Category: TIPS & TRICKS

How To Report Videos on YouTube – Flag YouTube Videos

Post author By Michel Gerard
Post date 30 August 2020

You just come across a video that you think it shouldn’t be on YouTube, I’m going to teach you how to report that video and make the environment safer for everybody else.

[embedyt]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8tj7P1nmIKQ[/embedyt]

How To Report Videos on YouTube – Flag YouTube Videos

Hello and welcome back to another video. I’m Alan Spicer, your YouTube certified expert and if you’re looking to start a YouTube channel, grow a YouTube channel, or push your brand out back into the second-largest search engine on the Internet, you should click “Subscribe“ and start creating now.

In an ever-changing world where there’s 400 hours worth of YouTube videos uploaded every minute, or every second, one of those stats is important, there is always going to be abuse when it comes to content.

Now, YouTube is cracking down on content, but they’re having to remove comment sections and they’re having to slap the risks of some completely innocent creators. But the best way for us as a community to police this kind of thing is to report videos that are indeed outside of the community guidelines.

Basically, if you find a video offensive, if it’s gory, if it’s violence, if it shouldn’t be on YouTube, if it’s clearly extremist, or dangerous to somebody’s mental health, physical health or well-being, then you can click the “Report” button and I’ll show you how you can do that.

Let’s go to the computer.

Okay, so you found a video that you want to report, maybe it’s insulting, maybe it’s triggered you, maybe it’s dangerous to people.

You go to the video, you scroll down, you’ll see “More,” and then in that drop down, you click “Report.”

At this point, it will give you the option of why you are reporting it. So, sexual content, violently repulsive, hateful or abusive content, dangerous harmful acts, child abuse, promotes terrorism, spam, infringes my rights or caption issues.

Once you pick on one, you can also have additional drops down. So, under “Infringes my rights” we have infringes my copyrights, invades my privacy, other legal claims.

Or if it’s “Sexual content,” let’s see what we have in the drop down: Graphic sexual activity, nudity, abusive in the description…

In the “Harmful dangerous acts” section, is it drug use? Is it suicide? That kind of thing.

When you’re done and you choose your option, you can highlight exactly the time stamp and type in a more detailed description of why this is a problem.

Then, you click “Submit.”

This then goes to a human being who then paws over this, and then they choose whether or not if it’s an acceptable flag or not.

Final Words

For more YouTube tricks and tips that help you improve the community that we live in on YouTube, I’ve done a playlist up here. Remember to hit that “Subscribe“ button, go out there, and start creating.

Tags flag, flag video, report video, youtube video

HOW TO GET MORE VIEWS ON YOUTUBE LISTS TIPS & TRICKS YOUTUBE

10 Best Tools to Grow Your YouTube Channel

Post author By Alan Spicer - YouTube Certified Expert
Post date 30 August 2020

You can paint pictures using only your fingers, but it’s doubtful you’d be any good at it unless you are Iris Scott.

All accomplished artists use tools to help them express their creativity; one tool helps them draw perspective; another helps mix colour.

As a YouTube creator, if you’re only shooting a video quickly, then uploading it after basic editing, in your own way, you are painting with your fingers.

The top YouTubers use a range of tools to help create and promote their work. Some help to make the videos more entertaining, while others allow their videos to rank well.

This article looks at ten products you could add to your YouTube video creation toolbox. Five help the visual/production process, and the other five help you with SEO/ranking.

Let’s jump right in.

Visual / Production Tools For YouTube

These five tools help you to transform your videos from dull talk-to-the-camera sermons into more expert productions.

There are tools for graphics and editing, libraries of sound and b-roll footage, and tools for captioning your content.

Adobe Creative Cloud – YouTube Video Production Tool

Occasionally you want a tool to edit photos, sometimes you need a tool to polish audio, and you always have to edit your content.

Adobe Creative Cloud is a suite of tools that help you to produce professional-quality content. For one monthly price, you get access to over 20 applications that are used by many of the top creators in the business.

You could hunt around for individual alternatives from other providers. Some you’ll be able to find free of charge, others you’ll be able to hack together using free trials, but you should want to use the best. And the best thing about Adobe Creative Cloud is that all the tools in the suite work happily together. So you’ll never have to hunt down file convertors, and you’ll be able to use tools that you hadn’t consider trying before.

For YouTubers, the centrepiece of Adobe Creative Cloud is Premier Pro, the industry-leading video editing software. You’ll need a decent computer to run it on as it’s quite resource intensive.

While there is no free trial for the Creative Cloud collection of tools, you can trial some of the individual ones for 30 days. Adobe Creative Cloud works on both Windows and Mac.

Website: adobe.com
Price: $49.94 per month for access to all tools.

Storyblocks – Youtube B-Roll and Audio Library

Give your videos extra flair with B-roll footage and sound effects. These types of assets are available free of charge on some stock-footage websites, but the choice of clips is small, and many are overused.

Storyblocks is a paid stock-footage website with 1.5 million videos, images, and sounds you can edit into your content.

All media is copyright-free and easy to find using categories and tags.

Want to cut to a person crying to emphasise a point? Storyblocks has a choice of over 1000 videos.

Video is available in a variety of resolutions including 4K, and most clips are under 35 seconds long. The audio clips include sound effects, short tracks, and shorter loops which you can, well, loop to get the length you desire. If you need the sound of a hammer bashing on stone or an ambient backing track, you’ll find it on Storyblocks.

You can buy a lower-priced subscription to access only video or sounds, but these are quite restrictive.

Much better to buy a pass for unlimited access which is $65 per month. Plans are flexible, and you can sign up for only a month if you like.

You can also link your YouTube account to Storyblocks and let their automated software handle copyright infringement claims too.

Website: storyblocks.com
Price: Starting from $9 per month.

Placeit – YouTube Intro/Outro Tool, Channel Banners, Logos and End Screen Templates

Becoming successful on YouTube is very difficult to do without branding yourself. The immense volume of videos means you must build a recognisable image so that users can spot you in the search results and suggestions.

Of course, your branding needs to look good too. Crummy photoshop skills can make your videos stand out – but for all the wrong reasons. So use a service like Placeit to help you design and build a professional brand image.

Placeit has dedicated tool to help you design and produce YouTube intros and outros and has hundreds of templates to pick from. You can also design custom logos and animate them too.

It’s likely as a Youtuber that you will want to cross-promote content on social media as well. Placeit has tools for creating Instagram stories and videos, and templates for Facebook covers.

Placeit is cloud-based, so you use all the tools via your browser. One price of $14.95 per month allows you to access all the functionality, and you can make a small saving paying upfront for an annual subscription.

Website: placeit.net
Price: From Free to $14.95

Rev – YouTube Caption Tool

Not all the people watching your content will view it in the same environment. Some will view your content in comfort sat on the sofa, where they can hear your voice clearly. Others will be on the move, on a bus or in a cafe, where listening can be difficult.

For some viewers, the location doesn’t matter at all: you exclude the hard of hearing when you don’t make your content accessible to all.

Rev is a service for adding captions and subtitles to your videos. Captions are a transcript of the words that you say, allowing the hard of hearing or those in a noisy environment to watch your content. Subtitles translate your content from your spoken language to another, opening your channel to a broader audience.

Rev doesn’t charge a fixed fee for its service; you instead pay based on the length of your video. Prices start at $1.25 per minute, so you always know exactly how much it will cost you upfront.

Website: rev.com
Price: From $1.25 per minute.

Lickd – YouTube Premium Music Library

If you want to use music by real artists in your videos, but worry about copyright issues, then you should try out the music licensing service from Lickd.

Designed expressly for YouTube content creators, Lickd has thousands of real songs to choose from by genuine artists.

You have to license each track individually, and Lickd set the cost dependent on your YouTube audience size. If you have under 50 thousand views on average for your videos, then prices start at $8 per track.

You’re not allowed to remix or change the music in any way, though you can edit for length. And while there aren’t too many well-established artists on the site yet, it’s early days. The more creators that use the service, the more artists Lickd are likely to attract.

Website: lickd.co
Price: From $8 per track.

SEO / Ranking YouTube Tools

You might create the best content around, but if you don’t choose the right keywords, or make the most of your metadata, then your channel may as well be invisible.

The following five tools help give you the best chance of your content being seen.

Google Trends

Google Trends gauges the popularity of any topic over time. It’s a way to discover which subjects are hot or not.

Google Trends can also help you plan the release of content for annual events. For example, if you want to know the best time to upload Halloween-themed content, the chart below shows you that interest starts to climb in mid-September. Maybe a bit earlier than you might have thought?

You can also use Google Trends to compare subjects, which can help you to narrow your focus when brainstorming ideas.

Google Trends is free to use and has lists of daily trends and real-time search trends, so you can see what’s creating a buzz online today. You also can view trend data by country, so you can find out what’s popular in your corner of the globe.

Website: trends.google.com
Price: Free!

VidIQ

VidIQ is a tool that aims to help you grow your channel in two broad ways.

First, vidIQ helps to maximise organic reach by helping you select the best tags, and choose the right keywords for your title and description. VidIQ works as a chrome plugin that displays extra data directly on the YouTube website.

Once your videos have gone live, vidIQ keeps you on track by letting you know which of your videos performs well. The software also audits your content and can highlight issues, like which videos aren’t part of a playlist, for example.

There is a free option for the software, though this is restricted in functionality. To make the best use of the tool, you need to buy a subscription. The ‘Boost’ level is the best option as it allows you access to vidIQ’s keyword engine and permits you to track 20 competitors.

VidIQ is popular with many large and successful channels.

Website: vidiq.com
Price: From free, though you need a subscription to get the most from the tool. Starting at $7.50 per month.

TubeBuddy

TubeBuddy is a competitor of VidIQ and offers similar features, and uses a chrome extension to display keyword and video information on the page of YouTube’s website.

TubeBuddy also offers ideas for tags and other metadata when you upload a video. It advises on best practices to have your video rank as high as possible. It reminds you to add cards, end screens, and other essential parts that add up to make a successful YouTube video.

There is a limited free option to give you an idea of what the software can do, but to get lasting benefits, you need to take out a monthly subscription. Pricing starts at $9 per month for the ‘Pro’ level, though you can save 50% if you have less than 1000 subscribers.

Of course, you will only need to use either TubeBuddy or vidIQ to manage your channel, while they are both excellent, vidIQ has the slight edge.

Website: tubebuddy.com
Price: From $9 ($4.50 if you have less than 1000 subscribers.)

YouTube Autosuggest

Sometimes thinking up new content ideas is hard. But it can be time wasted, too, if you don’t perform keyword research first to see if your ideas are even popular.

Fortunately, there is a free way to check if people have an interest in your idea, and that is on YouTube itself.

You may have noticed when you begin typing in the YouTube search bar a dropdown box appears with a list of options. These show a list of search terms that users are already using on YouTube to find content.

Use the auto-suggest feature to find and validate your content ideas.

When you are compiling ideas from YouTube Autosuggest, also make use of the underscore character ‘_’. It acts as a wildcard when placed between two words. Here is an example.

YouTube is giving you content ideas free of charge! Take this method a step further and combine the autosuggest search terms with the free version of vidIQ. You can see which of the ideas are popular and which you have a chance to rank with.

Website: youtube.com
Price: Free!

Morning Fame

Morning Fame is a website rather than the chrome plugin functionality of vidIQ and TubeBuddy. Morning Fame provides analytics for uploaded videos and a keyword tool to plan future content.

The analytics section gives a good historical overview of your channel’s performance. And offers suggestions on which of your videos perform best for your audience, and recommends which type of videos you should try to replicate.

Morning Fame also benchmarks your channel against to similar ones.

The keyword research tool suggests content ideas, and rates your chance of ranking for them considering your channel size.

Once you pick a target keyword, Morning Fame rates your channel’s chance of ranking for the keyword.

Morning Fame offers two levels of subscription. While both have full access to analytics reporting, if you want more than occasional access to the keyword research tool, you’ll need to choose the Plus plan at $12.90 per month.

Website: morningfa.me
Price: From $4.90 per month.

Conclusion

You’re unlikely to establish a channel on YouTube without using tools. Some tools help to make your videos compelling, and others help find best keywords to rank. There are 500 hours worth of videos uploaded to YouTube every minute, and you need to work hard to make yours stand out.

You need to add intros/outros to brand your videos, use B-roll and sound clips to enhance your content, and then make sure to edit your content well so that it engages viewers.

Finally, if you don’t take advantage of tools to help you plan and promote content, you will fall behind your competitors who will surely be using them.

If you need more help with equipment, software, artwork and other YouTube things then I have a list of EVERYTHING I use on my resources page.

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.

Tags apps, breaking bad movie el camino, broll, morningfame, placeit, rev, storyblocks, tools for youtubers, tubebuddy, vidiq, youtube apps, youtube seo, youtube tools, youtuber tools

DEEP DIVE ARTICLE TIPS & TRICKS YOUTUBE YOUTUBE TUTORIALS

YouTube Cards [What They Are and How To Use Them]

Post author By Alan Spicer - YouTube Certified Expert
Post date 29 August 2020

What are YouTube Cards?

YouTube cards – info cards and end screens – are interactive links you can use to promote other videos, playlists, channels, and external sites while your video is playing. It’s a method of keeping a viewer hooked on your content, or if you want, directing them to someone else’s.

It’s like having your own digital traffic cop to direct people where you would like them to go once they have finished watching one of your videos. Because, if you’re holding someone’s attention, isn’t it best to direct them to more of your content when your video ends?

There are four types of cards you can use in your videos.

Video
Playlist
Channel
Link

At one time you had the option of running a poll from a card too, but this type of card is no longer available.

The cards don’t automatically show when you add them to a video. The viewer instead has to click a small grey info bar which appears in the top right-hand corner. You can set when they appear in your YouTube Studio. Here is how the info-bar looks.

When a viewer clicks on the info-bar, the card displays, the viewer can then click on the card to follow the link.

Cards display in both desktop and mobile versions of YouTube and replace the older annotation system, which only displayed on the YouTube desktop site.

The four types of cards all have a similar appearance, so let’s take a look at each type and how you might use them.

The Four Types of Cards and How You Can Use Them.

You can place cards up to five times per video and can add them in at any point you like. Card placement, though, should be done strategically.

Card placement must always be done with a purpose in mind. Think about how the YouTube algorithm operates. YouTube’s main aim is to keep its users watching content and viewing more advertisements – it’s how they make money.

YouTube attempts to keep viewers tuned-in by suggesting high-quality videos for them to watch next. Have you ever found yourself thinking, ‘I’ll should be doing something else, I just watch one more video’? That’s YouTube’s ranking algorithm in action.

YouTube has perfected guessing what content will keep its audience engaged, and is an expert at recommending good videos. Now, YouTube can’t watch all of the videos uploaded on the site to see which are good – there are far too many of them.

YouTube has to work out video quality automatically. One of the main factors YouTube uses to decide video quality is watch time. Watch time is calculated as the average time viewers spend watching a video.

Video Watch time is Important.

YouTube knows that most videos aren’t watched all the way through, but reasons that the longer viewers keep watching, the better the video must be. To succeed on YouTube, you need to keep your audience tuned into your videos for as long as possible.

So, if you were to add cards linking away from your video at the start, then you are potentially harming your video’s chance of getting an excellent watch time average. As a result, your video may be suggested less frequently by YouTube for others to watch.

Aim to add cards into your video later on, preferably in the second half of your video.

Mention the YouTube Cards in Your Video.

A second factor is that card links are not very noticeable, so for maximum effectiveness you should mention them in your video. This requires planning and scripting in advance, so approach card placement with a well thought out strategy.

Let’s take a look at how you might use each card type in your videos.

YouTube Video Card Example.

This card links to a video and displays a thumbnail. As you can see in the example below, I have added the text ‘Video Card’. The customisable text helps you to sell the link a bit more, and I’ll cover how to do this later on in this article.

The video card is commonly used to link to other content you have made. It might be a video which covers a subject in more detail that you are only mentioning briefly, or it could be the next video in a series you are making.

Alternatively, you can also link to another video on YouTube – it doesn’t have to be your content.

YouTube Playlist Card Example.

Similar to the video card but this time a collection of videos. Again, it can be any playlist and not necessarily one you have created.

So if you want to link out to your favourite music or draw attention to your own curated collection of content, the playlist card is the one you should choose.

YouTube Channel Card Example.

Sometimes it’s useful to direct a viewer to your channel page. They can access all of your content quickly, or you may be trying to grow your community tab.

An easy way to link to your channel is occasionally useful.

YouTube Link Card Example.

While the cards discussed so far are open to anyone with a YouTube account, the link card is only available to those who are part of the YouTube Partner Program. The link card permits users to link away from the YouTube site, which being outside of YouTube’s control, is only offered to established channels. It helps YouTube to cut down on link-spam.

The link card is ideal for those that have a website as a central part of their business and want to attract traffic using YouTube. With the link card, it’s easy to raise awareness and pre-sell your service in a video, then direct viewers over to your website to buy.

How To Add Cards to YouTube Videos.

You add cards to your video via YouTube Studio. Go to the main window, and from the menu on the left select ‘Videos’.

Then from the list of your videos, select the one you want to add cards to and click the edit icon.

In the video details screen towards the bottom of the page on the right, select the cards option.

This will open the window with which you assign cards to a video.

If I wanted to add a playlist to this video, the first step is to select the playlist option. In the next window, you can either choose a playlist you have created or search for any other playlist.

In this example, I’ll use one of my playlists. Simply click on the thumbnail, which returns you to the previous window to add further details.

You can set the time for the card to appear using either the timestamp or by moving the blue slider at the foot of the screen.

You can also add a Custom Message and some Teaser Text. The teaser text is the wording which displays in the info-bar in the corner of your video.

The custom message displays in the card that is shown when a viewer clicks the info-bar. Hit the save button when you are happy with the wording and timing.

To add further cards to your video (up to five maximum), open up the card’s window again and select the blue plus symbol to add another.

Simply rinse-and-repeat until you have added the cards you want.

Displaying Cards on the End Screen of YouTube Videos.

If you have ever wondered how Youtubers add thumbnails to their other content at the end of a video, this section covers how to do that. Known as an End Screen, it enables you to show links to other content and also lets you display a clickable subscribe button.

The End Screen differs from the standard cards in that you can only display them during the last 20 seconds of your video. To set your end cards, navigate to your video details page and select the ‘End screen’ menu option on the right-hand side of the screen.

The End Screens window gives some measure of customisation, but YouTube has some basic requirements. You must have at least one video or playlist card in your end screen, and the maximum number of elements you can display is four.

You can control the layout in the end screen editor, as long as the cards are arranged within the white shaded box overlaying your video.

The end screen also gives you an additional card to choose from – the subscribe card. In the picture below, you can see an end card displaying two video cards plus the subscribe card.

The end screen editor also allows you to choose the timings for your end screen elements.

You can display all elements for the full 20 seconds or only the final five seconds if you prefer. You also don’t have to show all of the cards at the same time. Once your elements are selected, you can choose appearance times by sliding the element display bar, as shown below.

End screens are a powerful tool. They give you a virtual billboard to try and keep viewers watching your content before YouTube suggests to them someone else’s content, giving you the chance to deliver a call to action during a video.

Your best chance of retaining viewer attention will come when you combine a pre-scripted suggestion with an end card. Tell a viewer which video you think they should watch next then flash up an end card linking directly to the video.

Tips for Placing Cards.

As mentioned earlier, cards should be used with a purpose in mind rather than randomly scattered throughout your content.

Verbal cues are the obvious way to draw attention to your cards, and pre-scripting these should increase in the number of times they are clicked.

Use your Analytics.

Another strategic use of cards involves using the analytics of your existing content. View the audience retention graph for one of your videos and look for the moment you are losing the most people, as they click away to find another video.

If the average viewer navigates away at this point, flashing a card on the video just before this point can help you direct some of those leaving to alternative content of yours.

Choose Custom Text Wisely.

Don’t be boring when you write the teaser text; you need to use words that give viewers an incentive to click the info bar. Use wording that communicates a benefit, something of value.

Look at the two examples below, which one would you click?

Similarly, use the custom message to reassure the viewer that the content you are promoting is relevant to them too. In the example below, the term ‘related video’ should impress in the viewer’s mind that the video will be beneficial to them.

Conclusion

With the number of content creators on YouTube growing every day, you need to use all the tools at your disposal to retain the viewers watching your content. Interactive cards are an excellent way to build traffic funnels and direct viewers where you want them to go.

You are not restricted to promoting only your content either. You can use cards and end screens to direct viewers to friends channels, or even some of the big Youtubers if you like. As long as the content is on YouTube, you can steer them there.

Make the best use of end screens too; never let your video end without suggesting more of your content to watch.

Once you are a member of the Partner Program, you also get the ability to link to content outside of YouTube.

This can be powerful for those whose primary business is off YouTube, and you can use YouTube as part of your sales funnel to help grow your business.

Affiliate marketing is a powerful tool that makes me a large income online and it can for you too. Need help understanding affiliate marketing then check out my affiliate marketing for beginners deep dive blog.

Tags end screens, how to add cards on youtube, how to add end screens, how to add end screens on youtube, how to add info cards, youtube cards, youtube cards explained, youtube end screens

DEEP DIVE ARTICLE HOW TO GET MORE VIEWS ON YOUTUBE TIPS & TRICKS YOUTUBE

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

Post author By Alan Spicer - YouTube Certified Expert
Post date 23 August 2020
1 Comment on Youtube Community Tab: What It Is And How To Use It To Grow Your Channel.

Some people only visit YouTube to figure out how to unblock a sink.

But, many visit it to keep up with the latest from their favourite creators. YouTube, by definition, is a social media platform.

Social media is usually thought of as ‘fast’, yet short-lived. Content that gets posted and quickly forgotten like posting a picture of something you’re eating or instantly reacting to breaking news, for example.

YouTube, on the other hand, seems like a ‘slow’ platform. It takes time to plan, shoot, and edit a video, and most content creators only upload new material two or three times a week.

There is another place, however, to enhance the social aspect of your YouTube channel, and I don’t mean adding hearts to the comments under a video. Look a little deeper on any established channel homepage, and you’ll find a tab entitled ‘community’.

What Is the YouTube Community Tab?

YouTube has a disadvantage over other social video platforms like TikTok and IGTV. Video uploaded to these platforms is quick to produce, often unscripted, and raw.

On YouTube, viewers won’t forgive lousy sound and shoddy camera work. Viewers expect a certain standard; video content has to be scripted, well lit, and edited well, which takes time. As a result, most channels only upload only two or three videos per week.

If you need help to make better videos, find a great camera or some eye catching graphics for your banners, youtube intros and videos check out my resources page – its the place where i hide the secret sauce 😉

Getting social on Twitter, Snapchat, or Instagram is like stuffing a quick sandwich in your mouth, whereas YouTube, in comparison, requires you to bake the bread first.

YouTube decided to fix this problem with the launch of the YouTube Community Tab in 2016. It’s a space for channels to interact with viewers by posting text and image updates or seeking their opinions via polls.

YouTube chose familiar functions found on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, and made them available to established accounts. Here’s the community tab from MrBeast’s channel.

YouTube says it’s a light way to interact with your audience in-between video uploads. It only takes a moment to update and helps you boost viewer engagement, something you should be interested in as a channel owner.

Engagement plays a large part in how YouTube ranks videos, and if YouTube selects a video to suggest a viewer watch next.

The YouTube community tab then is a place to hook people into your content, start a conversation, and build a community.

There are several types of content you can post in the community tab. Quick text updates, like a twitter post, though with the extended character limits you can use it to mini-blog too.

You can include static images or moving GIFs, giving you options to tease new content, show behind-the-scenes, or embed a video thumbnail.

One function also baked into the community tab is the ability to post polls, so you can ask your subscribers a question and get them to interact on a deeper level with your channel.

You may be thinking, why bother; I can do all of that on Twitter or Instagram? Well, one of the best bits about the community updates is they appear in your subscribers feeds, the same as your videos.

It’s a no-brainer; you can quickly raise your profile through greater exposure to your YouTube subscribers.

If you have a YouTube channel but can’t see the community tab and thinks it’s missing, next, we’ll look at how you unlock the YouTube community tab.

How To Get YouTube Community Tab

The YouTube Community tab has an eligibility requirement; to qualify your channel must have 1000 subscribers. When you hit this threshold a week, or so later the YouTube Community tab should appear for your channel.

If you have over 1000 subscribers, but can’t see it, then this could mean you haven’t activated the custom channel layout.

To do this, navigate to your channel homepage and click ‘Customise Channel’.

When the next screen loads, click on the icon for the settings (small cog).

Then make sure that the toggle switch for ‘Customise the layout of your channel’ is switched on.

Return to your channel page hit refresh, and the Community tab should now appear.

What to Post in The YouTube Community Tab

With plenty of content types to choose from in the Community tab mix it up to make your feed more engaging. You need to give viewers a reason to return to your feed, bland, repetitive content, or shameless self-promotion will work against you eventually.

Let’s take a look at each content type in turn and how you post to your feed. First, you need to open Your Channel page and select the Community tab.

To do this, click on the menu in the top right-hand corner of YouTube then select ‘Your Channel’ menu option.

Next click on the Community Tab.

The Community Tab Editor

At the top of the community tab, you’ll see the editor, use this box to start creating your community updates.

Start typing to enter text, or use the three icons at the foot of the box to link to videos, run a poll, or post an image.

Text Updates

When entering text, the editor formats the first line for you in a larger character size. It works like an automatic headline as there are no tools in the editor you can use to change text appearance.

The only other text feature available is the @ symbol. This lets you tag in other channels or shoutout to friends.

There aren’t short character limits for an update, like Twitter, which in theory means you could use also use text updates to mini-blog. Remember, though; users come to YouTube to watch videos. It’s unlikely that regular lengthy updates would benefit you in the long run.

Look at other channels to see how they use text updates. If you find a style you like, emulate it, don’t copy directly. You don’t want to risk your channel through accusations of plagiarism.

PewDiePie uses the simple text-based updates frequently to thank his viewers or shoutout to other channels.

But, if I’m honest, the solely-text update is a bit dull, there are better ways to drive engagement with your channel. How about asking your subscribers a question instead?

Polls

Running a poll on your Community Tab is an excellent way to build a sense of community on your channel. A survey requires participation and can help the participants feel part of something bigger – everyone likes to belong.

Select the poll button on the editor, which displays the screen below.

Choose between two and five options for your poll. You can use both text and emojis, and the character limit for each option is 65.

It’s also a good idea to add an extra ‘neutral’ option to the poll if you have space. This option is for those who want to see the results and comment in the poll thread, but don’t want to answer the main polling question.

Rather than adding something boring like ‘I don’t know’, mix it up with something more humorous to help engagement.

While you can post engagement polls like the one above, you can also use polls to ask your subscribers about future content too.

Images

An image always helps with engagement, and you can use this option to illustrate text updates.

It’s an ideal way to show a glimpse behind the scenes of your YouTube channel. People like to ‘go behind the lens’, so try sharing some casual pictures of your studio setup or your regular home life.

To add an image, click on the image icon in the community editor and select or drag an image to the screen. It’s best using a picture with a 1:1 aspect ratio or your photo could be automatically clipped.

YouTube allows JPG, PNG, and the new WEBP image formats, but also permits GIFs too. GIFs are by there nature more compelling. Not many people skip past and image once it starts to move, so let’s take a quick look at how you might use GIFs for engagement.

GIFs

GIFs are posted to your community feed the same way as images. Naturally, the format has to be GIF, and the maximum file size you can upload is 16MB.

When posting a GIF, people instinctively think about posting funny memes. But the GIF format is a great way to tease your content too. Use an online service like placeit.net to make promo GIFs and drive engagement with your channel videos.

Vanessa Lau is excellent at this and frequently teases new content.

Link To Video

Remember everything you post in your community feed has the potential to show up in subscriber’s feeds. So use the link to video icon to regularly promote videos both new and old and increase your watch time.

Clicking on the add a video icon launches the following screen.

Select from your existing videos to promote your latest upload, and mix in some of your older content as well. Plus, you can add videos from other YouTubers using the search feature or by direct URL.

Once you have selected a video, you can add text, which when published to your feed looks like the following:

Picking the right text to go with your video link can further intrigue and prompt your followers to watch.

Schedule Your Community Posts

If you are the kind of creator who likes to get ahead of your content schedule, then you can schedule as many future community posts as you wish.

This feature is helpful for those who like to batch similar jobs together, or you could use it to keep your channel active while you are on vacation.

You can also use the scheduling feature to time content for followers in different timezones. If you’re European and your channel has lots of fans on the West coast of the US. You can schedule a post linking to a new video, and time it for the morning just as people are waking up and checking social feeds. Thus maximising the chance of a subscriber seeing the fresh content.

To schedule a post, compose your community update as usual, then to the right of the ‘post’ button, you will see a drop-down arrow. Click on the arrow then select ‘Schedule post’.

You’ll now see three options to the foot of the community editor; date, time, and timezone.

Then it’s just a case of selecting the exact moment you wish your post to go live.

Once you have scheduled a post, you still have the option to edit or delete it before publishing.

Community Plus – Paid Memberships

If you manage to grow your channel to over 30,000 subscribers, you have the option to run an exclusive paid channel membership club. You need to be a member of the YouTube Partner Program to take advantage of this additional option and further increase your YouTube earnings.

You can offer several levels of membership, like in the example below from travel vloggers Simon and Martina.

The first level provides members with exclusive channel chat emojis, and the subsequent levels provide additional exclusive content unavailable to regular subscribers to the channel.

It’s not a step to take lightly, though. Members will want something of value in return, which means providing additional content regularly. So you will need to plan carefully and make sure you can deliver on your promises before you take this step.

Conclusion

YouTube’s Community tab allows you to speedily interact with subscribers and viewers far quicker than the average time it takes to shoot and upload a video.

Whether you are driving additional watch time for old videos or building rapport with your followers, the community tab helps you to engage on a deeper level with them.

Mix up your community posts to take full advantage of content options to keep your feed refreshing and engaging. Post images, polls, and GIFs, and sometimes show different aspects of yourself than the one in your videos.

While it is no substitute for competing platforms, it can help your channel growth, video engagement. It should be an essential part of your content creation – once you meet the eligibility criteria.

Tags Community Tab, engagement, subscribers, YouTube Community Tab

SOCIAL MEDIA TIPS & TRICKS VIDEO YOUTUBE YOUTUBE TUTORIALS

How To Add A Watermark To YouTube Videos

Post author By Michel Gerard
Post date 19 August 2020

Watermarks, the little thing down here that help grow your YouTube channel. You can now add them in the new YouTube studio. That’s what we talk about today.

[embedyt]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lcU1cV4XS2g[/embedyt]

How To Add A Watermark To YouTube Videos

Hello and welcome back to another video, I’m Alan Spicer, your YouTube certified expert.

If you’re looking to start a YouTube channel, grow your YouTube channel, or push your brand out there, it’s the second largest search engine on the Internet.

You should click “Subscribe,” and start creating.

Now, my videos, around about the 22nd mark, there’s a little box that pops up here that says you can subscribe. It is a nice additional way on desktop to urge people to subscribe, to place some branding, to push out the chances and make it even easier for people to join your community.

It’s available in the new YouTube studio. So, let’s go to the computer and I’ll show you how you can use it.

But before we deep dive into this, this video is sponsored by TubeBuddy which is an online browser based plugin that can help optimize your titles, your descriptions, your tags, get you more views, get you more subscribers, and generally take away the grind, the day-to-day tasks that you just can’t be bothered with.

It also links up with their mobile phone app in which you can check your stats on the go, communicate with people and just generally level up your YouTube game.

This is a link here on how to install it for free.

Okay, so when you’re first adding your video watermark, you arrive here in your YouTube studio. You’re used to this place by now, it has your stats, your subscribers, how well your last video is doing, but we’re focusing on the option on the left-hand side that says “Settings.”

You want to click on “Channel,” and then “Branding.”

So, you’ll see here that I’ve already got my watermark set up. It shows up in the bottom right-hand corner, or even being the bottom right-hand corner of this video.

You can see here the display settings, whether you wanted to show it in the last part of the video, a specific time in the video or the entire video.

I start mine at about 20 seconds in, that way, all of the waffling and the branding disappears when it pops up.

To remove it, you click “Remove.”

Then you’ll see here, it says, “Adding a watermark is a great way to improve brand awareness and channel recognition.

It needs to be a PNG or a GIF file format of 150 pixels by 150 pixels, and less than one megabyte in size. Images with one or two colors and a transparent background works best.

So, to choose the image you click “Choose Image,” and then choose your image from your computer, and upload it.

It will see that it’s there, and then when you’re ready, you click “Save” and you are done.

Final Words

For your hidden tricks, tips and gems, I’ve done a playlist up here.

Hit that “Subscribe“ button for regular YouTube videos from me.

Go out there, start creating.

Tags add watermark to youtube video, watermark, youtube watermark

HOW TO MAKE MONEY ONLINE MARKETING SOCIAL MEDIA TIPS & TRICKS VIDEO YOUTUBE YOUTUBE TUTORIALS

How To Monetize A Facebook Page without Ads

Post author By Michel Gerard
Post date 19 August 2020

How would you monetize your Facebook page without adverts?

Now, if you hit a certain threshold on Facebook, you can start integrating brand deals with your Facebook page, but not everyone’s jumped through those hoops just yet, and you can make money without Facebook’s help.

[embedyt]https://youtu.be/qM9SeS_-F64[/embedyt]

How To Monetize A Facebook Page without Ads

1) Use relevant affiliate links

I’m a YouTube creator that talks about YouTube. So maybe I post up a post about what camera I’m using and I link through to that product on Amazon. If I’m really smart and I’m hunting out a specific brand, maybe I can talk to that brand before hand, to get a better deal, and then push it out there.

For example, maybe I’m talking about how you can subtitle your videos, and then I want to promote it on Facebook saying, go and use rev.com.That way you can subtitle all of your videos with captions that are in English or French or German or any language that you wish.

You simply click on the link in the description, or https://alanspicer.com/rev.

That’s a relevant affiliate marketing link, and you can do that in your descriptions on Facebook,

2) Add digital products

Now I have a digital product that I hardly promote, and it’s 75 thumbnails for YouTube. If you’re not quite sure on how to start, how a thumbnail should look, just click this link, it goes through my digital products.

That’s a product that hopefully helps you and is relevant to my audience. I’m not going to sell baby monitors to people that want to learn how to do YouTube.

So if you have a digital product, let’s say an ebook on how to knit because you do knitting, or a recipe book because you’re a cooking channel, that’s a good place to promote it on your specific Facebook page.

I also push out my services like a channel audit and coaching call consultation, but you can also be sending your products, or pots and pans set, some cute little crochet things.

By the way, if you’d like that, this is the link to “Oh Sew Cute.”

3) Consider a newsletter

This is your way of harvesting people from your page, and then collecting them into — I really hate this word — but a funnel.

If they’re engaged enough to actively choose to be on a newsletter with you to hear more from you, to see more videos from you, or see your blogs from you, then they’re more likely to be more engaged than any random human to possibly listen to your advice on buying a product or a service.

I know you said it to me as your slow cooker of leads. As you collect more and more people in there and you hone the art of talking to them and building up a relationship, they’re more likely to convert in the long run because you’ve kept them warm for eight, nine hours smelling sexy minted lamb hot pot.

Anyway, back on point…

4) Selling advertised posts

Maybe you have a huge audience. Maybe you have 20, 30, 50, or a million followers on your page. This is your chance to flip the script. People will want to advertise in front of your audience.

So, charge them for it.

5) Starts an associated podcast

I’ve got the “Start Creating Podcast” at http://startcreatingpodcast.com/, where I talk about my experiences as a YouTuber, and growing and marketing and branding.

It gives me a little bit more leeway, I can talk about more things, less heavily edited. In the long run, you can invite people in to talk about your specific niche, interview people, and associated podcasts gives you a chance to place adverts against that podcast, also affiliate links in the description.

As you grow a podcast audience, it can also become fairly passive once the contents is out there, it will remain out there forever. And when was the last time you started a podcast, and then went back and binged watched everything else that was already on that podcast playlist.

Just try to make them evergreen rather than “This week on July the 30th, 2020,” whatever.

If you think of the longevity of the content and you answer and solve a problem with each podcast, people are more likely to go back and finish them. A good example of this is Gary Vaynerchuk or Tube Talk from vidIQ.

6) Raising money for a charity

You don’t have to monetize your Facebook page to make you money. You can also monetize your Facebook page to make charities, money.

You might have an audience that’s quite tuned in with you and your feelings and your sentiments, your political leaning, or your empathy towards specific topics.

Right now we’re in the middle of an unprecedented worldwide situation. So, if you wanted to raise money for that illness, that’s causing a lot of problems around the world, nothing’s stopping you throwing up a charity post that people can donate.

Or you reflect on something in four or five years time, maybe someone near and dear to you dies of some horrible disease, or struggles with a mental illness, depression, anxiety.

There’s nothing wrong with you raising money for a charity.

Final Words

Now, if you want help on monetizing your Facebook group, there’s a video here. And if you need help on monetizing your Facebook page through Facebook, there’s a video here.

Tags monetize, monetize facebook page, youtube channel

SOCIAL MEDIA TIPS & TRICKS VIDEO YOUTUBE YOUTUBE TUTORIALS

THIS WILL DOUBLE YOUR YOUTUBE CHANNEL GROWTH

Post author By Michel Gerard
Post date 19 August 2020
2 Comments on THIS WILL DOUBLE YOUR YOUTUBE CHANNEL GROWTH

Today, we’re going to double your channel growth with these simple tricks. Here we go. If you’ve already thrown up 10, 20 or 30 videos, you’ve already got enough base there to start doing some analytic diving.

[embedyt]https://youtu.be/IsY2dM2rfsY[/embedyt]

THIS WILL DOUBLE YOUR YOUTUBE CHANNEL GROWTH

It will take a while for you to create 30 videos initially, vomited 30 videos onto your YouTube channel in day one, which by the way, I highly suggest you do not do. If you take your time and you’ve uploaded two, three, four videos a week, or maybe even one video a week for, I don’t know, half a year, you will start to see shoots or signals and signs of growth.

This is when we dive into analytics. If you flip through your analytics and having a look at your most popular videos, you search them in descending order, the most important ones at the top, you will see that there are videos there that have got you the most views on your channel.

No matter how old or how new your YouTube channel is, there will be a clear hierarchy of some videos doing better than others.

This is your chance to start gaging what your channel and your channel audience wants from you, what you are expected to do.

Let’s say your top video happens to be about a tutorial, teaching people how to get the best weapon in the game that you’re playing and that you are a gaming channel.

In fact, your whole channel could be about that game, but for whatever reason, that video did better than others, you need to identify why. If you haven’t looked at that video, see if there was a good retention rate.

Did people watch all the way through all? Is it a hot topic? Is it the fact that it is a tutorial teaching people that makes them watch all the way through? Or is there a trend?

Do you notice that when you do class videos, for example, how to set up a certain character or how to do a specific mission or how to mean max your player stats, in other words, the most attack or the most defense, is it when you deep dive into those kinds of things that you get more attention or is it when you make funny compilations? Is that when you do live streams?

Only you will tell because everybody’s channel is different. There’s no point in you looking at somebody else who’s doing well, his channel always get so many thousands of views more for his live streams compared to yours. That’s because that’s their own ecosystem.

You should never compare yourself to anybody else outside your bubble.

You should compare yourself with you.

So, have a looking at your analytics, your first five or ten videos, see if there’s a pattern. If you notice that two or three of the top five are tutorials or that the comedy stuff works more, start leaning into that direction. See if there’s anything that you can twist or tweak or change, or if they’re really old videos.

So for example, my case, I did a video two years ago on how to generate a YouTube playlist, if that’s really good and doing really well, maybe you could update it with a newer version.

So I made a video on three ways to make a YouTube playlist and I went through the new dashboard, and I showed you how to add a mobile.

That way, I’m leaning in on the thing that got me the most views, or tapping into the thing that is most popular or has the most support or traffic through my channel, my authority.

Now, if you’re looking to grow your subscribers, you can do exactly the same, instead of going for views, you go to the “Subscribers” tab, and then you order it in the order of the videos that got you the most subscribers.

This uses a similar technique. You look at the ones that got you in the most subscribers, and you see if there’s a pattern between the top 10 or the top 20.

Did the ones that do more favorably have a certain length? Was there a certain presenting style?

You’ll notice with mine at the start of my videos, on some of them I flash up the text here, or on some of my videos, I just have screenshots of me doing a specific tutorial.

Does my business rants do better than my YouTube brands?

Have a look at the ones that got you the most subscribers, and then see if you can, once again, replicates or add or make a better version or update those, see if you can compliment it.

So if one of my videos did really well, which was “How to add in-screens,” I could then teach you how to add in-screens on mobile, or how to add certain aspects of the in-screens, whether it’s best for videos, whether it’s the latest videos, whether it’s a specific playlist or a link to a website, maybe I’m talking about how fantastic vidIQ is, and I’m telling you, “Oh, go and get this specific tool.

But then, I can make other videos about certain features within that software.

How to do a thumbnail preview, how to search for video tags, how to translate your videos. All of these are still related to that topic, but you could then pile them into a playlist. Or you can link them together using keywords and putting videos in the top of the video comments, consult, feeding bubbles between them, feeding traffic, because they wanted that specific topic.

They came to you to learn, in this case, about how you vidIQ, and instead of being a generalized video, they can learn in five videos, a much broader picture.

Well for you, it could be that they really, really liked how to knit that jumper, but they also want to learn how to knit that jumper in red and knit that jumper with an embroidery logo and knit that jumper and a hoodie.

Or maybe you’re a gamer and they really liked how to get that specific weapon, and then they need to learn how to get a better version of that weapon, or get the adults or how to aim it or how to use it most effectively.

Your stats is the magic secret sauce just for only you that nobody else can use, because you’ve already proved that you presenting that type of content gets that audience.

Well, you now need to do reverse engineer that and say, “I want this audience, so what do I need to do to get them again over and over and over again, until it becomes a habit?”

It forms it in the brain of YouTube that, “Ah, every time that video is made by Alan, we serve that to those people.”

It makes it easy for YouTube to suggest you against other content, and then, all you need to do is nail the content in the best, most engaging way possible.

Final Words

There’s a video here to tell you exactly how you do that. Remember to subscribe for regular deep dive videos and tutorials, and I’ll see you soon.

Tags fast youtube growth, get more youtube subscribers, get more youtube views, how to use youtube analytics

SOCIAL MEDIA TIPS & TRICKS VIDEO YOUTUBE YOUTUBE TUTORIALS

How To Turn On / Off Restricted Mode in NEW YouTube Studio

Post author By Michel Gerard
Post date 19 August 2020

The YouTube restricted mode can hide some content from some people. Is this affecting you or do you just want to check to see if maybe your content has been restricted by everybody else and that you might need to dial it back?

[embedyt]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfNnBWjKgDw[/embedyt]

How To Turn On / Off Restricted Mode in NEW YouTube Studio

Today I’m going to teach you how to turn on and off the YouTube restricted mode, and show you why that’s important. Here we go.

Hello and welcome back to another video. I’m Alan Spicer, your YouTube certified expert and if you’re looking to start a YouTube channel, grow a YouTube channel, or push your brand out there on the second largest search engine on the Internet, you should click “Subscribe“ and start creating.

YouTube has implemented in the last two, three years, very strict practices to hide adult content, hide inappropriate information, hide some things that just aren’t advertiser friendly. And in some cases it can be a little bit strict, dirty humor, profanity, or even games that include violence like shooting.

What is general gameplay?

In fact, in some cases it’s even deemed wrestling content to be non-advertiser friendly and placed it behind some restricted filters.

Okay, so let’s start on PewDiePie’s channel.

Right now, I have the restricted mode activated. What does this mean?

Well, if you scroll through his last videos, you’ll notice that although he posts daily, you can see videos from two days ago, five days ago, three weeks ago, one month ago, then a couple of months ago.

Now that seems normal, right?

Well, if I turn off restricted mode, you will see that there’s a few videos that have now reappeared. So the “Jake Paul scam,” right? And a few others you’ll notice that he’s now posting daily again, 22 hours, one day, two days, three days, four days, and five days.

What restricted mode does is hide videos that YouTube have deemed a bit dodgy, a bit risky. Maybe they’re demonetized, maybe they’re not. Or they just happen to have some key words that are a bit sensitive.

So why would you do this?

Well, if your kids are in control of your computer, maybe you want to turn on restricted mode, or you might want to check your own videos to see which videos are being hidden behind restrictions, and then maybe tweak those videos to make them more user friendly in the future.

Now there’s two ways of turning on restrictive mode.

First of all, this case, you go to the top avatar and go to the bottom right-hand corner. You’ll see “Restricted Mode Off,” click on there.

It gives you the option to toggle it on and it will now reload the page for you.

Once again, we’re now on this page, we’ll see that the scam videos disappeared again, and the Thanos video has disappeared again and a few of his videos. So, that’s the restricted mode on.

If you go back up here and you click “Restricted Mode On,” your also have the option to lock it on this browser.

What this means is that if you are a parent and you want to completely lock on this and matter what, right? Only 100% stuff that is family friendly will be seen, but then you can lock it on the browser.

Now for some of you that may be still stuck in the YouTube classic mode, all you have to do is go to the dashboard and scroll down to the bottom, and the options are down here.

You’ve got language, your location, history, and “Restricted Mode On.”

You get the same kind of option. You can even lock it directly or click “Off,” then click “Save,” and you are done.

Use this tool to your advantage. If you’re a parent, use it to hide any content that you just don’t want them to stumble across just yet, or as a creator, check out your videos, and if they are restricted, maybe dial back on the profanity, maybe dial back on the sensitive topics, maybe dial back on specific graphic gameplay.

If it’s behind the restricted filter, it might affect your CPMs. You might lose money or you might get less cost per click per thousand views.

These are things that you need to consider if you’re building a business going forward, or are you willing to take that hit if it’s something that’s personal to you?

You’ve now got a way to check, filter and understand if you are being affected.

Final Words

But if you are advertiser friendly and you want to get more views there is a playlist up here, and of course for more YouTube tricks and tip tutorials, hit that “Subscribe“ button, hit that notification icon to know every time I go live.

Go out there, start creating!

Tags disable restricted mode, how to turn off restricted mode, restricted mode off, youtube restricted mode

DEEP DIVE ARTICLE HOW TO GET MORE VIEWS ON YOUTUBE TIPS & TRICKS YOUTUBE

How Often Should I Upload to YouTube?

Post author By Alan Spicer - YouTube Certified Expert
Post date 17 August 2020
3 Comments on How Often Should I Upload to YouTube?

For a question like “how often should I upload to YouTube?”, there are two answers. There is the idealistic, best-case-scenario answer, and there is the practical, real-world answer that applies to you specifically.

For maximum growth potential, uploading to YouTube daily is the best option. However, there is more to success than merely putting videos online. If, for you, getting videos up on a daily basis means a severe compromise in the quality of those videos, or it is not feasible to make the kind of content you make that regularly, then of course, daily is not the right answer.

If there are no obstacles to getting your content up on a daily basis and that content is not rushed or subpar because of that schedule, then you will give yourself the best chance of succeeding by uploading more often and regularly.

But, as always, there is nuance to this topic so let’s get our hands a little dirtier.

Quality is Key

The closest thing you can get to a guarantee of success on YouTube comes with making quality content.

It is not a guarantee, of course, but if you could only nail one aspect of YouTubing, having quality content would be your best bet. Similarly, if you nailed every other aspect of YouTube except for producing quality content, your channel could—and probably would—still fail.

What this means in practical terms is that if your videos are poor quality, lack focus, or do not provide anything useful to the viewer—be it information or entertainment—it won’t matter that you are consistently managing to get a new video up every day because people won’t be interested in watching it. Furthermore, some types of content cannot realistically fit into a daily schedule, especially for individuals running a YouTube channel. DIY project channels are a great example of this.

The projects depicted on these channels can sometimes take days or weeks to complete themselves, so how, then, can you put daily videos out when each video represents multiple days of work?

So, while daily uploads would give you the best chance of success, you should adjust the “ideal” upload amount to suit your personal circumstances and your channel type. If you can’t realistically make videos more regularly than once a week without compromising the quality, don’t even consider anything more frequent than that.

This is not to say that the ideal upload schedule for you should be as often as you can possibly manage.

There is more to running a YouTube channel than the mechanical aspect of making a video.

YouTube Burn Out is a Real Problem

The fact that you can make quality videos daily, or weekly, or whatever interval you choose, does not mean that you should. Many YouTube channels fade out—or never get going in the first place—because the effort of running the channel becomes too much for the YouTuber.

Couple this with the fact that the vast majority of YouTubers never reach a level of success where they can earn enough money from their channel to pay the bills, and you have a recipe for disillusioned content creators wondering if it’s really worth the effort.

Of course, we would always recommend going into a YouTube channel with the mindset of it being a labour of love, rather than a money-making venture. That way, you are not only more likely to succeed because you enjoy it, but it will also be a nice bonus if the money does start rolling in.

But if you are running yourself into the ground trying to get content out on a gruelling schedule, and you are one of the overwhelming majority of YouTubers who don’t make enough money from their channel to quit the day job, you will almost certainly reach a point where it doesn’t feel worth it anymore.

Exceeding Demand has no Benefit

Another aspect to consider here is the viewer’s desire to watch that much of your content.

Something like a current events channel with regular short videos suits a daily upload schedule, but if you are making hour-long in-depth analysis videos, even if you could get one out a day, would your viewers have that kind of appetite for what is essentially a lot of intensive content?

People lead increasingly busy lives, and there are far more options competing for their downtime than at any point in human history. Forget the Netflixes, Amazon Primes, Xboxes, and any number of other sources of entertainment. On YouTube alone, there is more competition for your viewer’s attention than you can fathom, no matter how small your niche is.

If you are putting out videos that are over an hour-long daily, you will almost certainly dilute your viewer’s attention. You may find they only come for one or two videos a week, for example, when you are uploading six or seven.

Will this hurt your channel?

Not in any significant direct way, but it would mean you are putting a lot of extra effort in for very little return. It would be a far more efficient use of your time to put that effort into fewer videos, hopefully improving your content and giving your viewers more breathing room between each video.

There are also arguments to be made on the optics of having highly viewed videos. While it is generally a good idea not to obsess over viewing figures, it is an unavoidable reality that highly viewed videos tend to get a prestige boost in the minds of new viewers.

That is; they see a lot of people have watched a video and they are more likely to deem it worth watching. If you spread your views across multiple videos, rather than focussing your energies on a smaller number, you risk your content coming across as less-viewed, which will have an indirect impact on your growth.

Consistency Trumps Frequency

Now, we’re going to level with you, regardless of what we say the best plan for success is regarding upload schedules, there will always be exceptions. The truth is you can succeed on any schedule if the content is good.

For example, YouTuber, Code Bullet, has a very popular coding channel.

His upload schedule is hilariously inconsistent, often stretching to months between videos. This state of affairs has become a running joke in both the comments section and the videos themselves, and yet his channel has over two million subscribers, and his videos (when they eventually come) consistently pass two million views.

It can certainly be done, but if you’re going to go off-book, posts like this won’t be a great deal of help to you.

If you want to play it a little more conventional, having a consistent upload schedule is often more effective than having a frequent schedule.

Consistency works for you both with the viewers and with YouTube itself. For YouTube’s part, they want people to stick around, and a big chunk of that is finding YouTubers that are going to draw viewers back on a regular basis.

Having a consistent upload schedule tells YouTube that you are reliable and that any subscribers you gain have a reason to keep coming back because you will always put out new content.

And, for the viewers, a consistent upload schedule tells them they’re not investing time in something that might just disappear one day without warning.

In much the same way people are more reluctant to watch a TV show that they know was eventually cancelled abruptly without the opportunity to tie up any loose ends in the plot, viewers will be less likely to subscribe to your channel if it looks like you might have stopped uploading because your last video was four months ago.

Evergreen Content

You should always try to make content based around what you are interested in because that gives you the best chance of being able to stick with it in the long term. It also makes the process easier because it’s much easier to work on something you enjoy.

So, when we talk about evergreen content, it may be useless information to you if your interests don’t mesh with this kind of content, but if you can make evergreen content, you will be in a much better position to succeed in the long term.

But what is evergreen content?

Evergreen content is content that has a long shelf-life. Content that will still be relevant and useful to viewers many months—or even years—down the line.

To give a couple of examples that illustrate what we mean, a video on celebrity gossip will only be relevant for a news cycle—something that is getting increasingly short in recent years. A tutorial on how to perform some clever trick in a popular piece of software, on the other hand, will be relevant for as long as that software is in use and the trick works.

It is not uncommon for YouTubers making evergreen content to give up on their channel, feeling that they are not getting anywhere, only to come back to it years later and find that their subscribers have continued to grow in their absence. This doesn’t happen for channels like the celebrity gossip channel we mentioned above.

Again, your content should largely be determined by what you enjoy making, but if you can make evergreen content, the success of your channel will be somewhat insulated against the possibility of failure due to inconsistencies in your upload schedule.

It also makes it easier to take a break from your channel—as you may sometimes feel the need to do—without it damaging your growth.

Make Sure Your Viewers Know What’s Coming

If you have a regular upload schedule, you wouldn’t have to do much more than making sure people know what that schedule is. But a lot of videos—especially videos that are not evergreen—tend to get the bulk of their views in the first few days after upload. The more views your video is getting in a short space of time; the more YouTube is likely to recommend it during that time because it will see it as something that is trending.

What this means in practical terms is that you should do everything in your power—without being obnoxious or spamming people—to make everyone aware that you have new content coming out, and what your upload schedule is.

Take to social media, update any mailing lists or Discord servers you run, etc. Treat it like a campaign, rather than a single blast of updates, such as waiting for a day after uploading and then posting about it in your community tab.

Spend at least twenty-four hours letting people know, so you have the best chance of catching the most viewers in the shortest amount of time.

It may be less important for evergreen videos, which will often get far more views over its lifetime than it does in the first few days, but it still helps to get that initial boost which could lead to YouTube promoting the video more.

As we mentioned above, there is a psychological component to seeing that a video has lots of views, and may increase the likelihood that someone clicks on your content.

Summing Up: How Often Should I Upload to YouTube?

So what have we learned? The more frequently you can upload videos to YouTube, the better the chance of success you have. But this only applies if you can get videos out at that rate without compromising on quality.

The minimum interval you should have between videos is however long it takes you to make the best content you can make because, ultimately, the quality of the content is more important than the frequency with which you upload it.

Evergreen content, if it fits your channel, can act as a kind of buffer against infrequent upload schedules, attracting viewers to your channel long after they were uploaded.

And, finally, promote your content. You don’t want to be in a situation where people who want to watch your content don’t because they didn’t realise there was a video out. Tweet, post on Facebook, Instagram, and wherever else, you have social media accounts.

Encourage viewers to click the notification icon on your video, whatever it takes. But don’t spam or act in other annoying ways because that will just put people off.

And, just to reiterate; the quality of the video should always come first.

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.

3. Rev.com helps people read my videos

You can’t always listen to a video.

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.

Tags how often should I upload, upload, upload schedule, upload videos, videos, youtube upload

HOW TO GET MORE VIEWS ON YOUTUBE SOCIAL MEDIA TIPS & TRICKS YOUTUBE

Live Stream with Zoom [YouTube, Facebook & More]

Post author By Michel Gerard
Post date 17 August 2020

Zoom is a powerful tool that you may be using for meetings, but did you know that you can use Zoom to live stream to YouTube, Facebook and other places as well?

[embedyt]https://youtu.be/JqS0T6oWFJs[/embedyt]

HOW TO LIVE STREAM WITH ZOOM

Hello, I’m Alan Spicer, your YouTube certified expert, and I use Zoom all the time to do channel audits with vidIQ.

It’s a meeting platform where you host a meeting, they join in, you can video chat, you can even share screens, but did you know you could live stream that meeting or even use Zoom as your platform for you to live stream yourself, share your screen, do your own channel audits, maybe show your recipes, that kind of thing?

Using Zoom gives you the opportunity to screen share, show what you’re doing, share to the world generally how you’re feeling, maybe walk your way through a process, a tutorial or webinar.

Let’s go to the computer. You started the click new meeting.

At this point, you get to see my fluffy face. Now we get to go full screen, so you get to see my face. I’m talking to the webcam and this is Zoom.

Now, if you’ve never used Zoom before, that’s perfectly fine. Most people ever found it pretty much in the last month. Now you do.

If you go down to the bar down here, what you can do is have a look at what participants is in here.

You can invite people, you can control who happens to be in here.

So if there’s someone in the meeting, you want to mute them. If you just want to talk to yourself, then you can do so.

You can screen share by using the little button down here and you pick a screen.

This is available. You will see in this case, it moves me to the right-hand side of the screen and I can draw things, so anyone in the meeting will be able to see this.

Or if I have a screen open like Facebook, for example, or a browser, I can share that browser, and then once again, I am in the top right-hand corner, you can see all my tabs and stuff like that. You can see my channel analytics.

Now, one thing you can do is live stream. What you do is go into your settings, go to “Profile” and “View Advanced Features.”

Now in your settings, if you scroll all the way down to the bottom, just above the email settings, keep going, keep going, keep going. There’s an email notification and just above you see: “Allow live streaming meetings.”

You click over, you can choose what platforms you want to live stream to. Facebook, for example, or YouTube. You can do Facebook and YouTube, or you could do “Workplace by Facebook,” or you can use a custom-streaming service, which is here.

See, I’m going to click “Facebook” for this time and I click “Save.”

I’ll go back to the Zoom. I click “New Meeting.”

I enter full screen. You will now see under more options “Live on Facebook.”

So once you’ve got everybody in, you’ve invited them in, you are ready, you’ve got all of your graphics and stuff like that, you click “Live on Facebook.”

It will ask you to choose what timeline you want to share it onto, your timeline, a group, an event, share to a page that you manage.

I’m going to share on my timeline, then it connects Zoom to Facebook Live.

And if you use the new Live producer, when you click “Next,” you can use a key stream, you can use paired encoder.

Click “Next” and “Done.”

You will now see here, this is what I was talking about two or three seconds ago.

You can see here that the audio quality is 126.4 kilobytes per second. You can see the video is 2.1 megabits per second, and as you click on the arrow down here, you can have a look at all of the important coding settings.

My stream is in the bottom right-hand corner, and as you can see here, it goes.

What you would do on the left-hand side is fill in the name, the title and the description of the live stream.

You choose whether or not it goes to Friends or to Public, and where you want to share it to: Timeline, page you manage, or a group.

When you’re ready to live stream from Zoom to Facebook or YouTube, or anywhere else, you click “Go Live” and you are done.

Final Words

For more tips on how to live stream, I’ve done a playlist here and on tips on how to grow your business using YouTube, there is a playlist here.

Now, remember to subscribe for regular YouTube tricks and tips tutorials and business tutorials. Hit that notification icon to see every time a video goes live, and I’ll see you soon.

Tags facebook live stream, live streaming, youtube live stream, zoom, zoom tutorial

TIPS & TRICKS YOUTUBE YOUTUBE TUTORIALS

How To Contact YouTube – Chat To A Human

Post author By Michel Gerard
Post date 15 August 2020

Direct Chat with YouTube - YouTube Adds Partner Support Instant Messenger 1

Good morning! Some of you may have woken up this morning already seeing this feature. It is the instant direct chat messenger that you can talk to a member of your customer support team.

[embedyt]https://youtu.be/swqv_4SilrA[/embedyt]

Direct Chat with YouTube – YouTube Adds Partner Support Instant Messenger

If you’ve been on the platform for long enough, at some point you’ve needed to receive some form of email from YouTube, you know, “Congratulations! Welcome to the monetization team.”

You’re appealing a copyright strike or you’ve got a problem with your channel. You’ve accidentally deleted stuff, whatever it happens to be, and then you get hit with one of those automated response emails that are completely un-human, the guy running loose that take days to arrive.

Now this little icon in the top right-hand corner appeared in my dashboard today. So, I thought I’d be curious and nosy. I had a poke at it.

My friend Mark was very understanding at my curiosity and was able to tell me that this is for anyone part of the YouTube partnership program.

There doesn’t seem to be a limit on the number of subscribers and it’s a direct instant messenger, just like you’d expect on WhatsApp or Facebook.

I was able to natter to him for a period of time. It’s fairly instant and it means that if I have any problems, I can directly talk to a human being rather than trying to play email tennis with YouTube.

Now, I think that this is quite important.

Finally, there’s a human element. It’s the one thing that’s been missing from customer care for a very long time.

Is this something that you would love? Is this a feature that you would have used at some point in the future? Is it something that you feel is finally long overdue?

Please leave a comment down below.

Final Words

If you use this feature recently, is there a problem that you might even go to this chat system with?

I’m quite curious to see how this rolls out. Am I part of an open beta or has this gone out to everyone this morning?

Please let me know if you can see that little icon in the top right-hand corner.

And of course, if you’re curious about any other YouTube feature, I’ve got a playlist here and hit “Subscribe“ for more random breaking news videos like this when a feature appears on my dashboard.

Tags chat, contact youtube, customer support, direct chat, instant messenger, YouTube chat, youtube customer support, YouTube support

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

How to Make Money on YouTube Using Other People’s Videos

Post author By Alan Spicer - YouTube Certified Expert
Post date 14 August 2020

Making money on YouTube with other people’s content is certainly possible, though, as you might expect, there are ethical considerations depending on how you go about it.

If you just re-upload someone else’s content wholesale, without any kind of modification, and pass it off as your own, there is no question that it is wrong in every sense of the word, including YouTube’s rules and guidelines.

So, not only would you be doing something generally unpleasant, but you would also likely fall afoul of YouTube’s policies, and lose any monetary gain you might have had.

That being said, there are ways to make money using other people’s content on YouTube that are entirely within YouTube’s terms, and you can do it in ways that won’t have the YouTubers whose content you are using wishing ill fortune on you.

So let’s dive into how to make money on YouTube using other people’s videos!

Stealing Content

There isn’t much more to say about this that we didn’t cover in the intro, but just to reiterate; taking another YouTuber’s content and re-uploading without their permission has very little going for it as a money-making tactic.

It will not make you many friends, you will be competing with the original video for views, and it will almost certainly be a short term thing as YouTube will eventually shut you down when they find out you are stealing content.

It’s best to steer clear of this method entirely.

Getting Permission

We’re going to discuss some methods here that, strictly speaking, could be done without permission from the YouTuber whose content you are using, but it’s always worth getting permission if you can, regardless of whether you need it.

If you can somehow get permission for it, even the above method of just taking someone else’s content and re-uploading it would be fine. We can’t think of many situations where the original creator would be okay with that, but it would be perfectly fine if they did.

But, as a general courtesy, it is nice to ask YouTuber’s if you can use their content, even if it’s only a small clip. And, who knows? They may even share your video.

Getting the permissions itself can be tricky, especially if the YouTuber doesn’t check their spam folder too often.

You should be able to find a contact email address for them in their channel’s “About” page (you may have to prove you’re not a bot in order to see it), though the existence of an email address doesn’t mean anyone is looking at the inbox.

You can also try pinging them on social media. What you want to avoid, however, is spamming them with a barrage of messages across different platforms.

Try to leave a little bit of breathing space between attempts to contact them, as waking up to dozens of notifications in different apps all from the same person may be a bit off-putting.

In your messages, be polite, and it can’t hurt to throw in a compliment about their content. After all; you are wanting to use it. Y

ou should also let them know what you are planning to do with the content you are seeking permission to use, and be honest. Nothing can burn bridges like getting permission to use someone’s content for one thing and then using it for something else, especially if the thing you end up using it for is something the original creator would object to.

Reused Content

As this post is talking about making money specifically, we need to address YouTube’s stance on reused content.

There is a lot of content on YouTube (and other parts of the web) that are fair game for you to use on your channel from a legal standpoint. Creative Commons content and content in the public domain being the main examples of this.

However, being legally allowed to use content does not mean YouTube will let you monetise it. Their monetisation policies specifically call out “reused content” as something that cannot be monetised.

What this means in practical terms is that even though you are allowed—both legally and under YouTube’s terms—to take a video that is licensed under Creative Commons (as long as you give full attribution) and post it on your channel in full, YouTube will not allow you to monetise it unless you have made sufficient modification to it. How these modifications might look is a significant part of the rest of this post, so keep reading.

What About Fair Use?

Fair use is a convention through which copyrighted material can be used without the express permission of the copyright holder or a licensing agreement to use the content in some circumstances.

The content you produce must be “transformative”, which can include commentary and parody, as well as some other kinds of content.

Fair use is often misunderstood to be some kind of shield to protect you against copyright strikes, but that is not how it works. Fair use is a defence—not a black and white policy—and it is determined on a case-by-case basis. That means that, even if you were entirely within the spirit of fair use, you would still have to go to court and make your case if you faced a copyright owner who is aggressive enough with their legal team to take it that far.

One of the problems with fair use on YouTube is their automated content recognition system, which has no concept of fair use and will flag your videos regardless if it recognises copyrighted material.

As sad a state of affairs as it may seem, it would generally make your life much easier if you steered clear of copyrighted content altogether.

How to Make Money on YouTube Using Other People’s Videos

Now that we’ve told you what you can’t do, let’s get into what you can do.

Here we are going to outline some different ways you can make money on YouTube using other people’s videos, as well as how you would go about it and any other relevant information.

Reaction Videos

Reaction videos are more popular than ever and are not limited to movie trailers. Just about any viral video can be good fodder for a reaction video, though it can help to stick within a particular genre or type of video.

For example, Stevie Knight is a popular reaction YouTuber who reacts to rap songs specifically. For the super famous YouTubers, reaction videos can be about anything because the audience is there to see them, whatever they are doing. But for us mere mortals, it’s probably best to find a niche and stick to it.

One of the critical aspects of reaction videos, as obvious as it sounds, is reacting. If you sit and watch a nine-minute video, pulling the occasional face and barely saying anything, you’re not going to make much of an impression.

And you may fall afoul of YouTube’s reuse policy, as they could deem it not to be sufficiently different from the original video.

Needless to say, this type of video is more suited to YouTubers with a lot of personality.

You are banking on people wanting to see you. They can go and watch the original video easily enough, or check out one of the other reaction YouTubers covering this video, and if you are bland and unentertaining, they may do just that.

Be yourself, as well.

Being a reaction, YouTuber will quickly fall apart if you are putting on a persona. Try not to worry about pleasing everyone; it’s an impossible task.

Just be yourself and be consistent with your videos.

Breakdown Videos

Breakdown videos are very similar to reaction videos but a little more technical in nature.

Where a reaction video is all about the… well… reaction, breakdown videos go into detail about the content itself. In fact, the YouTuber we mentioned above, Stevie Knight, would be a good example for this kind of video as well, as he doesn’t just react to rap music, he breaks down the lyrics.

Breakdown videos are also common for political and social commentary, as well as movie trailers and speeches. The aim of a breakdown is either to respond to things in the video or to give your unique insight to the viewers.

If you decide to go down this path, you make sure you have something to offer.

Unlike reaction videos, where a lively personality and a bit of comedy can be enough, a breakdown video needs to add something to the conversation. If you are breaking down the latest Marvel movie trailer, make sure you are well-versed in Marvel lore, so that you can spot things that regular viewers may miss.

Clip Videos

Clip videos can be on a range of topics, such as “Top 10” videos, or “This Week In…”. An example of this can be found on GameDevHQ’s channel, where they have a weekly series that lists off some of the most interesting projects being developed in the Unity game engine.

This kind of video is very appealing to those more camera-shy YouTubers out there, as it doesn’t require you to be on-camera to make content. It would typically take the form of a series of clips with voice-over narration saying something about each clip.

In these cases, as long as the clips are not too long, you can usually claim fair use with regards to your use of the clip, however, as we stated above, fair use, even when used correctly, is no guarantee that you will be free to use the content.

It would be best to get permission from the content owners first, but if you keep the clips short, you should be okay.

Become a Music Content Aggregator/Promoter

This one is a little less conventional, but you could become a channel for promoting unknown musicians.

The idea here would be that you are putting the music videos out on a channel that has more exposure—benefitting the artist—while you run advertisements on those videos.

Whether or not you cut the artists in on the revenue would be up to you, although it will undoubtedly be easier to get artists on board if you are going to pay them.

The main problem with this kind of channel is that it is challenging to get off of the ground, as you need a significant number of subscribers to draw in more popular artists.

One trick could be to use Creative Commons music in the beginning. You would not be able to monetise these videos due to YouTube’s reuse policy, but you wouldn’t be able to monetise in the beginning anyway due to the requirements for joining YouTube’s Partner Programme.

The goal would be to build the channel’s reputation and following up to the point that you can entice up and coming artists to release music through your channel, and hopefully reach a point where all of the content you publish is original.

You can even use cover songs to get your foot in the door and leverage attention. If you need help in making money from cover songs then check out my deep dive blog where I break down the legal points, the fast traffic tips and some great tweaks you can use to get the maximum impact for minimal impact on your pocket.

Mashup Videos

This one requires quite a bit of ability with audio editing software, but you could make mashups of existing music videos.

These tend to be popular when the original videos are from contrasting genres, making the final result something of a novelty that will interest fans of both genres.

One of the most well-known examples of this kind of video is an interesting mashup between Justin Beiber and Slipknot. The less similar to the original songs, the better, or you may get hit with YouTube’s Content ID.

It should be noted that there are legal obligations when using copyrighted music, even if it is only small samples.

You probably won’t end up in a courtroom if you get caught—it is far more likely you’ll get a copyright strike or your ad revenue diverted to the copyright holder—but the possibility is always there when you break copyright law.

What we’re saying here is, strictly speaking, you should get the proper licensing sorted with any copyright holders before creating mashups video. This blog does not endorse doing anything that breaks the law.

You could always license a song from a music supplier such as LickD where you can make cover-songs or mashups and not have to worry about revenue share or copyright clam for the audio. They have a wide selection of popular tracks and you even get your first track for free when you sign up.

Conclusions

You may have noticed that there is still quite a bit of work involved in these various methods.

Unfortunately, there is no way of making money on YouTube with other people’s videos that is simultaneously allowed by YouTube, legal, and does not require some effort on your part.

However you could always try stock video content (for example I use storyblocks for all my b-roll) to pad out your creations and all you have to do is talk over the clips – you wouldn’t even need to show your face.

If that sounds perfect I have 12 Channel Ideas Without Showing Your Face just for you!

Tags copyright, income, make money on youtube, make money online, money, youtube

HOW TO GET MORE VIEWS ON YOUTUBE TIPS & TRICKS VIDEO YOUTUBE YOUTUBE TUTORIALS

Unlimited YouTube Video Ideas In Minutes

Post author By Michel Gerard
Post date 14 August 2020
2 Comments on Unlimited YouTube Video Ideas In Minutes

DO THIS FOR UNLIMITED YOUTUBE VIDEO IDEAS 1

Are you struggling for video ideas? Here is a sure fire way to have unlimited options that are definitely being searched.

[embedyt]https://youtu.be/FZJehuSmVjo[/embedyt]

DO THIS FOR UNLIMITED YOUTUBE VIDEO IDEAS

Here we go. Hello, I’m Alan Spicer, your YouTube certified expert and I know that it’s really hard to get started on YouTube. It’s hard to think of ideas.

When you first get started, you might barrel into ideas. You might have a load in your head. You might have a notebook to get started, but sooner or later, it might just dry up where you get a bit of writer’s block, you’re stuck.

The core problem here happens to be that you want to be creating content that is searched, and being searched for right now, because it’s okay to throw up a video about your travel, it’s okay to throw up a video about your new hair dye or to seat there reading a book, but if you truly want to get caught by search, you need to make sure that you’re actually making content, that people are searching for.

I use this all the time. It’s called the “Alphabet Soup Method.”

If you already know what this happens to be, then fine, please bear with me, right?

I’ll explain why it’s important. But if you have no idea, I’m just about to explode your brain.

YouTube is the second largest search engine on the Internet. The only one that beats YouTube is Google who owns YouTube. So, they’ve been doing this for years. They’ve got 10, 15, 20 years worth of experience of learning what humans want to know, or find, and they understand our searching habits.

This means that you finally get that shortcut to understanding how people find your videos. I do channel reviews for my clients and I did possibly hundreds over the course of the last few months with vid IQ.

So many people make this mistake. Well, you look at their video and they have a fantastic done now, but the title of the video is the name of a series or “Wow, look at this!” or “Yummy cupcake.”

At least “Yummy cupcakes” is a searchable term, but “Wow, look at this!” and “This is a wall” or “We went here.” Nobody is searching for “We went here,” or “I dyed my hair.” Nobody is searching for really obscure Wow titles.

The only reason you get away with Wow is if you’re Casey Neistat or Jake Paul or Logan Paul or Cody Wanner, people who already have an inbuilt baked audience.

For a small YouTube channel, you need to stop pandering to either suggested traffic by uploading a ton of content or search by being smart aboutnhow you title content and how you think your things that you will create. There is no point in making a video that is so ultra niche that the only person that’s going to search for it is you and your mom.

That’s why you can’t just do, “Here’s what I did on my day in my house with my brother” because nobody else cares about that other than your brother.

So, what you do is you go to the search bar and dependent on your niche you start typing your way through search suggestions.

Let’s say I want to do something about cake, so I type in “Make a cake” and you’ll get your search results. But here’s the important thing: “Make a cake a” and it gives you suggestions.

Then, “Make a cake b” and “Make a cake c,” these are your search terms that humans have actively searched for.

So it could be “How to make a cake without eggs, how to make a cake with chocolate, how to make a banana cake, how to make an almond cake,” these are search terms that people have searched for.

And if it doesn’t auto complete, it’s likely that people haven’t gone to look for it.

You could also do this in Google, you type in your keyword or key-search term, “How to make a cake.”

And then you scroll all the way past the results down to the bottom, to the related terms. These are also video topics that you can make.

As you keep clicking through, you can get ultra niche. So it could be, “How to make a chocolate cake with cherries, how to make a chocolate cake with fudge icing.”

The ABC method will give you an unlimited amount of ideas that you can deep dive into. Also, if it was to just do the search results, that’s what I did here to start with: “How to make a YouTube,” and then it was “Playlist, channel, video, end screen, end card, outro.”

You will never run out of topics and you can always cheat by adding a little asterisk as well.

So, “How to * cake?”

What this does is it tells YouTube, “Okay, I want it to be about cake, but I don’t know what it is.”

So it could be, “How to proof a cake, how to ice a cake, how to make a fudge cake brownie.”

The little stars are wild cards and YouTube will auto fill it. And if it auto fills it for you, you’ll see that those are words and phrases that other humans have searched for in such a regular basis, that it becomes a search term.

If you pair that up with something like vidIQ search tool, you can see the competitiveness and the volume.

What you need is low competitiveness and high volume, which means there are so many people searching it, but not enough content to service that need.

Final Words

All you need to do is know exactly the videos you need to make by watching this video right here, remember to subscribe and I’ll see you soon.

And remember if you need more help with your channel with graphics, subtitles, affiliate marketing or more – check out my resource page where I list all my secret tools and websites to supercharge your channel growth.

Tags Alphabet Soup Method, keyword research, suggested keyword, video ideas, youtube ideas, youtube video ideas

SOCIAL MEDIA TIPS & TRICKS VIDEO YOUTUBE YOUTUBE TUTORIALS

HOW TO ADD TIME STAMP CHAPTERS TO YOUTUBE VIDEOS

Post author By Michel Gerard
Post date 14 August 2020

YouTube has added new chapters inside your videos, where you can bookmark certain areas within your content to make it easier, to jump to. A fantastic way to pack in keywords and possibly win that snippet on Google search results.

[embedyt]https://youtu.be/9coVVqAoff8[/embedyt]

HOW TO ADD TIME STAMP CHAPTERS TO YOUTUBE VIDEOS

Let’s go to the computer.

Now, these chapters on videos help break up the video and hopefully help it index in Google search.

As you will see, each one of them have a mini subheading and a scrollable bar along the bottom.

As you jump to specific places, the chapter subtotal total changes next to the time stamp, and it’s a good way to cram in some keywords.

But, if you don’t have them, it’s one long bar that you just scrubbed through slightly blind, and there is no subheading underneath, next to it.

So, you can see the one could be very helpful.

To get started, from your homepage, you click on your avatar and click on “YouTube Studio.”

You go to “Videos” and you find the video that you want to add chapters to.

What I’m going to do is deliberately add chapters to this video, so you can see the difference.

I’m going to take the name of the video. I’m going to search it here. We’re gonna to click “Edit,” and it loads you into the “Video details” page.

The important thing that you need to know here is those chapters are set by time stamps.

Now, I’m going to write, “Timestamp” here, but you don’t have to. The most important thing is starting the time stamps from 0:00.

The next step is to use the mini player here, scrub through the video and make time gaps.

Maybe at the start, I’m talking about how I got to VidCon, maybe in the middle I’m talking about my experience with VidCon, and at the end, maybe I’m wrapping it up.

So I could make time stamps like this.

Now, these can be much more keyword rich. Obviously, if you’re doing a tutorial, it could go through just like a blog. That could be your subtitles.

If I click “Save,” and then I load the video from the link here or any other link for that matter, you will see immediately, the chapters are now added like instantly.

You can see that I can scrub through, each one’s got a mini subheading and it’s ready for you.

Compared to the original one, which once again, didn’t have those chapters.

Final Words

For more helpful YouTube features, there’s a playlist here. Or if you want to know how to self-certify your YouTube videos, let’s say for ads on YouTube, there’s a video here.

Tags time stamps, youtube chapters, youtube videos

DEEP DIVE ARTICLE TIPS & TRICKS YOUTUBE

YouTube Codecs Explained

Post author By Alan Spicer - YouTube Certified Expert
Post date 12 August 2020
3 Comments on YouTube Codecs Explained

If you’re new to the wide and wonderful world of YouTube—or working with any kind of video for that matter—you might have heard of video codecs.

Or perhaps you’re not so new, and you’ve heard of them, but you don’t really understand what they are or what they do. If you are either of these people, this post is for you.

Video codecs are the software and method that is used to compress video. In the case of YouTube, codecs are employed to reduce the size of the video before it is streamed by millions of people across the globe.

It is an essential part of transmitting video, and there are a variety of different flavours available. But what are they? And why are they so important? Read on to have YouTube codecs explained in full.

What is a Codec?

In short, codecs are compression. They are the software and method used to compress a large video file into a smaller video file using clever algorithms that strive to achieve the most significant reduction in size at the expense of as little loss of detail as possible.

Video is an incredibly large medium in terms of raw data—which we’ll get to shortly—and few people who don’t work with video appreciate just how much information is involved. Of course, anyone who edits video in any capacity will be fully aware, and anyone who has ever attempted to edit 4K video on a computer that, while powerful, was nevertheless not up to the task, will appreciate the struggle that video can present.

If you need help in deciding between 1080p and 4K – maybe you are lost and don’t know the difference – check out my deep dive blog on 4K and it could take YouTube by storm!

Codecs don’t typically help with editing, however, but they make life a lot easier on your Internet connection, and given how far our Internet speeds have come in recent years, the fact that there are still effort to improve compression and shrink video files further should serve to highlight how big video can be.

How do Codecs Work?

In the simplest terms, codecs compress information into a smaller size by replacing it with a different set of data that represents the original information.

To give a very simplified example of this, imagine you have a still frame of 1080p video where the top half of the screen is entirely black. Each pixel on the screen has to be accounted for in the data for that still frame, which means there are 1920×540, or 1,036,800 pixels. That’s a lot of data.

However, we don’t need to store every single pixel in our data. Knowing that the next million pixels are the same, we can just say that and be done. Saving the data equivalent of “Black: 1,036,800 times” is a lot more efficient than actually listing black over a million times.

Of course, there is much more to it than that, but it should serve to give you a basic grounding in how codecs do their job. Compression can be taken to extreme levels, of course. Video can be compressed until it is little more than a pixellated blur of what it once was—albeit is a pixellated blur that takes up considerably less space than it once did. Many ingenious techniques are employed to preserve information, but as a general rule, the more compressed a video is, the more of that original information you lose.

“Why is information lost?” we hear you asking. In the above example of a frame that is half black, no information would be lost. The entirety of that black half of the screen would be stored fully intact in the dramatically reduced space we outlined. Real-world applications of compression are not so simple, however.

There are very rarely large portions of a frame that are the same colour in a frame of video, especially a film or TV show. Furthermore, there may not be any smaller areas that are identical. When you consider the depth of colours available and things like film grain, it is entirely possible to have frames of video where there isn’t a single collection of pixels adjacent to each other that are identical. In those cases, the simple compression method we detailed above would be useless.

This is where the information loss comes in. Codecs employ algorithms to decide what is compressible. If you have two pixels that are ever so slightly different shades of blue, they would technically be different but probably not different enough that the human eye could distinguish between the two.

The compression algorithm may count both of these pixels as the same colour, allowing it to reduce the size of the frame slightly.

And, when the video is decoded, it will still look good to our human eyes, but the information of that slightly differently shaded blue pixel is lost, and cannot be recovered from the encoded video.

This is why high-resolution footage with a lot of film grain is hard to compress, because you either can’t get much of a size reduction from the compression, or you lose a lot of that fine detail.

This should hopefully also go some way to explaining why there are so many codecs available. It is not a simple matter of which codec reduces the video size the most, there are preferences to take into account.

Some codecs are more aggressive, others don’t achieve the same degree of size-reduction. Depending on what you are doing with your video, different codecs may be suitable.

Why do we Need Codecs?

Computers are getting more powerful, and Internet speeds are getting faster, but at the same time, media is growing in fidelity.

There was a time not too long ago when our only means of watching video was the equivalent of a 640×480 screen, in what would retroactively be called 480i. For comparison, 1080p—which is considered the bare minimum these days and is even drifting slowly into obsolesce—is 1920×1080. That’s three times more information than the standard definition video we used to watch.

In keeping with this trend, 4K—which is well on its way to replacing 1080p as the defacto standard—is four times larger again. It should be noted that the “4” in 4K is not down to the fact that it is four times the size of 1080p, but rather the fact that the horizontal resolution is nearly 4,000 pixels across.

But 4K itself already has a replacement on the horizon, with 8K screens creeping onto the market. As you might have guessed, 8K is four times larger again than 4K, though we are far from 8K being commonplace in our homes, so we wouldn’t hold off on purchasing that 4K television just yet.

So what does all this mean? It means that despite computers getting more powerful and Internet speeds getting faster, the size of the media we are trying to play is getting similarly more substantial. Exponentially so, in fact. And this is just taking video files into account; there is also game streaming to consider, which Google is getting into in the form of their Stadia service.

And, while this is a gaming platform, it ultimately boils down to streaming live video to your screen, and will likely be a big part of YouTube if it succeeds.

Should I Upload 4K to YouTube? 1 — Two players playing video games on TV at home

To illustrate this point, here is a list of some resolutions and their typical data rate in megabits per second (Mbps). This is the amount of data that is being transmitted per second, whether that is from a Blu-ray drive to your screen, or from a distant server and over the Internet.

Compression Type	Resolution	Bitrate
YouTube @ 60FPS	1080p	4.5-9 Mbps
Blu-ray	1080p	20-30 Mbps
H.264 50Mbps	1080p	50 Mbps
No Compression	1080p	3,000 Mbps
YouTube @ 60FPS	4K	20-51 Mbps
X264 Codec	4K	100 Mbps
Blu-ray	4K	82-128 Mbps
No Compression	4K	10,000 Mbps

We should mention that all of the above compression methods are to a degree where the video is still kept to a high quality.

Of course, it would be possible to significantly reduce the bitrate further with more compression, but that would compromise the quality of the video to the point where it would affect the viewing experience.

Hopefully, that table will illustrate the importance of codecs. Even looking at the raw, uncompressed 1080p bitrate, it is sixty times more data than the typical bitrate that 4K video streamed over YouTube requires. Bearing in mind that 8Mbps is equivalent to 1 megabyte per second, a raw, uncompressed 4K stream would require data transfer rates of over a gigabyte per second.

This would present serious problems for Internet delivery, optical bandwidth in disc drives, and even if you were pulling the information directly from a high-speed solid-state drive, your computer would still need to be up to the task of processing that much information.

Audio Codecs

We’ve been focused on video codecs so far, but the audio is a critical part of the process as well, and the two do not necessarily go together in the compression process. When you encode video, the file name at the end (often .MP4) is little more than a wrapper. For the most part, you can mix and match your video and audio codecs to suit your needs.

As for the audio codecs themselves, there are nuances to compressing audio that differ from video, of course. For one thing, the smaller size of audio means that audio bitrates are typically measured in kilobits per second (Kbps) rather than megabits per second (Mbps).

But the broad strokes are the same as video codecs. They work to reduce the size of the audio by compressing it, often at the cost of some of the information stored.

The Best Codecs For YouTube

The answer what the best codecs for YouTube are is quite a short one since YouTube themselves openly tell us. YouTube prefer you to upload your videos in MP4 format, encoded with the H.264 video codec and AAC audio codec.

As we mentioned above, the file format and the codec are two different things, and YouTube is open to several different formats, such as MOV, AVI, MP4, WMV, MPEG, WebM, 3GPP, and FLV.

What Happens When I Upload Video to YouTube?

If you are already uploading videos to YouTube, you will be familiar with the “processing” phase of the upload process. During this time, YouTube is converting your video to a number of different resolutions.

When you select a different quality in a video—or when YouTube changes the quality automatically due to bandwidth issues—YouTube is not doing that on the fly. All the available quality options on a video are pre-processed and exist as their own video files on the YouTube servers.

Obviously, the capability to upscale your video to higher resolutions than the one you uploaded does not yet exist to the degree that would be feasible to use in this manner, but YouTube will create lower resolution alternatives. The standard definition is typically the first one to be created, though we would generally advise waiting until at least the high definition option has finished encoding, as that will be the most in-demand version.

YouTube has a preference for the codec you upload your video with because the fewer incoming codecs they have to deal with, the more they can optimise their platform and reduce the time it takes to process new video.

If you need help in getting the best setting to render out your video in 4K I have a blog dedicated to everything you need to know for 4K perfect quality, smallest file size and fastest upload times!

Are Codecs Free?

Not all codecs are free; however, the most popular ones that are used today do not cost money to use. While we are on the subject of free codecs, it is worth pointing out that codecs can be dangerous in the same way that downloading an executable file from an untrustworthy source can be.

Codecs can be used to get malicious software onto your computer, or they could just cause serious problems when attempting to playback media. So take care when downloading them, and make sure you are downloading from a verified source.

Summing Up

So, now you have had YouTube codecs explained, why you need them, and how they work (in simplified terms).

Remember, the world of codecs is not static, and new developments happen all the time, especially with new video formats and resolutions popping up from time to time.

It’s worth checking in with YouTube’s help resources occasionally to make sure there haven’t been any developments you should know about.

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.

3. Rev.com helps people read my videos

You can’t always listen to a video.

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.

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.

Tags 4k, 4k codec, 4k video, codec, codecs, codecs explained, video, video codec, video codecs, youtube codec, youtube codecs, youtube explained

TIPS & TRICKS

Do Dislikes Matter on YouTube?

Post author By Alan Spicer - YouTube Certified Expert
Post date 11 August 2020

There are two ways to look at the topic dislikes and whether they matter. The first way is from your audience’s perspective; the second way is from the perspective of the YouTube algorithm.

Both of these perspectives are important, as they will ultimately determine how successful your videos are, though the impact of dislikes on each is markedly different.

So, do dislikes matter on YouTube? Everyone is in a rush these days, of course, so if you’re looking for a quick answer, it is yes. Dislikes do matter on YouTube, and for a variety of reasons. But they do not have a negative affect on ranking or views.

Is this why people beg for likes? Now that is a completely different blog posts, I deep dive into why people ask for likes here.

If you would like to learn more about what those reasons are, and how they affect your channel, read on.

Dislikes and the YouTube Algorithm

Dislikes do have a negative effect on your channel when it comes to the almighty algorithm, but it is an indirect negative effect.

YouTube places a great deal of significance on interaction and engagement, and dislikes fall under that umbrella. So, counter-intuitive as it may seem, dislikes can actually be seen as a positive thing by the YouTube algorithm if there are no other negative factors in play. But what might those other negative factors look like?

Well, if someone watches your video for twenty seconds, hits dislike, and closes the browser, that’s a bad thing. As far as YouTube is concerned, they didn’t like your content, and they left.

In terms of YouTube goals, that’s about as close to a cardinal sin as it gets.

If, on the other hand, they disliked your video but they watched the whole thing, and then went on to watch more videos on YouTube, well, from YouTube’s point of view, you held their attention, got some engagement out of them, and kept them on the site. That’s all good news as far as YouTube is concerned.

Now, even in that last example, there are adverse effects to your channel. YouTube may not penalise your channel’s exposure for dislikes if you are still getting plenty of watch time and engagement, but they do use those dislikes to gauge personal interest. That means there’s a higher chance that the user who disliked your videos will not get your content recommended to them in future.

Furthermore, YouTube may also decide not to recommend your content to other users with similar interests.

So as you can see, YouTube will not directly punish your channel for getting a lot of dislikes, but the indirect results of those dislikes could hamper your growth nonetheless.

But you may want to look into how to boost your retention and keep them watching for longer.

Dislikes and Your Viewers

Much as there are two ways to view the negative impact of dislikes on your channel, there are two significant ways to consider dislikes in relation to your viewers. The first of which is how they react to dislikes on your videos.

The impact that a high number of dislikes has on a viewers desire to watch a video is a little hard to quantify. From a purely anecdotal perspective, it doesn’t seem to make a great deal of difference.

Many people seem to start watching the content based on the thumbnails and titles and don’t even notice dislikes until it occurs to them to leave a dislike of their own. That being said, it is hard to think of a way in which dislikes would not have a negative effect on a viewers willingness to check your content out. At best, they might be indifferent.

The more important thing here is – what those dislikes are telling you about your content?

Remember, disliking a channel takes effort. Granted, it is not much effort, but more effort than not doing anything. YouTubers regularly ask their viewers to like their videos because it works, and it works because viewers just don’t think to hit like button a lot of the time.

What that tells you about your dislikes is that if someone was negatively affected enough to the effort of hitting dislike on your video. In other words; they meant it.

Of course, not every dislike is created equally—especially on the Internet. You certainly should not obsess over every dislike you get, but if you are consistently getting a high number of dislikes on your videos, it might be a sign that you need to rethink your content.

As for what constitutes a concerning number of dislikes, only you can accurately judge that. It is not a simple matter of more dislikes equals worse content for some channels, as there are channels that deal in controversial content, such as political commentary. For channels like this, dislikes should be judged proportionally, rather than as pure numbers.

If your like to dislike ratio is roughly half and half on average, you should take it as a warning sign.

And, just for a moment, even though it is not the target audience of this blog, it’s worth addressing people who are purely YouTube viewers, rather than creators.

It is important to remember that dislikes can happen for a wide range of reasons. It may be that the video quality was poor, or that the title was clickbaity. It could be a purely ideological thing as we mentioned above, or merely a divisive issue—or a divisive YouTuber. Dislikes are not a worthless metric to judge a video’s worth by any means, but let them be your only metric.

Dislikes and Monetisation

A question that will undoubtedly come up around this topic is what impact dislikes have on the earning power of your YouTube channel. Much like the impact on your exposure in the YouTube recommendation algorithm, dislikes do have a negative impact on your earnings, but only in an indirect sense.

Indeed, it is the very same mechanism that can lower your exposure that would also lower your earnings. In short, if fewer people are seeing your video due to fewer recommendations from YouTube, your earnings will obviously suffer.

Another link between dislikes and monetisation comes from the fact that controversial content—which is more likely to attract dislikes—may also turn advertisers off of your content. In this case, both the dislikes and the lack of advertising revenue are a symptom of the same thing, rather than one being caused by the other.

Common Causes of Dislikes

Understanding when dislikes are an indicator that your channel needs attention is only part of the battle. You also need to be able to work out what your channel needs in order to be set back on the right path. To that end, let’s look at some of the more common causes of an increased number of dislikes.

And, just to be clear, we are talking about objective problems here. The things we mentioned earlier, such as divisive issues, cannot be “fixed”. But if you run that kind of channel, you will know all about that.

Fix Poor Video or Audio Quality

If you’ve ever tried to watch a video where the visual quality is poor or perhaps the audio quality is not great in a video where listening to the audio is essential to the content, you will understand the frustration that it can cause.

Of course, improving the quality of your videos can be easier said than done. Recording equipment costs money, and not everyone can afford the latest and greatest cameras and microphones. But if the quality of your videos is causing your channel problems, it should at least be made a priority.

And you should certainly look into any methods of improving your video quality that do not involve spending hundreds or thousands of dollars on new gear.

The good news is that if you are getting dislikes on your video because of the quality, you are doing something right. It means people have found their way to your video in the first place, meaning you must have done a good job at titling your video and creating a thumbnail for it, and you must be providing content that people want to see. Compared to figuring that side of YouTube out, improving the quality of your videos is a relatively easy task.

Avoid Clickbait

One of the most sure-fire ways to generate a lot of dislikes is to use clickbait titles and thumbnails. Understand, when we say “clickbait” we mean the traditional sense of the word—as much as any Internet slang can be traditional—where the title and thumbnail are designed to bring viewers while not necessarily being representative of the content in the video.

There has been a shift in the use of the word recently to refer to any title that is tailored towards catching a viewers interest, regardless of whether it is an accurate representation of the video. In our opinion, a title that accurately portrays what the video is about and makes people want to watch it is a resounding success.

The problem comes when those titles and thumbnails bring viewers in but do not deliver on the promise that got them there. Short cuts rarely work when it comes to YouTube growth, and this is no different. You may see high numbers to begin with, but the annoyance and frustration at your video’s lack of delivery on its promises will generate dislikes. And, whether through a bad reputation or YouTube’s lack of recommendations—or both—any success you gain will start to dwindle.

Stick to the Script

The script, in this case, does not have to be a literal script—we’re not saying that the only path to YouTube success is through carefully scripting your videos and never improvising. What we mean here is that your videos should have a clear purpose, be coherent in the delivery of that point, and not waste the viewers time.

Again, there is a lot of wiggle room in this point. It would be a boring platform indeed if every video put across only the critical aspects of the topic and nothing else. But there is a balance to be struck between a bit of colour and personality, and rambling and waffling on.

Make your videos distinct. Give your viewers a reason to watch your content over someone else’s who covers similar things. But anything that isn’t serving that purpose or delivering the stated content of the video; consider cutting it from your gameplan.

Always Improve

Okay, it’s not exactly the most actionable advice, but a failure to grow as a YouTube channel can also cause you to start picking up dislikes. Even the most diehard of fans will eventually start to tire of your content if it feels stale and overdone.

Being engaged with your community is an excellent way to gauge what might work for your channel, saving you some of the trial and error of making videos and seeing what works.

Of course, we don’t recommend pivoting your whole channel overnight, but introducing new elements and trying new things is rarely a bad idea.

And in those cases, the dislikes can help you determine what works and what doesn’t.

Conclusions

Dislikes can undoubtedly point to problems with your content, though a dislike in and of itself is not necessarily a cause for concern. It is unlikely that the dislikes themselves will hurt your channel, however.

Instead, the damage to your channel will come from the cause of those dislikes, which makes it no less important to address a disproportionate amount of negative feedback on your channel, even if that feedback isn’t actively harming it.

Dislikes can be a great indicator that there are things that need fixing about your content, so it pays to keep a close eye on them. Remember to judge your channel on its own merit, though.

If you are making unobjectionable content—such as software tutorials—you can probably take dislikes as a pure metric on how good your content is. But if you are making something a little less wholesome, such as political commentary or videos about controversial topics, you should probably expect a certain amount of dislikes as a matter of course.

Try to gauge what is normal for your channel, and judge any changes based on that starting point.

And, remember, you can’t please everyone. Don’t ignore dislikes entirely, but don’t let them dictate your channel either. As always, you should strive to find a healthy balance.

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.

3. Rev.com helps people read my videos

You can’t always listen to a video.

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.

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.

Tags dislikes, do dislikes hurt videos, do dislikes matter?, do thumbs down matter, marketing, seo, social media, thumbs down, views, youtube, youtube dislikes

SOCIAL MEDIA TIPS & TRICKS YOUTUBE

Am I Too Old to Start a YouTube Channel?

Post author By Alan Spicer - YouTube Certified Expert
Post date 7 August 2020

Absolutely not.

Okay, that’s not really the end of the post; we’ll dive into this topic as we do with all things YouTube, but if you’re looking for the quick answer to “am I too old to start a YouTube channel?”; – No. You are not too old to start a YouTube channel. Whatever your age. As the saying goes, “It’s never too late to start something new”.

It is, however, perfectly natural to worry about being too old to jump into something that, from the outside, looks very much like a young person’s game.

There several reasons why you might think it’s not for you, and we’re going to lay the biggest ones out for all to see, and then tell you exactly why they shouldn’t stop you from starting up your own channel.

Let’s Talk Numbers

It can help to get over your fear of being “too old” for YouTube if you know some of the numbers around age on the platform. For example, even though YouTube is thought of as a very young person’s platform, you might be surprised to learn that the average age of a YouTuber is closer to thirty. Twenty-seven, to be exact.

Of course, that’s still pretty young, but remember; that’s the average age. That includes extremely popular YouTuber’s that are as young as 16. And, though not strictly in keeping with YouTube’s terms of service, there are YouTuber’s like EthanGamer, who started his channel at seven years of age and had hit a million subscribers by the age of ten!

We realise that highlighting these incredibly young YouTubers may seem counter-intuitive to the point of this post, but remember, we’re discussing the average here. YouTuber’s like Ethan—who even now is only fourteen years old, bring that average age down considerably. For the average to be up around twenty-seven years old, there has to older YouTubers to balance it out.

YouTubers like ThePianoGuys—one of whom is over fifty years old—and Adam Savage—fifty-three years old—prove that you don’t need to be a baby to get going on YouTube. And those are just popular examples. ThePianoGuys rank inside the top 100 YouTube channels (discounting organisations like VEVO), and Adam Savage has over five million subscribers.

There are YouTubers like Gamer Grandma who has a much more modest—yet still very impressive—410k subscribers for her gaming channel. She is ninety years old. And there are many more YouTubers like her who, while not as successful in terms of subscribers counts, are nevertheless enjoying plenty of popularity in a wide range of niches, such as Peter Oakley, an eighty-six-year-old autobiographical vlogger.

It’s also worth noting that YouTube’s reputation as a platform for younger people stems from the earlier days when it really was a platform for younger people. But YouTube has been around for a while now, and those more youthful people have grown up. For example, YouTube veteran, Philip DeFranco, started YouTubing at the tender age of twenty-one years old.

These days he is thirty-four years old and still going strong. To illustrate this, we’ve picked out a few YouTubers from the top fifty channels by subscriber count. Obviously, we’ve left out the large organisations and YouTube channels for big celebrities. Nobody should be looking at T-Series, Eminem, or Ed Sheeran for examples of how to succeed on YouTube.

Who?	Age	Subscriber Count (2020)
PewDiePie	31	106 Million
Knondzilla	31	58 Million
HoySoyGerman	30	41 Million
Filipe Neto	32	39 Million
Fernanfloo	27	36 Million
Luisito Comunica	29	33 Million

So, let’s get to those reasons why you might feel too old to start a YouTube channel, and why you shouldn’t let them stop you.

Personality Clash

As we get older, we tend to become more conservative. Not in a political sense—well, actually, in a political sense as well—but in the sense that we become more introverted as time goes on.

It’s perfectly natural, and it happens to most of us, but on a platform full of bright-eyed, cheerful souls all gleefully welcoming viewers to their videos with bubbly optimism, it is easy to feel intimidated by the prospect of joining that world yourself.

Fortunately, there are many ways to put your videos together, and there is absolutely space for more introverted YouTubers. Many successful channels feature quiet, reserved personalities, people who don’t show themselves on camera, even videos where the YouTuber in question never features at all!

The main ingredient to a successful YouTube channel is providing content that people want to see, and the way you deliver that content is the seasoning. Your particular seasoning maybe to some people’s taste and not to others, but it is the main ingredients that will be the primary determiner of success. So, focus on those main ingredients, and don’t worry about whether you come across as cheerful enough.

And, besides, putting on a personality that just isn’t you is a surefire way to burnout and lost the desire to make videos altogether.

Viewer Demographics

Even if YouTubers themselves are trending older, the people watching YouTube are still young, right?

One of the key aspects of building an audience is being able to appeal to that audience, and there has always been a natural culture-gap between younger and older people.

Not an insurmountable one, of course, and as we mentioned above, the main content of your videos is a more significant factor than the way you deliver it, but it is there nonetheless.

It is certainly not impossible to appeal to people outside of your age bracket, but you might be surprised to learn that 35+ and 55+ are two of the fastest-growing demographics when it comes to people watching YouTube.

Again, it is not impossible to appeal to other age groups than your own, but if you are firmly locked into your own age demographic, there are plenty of viewers for you attract.

Topics

Another reason older people might be dissuaded from creating a YouTube channel is the lack of ideas for engaging content.

Some of the most popular videos on YouTube involve young, handsome people dropping heavy things onto trampolines from a great height, or makeup tutorials, gaming videos, or any number of other things that are decidedly younger in scope.

It can be very easy to look at these videos and think that you have nothing to offer.

However if you need some guidance I have pulled together a list of “older” youtubers within the silver surfer bracket that command huge audiences and prove that age is merely a number and not a road block.

The first point of order here is that you should not let arbitrary limitations hold you back. We’re not saying start-up a parkour channel at the grand old age of eighty-five, but anything you are physically capable of doing should not be considered off the table. Grandma Gamer, who we mentioned earlier, is a prime example of that.

That being said, even if you don’t want to tackle something that might be considered a little young for you, there is no shortage of topics and ideas and niches on YouTube. We mentioned earlier about the growing number of older watchers, and those older YouTube viewers have interests that are similarly skewed.

Don’t get bogged down trying to appeal to a younger audience if what that audience wants isn’t something you are interested in. YouTube viewers span a broad spectrum of interests, from gaming channels to life hacks, from keyboard modding videos to reviews of historical military rations.

Finding Your Place

We have talked about not getting held back by misconceptions of age on YouTube, and what kind of content you could make, but how do you go about finding your voice and choosing your niche on YouTube?

The first thing to address is why you want to make content in the first place. If you have no clear motive, you will struggle to maintain any kind of momentum in your YouTube career. It would, of course, be immensely helpful if that motive aligned with your own interests.

Not only are you far more likely to stick at it if you are genuinely interested in your content, but you are also more likely to make more engaging content in the first place.

Now, there may be other factors in play as to why you are starting a YouTube channel. Perhaps it is a companion channel to something else, such as a blog, a podcast, or a business. Unfortunately, not every venture is a labour of love.

And even if you are making content around a subject you are passionate about; it might sometimes feel like hard work, but there is no sense in making life harder for yourself than it has to be.

There are also people who just enjoy the act of making YouTube content itself, and perhaps you are one of them. People like this often end up vlogging because talking about yourself is a subject we can all be experts in. However, combine a simple desire to make YouTube content with the introverts we mentioned above, and you have a recipe for internal conflict.

If it is the process of making content that appeals to you, but the thought of sitting in front of a camera and talking about yourself a few times a week is unappealing, consider making your videos about something you like, even if you are not an expert in that thing.

YouTube viewers can be very forgiving as long as you are honest with them. And, if you are open about your lack of expertise, you may even find viewers helping you out from time to time.

It can help to do your research before getting started. If you have a particular type of content in mind, find successful channels that are making that kind of content and see what they are doing. Of course, you shouldn’t be looking to copy anyone, but if you see common themes across different channels in your desired niche, there may be a reason for it. That being said, don’t blindly copy themes just because you’ve seen them crop up a lot.

Always try to understand why people are doing what they are doing before using that method yourself.

And, since age is the focal point of this post, it may help to study channels by other YouTubers your age, and see what they are doing. Do they have a young audience? And if so, how are they engaging that audience? Or, if their audience is more on par with their own age, how are they approaching things differently to the younger content creators?

YouTube may still be young, but has been around for a long time in Internet terms, and there it is full of examples of success from all walks of life.

Also, while we would never advocate you starting a channel on something you don’t like, if you do like something that might be considered a typically younger interest, there is plenty of clout to be had in the novelty factor of older people doing younger things, as people like former Vine star and current YouTuber, Jason Nash, have shown.

Jason has essentially made a successful career out of being “too old”, and now has a very popular channel, as shown by the three million subscribers he currently has. In this case, Jason’s age has not only not held him back, but it has also played an active part in his success.

Embrace Your Age

Growing older is a natural part of life, and one we all have to come to terms with eventually.

However—continued advances in medical science, not to mention a much better awareness of health concerns in the workplace and at home—have led to us not only living longer lives on average but living fuller lives in our later years.

People are increasingly taking up—and excelling at—new professions in their forties and fifties. Pensioners are discovering new hobbies in their retirement. And we’ve already talked about the eighty years and up YouTubers who are enjoying great success on the platform.

The paradigm of working your whole life so that you could enjoy a few nice holidays in your retirement are long past, and lots of people are finding fulfillment in their golden years.

If you suspect YouTube could be part of that fulfillment for you, don’t let any stigma about your age get in the way.

Tags oap, oap youtuber, oaptuber, old, older youtuber, silver surfer, too old, too old for youtube, too young for youtube, too young for youtuber, youtube, youtuber

HOW TO GET MORE VIEWS ON YOUTUBE TIPS & TRICKS VIDEO YOUTUBE TUTORIALS

How Important Is Video To Business? [Brand Building]

Post author By Michel Gerard
Post date 6 August 2020

How important would you say video is to a brand, to a business, these days?

Nowadays, I believe the statistic is like 80% of all media consumers is video. If you’re not able to create something visual these days, then you’re missing out a huge chunk of your own market. For different ways, really, a picture paints a thousand words and a video is nonstop pictures.

[embedyt]https://youtu.be/GtizY4bnfy8[/embedyt]

How Important Is Video To Business? [Brand Building]

When it comes to YouTube, it can be shared anywhere, it can index anywhere. You could make an hour long live stream that you can rip content out of the end of days.

If you need help is sharing your content and getting more views check out my deep dive article into best places to share youtube videos for growth.

Like, what are my biggest North stars? It is a guy called Gary Vaynerchuk in which he puts out so much content, but it’s not necessarily for the sake of content today. It’s for the sake of documenting his life, documenting his growth, looking back on trends. He wants to look back in five, ten years time and go, “Look, I called TikTok now.”

And he called like Facebook and LinkedIn.

When it comes to video, what you’ve got to think of is you may be creating a load of videos now that may not necessarily see a return on investment immediately.

Well, I have 450 videos right now on my channel this year, the world decided to sit in doors and netflix my content. The way it basically worked is because I had back catalog, I was able to grow up that attention.

So at the start of my channel, I was getting 20, 30, 50 views a day, and now I’m getting around about 7,000 or 8,000 views per day.

I’m growing at a rate of about 1,400 or 1,500 subscribers a month right now because the power of the compound interest of every single one of those videos helps you grow further and faster.

The advantage of each one of these videos and the compound interest that you can get with these videos is that now that I am growing at the rates of 1,400 or 1,500 subscribers per month, that also feeds into the affiliate marketing, that feeds into any client who places requests.

I’ve got 450 videos that are testimonials to the knowledge that I’ve learned through my hobby, and hopefully over time, you watch 5, 10 or 20 of my videos. You trust that I know what I’m talking about, and then you’ll reach out or your suggest me or you use one of the tools that I may suggest in one of the videos.

I’m not directly hard selling to you, but I have such a wide spider web that I continue to capture the flies in that, that then monetary helped me, my business or my brand.

Final words

Right now, if you want to see the full interview, click on this video here, remember to subscribe for regular tips and tutorials, and I’ll see you soon.

Tags more video views, videos for business, youtube videos