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?
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
Finding information about YouTube videos isn’t that difficult.
There is a wealth of data from the platform itself, not to mention videos and blog posts like this one.
Add to that the analytics that you can access behind the scenes on your own videos, and browser plugins like TubeBuddy that let you easily view stats on other YouTuber’s videos or VidIQ to help you out rank your rivals, and you’ve probably got more information than you know what to do with.
But there’s more, thanks to YouTube’s Stats for Nerds.
As the name suggests, Stats for Nerds provides some very technical information on specific videos, but the information is useful in some cases and just downright interesting in others.
Granted, this feature isn’t for everybody, but in this post, we will explain what it is, where you can find it, and what you can do with it. So keep reading for YouTube Stats for Nerds Explained.
What is YouTube Stats for Nerds?
On any YouTube video, if you right-click or control-click on the video, you will be presented with a contextual menu. In this menu, you will find a few options, such as the ability to set the video to loop, copy the URL of the video, copy a timestamped URL to share the specific location in the video, and few others.
However, the one we are interested in is right at the bottom. There you should see the eponymous Stats for Nerds option. Clicking that will bring up a box full of information in the top left-hand corner of the video.
The data in here can look a little bit intimidating when you don’t know what you are looking at, but don’t worry, we are going to go through each bit of information it presents and explain what it is.
Video ID / sCPN
The first part of this field—Video ID—is self-explanatory. This is the alphanumeric ID number that is associated with this video and can be used to access the video through things like YouTube’s API.
If you look in the address bar of your browser, you should be able to spot this number in the address of the video page you have open. The format will be “youtube.com/watch?v=” followed by the number.
There may also be other information after the number, such as arguments telling YouTube that you are looking at a video in a playlist, or that you have come to this video with a specific timestamp. The ID number itself will always be eleven digits long. That is unless YouTube runs out of video IDs and is forced to make ID numbers longer.
However, given that the current system allows for over seventy quintillion videos which, as YouTuber Tom Scott put it, is enough for every person on the planet to upload a new video every minute for the next eighteen thousand years, is unlikely to happen any time soon.
The second part of this field—sCPN—is a unique string that developers can use to identify your specific playback of the video.
This can help with debugging problems since your particular watch of the video can be analysed, allowing developers to determine what factors might have contributed to the problems that were experienced.
Viewport / Frames
The viewport resolution is a little like video resolution; only it is the actual resolution you are viewing, rather than the resolution of the video itself.
YouTube will always endeavour to show videos at the lowest resolution they need to without compromising on quality—there is no sense in showing a video at 4K resolution if the viewer is watching on a 1080p screen. But YouTube can’t always guarantee that the viewport will be a size that they have pre-processed.
For example, a standard YouTube video that is not full-screen or in theatre mode on a 1080p screen will be 1280×720 or 720p. This is a resolution that YouTube pre-processes, meaning they can play the video without any issue. However, if you resize your window to be smaller, the viewport may shrink, forcing your browser to scale the video to suit.
The viewport field will give you the exact resolution the video is currently displaying at, regardless of the incoming resolution of the video.
The frames value shows you the frame you are currently viewing. Another way to think of it is the number of frames that have been played so far. It is worth remembering that frames are not equivalent to time, since the frame rates can be different.
For example, 100 frames of a 30fps video represent half as much time as 100 frames of a 60fps video, since there are twice as many frames packed into the same amount of time in a 60fps video.
You will notice that this part of the data does not just show a number, but two numbers with “dropped of” in-between. If all is going according to plan, the first number should be zero. This is telling you how many frames have been dropped so far.
Dropped frames can happen for several reasons, but the most common cause is computer hardware being unable to keep up with the video playback. Rather than stalling the video, frames get dropped, and you get a kind of stuttering effect as the video skips over the dropped frames.
Current / Optimal Res
The current resolution is the resolution in which the video is being played at that moment. This can change depending on the circumstances, such as what your device’s maximum resolution is, and what connection speed you are working with.
For example, YouTube will throttle video if your connection gets too slow to maintain the current playback resolution, which can happen due to mass-congestion on your ISP, or more local issues, like someone else in the building hogging all of the bandwidth. Similarly, YouTube will not automatically serve a large resolution to a screen that can’t display it, such as delivering 4K to a 1080p screen, or 1080p video to a 720p screen.
You can force YouTube to send the larger resolution anyway by changing the quality setting in the little cog menu at the bottom of the video, but you would be wasting bandwidth as the video would still need to be scaled down to fit on your screen.
The optimal resolution can also be thought of as a “target” resolution, and will often be the maximum resolution your device can display. This means that YouTube will endeavour to display the content at this resolution, but will not attempt to go to a higher resolution. If the video is only available in lower resolutions, such as a 1080p video on a 1440p screen, then the optimal resolution will be 1080p.
The current resolution can be dropped down from the optimal resolution for all of the reasons mentioned so far, such as insufficient bandwidth, viewport resizing, and you manually setting the quality lower.
Volume / Normalized
The first part of this stat is simple. The volume shows where the volume slider currently is as a percentage, with 0% being all the way to the left, and 100% being all the way to the right. The second part of this stat is a little trickier to explain, however.
“Normalized” refers to the normalisation of the audio, which is how YouTube protects your ears from drastic volume variation in a video. Think of this as an adjustment. If the normalised volume is 80%, then you turning the volume down to half will make the actual volume 40%, rather than 50%.
The final stat here is the “content loudness” value, which refers to your videos loudness level in comparison to YouTube’s reference level. The reference level is how YouTube ensures that there are no dramatic differences between different videos on their platform, which would be jarring to anyone who is just enjoying a bit of downtime and letting YouTube take the wheel with regards to what they are watching.
It is this value that is used to determine the normalisation amount, as YouTube attempts to bring this video in line with their reference volume. This value will not change based on any action taken by you, such as moving the volume slider. In fact, it is fixed at the point of upload, and would only change if the video was edited to adjust the volume, or YouTube changed their reference volume.
Codecs
The codecs field shows you the codecs that were used to compress the video and audio.
This is different from the filename, which is little more than a container.
Different codecs compress audio and video in different ways, and you must have the appropriate codecs installed on your device in order to playback video that uses them.
Connection Speed, Network Activity, and Buffer Health
The next three fields have been lumped together because they are all related, though they each get their own line in the Stats for Nerds window. Unlike the other stats, these are represented as a realtime graph.
The connection speed, as you might have guessed, is the speed at which your device is accessing the YouTube servers. This is determined thanks to the fact that YouTube knows the size of the data being transmitted, and can tell how quick your connection is by timing how long it takes for that data to arrive.
You should not rely on this as a means of testing your Internet connection speed, however, as there are other factors that come into play that YouTube’s Stats for Nerds window won’t necessarily factor.
The network activity field represents the actual data transmission. You should see this number drop to zero if you pause the video, and it will scale with the video quality. 4K video requires considerably more data transfer, so the network activity will be higher for 4K than for 1440p or lower.
Next, we come to our buffer health.
Internet connection speeds fluctuate, it is an unavoidable reality of the technology. This fluctuation is usually minimal, but it would be enough to cause problems if you were playing video directly from the data being received.
Buffers help to avoid stuttering by loading a little way ahead and allowing the video to be played from the buffer, rather than the direct connection.
This means that should a fluctuation in the connection speed cause the data stream to drop slightly, the video can keep playing smoothly, and the buffer can catch back up when the speed fluctuates back the other way.
As a general rule, the lower your buffer health, the more likely you are to experience stuttering in your video.
Mystery Text
There is no official word on what the mystery text means; however, there have been some very plausible attempts to decipher it.
The general consensus is that it contains various coded pieces of information about the current state of the video, such as whether it is paused or not.
If you are experiencing issues in your playback, you can use these stats to determine if the problem lies with your connection, your codec, or something else entirely. If you suspect you are not receiving the correct video size for your device, you can use these stats to determine what YouTube considers the optimal resolution for your device.
As a YouTuber, you can use these stats to ensure you are getting things like your volume right.
While it is nice that YouTube adjusts the volume of your video, the less that YouTube has to do to modify it, the closer to your original video it will be, so this information can help you reduce the amount of altering YouTube has to do on the next video you upload.
Regardless of how you want to use Stats for Nerds, or even if you need to use them at all, they represent a very useful little tool for us mere YouTubers and viewers to make use of.
And what is more impressive about this tool is the fact that you do not need a YouTube account to be able to access it. If you are not logged in, the Stats for Nerds option will be right there in the same place.
And, when you are done analysing the data, you can close the Stats for Nerds window by hitting the little [x] in the top right-hand corner of the Stats for Nerds window.
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.
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.
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 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.
Are you struggling for video ideas? Here is a sure fire way to have unlimited options that are definitely being searched.
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.
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.
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.
Covering popular songs is an excellent way for musicians to gain exposure through YouTube.
The popularity of the song can draw people into your channel where you can show off your talent, skill, and, hopefully, your unique style.
Unfortunately, copyright is a serious roadblock to monetising this kind of content.
The music industry has been and still is one of the most aggressive industries when it comes to protecting their intellectual property, which has led to some less-than-fair policies being put in place by YouTube in order to mollify record labels. Policies such as granting copyright owners the ability to claim ad revenue from your video, even if the video contains more than just their music.
This may save YouTube a great deal of expense compared to paying people to hunt through an absurd amount of video, but it can lead to problems for cover artists, such as Seth Everman’s cover of Billie Eilish’s Bad Guy. As Seth’s pinned comment states, the cover was instantly flagged for copyright despite being made using household items such as couch cushions and pots and pans.
So how, then, do you go about monetising this kind of content? Fortunately, there are plenty of ways, so read to discover how to make money doing covers on YouTube.
The Basics
Before getting into how you can make money doing covers on YouTube, it is important to have a basic grasp of the legalities of cover songs. We say “basic” because we’re not going to attempt to explain actual law to you—this is a YouTube blog, and there are no lawyers here.
The long and short of it is that in order to legally make money from a cover song, you would have to have agreements in place with the songwriters and publishers, and the licenses you would gain from this would almost certainly require you to pay royalty fees.
This may be fine for an established musician who is going to release a cover song through traditional channels, but it is not exactly practical for a small YouTube musician who is just looking for a little added exposure, or merely wants to cover their favourite song.
YouTube have mechanisms in place to remove the need for every YouTube cover to have an individual licensing agreement in place in the form their Content ID system, but this doesn’t help with monetisation and, depending on the rights holder, can result in your video being blocked in certain countries—or blocked altogether.
So, now we’ve told you why you can’t make money from covers on YouTube, let’s get into how you can make money from covers on YouTube.
YouTube Partner Programme
Here’s the good news; the YouTube Partner Programme has provisions for cover songs that allow you to share revenue easily between you and the relevant entities with little more than a few clicks.
The bad news? This only applies to songs that are part of an agreement with rights holders to enable this kind of thing.
Now, granted, there are a lot of songs included in these deals, with plenty of popular songs and current hits among them. But it is not everything, and you may find yourself wanting to cover something that is not part of YouTube’s deal and thus cannot be monetised in this way.
For the songs that are part of the deal, you will be able to share the revenue with the rights holders, and you will get be paid on a pro-rata basis.
This is one example of how to make money doing covers on YouTube, but it is not exactly a reliable method, and even when it works, you are getting a reduced percentage of YouTube revenue, which has already gained a reputation as a less-than-stellar way to get paid for your time.
The actual rate you get paid may vary, but you shouldn’t expect to see more than 40% of the revenue your videos generate. So let’s look at other ways you can earn money from your cover songs.
Promote Original Music
It will likely seem obvious to many YouTube cover artists since a lot of you will have gotten into cover songs as a means to bring attention to your channel and promote your own songs. This very method is one of the best ways you can parlay your cover song success into YouTube revenue.
Be sure to put your own spin on the covers you perform, however.
The goal is to draw people in with your unique style and take on the song, and then providing your viewers with a call to action like, “If you like this, why not check out my original song…”, and it will be considerably less effective if your original songs are entirely different in tone and style to your cover songs.
There is no barrier to monetising original content, so you are free to monetise an original song through YouTube’s Partner Programme, get sponsors, or do anything else you would be free to do with your own intellectual property.
Promote Live Performances
In much the same way your cover songs can be used to promote your original music, they can also be used as a means of getting eyeballs on any upcoming shows you are playing.
It is common for established musicians to make a substantial portion of their income from live performances, so it will likely be something a serious musician will want to get into regardless—especially since live performances can make up almost all of your income as a musician just getting started.
If you go down this route, make sure you have easy to find links and information regarding your live shows.
You want your viewers to have to put in as little effort as possible if they decide to come out to see you live, so don’t force them to hunt around for the right links and dates.
If you go to the trouble of creating a cover song for YouTube, don’t feel like you have to limit it to just that platform. There are many outlets to sell music digitally these days, without the need for recording deals or record labels. If you make a popular cover, giving viewers the option to buy the song or listen to it on other revenue-generating platforms like Spotify and iTunes is a great way to earn some extra money.
Of course, the issues with licensing and ownership are still there, and we would not recommend you just putting a song out there without ensuring you go through the proper channels. Fortunately, there are plenty of music distribution services out there for small artists, and many of them have provisions set up for cover songs, meaning you can release them entirely legally.
Every platform is different, and this is a YouTube blog, so rather than explaining the process, here are a few of the top music distribution platforms that allow you to release cover songs to services like Spotify.
This is an excellent method of earning money through YouTube regardless of what the actual content is because it serves not only as a revenue source but also as an endorsement of your channel.
Since people who contribute are actively choosing to do so, you will benefit from a dedicated fanbase who are more likely to want to support financially.
There are several ways to go about setting this up, with Patreon being the most prominent and popular example. There are also platforms like Ko-Fi, as well as simply accepting donations directly through a payment processor like PayPal.
If you decide to try this method of earning money from covers, consider giving incentives to your supporters. Such incentives can be as little as a thank you at the end of a video, or they can be as much as tickets to a live show, or merchandise included as a thank you.
It could also be early access to videos or exclusive content.
The point is that by providing supporters with something extra, you not only make them feel appreciated, but you incentivise others to support you as well.
Making Your Cover Videos
Knowing how to monetise your covers is a relatively small part of the battle. Before you worry about that, you should be working on giving your videos the best chance of success you possibly can.
Now, as far as the music goes, that’s all on you.
Music is a very subjective medium, and you will no doubt have your own style and genre preferences when you perform.
All you can do there is make the technically best version of whatever it is that you want to make.
But regarding the video itself, there are things you incorporate that will help you succeed as a YouTube cover artist.
Create Engaging Videos
While it is generally true that the content speaks for itself, it is not that simple with cover songs. It is not merely a matter of making great music and hoping that the quality will shine through because there are so many talented musicians making music on YouTube.
Consider including the lyrics in your video, possibly in a fun animated way, and at the very least shoot something with you playing the song.
You want viewers to connect with you, and they are unlikely to do that if they never see you.
Be Creative
There are only so many ways you can cover a song in a way that is still appealing to a large enough number of people. And, with the amount of YouTube musicians out there doing cover songs, the number of unique takes there are left for popular songs are starting to become a little scarce.
Of course, you can always cover less popular songs, but the problem there is that less popular music means less interest in your cover song.
Don’t be afraid to get creative with your cover.
We mentioned Seth Everman’s Bad Guy video earlier on. Even though that particular cover was a comedic video, rather than a straight music video, it nevertheless generated a lot of interest for the unconventional way he played the song.
We’re not saying you should cover a song using furniture exclusively as your instrument, but looking for new and creative ways to make your cover videos is an excellent way to get noticed.
Another great example of this is Postmodern Jukebox, a channel that exclusively creates covers of contemporary songs in the style of classic genres from as far back as the early 1900s. Their videos feature a full band accompaniment with everyone dressed in the style of the era they are emulating and make for a fascinating watch.
Another example is mashups, where more than one song or style is brought together to create something new. A very popular example of this is 10 Second Songs, where the talented Anthony Vincent performs songs in the style of a variety of different artists.
Keep An Eye Out For Trends
Trend-chasing can feel a little “dirty” to some, but cover videos are an extremely competitive space, and it will take a lot of effort—and not a small amount of luck—to get established in this niche. By putting out your own take on a popular trend, you can bring new viewers to your channel.
And the good thing about this kind of viewer is they will have subscribed because they liked your take on the song, which means they are more likely to stick around.
Trends can come in many forms, such as old songs that inexplicably get a second life (see: Rick Rolling) or new viral hits that take the world by storm.
Whatever the trend, be sure to stay true to your unique style because ultimately, you want people to come to your channel for you, not a version of you that you put on once.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Now, this is one of those questions that many people ask. It’s just they have no idea. If you’re jumping onto the YouTube platform right now, then there are many legacy features that have been around for literally over a decade now that used to be much more specific for this platform that has slowly got less and less important over time.
What Are YouTube Categories? [Do They Matter?]
Categories specifically put you in buckets based on what content you create, how to, style, business, money, food, finance, people, education.
I’ll be honest, I’m not totally sure what the list is anymore, mainly because it doesn’t matter.
Back when the platform was in infancy, you highlighted specifically what your content was about. If yours was comedy, then there would be specific areas on the site. You could go to only comedy videos and there would be specifically only people videos.
The way the YouTube algorithm currently works, it doesn’t matter. What you need to focus on is the title, the descriptions, kinds of your tags, and then the audience that it pushes out to.
There is no relation to the category you are in to the views that you get. If I was to switch this video from educational to gaming, I’m not going to get more gamers watch these videos.
Now, there might be something way back in the legacy algorithm that specifically recommends you against specific things, but it’s highly unlikely nowadays.
This machine is very powerful and very clever. So you shouldn’t be homing over the fact that what I do, ‘how to videos’, am I an how-to in style or am I an educational channel?
What you need to focus on is the content you create on a regular basis. If you stick to one niche and you’re not doing cooking on Thursday, knitting on Friday, and then skydiving on Sunday, followed by car repair on Tuesday, as long as you’re niched, then YouTube knows that’s your niche.
Because over time you have a hundred videos and those hundred video tags, all points into that kind of direction that say a hundred of your videos are all about cars. All of those tags would all be automobile based, and old cars, spark plugs and repairs.
It is very highly unlikely that out of those 100 videos, you’ve tagged it like a knitting pattern tutorial.
That’s one of the reasons why focusing on a niche can be so important and powerful mainly because it establishes your niche in your viewers’ mind, rather than YouTube in itself.
It’s just one of those questions that nags at you, because it’s still there. It’s still in the system and it hasn’t been removed.
Final words
It’s just like people saying, “Do you get paid for likes?”
I’ve got a video here, and if you’ve got a question about anything, no matter how small or weird or stupid, leave it in the comment section and subscribe, so you get to see the answer.
You’ve seen a million YouTubers doing it—”please like and subscribe and ring that bell!”.
Whether it’s a verbal reminder at the end of the video, a graphical popup part-way through, or something else, it seems every YouTuber on the platform wants you to like their video.
But why do YouTubers ask for likes? Likes play a significant role in the success of a YouTube channel. Likes, comments, shares and even dislikes are a form of engagement and is a positive sign that plays into the youtube ranking algorithm.
Reason 2 – Simple validation would be a sensible enough explanation. After all, social media is largely predicated on the fact that people are constantly seeking external validation.
Now, we’re not saying that those YouTubers who ask you to like their video aren’t still seeking that juicy external validation—they very well maybe—but that’s almost certainly not all there is to it.
Well, actually, yes. But, as always, we’re not going to just skim the surface of this topic, so let’s dive a little deeper.
Do Likes Make YouTuber’s Money?
It’s reasonable to assume that, if asking for likes is not purely a vanity thing, it must be a monetary thing. The truth about this aspect of YouTube is a little fuzzier than you might think. We can say, quite clearly, that likes do not make YouTubers money.
Kind of.
When you click like, the YouTuber you are watching doesn’t get a few cents dropped into their Adsense account.
However; you are improving the standing of that channel in the eyes of the almighty YouTube algorithm, and that makes their channel more likely to succeed financially going forward. To understand how this works, it helps to understand what YouTube looks for in its content creators.
Engagement Is King
YouTube is in the business of watch time and engagement.
Even a rudimentary understanding of online marketing will tell you that having a smaller number of engaged fans/viewers/customers is far better than a more significant amount of disinterested ones.
This is why business owners are willing to pay extra for targeted advertising—because they know a hundred ad impressions with the right people are more valuable than a thousand ad impressions with random viewers. Those hundred ad impressions are far more likely to yield leads because the people watching the ad are already predisposed to want the thing you are advertising.
YouTube think along the same lines when it comes to viewers. Now, at the end of the day, an ad impression is an ad impression. YouTube get paid if someone watches an ad regardless of whether that viewer was engaged.
But they place far less value on viewers who are not engaged than they do on ones who are. In short, it is the engaged viewers that YouTube are looking for, and it is the channels that create those engaged viewers that YouTube likes to promote the most.
How Do Likes Help With Engagement?
Simply put, a like is an engagement because it is an extra action that the viewer takes that they didn’t have to.
Sure, it’s not a particularly intensive action—it doesn’t take much effort to click a button—but it does take some effort, and that effort shows that the viewer is more engaged than the millions of viewers who don’t click like.
Also, a significant amount of viewers just don’t think about the like button when they are browsing. It is not a statement on the content they are watching; it just doesn’t occur to them to like the video.
When, like YouTube, you are dealing with two billion users a month, even small changes in the percentage of users that like videos can represent a ridiculous number of people.
Do Dislikes Hurt a Video?
The next question that usually follows this discussion is, if likes are so good for a video, are dislikes bad for the video? And, actually, no. At least; not inherently.
Sure, if someone dislikes your video, closes the tab, and never comes back to YouTube, that will reflect poorly on your content, and YouTube’s algorithm will factor that in. However, the action of disliking a video when considered in a vacuum is still engagement.
That means that if your viewers give your video the thumbs down, but then go on to watch more videos, it’s all good as far as YouTube is concerned. They still see that as engagement, and, as the viewer stuck around, there’s no downside.
Where it could be considered detrimental to a channel to dislike a video, however, is in your personal recommendations. Those videos YouTube put down the side when you’re watching something; they’re based on a lot of data, including your likes.
If you repeatedly like a particular kind of video, you will see more of that kind of video. If you like a lot of videos by a certain YouTuber, you will see more videos by that YouTuber.
Naturally, if you dislike videos, you are less likely to see that kind of video in future, or the YouTuber behind it. How much an individual dislike affects a video’s overall recommendation is unclear, but it certainly affects whether or not it will be recommended to you.
Watch Time Matters
Of course, there’s more to it than merely liking and disliking videos. YouTube wants to see that engagement, whether it is liking, disliking, or leaving comments, but watch time is the ultimate gatekeeper to a YouTuber’s success.
You see, it is watch time that is YouTube’s endgame metric when it comes to measuring success.
The more time people spend on YouTube, the more opportunities there are to serve those people advertisements and the more money YouTube makes.
Watch time is the single, most important metric in the YouTube algorithm’s decision-making process.
This is why we specified that dislikes are not harmful in a vacuum. There is nothing inherently damaging about getting a thumbs down, but there may be damaging implications.
If a viewer dislikes your video and then leaves the site altogether, the fact that they left YouTube from your content will count against you in the eyes of the algorithm, even if the thumbs down itself doesn’t.
Why is Engagement Important?
So, if watch time is so important, why does engagement matter at all? Well, it’s true that watch time is the significant metric that YouTube covets above all, but engagement is still an important part of their decision making processes.
Engagement shows that a YouTuber is not just drawing in casual, disinterested viewers, but active viewers who are involved in the platform. These viewers are far more likely to pay attention to advertisements and, as a result, click on them when they see one they like.
It is also the case that engagement is only possible from a signed-in YouTube account. YouTube does count views and watch time from anonymous viewers, but it is considerably more challenging to provide relevant advertisements to these viewers.
And, as we covered earlier in the post, it is the highly targeted advertisements that companies prefer to pay for since they yield better results.
If you want to know how to book that yield and get better cpm advertising rates, helping you make more money from your videos, check out my deep dive blog into how to increase youtube video cpm.
High levels of engagement are an indication that your videos are attracting logged-in YouTube users who can be served relevant ads based on their preferences and watch history, and that makes YouTube happy since targeted advertisements are both worth more and more likely to be clicked.
It Works
All of this is digging a little deeper than most YouTubers are thinking, however.
While there are plenty of YouTubers that are fully informed about the intricacies of YouTube’s algorithm, there are far more that don’t concern themselves with that level of detail, but nevertheless know that likes are a good thing for their channel.
And, of course, a good number of YouTubers that are purely after that external validation we mentioned earlier. So, for those YouTubers, why bother asking their viewers to like the content?
Quite simply; because it works. YouTuber after YouTuber has experimented with asking viewers to like a particular video as a way of testing if it makes a difference, and they invariably find that it does. It may be because a lot of viewers simply don’t think about liking until they are prompted, or that they didn’t think liking was that important to this particular YouTuber.
Whatever the reason, asking viewers to like a video has been proven time and time again to be effective. So regardless of why a specific YouTubers wants those likes, they know that asking for them will usually get them.
Tips on Asking for Likes
As silly as it might sound, there is something of an art to asking for likes in a YouTube video.
Doing it incorrectly most of the time will just be ineffective; however, there is also a chance you could actively put viewers off of liking your video or even watching future videos.
One of the first recommendations we would make is to avoid asking people to like (and subscribe, for that matter) right up top. In the case of subscribing, at least wait until you’ve introduced your channel, so the viewer knows if your content is the kind of thing they would even want to subscribe to.
In the case of likes, however, it is often seen as presumptuous to ask your viewers to like a video they haven’t even seen yet. This can create a sense of resentfulness and may even result in viewers refusing to like the video even if they did find the content useful or entertaining.
It is good practice to wait until approximately halfway through the video before considering using any visual cues, such as a “like and subscribe” graphical popup, and to wait until the sign off to verbally ask your viewers to like the video. By this time, your viewers will know whether they do, in fact, like the content.
Another tip is to ask, rather than tell. If you just say, “like the video” once again it can be seen as a bit presumptive. Instead, say something like, “if you liked the video, consider giving it a thumbs up”. That way, you are merely giving your viewers a polite, gentle reminder that the like button is there, but leaving it entirely up to them to decide if they think you have earned it.
Which brings us to the final suggestion we can make for getting those likes; earn it. All the YouTube science in the world won’t help you with subpar content. Before worrying about reminding viewers to click the like button, make sure you have worked out all of the major kinks in your videos. Your content doesn’t have to be perfect—few YouTube channels are—but any glaring problems should be addressed before you start asking people to give you a thumbs up.
Conclusions
There was a lot to cover there, but the basic theory behind likes can be summed up easily.
Likes are a significant metric that YouTube uses to determine which content to recommend to people, though they are by no means the only metric. They play a vital role in personal recommendations.
That is, if you like a particular type of video a lot, YouTube will endeavour to show you more of that kind of video. Dislikes can also play a positive role in your channel’s exposure, as can comments (regardless of the content).
All of it is as seen as engagement that your content is creating, and YouTube likes to see plenty of engagement.
All of this is secondary watch time, however. The longer people spend on YouTube, the better. And if they happen to be spending vast amounts of time on your videos, that will reflect very well for you in the YouTube algorithm.
Finally, don’t be presumptive about your viewer’s opinions. Ask them to like your videos, don’t tell them to. And only do so at a point in your video where there has been enough content for your viewer to judge if they do actually like it.
None of this guarantees you likes, of course. The only thing that can do that is quality content. But by knowing how the system works, you are better placed to leverage that quality content when you make it.
Top 5 Tools To Get You Started on YouTube
Very quickly before you go here are 5 amazing tools I have used every day to grow my YouTube channel from 0 to 30K subscribers in the last 12 months that I could not live without.
1. VidIQ helps boost my views and get found in search
I almost exclusively switched to VidIQ from a rival in 2020.
Within 12 months I tripled the size of my channel and very quickly learnt the power of thumbnails, click through rate and proper search optimization. Best of all, they are FREE!
2. Adobe Creative Suite helps me craft amazing looking thumbnails and eye-catching videos
I have been making youtube videos on and off since 2013.
When I first started I threw things together in Window Movie Maker, cringed at how it looked but thought “that’s the best I can do so it’ll have to do”.
Big mistake!
I soon realized the move time you put into your editing and the more engaging your thumbnails are the more views you will get and the more people will trust you enough to subscribe.
That is why I took the plunge and invested in my editing and design process with Adobe Creative Suite. They offer a WIDE range of tools to help make amazing videos, simple to use tools for overlays, graphics, one click tools to fix your audio and the very powerful Photoshop graphics program to make eye-catching thumbnails.
Best of all you can get a free trial for 30 days on their website, a discount if you are a student and if you are a regular human being it starts from as little as £9 per month if you want to commit to a plan.
3. Rev.com helps people read my videos
You can’t always listen to a video.
Maybe you’re on a bus, a train or sat in a living room with a 5 year old singing baby shark on loop… for HOURS. Or, you are trying to make as little noise as possible while your new born is FINALLY sleeping.
This is where Rev can help you or your audience consume your content on the go, in silence or in a language not native to the video.
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.
When you start out as a YouTuber, you are trying to achieve many things at once.
Most of your time is spent on thinking about content ideas, filming it, and learning how to edit it into a great video. With, perhaps, a bit of time dreaming about what you’ll spend your YouTube earnings on too!
But, eventually, you get to a point and think ‘hang on, how do I promote my youtube channel?’
You’re working from a standing start. You don’t have the budget for ad buys or an existing following from another platform to leverage.
Well, to get the ball rolling, and the subscribers racking up, you’ll need to spend a little elbow grease. Do some hard work. Because at the start you need to do all you can to get your name out there.
This means cross-promotion on social media networks. You need to be your own distribution network at the start, and create a spiderweb of content to catch your viewers. Then, well, it’s down to the quality of your content to then turn those initial viewers into long-term subscribers.
This blog post covers the big-four social media platforms you should be cross-posting your content on, how often you should do it, and what kind of material to publish.
Let’s get going.
A Brief Word of Caution.
The following tips won’t work unless you are a consistent YouTuber.
You can undertake all the promotional activity you like, but if you don’t regularly upload compelling content to YouTube, then your channel is set for failure. Mr Beast uploaded content for five years before his channel took off. Five years!
The content you’ll post to Twitter has a very short shelf life, in most cases, only a matter of hours. So it’s fine to post out lots of links to your content.
Look for a few popular hashtags that tend to trend frequently, rather than one-offs that happen to be trending at any particular moment. Don’t copy spammers and use hashtags that are not related to your content. You’ll only end up annoying Twitter users.
While following hashtags on Twitter is not possible, people do have favourites that they regularly look up so they can see the latest.
If users see your content under that hashtag, and it’s excellent, then you may get a new follower. Once you gain followers, then you can post out links to your channel and invite them to watch your content over on YouTube.
Think about what you tweet, though. Before you tweet, think carefully about what you’ll write – ask yourself ‘why would people care about this tweet?’ You have to engage people.
Look at the example below, posted with the phrase ‘New Vlog is up!!!’. Who cares!? Maybe his mother, but not anyone else.
Instead, give the Twitter users a reason to click on your link. The illustration below is much better.
Also, make sure to separate your link from the hashtags. Both are hyperlinks. So if your content is next to the hashtags, then fat thumbs can mean you could miss a potential viewer.
Promote Your YouTube Channel on Facebook
Two excellent places to share your new content on Facebook are on your own Facebook branding Page and in Facebook groups.
Create your own brand page. You won’t have any followers, to begin with, but post your videos there anyway. It won’t help your video to rank on YouTube but can help your video to rank for Google searches
The best part is that Facebook has already niched down the audiences for you. Whatever topic area you make your videos around, there is a place for you to share them on Facebook.
Tips for Promoting Youtube Content in Facebook Groups
When searching for groups to post your content to, make sure it contains enough people to engage with. There are plenty of groups with only a handful of members; keep searching until you find a large one.
For some Facebook Groups, activity drops over time. So, even if there is a large membership for a group, check the frequency of posts to make sure that it is worth your time to engage with it.
How you act in a group, once you have joined and been given access, matters. You have to engage with the group and be helpful. There is no point in joining a group to spam a link to your videos every once in a while. Instead, participate in the conversation, be helpful where you can, and when it’s appropriate, then share a link to your content. If you don’t, you’ll likely end up banned from the group.
Promote Your Youtube Channel on Instagram
Instagram is an ideal place to help build your YouTube audience.
Depending on the type of content you make for YouTube, you may be OK with using your existing Instagram account. If you don’t want to mix up your content with your personal Instagram usage, then create a new one specifically for your channel.
But it’s up to you. If you are the main focus of your YouTube channel, and ‘behind-the-scenes’ content might be valuable to followers, so use your existing account. If your YouTube channel is in a niche where you don’t show your face, then set up a fresh account.
Use Instagram to build up a following in your topic area. Spend some time browsing relevant hashtags to get an understanding of the type of content that is popular, then set out to emulate it.
Create Youtube Teasers
One of the best uses of Instagram to promote your YouTube channel is to create short 15-second teaser clips. Teaser clips can intrigue and draw Instagram users over to your YouTube channel.
A teaser is different and operates like a film trailer made by the big Hollywood movie studios. You intrigue and invite your potential audience to watch the full thing.
You can use your video editing software, or even better use a tool like Placeit to produce a compelling teaser. Placeit lets you quickly create teasers for Instagram (and other platforms) with handy templates and stock graphics.
Promote Your YouTube Channel on TikTok
The new kid on the block. Tik Tok divides opinion, some love the brash new social sharing platform, others criticise child safety and privacy issues. But, no-one can deny its reach.
It’s the new Vine, the platform to share short snappy videos, and there is a massive audience on this hot fresh platform.
TikTok has experienced incredible growth since its launch in 2016. The TikTok app has been downloaded over 2 billion times and now has over 800 million active users.
Use TikTok to post 15-second teaser clips like the ones you made for Instagram. Make sure to add a link to your YouTube channel in your bio, and direct people to your bio in your teaser clip.
Once you become as popular as Mr Beast, you can forget the profile link and afford to be sassy instead.
Conclusion
When looking for ways to promote your YouTube channel, don’t overlook the free options. Yes, it can be tempting to spend money you don’t have on ads and try and spend your way to success.
But YouTube is a long-term undertaking. You have to do the right things, regularly, to make a success of your channel. You’ll run out of advertising budget before you attract enough followers to make your channel a cash earning machine.
Look instead to the big social media players. There are millions of daily active users on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and TikTok. Get strategic and make promotional content for your channel to post on those platforms.
And make sure to do it right. You can spot spam posts yourself, so make sure not to post spam for others to ignore. Become a part of the conversation, help out other users, and when it’s right, direct them to your channel 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.
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!
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.
So you’re looking to recording slow mo, 240 frames per second on an iPhone SE and anything that has a brand new iOS.
Why turn into 240 frames per seconds?
Very good question.
How To Record In Slow Mo on iPhone 240FPS
Your TV and any other thing that you normally watch, like films and things, are normally at 24 to 30 frames per second. That’s what our eyes comfortably see.
When you skip to 60 frames per second, that gives you the chance to slow things down a little bit, but 240 frames per second allows you to do mega slow mo on footage without it looking jittery.
Basically what this allows you to do is in theory, slow it down to 10 times slower than 24 frames per second, because it takes 10 times more frames, 240 frames per second.
So how do we do this?
Well, you open your phone, you click on settings and you scroll down to “Camera.”
In here you have all of your settings for your grid, your recording format, whether or not you’re being efficient or not, your resolution in which I’ve talked about, whether or not you want to recording 4k or 1080p, there’ll be a video severing the codes up here.
But what you’re looking for is the “Record Slow-mo” setting.
Mine is currently set to 720p and 240 frames per second, but you can have 1080p at 120, 720 at 240, and 1080p at 240.
So, how does it affect you?
Well, the smaller, the resolution and smaller the frame rate, the smaller, the file, the higher the resolution, the higher the frame rate, the larger the file, and will take longer to edit with or render out, or it takes up more memory on your phone.
Slow-mo footage can be fantastic. It gives you that little bit of flexibility, just like recording in 4K.
If you need help in understanding the difference between 1080p and 4K footage I have a large deep dive blog that will drill into the benefits and flaws of both formats.
Final Words
If you want to know how you can record in 4K at 60 frames per second on your iPhone and any latest device, there is a video right here where if it’s not quite uploaded yet, there’s a playlist here on how you can make better videos.
Two players playing video games on TV at home
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