get under the hood of YouTube and perform detailed keyword analysis for your channel, then you need to pay for one of the professional-grade keyword tools like Ahrefs. Used by many content creators, it is frequently rated in the top 5 of all SEO tools.

Ahrefs has a database of 841 million YouTube keywords. So whatever your channel niche, you are likely to find many keywords you can target.

To get started, enter your seed keyword, select ‘YouTube’, and choose target country.

ahrefs keyword explorer

The tool returns the total search volume for the keyword, indicates how often people click a video after using the keyword, and provides suggestions for alternative keywords.

ahrefs keyword results

So far, so good. But Ahrefs true capabilities are shown in the variety of additional keywords it provides using the phrase match option. This feature returns all the keywords from their database, which include your seed word.

The phrase-match results page for the seed word ‘pancakes’ has nearly 13,000 results. Along with the search volume for each keyword, you also get the number of resulting clicks after entering that keyword.

This helps you to target keywords which attract a higher percentage of clicks. Click-thru rate is a crucial metric in YouTube analytics, and also plays a part in how YouTube ranks videos. So it makes sense for you to target keywords which have the best chance of getting a click.

ahrefs Youtube keyword results

You can also use filters to narrow down large lists quickly.

ahrefs keyword phrase match for youtube

Ahrefs is one of the best keyword tools on the market, but it comes with a hefty price tag. Plans start at $99 per month. However, you can stop your subscription at any time and restart it when you need it. Additionally, there is a one-off trial where you have access to the software for seven days for $7. Use it wisely.

Conclusion.

Well, that wraps up this overview of tools you can use to analyse keywords for your YouTube channel. It’s worth reminding yourself when you plan your videos that YouTube is a search engine, just like Google.

The keywords you choose for your video title and tags can be easy or extremely difficult to rank for, and all the stops in-between.

Give your channel the best chance you can, by performing keyword analysis first with some of the above tools. If you want a helping hand, then contact me to arrange a consultancy call to help find the best keywords for your YouTube channel.

 

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DEEP DIVE ARTICLE TIPS & TRICKS YOUTUBE

YouTube Tips for Parents

YouTube has had its fair share of horror stories over the years when it comes to dubious content and impressionable children.

Whether it’s sinister hoaxes like the Momo Challenge, which turned out to be completely fake, or incidents like children eating dishwasher detergent, which was very real, there is seemingly never a shortage of reasons for parents to worry about their children’s online presence.

Add to this the general fear of child grooming that has been around since the early days of the Internet, and even relatively minor issues, by comparison, such age-inappropriate content, and it is easy to see why parents might be reluctant to let their children roam free through the pages of YouTube without supervision.

That being said, you can only watch your children’s activities so much. And, while it may be possible to supervise their every move early on in life, there comes a time where it is not feasible to keep an eye on them all of the time without seriously limiting their freedom.

Of course, we can’t guide in general parenting—that’s not what this blog is about—but we can give you advice specifically as it pertains to your children and YouTube.

How To Increase YouTube Video CPM - Make More Money On YouTube

YouTube’s Policy on Children

Largely thanks to regulatory intervention, YouTube is quite strict about not allowing children unfettered access to their platform. Even to the point that if you register a children’s account (more on that later), YouTube will not allow that account to access the full YouTube service even if you, the parent, want to enable it.

YouTube’s terms of service state that you have to be over thirteen years of age to have a full YouTube account that can access the regular service, rather than YouTube Kids—a moderated version of YouTube. Furthermore, children under thirteen cannot upload videos to the platform.

That being said, YouTube does not demand proof of identity when you sign up for an account, so there is nothing to stop you or your child from creating a YouTube account and lying in the age field.

Still, for a concerned parent, it can help to know that, if you aren’t lying in the age field, YouTube actually does a lot to protect your children. Whether they do enough to protect your children is a judgement only you can make, but they certainly take a good deal of the burden off of you when it comes to moderating what your child watches.

“Made For Kids” Content

Primarily due to the regulations we hinted at above, YouTube is very proactive when it comes to content that is made for children, regardless of who made the content or whether it is declared as made for kids by the uploader.

The main difference with Made For Kids content is that the selection of advertisements that can be served around this content is considerably more restricted.

This is partly due to the fact that YouTube is required to not store personal data for children, which deters many advertisers because they want to target their ads at specific demographics, which can’t be done if you have no information about the viewer.

Of course, there is also the fact that some advertisements are not suitable for a young audience, which further reduces the pool of advertisements that can be played to children.

It is worth reiterating that these rules apply to any videos that YouTube deems to be made for children. Granted, most of the time, they will know this because the uploader declares that it is made for children, but in some cases, YouTube will decide themselves, regardless of what the uploader says.

Things to Look Out For

It’s not hard to find YouTube tips for parents articles that cover the obvious things; violence, sexual content, and generally inappropriate topics.

These are, we feel, quite obvious, and nothing new. Parents have had to be mindful of their children watching inappropriate content since the 1970s, and it is something we are very culturally aware of today.

So we thought we’d go over some of the less obvious—and more uniquely YouTube—things to be mindful of as a parent.

Envy and Depression

Social media, in general, has brought with it a host of new challenges for society. Perhaps one of the least expected of these challenges is depression as a result of envy caused by continually seeing the glossy lives of online personalities.

This phenomenon may be more associated with platforms like Facebook and Instagram, but the premise is no less applicable to YouTube. Essentially, your children see the seemingly perfect lives of their favourite YouTubers day in, day out, and begin to feel depressed that their life is not as good.

In these cases, it is important to stress to your child that what they see on YouTube, even in seemingly honest and personal vlogs, is not necessarily representative of real life. In much the same way that you should explain to your child that Spider-Man is not a documentary, and they shouldn’t try to swing from the roof, you should explain to them that the videos they see on YouTube are crafted, and only show what the YouTuber wants them to show.

Nobody’s life is perfect.

Unrealistic Expectations

There is a whole niche on YouTube dedicated to children opening packages and demoing toys, which is very popular because children love to see new toys.

Of course, toy commercials have been around for decades, and children seeing a shiny new toy on the television and wanting that toy is nothing new, but it’s a little different on YouTube.

The problem is that these videos typically feature children opening and playing with the toys. To make matters worse, the channels that produce this kind of content are often families and shoot the videos as though their children are getting this unending stream of new toys as part of their everyday life.

Unlike the commercials we mentioned, this can create an expectation in your child that this is how things are. After all, they are not watching an advertisement, but a child just like them, seemingly living their life. It’s only natural for your child to wonder why their life is not full of new toys in exciting hiding places every day.

Again, the trick to avoiding this is to talk to your child and make sure they understand that videos like this are made for entertainment value, and not just filmed during someone’s average day. Many of these channels donate the toys they feature, so be sure to explain that as well.

Current Events

This one is a little subjective in that different parents will have different views on whether it is a cause for concern or not.

YouTube features plenty of current events in the form of news reports, commentary, and other formats. It is safe to say that the world has not been a particularly happy place in recent years, and with the light of social media shining into every crevice of the world lately, there will always be plenty of negativity to make YouTube videos about.

Being a parent is all about striking balances, and this is one of those times. Where the right balance lies between sheltering your child from the world entirely and over-exposing them to it for you is a judgement you will have to make as a parent.

We are merely warning you that there is a lot of current events content on YouTube, and with the state of the world lately, your child could well be exposed to far more negativity than you would like.

YouTube Tips for Parents 1

“Challenges”

Technically this would fall under those obvious examples we mentioned above—children have been getting injured trying to recreate stunts they have seen on television for as long as there has been television. Still, in light of the uniquely Internet threats that platforms like YouTube have been witness to, it is worth mentioning this one.

Sometimes through malicious intent, sometimes through pure stupidity, Internet “challenges” crop up on a semi-regular basis. These challenges involve people—often children—filming themselves performing some action that can be dangerous to their wellbeing.

These kinds of challenges started harmlessly enough, with things like planking in strange places, doing a particular dance, or eating a spoonful of cinnamon. The Ice Bucket challenge that stormed the Internet is an example of this kind of challenge that actually did some good in the world, raising a lot of money for charity. Unfortunately, as is often the case with dares—which is essentially what Internet challenges are—things tend to escalate. More recent challenges have involved attempting to eat corn on the cob using power tools, and the detergent-eating incident we mentioned above.

The corn on a cob challenge naturally led to several injuries, and the problem with the detergent incident shouldn’t need explaining here.

YouTube Tips for Parents

Being aware of the dangers YouTube can present for your children is only part of the battle—you also need to know how to combat them. Every parent handles things their own way, and, abusive behaviour aside, it is not for us to say who is right in their parenting methods.

That being said, here are some approaches to take with your children to help keep them safe on YouTube, and you can make your own informed decisions as a parent.

And, just to address it, preventing your child from watching YouTube at all is obviously an option, but this is a blog about YouTube, so we’ll be sticking to methods that involve your child still watching YouTube.

YouTube Tips for Parents 2

Talk to Your Child

One of the most obvious ways to protect your child from many things in life, not just YouTube, is education.

Take curse words as an example. The chances are, you will never be able to prevent your child from hearing curse words, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. It is not your children knowing those words that are the problem; it is them saying them.

If you can educate your child to learn not to use inappropriate words, you don’t need to worry about them occasionally hearing one.

YouTube can be approached similarly. Properly educating your child on things like YouTuber’s lives not being as perfect as they look on screen, and not doing dangerous things just because a YouTuber “challenged” you to, will significantly reduce the causes for concern when your child watches YouTube.

Set up a Children’s Account

Google allows you to create accounts for your children that are restricted in several ways to prevent your children from seeing content they shouldn’t be seeing.

One of the main ways it limits YouTube is by preventing access from that account to the full YouTube platform, instead of taking them to the YouTube Kids platform. It is worth noting that the YouTube Kids platform is not available in-browser, so your child will not be able to watch YouTube on a full computer. They will be able to watch it on a phone or tablet, of course.

This account will automatically convert to a full account when your child turns thirteen, so be sure to put the correct date in. It’s also worth reiterating that you cannot choose to allow your child full access to YouTube. The only way a child’s account can access the full platform is if that child turns thirteen.

Create a Family Account

The overly restrictive nature of YouTube children’s accounts may be perfect for younger children, but many parents feel it is too restrictive for older children of around ten years old and up. Still, that doesn’t mean they’re ready to give their children the keys to the Internet.

In these cases, consider creating a single YouTube account that is used by the whole family.

This will allow you to keep tabs on what your child is watching while still allowing them more freedom to access YouTube.

How to Write a YouTube Title

Disable Comments

One of the worst parts of YouTube from a mental health standpoint is the comments.

YouTube automatically disable comments on videos made for children, but you can also choose to disable them on any video you upload. If your child starts uploading content—either contributing to an adult-run channel or running their own channel after they have turned thirteen—consider disabling the comments if YouTube doesn’t do it for you.

Much of the negativity on the platform comes from the comments section, and there is little to be gained from exposing your child that.

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TIPS & TRICKS YOUTUBE

How to Group Videos on YouTube

Grouping videos together is a great way to make it easier for your viewers to find the content they want when looking through your channel.

It is especially useful for channels that have a number of different “series” or types of video. It is always preferable to have a focussed niche to direct your content at, but that doesn’t mean you can’t create even more focussed sub-niches.

An example of this might be a cooking channel that occasionally does videos on how to make great meals at very little cost, while also sometimes doing videos on food from a specific region. Both of those types of video would be fine on a cooking channel, but grouping them off with other videos of the same kind can make it much easier for viewers to get to the content they want.

What is Grouping Videos on YouTube?

Though “grouping” is the aptest and most natural name for what we are discussing, there is no “group” function on the platform.

There are, however, two ways in which you can group videos on YouTube, and those are Playlists and Sections.

Sections

Sections apply to your channel page and allow you to group individual videos or playlists together in one section with a header. There are also some dynamic options here, such as “Most Popular”, and “Uploaded”, which will update themselves automatically.

Sections are useful because a viewer who stumbles across one of your videos, likes what they see, and wants to see more will most likely head to your channel next to find it.

If the video they liked is part of a series of similar videos, having that series in a clearly defined section right there on the channel page will save them a lot of time.

Playlists

Playlists are perhaps the more useful of the two grouping options. For one thing, sections on your channel page can be playlists. In other words, if you are going to group a collection of videos to display on your channel page, it would be a better use of your time to group them into a playlist and create a section for that playlist.

That way, you still get a channel section, but you also have it available in playlist form should you need it. And, any updates to the playlist will automatically be applied to the section, since the section is just showing the contents of that playlist.

The main reason to put videos into playlists, however, is autoplay. When a viewer watches a YouTube video to the end, YouTube endeavours to show them something they will be interested in next. And, if the viewer doesn’t click away or select a video of their own choice, YouTube will auto-play the video they have chosen. If a viewer is watching a playlist, however, the next video in the playlist will be auto-played.

For a step by step guide on how to make a playlist on YouTube (with pictures) then check out my blog for all the super secret tweaks that will get you more views.

Advantages

For new viewers who take the step of going to your channel, or who have watched one of your videos to the very end and may be interested in more, being able to find what it is they are looking for easily can be the difference between them becoming new subscribers, and drifting away never to return.

Capturing someone’s attention is relatively easy compared to retention, so you should do everything in your power to reduce the amount of effort new viewers have to put in to get to the content they want on your channel.

Why Group Videos?

It’s one thing knowing how to group videos on YouTube, but why?

We’ve already touched on the fact that it doesn’t take much for a new viewer to wander away from your channel, even if they really liked the video that brought them there in the first place.

There are other reasons why grouping content is good for your channel, however.

For example; as much as we’d like for our viewers to want to watch every bit of content we put out, the unfortunate reality is that they don’t. Even in the case of personality-based channels—where the majority of the audience is there to see the YouTuber regardless of what video is actually about—there will still be viewers who see a particular type of video and decide they would rather give it a miss.

You can’t please everybody all of the time.

But you can make your viewers’ experience in consuming your content as frictionless as possible, and grouping videos is one of the best ways to do that. It allows them to easily find the series or video type they are looking for. And if they have come to a series video that is in a playlist, they won’t even need to leave the video page to get to the next one in the series.

You are not limited to custom groupings and playlists, however. You can create sections for things like upcoming live streams, most popular videos, and, of course, your most recently uploaded videos.

Each of these sections comes with a header to make it clear to your viewers what they are getting, and they can click through to see more content from that grouping.

You can also create a section of playlists, which would come in handy if you have a lot of different series and do not want to clutter your channel page with lots of different sections for each one.

How to Group Videos on YouTube

How to Create Sections on Your Channel

Creating sections is extremely simple. Simply head over to your channel page (making sure you are logged in) and click on the “Customize Channel” button which should be up near the top right of the page.

You will be taken to what might at first look like your regular channel page, but if you look closely, you should see that the different sections of your channel have a little edit icon (the one that looks like a pen) in the corner when you hover over them.

Clicking on this will allow you to change the details of that particular section.

Next to the edit icon, there should be an arrow—or arrows—that allow you to slide that section up or down your page.

The part we are interested in the most, however, is at the bottom of your channel customisation page.

Down there you should find an “add section” button, which you will need to click if you want to add a new section.

The options you have are;

  • Popular Uploads
  • Uploads
  • Live Now
  • Upcoming Live Streams
  • Past Live Streams
  • Created Playlists
  • Single Playlists
  • Saved Playlists
  • Multiple Playlists
  • Subscriptions
  • Custom Groupings

For the most part, these are pretty self-explanatory, though some of them may need expanding on a little, so we’ll go through each of them now.

Popular Uploads

Based on views, this section will show your most successful videos so far. This can be handy for YouTubers who want to showcase their finest work… assuming your most-viewed videos are your finest work, that is.

This section will automatically change based on your live viewing figures.

So, if you land yourself a viral hit that races ahead of your other videos in terms of view count, it will jump to the top the queue in this section.

Uploads

Another way to think of this section would be “Latest Videos”. The uploads section just shows the most recently uploaded videos on your channel.

Like popular uploads, it updates itself automatically whenever you put out a new video. YouTubers tend to have a range of opinions on showing this section on your channel.

Some YouTubers feel you should always show your latest videos straight away, while others feel you should curate the content on your channel page—only showing the best examples of your work. This topic is one of those “no right or wrong” situations.

For example, if you are a current events channel, there would be no sense in not showing your latest videos, since viewers would only be interested in the most recent content. If you were a tutorial channel, however, it would make more sense to group your videos into playlists and show that on the channel page.

Live Now

This section will show any live content that is currently streaming.

As you might have guessed, this section is really only suitable for channels that stream a lot.

That being said, empty sections do not show up on your channel, so there’s no harm in putting the section there as it will only be visible when you have live content to show.

Upcoming Live Streams

If you do not live stream, you may not be aware that you can schedule streams in advance.

This not only gives you a page to link to, as well as setting the date with your subscribers, but it will also show up on your channel.

The upcoming live streams section will show only scheduled live streams, not streams that are live now, and not live streams that have ended. If you have no live streams scheduled, the section will not show up.

Past Live Streams

This section, as the name suggests, shows live streams that have already been broadcast. It will take some time for a stream to be processed by YouTube, and the video won’t appear in places like this section until that has been completed.

Depending on the length of the stream, it can take anywhere from twenty minutes to an hour or two for processing to be complete.

Whether or not you place this section on your channel page will mainly be down to the viewing habits of your viewers. If streams are the primary content of your channel, you should put them front and centre with this section.

If streams are just something you do as a little extra content for your viewers, it may be better to leave this section off the channel page and dedicate more space to the videos that are the primary content of your channel.

How to Group Videos on YouTube 1

Created Playlists

This section will display the playlists that you have created. This is an ideal section to bring together all of your video series’ in one place, as it will dynamically update with new playlists whenever you create them.

It will contain any playlists you create that are public, however. That includes playlists of other people’s videos.

So, if you have a playlist of your favourite YouTube musicians, be sure to make it private if you don’t want it showing up in this section.

Single Playlists

This is a particularly useful section, as it shows the videos from within the selected playlist, and it updates automatically when new videos are added to that playlist.

If you have a few popular series’, you might want to give them each a single playlist section on your channel page so that they can be easily found by your viewers.

Saved Playlists

On YouTube, you have the option to save playlists created by other people, allowing you to easily find that playlist at a later date.

With this section, you can display all of your saved playlists so that others can view them as well.

This can be very useful if you find playlists that form great companion pieces to your own content.

Multiple Playlists

A multiple playlist section will show any playlists you tell it to, whether from your own channel or anywhere else on YouTube.

As long as the playlist is public, you can add it here. This is not a dynamic section, however, and you will have to manually update it with any additional playlists you want adding.

Subscriptions

In order for this section to display anything, your subscriptions must be set to public.

When it is, this section will display the latest channels you have subscribed to.

If you decide to have this section on your channel, we would recommend only subscribing to channels that may be useful to your viewers from that account and setting up a separate account for personal interests.

Custom Groupings

Custom groupings allow you to create a section of channels.

This can be handy for highlighted related channels, shouting out channels you like, and even promotional purposes if you are a more significant channel looking to help out smaller channels.

This section is static and will need updating manually with new entries.

Unlisted Videos

A quick note on unlisted videos.

Typically, if you post something unlisted, you don’t want it to be accessible unless you give someone the link.

If you an unlisted video into a playlist, however, it will show up in for anyone looking at that playlist—just a little something to bear in mind.