Category: TIPS & TRICKS

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SOCIAL MEDIA TIPS & TRICKS YOUTUBE

Do VPN Hurt YouTubers?

Do VPN Hurt YouTubers? 1

VPNs—virtual private networks—are a crucial tool for anyone looking to maintain their privacy online, as well as a range of other cases, including getting around geographical restrictions on content. It would be an exaggeration to call VPNs a “popular” tool, as they are still employed by a small minority of YouTube users, but that minority still represents a lot of users. So, for the more conscientious YouTube viewer, it makes sense to wonder if your VPN-based viewing habits might be negatively affecting your favourite YouTubers.

Do VPNs hurt YouTubers? – While it can affect the YouTubers you are watching if you view using a VPN, the chances are that the effect will be relatively small.

There are two ways to look at the subject of VPNs hurting YouTubers, and that is either from the perspective of the YouTuber themselves using a VPN and then from the perspective of their viewers using a VPN, but before we get into that, let’s get a little grounding in what a VPN is.

What is a VPN?

For regular readers of this blog, don’t worry; we’re not going to spend much time explaining this precisely because we’ve explained it at length in other posts, but a little primer is necessary before jumping into how VPNs may or may not hurt YouTubers.

A virtual private network is essentially a way of hiding a network inside of the larger network that is the Internet. Any system connected to a VPN will have the ability to encrypt and decrypt data in a way that is unique to that network. This means that any information sent from one computer to another on that VPN will be unreadable to anything else that may intercept it.

This is useful for remaining anonymous while using the web because your connection will appear to be coming from the remote “node” that your request was routed through, rather than the device you are actually using, making it considerably harder to track your activity online. This is also how VPNs can help get around regional content restrictions since a VPN can make it appear as though you are requesting the content from within the region where the content is allowed.

Best VPNs For YouTube

Using A VPN As A YouTuber

There is no explicit rule that states you cannot use a VPN as a YouTuber, though there are rules against certain actions you may be using your VPN for. The main reason we’re thinking of here is using a VPN to “fool” YouTube into thinking your view is coming from somewhere else in order to artificially inflate your view count.

This is bad for two reasons. The first of those reasons is that it is explicitly against YouTube’s terms of service to artificially inflate your view count. It doesn’t matter how you achieve it, it is against the rules. You can pay for as much advertising as you want, but you can’t pay strangers or bots to watch your content. Viewing your videos yourself from an anonymous VPN address would certainly fall under artificial view count inflation, and would certainly “hurt” the YouTuber if they were caught.

The second reason it is bad is that it is an objectively terrible way to inflate your view count since the amount of effort required to make any meaningful impact on your view count would far outweigh the benefits gained.

Using A VPN As A Viewer

A more realistic concern is whether using a VPN to view YouTube might be hurting the YouTubers you are watching since there are understandable question marks over what YouTube does with views from VPN users.

For the most part, you can rest relatively easily. As long as you are using YouTube in a normal manner, YouTube shouldn’t treat your view any differently to a non-VPN user. The exception to this rule is if the VPN you are using has gotten itself a bad reputation and is automatically blocked to prevent malicious attacks. Assuming that’s not the case, however, YouTube will treat you like just another viewer. Indeed, YouTube might not even be able to tell that you are using a VPN at all.

A less direct way that using a VPN can hurt YouTubers is if you are succeeding at being truly anonymous. YouTube relies on being able to collect a good deal of information about you based on your viewing preferences so that they can serve you relevant ads. Relevant ads mean a higher likelihood of being clicked, which means a higher likelihood of generating revenue for YouTube and the YouTuber whose content you are watching.

Of course, if you are never going to click an ad on principle—or if you use an ad blocker anyway—this point doesn’t apply to you. For users who may be tempted to click an ad if it appeals to them, using a VPN to browse anonymously can harm the YouTuber in that you are considerably less likely to see an ad you like, which means you’re less likely to click. You can get around this by being logged in to your YouTube account so that YouTube knows who you are regardless of where your connection appears to be coming from. Of course, that rather defies the point if you are using a VPN to remain anonymous. Sometimes there is no solution that fixes everything.

Final Thoughts

Do VPNs hurt YouTubers? – While it can affect the YouTubers you are watching if you view using a VPN, the chances are that the effect will be relatively small.

That being said, if you are concerned but are not prepared to give up the anonymity that VPNs provide, you can always look for other ways to support your favourite YouTubers.

Liking and sharing the videos is an obvious and free way to support them, but there are usually ways to support them more directly, such as signing up to a Patreon or other crowd-funding app, or sending them a donation if they have something set up for that. Perhaps they have merch you can buy.

It’s certainly admirable to want to support your favourite creators. After all, if they can’t afford to keep making the content you love, they will have to stop doing it!

Top 5 Tools To Get You Started on YouTube

Very quickly before you go here are 5 amazing tools I have used every day to grow my YouTube channel from 0 to 30K subscribers in the last 12 months that I could not live without.

1. VidIQ helps boost my views and get found in search

I almost exclusively switched to VidIQ from a rival in 2020.

Within 12 months I tripled the size of my channel and very quickly learnt the power of thumbnails, click through rate and proper search optimization. Best of all, they are FREE!

2. Adobe Creative Suite helps me craft amazing looking thumbnails and eye-catching videos

I have been making youtube videos on and off since 2013.

When I first started I threw things together in Window Movie Maker, cringed at how it looked but thought “that’s the best I can do so it’ll have to do”.

Big mistake!

I soon realized the move time you put into your editing and the more engaging your thumbnails are the more views you will get and the more people will trust you enough to subscribe.

That is why I took the plunge and invested in my editing and design process with Adobe Creative Suite. They offer a WIDE range of tools to help make amazing videos, simple to use tools for overlays, graphics, one click tools to fix your audio and the very powerful Photoshop graphics program to make eye-catching thumbnails.

Best of all you can get a free trial for 30 days on their website, a discount if you are a student and if you are a regular human being it starts from as little as £9 per month if you want to commit to a plan.

3. Rev.com helps people read my videos

You can’t always listen to a video.

Maybe you’re on a bus, a train or sat in a living room with a 5 year old singing baby shark on loop… for HOURS. Or, you are trying to make as little noise as possible while your new born is FINALLY sleeping.

This is where Rev can help you or your audience consume your content on the go, in silence or in a language not native to the video.

Rev.com can help you translate your videos, transcribe your videos, add subtitles and even convert those subtitles into other languages – all from just $1.50 per minute.

A GREAT way to find an audience and keep them hooked no matter where they are watching your content.

4. PlaceIT can help you STAND OUT on YouTube

I SUCK at making anything flashy or arty.

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

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

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

5. StoryBlocks helps me add amazing video b-roll cutaways

I mainly make tutorials and talking head videos.

And in this modern world this can be a little boring if you don’t see something funky every once in a while.

I try with overlays, jump cuts and being funny but my secret weapon is b-roll overlay content.

I can talk about skydiving, food, money, kids, cats – ANYTHING I WANT – with a quick search on the StoryBlocks website I can find a great looking clip to overlay on my videos, keeping them entertained and watching for longer.

They have a wide library of videos, graphics, images and even a video maker tool and it wont break the bank with plans starting from as little as £8.25 ($9) per month.

Categories
SOCIAL MEDIA TIPS & TRICKS YOUTUBE

Best VPNs For YouTube

Best VPNs For YouTube

Whether you have a pressing reason to use a VPN for YouTube or you just like to maintain your privacy, you’ll want to make sure you have the best VPN for the job… or at least a VPN that’s up to the job.

This isn’t as straightforward as you might think (for reasons we’ll get into below), so it can help to know what you’re looking for. We’ll explain a little about why it matters which VPN you choose before getting into our top picks.

Why Your Choice of VPN Matters

We won’t spend valuable characters explaining how a VPN (virtual private network) works as you can easily find that information (including on this very site!), but you do need to know that a natural and unavoidable consequence of the way VPNs work is a certain degradation of things like latency and speed.

When your connection is being routed through several other locations before reaching its destination, it’s going to cause a bit of a slow down. Video is a bandwidth-hungry medium, and the slower your connection, the poorer your video-watching experience is going to be.

Latency can also be an issue if you are trying to watch live streams, as you can quickly find yourself out of sync with the video feed, meaning you are essentially not watching the stream live any more.

Now, if you are using a free or cheap VPN, you can be almost guaranteed to not get the kind of service you need to have an enjoyable YouTube watching experience. Of course, if you are going to be paying for your VPN service, you want it to be sure it’s going to deliver on what you need.

With that in mind, let’s get into our best VPN YouTube picks!

Best VPNs For YouTube

Before get into, it’s worth noting that any prices we mention are the best-case prices, which are typically the effective monthly cost when you pay for a full year up front. For example, our first suggestion, SurfShark, is $2.50 a month but only if you pay for 24 months at once. If you want to pay monthly, you’re going to be looking at $12.95 per month. Something to bear in mind. Now, in no particular order, here are our picks;

Surfshark

SurfShark is the first suggestion we’re going to offer, largely because it is the most affordable. At $2.50 per month, SurfShark is almost free, yet still offers the speeds necessary to stream video. Of course, you can’t expect something for nothing, and there are certainly areas where SurfShark is going to fall flat compared to the other VPNs on this list, but purely for use with YouTube, this is as good as you need.

It allows for unlimited connections, meaning you only need the one account for all your devices, even if you have a lot of devices. You get full AES-256 encryption, however there are question marks over the security, as SurfShark has not performed an external audit of its servers and clients, only the browser extensions running on the VPN. It should be fine for getting around content restrictions on YouTube, but we would probably use a different VPN for anything involving sensitive information.

NordVPN

If you’ve been on YouTube at all over the last few years—and we’re pretty sure that includes anyone reading this blog—you’ve probably seen or heard an ad for NordVPN. This VPN has been the subject of a mammoth advertising campaign.

Still, they have a lot to talk about. Their network consists of over 5,000 servers, making it possible to get a quick connection in your desired location when you need it. For your money, you’ll get full high-level encryption and an instant kill-switch, instantly making NordVPN a more secure option than SurfShark.

Of course, you get a connection quality that is more than capable of handling video streaming.

Best VPNs For YouTube 1

ExpressVPN

ExpressVPN is seen by many as the top option when it comes to the quality of service. You don’t have quite as many servers to choose from as NordVPN, but you do get strong encryption, a wide variety of protocols to choose from, and amazing reliability and speeds.

Probably the biggest con for ExpressVPN to your average YouTuber is their device limit. You can only get five simultaneous devices running on a single ExpressVPN account, so if you have a lot of devices, one of the other VPNs may be a better option.

Hotspot Shield

HotSpot Shield is the very definition of a single-purpose VPN. You don’t get much in the way of features, but you do get lightning fast (in VPN terms) speeds. If all you want to do is stream video, Hotspot Shield is likely the best choice for performance, with over 400mbps speeds. In reality, most users will be bottlenecked by their own connection rather than the VPN.

It is a very straightforward VPN to use, largely owed to the fact that there aren’t many options to mess around with. There are also some concerns about how secure it is, so you might want to keep your sensitive information off for now.

CyberGhost

While not as fast as Hotspot Shield, CyberGhost is still a very fast VPN, and with over 6,000 servers, you can be sure of a satisfying experience using this VPN for YouTube.

CyberGhost even includes a data compression tool to reduce the amount of bandwidth being used, making VPN’ing on the go a feasible option. It’s also P2P-optimised, so if you do a lot of torrenting, this could be a good option for you.

Final Thoughts

Ultimately, the the speed of your chosen VPN will be the primary concern if you want to use it with YouTube. This does not mean you should disregard other concerns, however. For example, if you are going to be using the VPN for sensitive tasks, you should make sure the security is up to scratch, even if that means sacrificing some of the speed that a less secure VPN offers.

Top 5 Tools To Get You Started on YouTube

Very quickly before you go here are 5 amazing tools I have used every day to grow my YouTube channel from 0 to 30K subscribers in the last 12 months that I could not live without.

1. VidIQ helps boost my views and get found in search

I almost exclusively switched to VidIQ from a rival in 2020.

Within 12 months I tripled the size of my channel and very quickly learnt the power of thumbnails, click through rate and proper search optimization. Best of all, they are FREE!

2. Adobe Creative Suite helps me craft amazing looking thumbnails and eye-catching videos

I have been making youtube videos on and off since 2013.

When I first started I threw things together in Window Movie Maker, cringed at how it looked but thought “that’s the best I can do so it’ll have to do”.

Big mistake!

I soon realized the move time you put into your editing and the more engaging your thumbnails are the more views you will get and the more people will trust you enough to subscribe.

That is why I took the plunge and invested in my editing and design process with Adobe Creative Suite. They offer a WIDE range of tools to help make amazing videos, simple to use tools for overlays, graphics, one click tools to fix your audio and the very powerful Photoshop graphics program to make eye-catching thumbnails.

Best of all you can get a free trial for 30 days on their website, a discount if you are a student and if you are a regular human being it starts from as little as £9 per month if you want to commit to a plan.

3. Rev.com helps people read my videos

You can’t always listen to a video.

Maybe you’re on a bus, a train or sat in a living room with a 5 year old singing baby shark on loop… for HOURS. Or, you are trying to make as little noise as possible while your new born is FINALLY sleeping.

This is where Rev can help you or your audience consume your content on the go, in silence or in a language not native to the video.

Rev.com can help you translate your videos, transcribe your videos, add subtitles and even convert those subtitles into other languages – all from just $1.50 per minute.

A GREAT way to find an audience and keep them hooked no matter where they are watching your content.

4. PlaceIT can help you STAND OUT on YouTube

I SUCK at making anything flashy or arty.

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

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

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

5. StoryBlocks helps me add amazing video b-roll cutaways

I mainly make tutorials and talking head videos.

And in this modern world this can be a little boring if you don’t see something funky every once in a while.

I try with overlays, jump cuts and being funny but my secret weapon is b-roll overlay content.

I can talk about skydiving, food, money, kids, cats – ANYTHING I WANT – with a quick search on the StoryBlocks website I can find a great looking clip to overlay on my videos, keeping them entertained and watching for longer.

They have a wide library of videos, graphics, images and even a video maker tool and it wont break the bank with plans starting from as little as £8.25 ($9) per month.

Categories
TIPS & TRICKS YOUTUBE

Can I Use YouTube to Store My Videos?

Can I Use YouTube to Store My Videos? 1

Many great features and services have spawned from people using online platforms in ways that the creators had either not intended or not even considered. For example, way back in the early days of Twitter, users started including the “@” symbol to signify they were speaking to someone and the “#” symbol to denote a topic long before it was ever a feature officially implemented by Twitter. Sometimes using a platform in a way the creators hadn’t intended can cause them to incorporate new features, sometimes it can just be a cool little trick to make your life easier.

YouTube is usually the first place anyone thinks of when the subject of user-generated video online comes up. Of course, the site is intended as a platform for uploading and viewing that content, but can you use YouTube to store your videos?

The short answer is yes, you can use YouTube to store your videos. As always, however, there’s plenty more to talk about with this topic.

Using YouTube To Store Your Videos

While YouTube technically is not intended for storing videos, the functionality of the platforms allows for it with absolutely no “hacking” or playing the system. When you upload a video, you have the option to have it be public, private, or unlisted.

Naturally, most YouTubers want their videos to be public, as this is how viewers get to see those videos. But when you have your videos marked as private, you are essentially just storing them on YouTube’s servers. YouTube does not presently impose any restrictions on how many videos you can upload or how long you can keep them on YouTube’s servers, regardless of whether they are public and making revenue for YouTube or private and just taking up storage space.

Technically speaking, you are using YouTube to store your videos even when those videos are public and available to view and generate revenue, since you can always get to them, and they can serve as a backup should anything happen to your original files.

Why Use YouTube To Store Videos

The most obvious reason to use YouTube to store your videos is that video files are notoriously large and YouTube is free. If you were going to store tens—even hundreds—of gigabytes of video files on a service like Dropbox, you would almost certainly end up having to pay for that service.

While YouTube reserves the right to leverage any videos you upload for promotional purposes and to display ads against, they do not charge you for the privilege. And, if you are not concerned about keeping the videos private, you could even make some money yourself. What’s more, if the videos you are uploading are videos you would be making regardless, any revenue you generate through YouTube would be truly passive income.

It should be noted that YouTube applies a lot of compression to get the bandwidth costs of streaming down and downloading a video through YouTube Studio will return that compressed video, not the original full-quality video that you uploaded. If this is an issue, you can go to takeout.google.com, which allows you to request any data YouTube has stored about you… which can be a lot. Scroll down to YouTube and request an archive of your video files. These video files will be the original uncompressed files, however, you cannot pick and choose which video files to download. If you have a lot of high-quality videos, getting a single video back this way will involve a lengthy download including every other video you uploaded.

The Risk

Few good things in life are completely without risk, and this is no different. The risk in this case is that YouTube are in total control of their platform—as you would expect—and are at liberty to make changes to how things are run at any time.

YouTube has been a notorious money pit in the past, and while Google’s record for putting unprofitable ventures out to pasture would imply YouTube has at least reached a stage where it is breaking even, it would certainly not be out of character for Google to make drastic changes to balance YouTube’s books.

Now, there has been no wording, actions, or rhetoric that suggest YouTube might be about to impose restrictions on video uploads, or perhaps require any uploaded content to be public so that they can advertise on it, but they could make those changes if they wished. In using YouTube as a method for storing your videos, you run the risk of this kind of change happening.

Remember, YouTube is not intended to be used as a video storage tool, so there are no guarantees offered in that regard. In contrast, services like Dropbox and OneDrive will give certain assurances because their business model is built around offering file storage. It would be a poor offering if they said your files could go missing at any time. In contrast, YouTube’s business is providing a platform for user generated content, and their assurances will revolve around that side of things.

It’s also worth bearing in mind that, while storing a video isn’t free, it is the watching of those videos and the continual use of bandwidth that really racks up the bills for YouTube.

Final Thoughts

YouTube can certainly be used as a free tool to backup your video files, but it certainly shouldn’t be your only storage solution. If you are looking for a home for your files because you intend to delete them from your hard drive, you should absolutely seek out an additional backup, even if it is physical media, such as a DVD. Putting all of your eggs in the YouTube basket could come back to bite you in the future, and making decisions like that based on the hope that nothing bad happens is rarely a good strategy. After all, that’s why you have backups in the first place.

That being said, if the videos you are storing are also videos you are happy to have publicly viewable, you will probably be safe from such a hypothetical scenario, since any change like that would undoubtedly be driven by the need to make improve revenue.

Top 5 Tools To Get You Started on YouTube

Very quickly before you go here are 5 amazing tools I have used every day to grow my YouTube channel from 0 to 30K subscribers in the last 12 months that I could not live without.

1. VidIQ helps boost my views and get found in search

I almost exclusively switched to VidIQ from a rival in 2020.

Within 12 months I tripled the size of my channel and very quickly learnt the power of thumbnails, click through rate and proper search optimization. Best of all, they are FREE!

2. Adobe Creative Suite helps me craft amazing looking thumbnails and eye-catching videos

I have been making youtube videos on and off since 2013.

When I first started I threw things together in Window Movie Maker, cringed at how it looked but thought “that’s the best I can do so it’ll have to do”.

Big mistake!

I soon realized the move time you put into your editing and the more engaging your thumbnails are the more views you will get and the more people will trust you enough to subscribe.

That is why I took the plunge and invested in my editing and design process with Adobe Creative Suite. They offer a WIDE range of tools to help make amazing videos, simple to use tools for overlays, graphics, one click tools to fix your audio and the very powerful Photoshop graphics program to make eye-catching thumbnails.

Best of all you can get a free trial for 30 days on their website, a discount if you are a student and if you are a regular human being it starts from as little as £9 per month if you want to commit to a plan.

3. Rev.com helps people read my videos

You can’t always listen to a video.

Maybe you’re on a bus, a train or sat in a living room with a 5 year old singing baby shark on loop… for HOURS. Or, you are trying to make as little noise as possible while your new born is FINALLY sleeping.

This is where Rev can help you or your audience consume your content on the go, in silence or in a language not native to the video.

Rev.com can help you translate your videos, transcribe your videos, add subtitles and even convert those subtitles into other languages – all from just $1.50 per minute.

A GREAT way to find an audience and keep them hooked no matter where they are watching your content.

4. Learn new skills for FREE with Skillshare

I SUCK reading books to learn, but I LOVE online video courses.

Every month I learn something new. Editing, writing, video skills, how to cook, how to run a business – even how to meditate to calm a busy mind.

I find all of these for FREE with Skillshare – Sign up, pick all the courses you want and cancel anytime you need.

5. Shutterstock helps me add amazing video b-roll cutaways

I mainly make tutorials and talking head videos.

And in this modern world this can be a little boring if you don’t see something funky every once in a while.

I try with overlays, jump cuts and being funny but my secret weapon is b-roll overlay content.

I can talk about skydiving, food, money, kids, cats – ANYTHING I WANT – with a quick search on the Shutterstock website I can find a great looking clip to overlay on my videos, keeping them entertained and watching for longer.

They have a wide library of videos, graphics, images and even a video maker tool and it wont break the bank with plans starting from as little as £8.25 ($9) per month.

Categories
LISTS MARKETING TIPS & TRICKS YOUTUBE

5 Free Branding Tools Every YouTube Vlogger Should Know

5 Free Branding Tools Every YouTube Vlogger Should Know

Vlogging is all about your brand. You need people to recognize you on other socials as well as YouTube and post your videos out from them. Branding yourself carefully at the beginning is a great way to set yourself up for success. Here are five free branding tools that every YouTube vlogger should know.

LogoCreator

 LogoCreator is a free logo maker that is full of hundreds of templates that you can use and alter to suit your needs. You can convert your logo into a variety of formats for free download and use it in any way you like.

 Why Use It?

 When you brand your vlog with a logo, you show your fans who you are and the style of your brand personality. Give people something to easily recognize when they watch your vlogs. This way, when they see another pop up on YouTube or your logo head a photo you post for content on Instagram, they will know that it is you. This is how you develop a brand following for your business.

Canva

 Canva is an online design tool that allows vloggers to use customizable templated videos to create content for their socials and vlogs. They offer hundreds of templates for free and you can alter them to suit your brand.

Why Use it?

Using a video template can be a great way to ensure your vlog looks professional every time. You can use it to put across your branding in your video, which makes your business easier for consumers to follow and associate with.

Biteable

Biteable offers a vast array of customizable videos. Much like Canva, but with more features. Biteable is a dedicated video site, offering free video templates as long as you have their watermark on the vlog. If you want to lose their logo and add your own, price plans start at just under £14 per month.

Why Use it?

If you want to set up a vlog but don’t have the technical or creative know-how to create videos yet, then a template can help get you started. Once you are a master vlogger, you might want to move to a different tool, but for the beginner, Biteable has almost no competition. 

Open Broadcaster

Open Broadcaster, or OBS is a great piece of software for the more experienced vlogger. It is a free open-source piece of software that is designed for video streaming and recording. Many people use it to stream themselves playing games or vlog about certain topics. It is sponsored by Twitch, Facebook and YouTube so you can rely on it to be updated fairly often. You can add graphics and overlays to your OBS to sync it with your brand.

Why Use It?

OBS offers an enormous amount of guidance with how to use their software. They have a downloadable quick start guide, a more detailed OBS Studio overview and a Discord community forum. All of this assistance means that vloggers can feel supported and get the help they need when creating their videos.

Shotcut

Shotcut is an open-source video editor that can be used cross platforms. It offers an incredibly detailed repertoire of features. Shotcut offers wide-angle support, device transfer options and a sleek, intuitive interface. They offer an astounding amount of video and audio options that can help you brand your vlog. They also have an option to add a watermark which can be great for branding if you use your logo.

Why Use it?

Shotcut has all of its previous versions available for download and a detailed site map available with FAQs, contact options and an active forum. It is a great bit of kit if you are looking do get in deep with vlogging.

When vlogging it is important to brand your videos to create a direct link between your socials, emails, website and videos. Your brand is also the first point of contact for most of your audience so branding your vlogs is a sure-fire way to get viewers acknowledging you brand and building a relationship via association.

Categories
SEO TIPS & TRICKS YOUTUBE

How to Write a YouTube Bio

How to Write a YouTube Bio 2

So you’ve decided to start a YouTube channel? Perhaps you’ve had one for a while and just never got around to writing a bio. Regardless of the reason you’re here right now, the important thing is that you are here.

The YouTube bio—or “about” page—is often overlooked, and not without good reason. Think about it; how often do you check out a YouTuber’s about page? It’s a few clicks off the beaten path, and the chances are you already know what you need to know about them from the video. And, of course, the fact that so many people neglect their YouTube bio is another reason why so many other people never bother to look at them.

A good YouTube bio about us page summarises in the first 170 characters the core premise of the channel. WHY they would watch your content, what value they will get from you. Do not lead with who you are, you can add that later in the bio. Your bio is there to hook people – make them curious.

These are perfectly valid reasons for thinking a YouTube bio is unnecessary. However, they are built on a flawed premised. You see, the YouTube bio isn’t for viewers.

Of course, it should be there if they want it, but the reason to have a well written bio has more to do with Google than it does the person clicking on your videos.

Why a YouTube Bio is Important

One word. Or, rather, one acronym; SEO. Search engine optimisation is the reason you should put some effort into your YouTube bio. And your video descriptions, for that matter, but that deserves a post of its own.

The YouTube recommendation algorithm is not the be-all and end-all of video discovery. Sure, getting favoured by the algorithm will see mountains of traffic flowing your way, but Google’s regular old search engine shouldn’t be neglected.

Many people come across YouTubers, not through searching YouTube itself, but through searching Google and having a few video recommendations thrown their way. But Google needs to know that the videos—and the YouTuber making them—are relevant to the search term in question, which is where you bio comes in.

How to Write a YouTube Bio 1

How to Write a YouTube Bio

So, hopefully we’ve impressed upon you how important your bio is for comprehensive growth, but how do you go about making sure it is up to the task of bringing in those organic search results? Why, with our handy list of tips, that’s how!

Tell Viewers What to Expect From Your Channel

This one isn’t as important from an SEO point of view—though search engines are getting smarter all the time—but it is important for those few intrepid users who do find their way to your about page.

Remember, even if the only reason a page exists is for SEO purposes, you should always aim to write it so that it reads naturally and contains useful information. If for no other reason than search engines are always improving, and they could well come up with a way to detect whether your bio reads naturally before long. It’s better to write good content from the start than have to go back and change things because of a search engine update.

Put the Important Stuff First

Humans, sadly, have a remarkably short attention span. And its getting shorter all the time. If you have something important, something that you want viewers to know if they read your about page, put it at the top.

More than that, make it compelling. In an ideal world, someone reading your bio would take in the whole thing before moving on, but in the absence of that ideal world, you should aim to make sure they take in the vital stuff before they click away.

Use Keywords

This is where we start getting into that SEO we talked about. You’re going to want to squeeze a few keywords in there. Again, your priority should be to write useful, natural-sounding copy, so you might need to put your thinking cap on for some of the more awkward keywords.

As for what those keywords are, this is where you’ll need to do a little research. There are many ways—both free and paid—to find keywords, including just using Google auto-suggest. The trick is to find keywords that are as underserved as possible while still being in demand enough to bring an audience. A plumbing company in Toronto would be foolish to try and target “plumbing” for their keyword because there would be far too much competition, but “emergency plumbers Toronto” would be a good fit with a smaller audience.

If you focus on a specific type of content, highlight that. If you primarily do Photoshop tutorials, don’t just target “image editing”, mention Photoshop.

Treat it Like a Business Page

This part is important because, SEO aside, a lot of people who seek out your about page will be looking to contact you for some reason or other. In the best cases, that reason will be something like a brand deal offer, or to talk about a collaboration.

Make sure your contact details are up-to-date. Google hides your contact details, so you don’t just get inundated with spam from bots scraping the page, but you want legitimate enquiries to be able to reach you. You can also take this opportunity to politely mention any kind of correspondence you are not interested in. For example, tutorial channels often get inundated with requests for direct help, which, for larger channels, is not feasible. In these cases, a little note asking people not to use these contact details for that reason might save you a lot of time in the long run.

Final Thoughts

In truth, your bio is not the most important thing you will craft for your YouTube channel. Organic Google search traffic is important, but, for most YouTubers, it is far from the largest source of traffic. And most of the organic search traffic ends up going directly to a video page.

Still, if you are looking to get noticed on YouTube, there is no denying that SEO is a factor, so there is no sense in neglecting your bio for the sake of half an hour’s work. Just remember to research keywords, put the important information up top, and give an accurate account of what your channel is for.

Top 5 Tools To Get You Started on YouTube

Very quickly before you go here are 5 amazing tools I have used every day to grow my YouTube channel from 0 to 30K subscribers in the last 12 months that I could not live without.

1. VidIQ helps boost my views and get found in search

I almost exclusively switched to VidIQ from a rival in 2020.

Within 12 months I tripled the size of my channel and very quickly learnt the power of thumbnails, click through rate and proper search optimization. Best of all, they are FREE!

2. Adobe Creative Suite helps me craft amazing looking thumbnails and eye-catching videos

I have been making youtube videos on and off since 2013.

When I first started I threw things together in Window Movie Maker, cringed at how it looked but thought “that’s the best I can do so it’ll have to do”.

Big mistake!

I soon realized the move time you put into your editing and the more engaging your thumbnails are the more views you will get and the more people will trust you enough to subscribe.

That is why I took the plunge and invested in my editing and design process with Adobe Creative Suite. They offer a WIDE range of tools to help make amazing videos, simple to use tools for overlays, graphics, one click tools to fix your audio and the very powerful Photoshop graphics program to make eye-catching thumbnails.

Best of all you can get a free trial for 30 days on their website, a discount if you are a student and if you are a regular human being it starts from as little as £9 per month if you want to commit to a plan.

3. Rev.com helps people read my videos

You can’t always listen to a video.

Maybe you’re on a bus, a train or sat in a living room with a 5 year old singing baby shark on loop… for HOURS. Or, you are trying to make as little noise as possible while your new born is FINALLY sleeping.

This is where Rev can help you or your audience consume your content on the go, in silence or in a language not native to the video.

Rev.com can help you translate your videos, transcribe your videos, add subtitles and even convert those subtitles into other languages – all from just $1.50 per minute.

A GREAT way to find an audience and keep them hooked no matter where they are watching your content.

4. PlaceIT can help you STAND OUT on YouTube

I SUCK at making anything flashy or arty.

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

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

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

5. StoryBlocks helps me add amazing video b-roll cutaways

I mainly make tutorials and talking head videos.

And in this modern world this can be a little boring if you don’t see something funky every once in a while.

I try with overlays, jump cuts and being funny but my secret weapon is b-roll overlay content.

I can talk about skydiving, food, money, kids, cats – ANYTHING I WANT – with a quick search on the StoryBlocks website I can find a great looking clip to overlay on my videos, keeping them entertained and watching for longer.

They have a wide library of videos, graphics, images and even a video maker tool and it wont break the bank with plans starting from as little as £8.25 ($9) per month.

Categories
TIPS & TRICKS

Do YouTubers Need a Business License?

Do YouTubers Need a Business License?

Many YouTubers find themselves caught off-guard by the realities of their success. It is one thing to get millions of views on a viral video and achieve a brief moment of Internet fame, but it is quite another to start making good money as a result of that success.

As much as people in certain parts of the political spectrum may be unhappy about it, we each live in a society that requires certain things of us, namely contributions to that society in the form of taxes. In an ideal world, we would all voluntarily contribute, but the reality of human nature means that governments have to take steps to make sure we all do our part, and business licenses are part of that system.

What is a Business License?

Before we get into this, we should point out that business licences are primarily a United States thing, with India also using them. We will do our best to explain the purpose of a business licence, and for those of you living in countries or regions that don’t use them, you should be able to identify the equivalent systems where you are.

Business licences are required for any… well… business. The precise nature of these licences will vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, as well as depending on what the business actually does.

Businesses are required to pay business taxes, and licences—which are essentially permits—are part of establishing what taxes that business should pay.

Do YouTubers Need a Business License?

There are three answers to this question; yes, no, and yes with an asterisk. Let’s start with the easiest one of these to answer.

If your YouTube channel does not make any money, you are not required to have a business licence for it. There may be some uncommon situations where this is not the case, however.

For example, if your YouTube channel involves owning or renting premises, or any kind of disruption to the local area, you will almost certainly need a business licence regardless of whether you make any money.

The chances of any of that being the case for a YouTube channel that is not already established and profitable, however, are very slim. For most people if, their channel is not making money, they won’t need a licence.

Now, onto the definite yes.

If your channel is making a lot of money, you almost certainly will need a business licence if you are in a part of the world where business licences apply.

But what about that yes with an asterisk?

Now, let’s be absolutely clear; this is not a business advice blog.

You should absolutely check the laws in your locality before making any decisions about things like business licences. That being said, it is worth noting that there has to be a reason for a government agency to come after you. If you make enough without paying taxes, they will notice. If you cause disruptions for your neighbours, and they report you to the authorities, you may bring attention to your YouTube shenanigans. In most laws, if you have a venture that makes any money at all, you should be getting a business licence for it, but the reality is that it is unlikely you will get in trouble if you are only making pennies.

But just to reiterate, the law typically doesn’t deal in likelihoods. If you get caught making pennies that the authorities don’t know about, you will still get in trouble.

Other Systems

There are, of course, many different systems in place across the world—the United States alone has different rules from state to state—so naturally, we can’t cover them all. One particularly relevant example for an English-speaking YouTube audience is the United Kingdom. Here there are no business licences, but you would be expected to declare yourself as a sole trader if you are making money, and become VAT registered if you are making a lot of money.

Do YouTubers Get Paid for Views?

What Counts as Making Money on YouTube?

This may seem like a bit of a silly section to include, but it is worth pointing that government organisations do not let you off if you play dumb or claim that you have only committed a minor crime.

All of the money you make is, legally speaking, supposed to be declared to your government. It doesn’t matter to them whether that money came as result of the YouTube Partner Programme, Super Chats, merchandise, Patreon, or anything else.

In other words, if you get a business licence for your YouTube channel, you can’t just declare the earnings that come directly from YouTube and hope to play ignorant if the government finds out about your Patreon.

Should I Apply For a Business Licence Straight Away

If you are not making money or doing anything that would warrant being classified as a business, there is no sense in rushing to getting a business licence. They are not prohibitively expensive, but they do cost money. And the process of getting one is rarely long or complicated. After all, business licences are essentially a means for taxing you, and governments aren’t in the habit of making it harder for them to get your money.

How Do I Make Money on YouTube?

All of the above may feel a little like getting ahead of yourself if you’re not sure how to make money on YouTube in the first place. Broadly speaking, it is a case of more views equals more money, but there are a few steps along the way to making that happen.

YouTube Partner Programme

Unless you have a compelling reason not to, your first goal should be to become part of the YouTube Partner Programme. There some requirements for doing this, but one of the advantages is that qualifying for the Partner Programme means you have reached certain milestones that show you are on the right path. Those requirements are;

  • Adhere to YouTube monetisation policies
  • Be in a region where the Partner Programme is available
  • Have at least 4,000 hours of valid public watch time over the last year
  • Have at least 1,000 subscribers
  • Have a linked AdSense account

Once you meet that criteria, you will be able to apply to the Partner Programme and, in the vast majority of cases, you will be accepted. From then on, YouTube will begin showing ads on eligible videos, and splitting the revenue generated from those ads with you.

Memberships

If and when you manage to build up a loyal audience, you can start to look at memberships as an option. If you are eligible, you can use YouTube’s built-in membership platform to do this, but there are also services like Patreon that can enable you to do this as well.

The premise is simple enough; users contribute a recurring amount to you to support your content, and as an added sweetener, you can offer exclusive content and other perks to encourage viewers to become members.

Merchandise

Merchandise isn’t for every channel, but for those that it is a good fit for, there are plenty of third party options, as well as YouTube’s own partnership for eligible channels. On-demand services mean you can offer merchandise without having to buy the stock in advance yourself, which significantly reduces the barrier to entry.

Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is a way in which you can leverage your existing content by providing links and offers to your viewers which you get commission for. The most commonly used example of this is Amazon, where channels that review products or talk about new tech or similar can link off to those products through their Amazon affiliate links and earn a little money any time someone buys something through those links.

Affiliate links are handy because they can be used in a range of situations by a variety of channels. For example, a channel about improving your YouTube content might not have anything to sell, but they can leave a list of the equipment they use as affiliate links for people who are interested in using the same gear.

Final Thoughts

Business licences (or the equivalent for your jurisdiction) are the kind of thing that, practically speaking, won’t apply to most YouTubers. Sadly, the vast majority of YouTubers either don’t make any money from their channel, or they make so little that they’re probably never going to have to worry about the IRS paying them a visit.

That being said, if you earn any money from your YouTube channel, you will almost certainly be expected to declare that money to the government. While it’s true that you probably won’t have to worry if you are only making a few dollars here and there, you are still technically obliged to declare that money, and as such, legally in the wrong if you don’t.

Given the reach of YouTube and the many differences between states and countries, it is impossible for us to fit all of the relevant laws and regulations into one post. Always check your local laws and make sure you adhere to them. If you take your chances by not getting a business licence when you should, you do so at your own risk.

Top 5 Tools To Get You Started on YouTube

Very quickly before you go here are 5 amazing tools I have used every day to grow my YouTube channel from 0 to 30K subscribers in the last 12 months that I could not live without.

1. VidIQ helps boost my views and get found in search

I almost exclusively switched to VidIQ from a rival in 2020.

Within 12 months I tripled the size of my channel and very quickly learnt the power of thumbnails, click through rate and proper search optimization. Best of all, they are FREE!

2. Adobe Creative Suite helps me craft amazing looking thumbnails and eye-catching videos

I have been making youtube videos on and off since 2013.

When I first started I threw things together in Window Movie Maker, cringed at how it looked but thought “that’s the best I can do so it’ll have to do”.

Big mistake!

I soon realized the move time you put into your editing and the more engaging your thumbnails are the more views you will get and the more people will trust you enough to subscribe.

That is why I took the plunge and invested in my editing and design process with Adobe Creative Suite. They offer a WIDE range of tools to help make amazing videos, simple to use tools for overlays, graphics, one click tools to fix your audio and the very powerful Photoshop graphics program to make eye-catching thumbnails.

Best of all you can get a free trial for 30 days on their website, a discount if you are a student and if you are a regular human being it starts from as little as £9 per month if you want to commit to a plan.

3. Rev.com helps people read my videos

You can’t always listen to a video.

Maybe you’re on a bus, a train or sat in a living room with a 5 year old singing baby shark on loop… for HOURS. Or, you are trying to make as little noise as possible while your new born is FINALLY sleeping.

This is where Rev can help you or your audience consume your content on the go, in silence or in a language not native to the video.

Rev.com can help you translate your videos, transcribe your videos, add subtitles and even convert those subtitles into other languages – all from just $1.50 per minute.

A GREAT way to find an audience and keep them hooked no matter where they are watching your content.

4. Learn new skills for FREE with Skillshare

I SUCK reading books to learn, but I LOVE online video courses.

Every month I learn something new. Editing, writing, video skills, how to cook, how to run a business – even how to meditate to calm a busy mind.

I find all of these for FREE with Skillshare – Sign up, pick all the courses you want and cancel anytime you need.

5. Shutterstock helps me add amazing video b-roll cutaways

I mainly make tutorials and talking head videos.

And in this modern world this can be a little boring if you don’t see something funky every once in a while.

I try with overlays, jump cuts and being funny but my secret weapon is b-roll overlay content.

I can talk about skydiving, food, money, kids, cats – ANYTHING I WANT – with a quick search on the Shutterstock website I can find a great looking clip to overlay on my videos, keeping them entertained and watching for longer.

They have a wide library of videos, graphics, images and even a video maker tool and it wont break the bank with plans starting from as little as £8.25 ($9) per month.

Categories
DEEP DIVE ARTICLE TIPS & TRICKS YOUTUBE

How do Virtual YouTubers Work?

How do Virtual YouTubers Work? 2

Like many new trends on YouTube and beyond, there are plenty of question marks around virtual YouTubing. What sets these questions apart, however, is that the head-scratching over other YouTube trends tends to be along the lines of “why do people watch this?”, whereas, with virtual YouTubers, it is often literally a question of how it works.

Virtual YouTubers, a type of YouTuber that uses a digital avatar as their on-screen persona, typically use innovative motion tracking software to copy their movements in real-time and animate their 3D avatar automatically. There are different ways that this can be achieved, as well as different software options for achieving it.

In this post, we’re going to take as much of an in-depth look into the way virtual YouTubing works as we can without drifting into the realms of computer science and other topics that might need a masters degree to understand. So, if you’re curious and have asked yourself “how do virtual YouTubers work?” keep reading!

What Are Virtual Influencers?

What is a Virtual YouTuber?

We’ll keep this section brief as the question of what a virtual YouTuber—or VTuber—is, can be quite in-depth, which is why we already have a dedicated post on that very thing. This post is going to assume you already know (hence why you’re curious how they work) but for anyone who isn’t, here’s a quick primer.

Virtual YouTuber channels present themselves like a regular YouTube channel with the exception that the YouTuber in question is a digital avatar that is brought to life by the person or people behind the channel. These avatars are often in the style of Japanese anime, but there is really no limit to what a virtual YouTuber can be, which is a big part of the appeal for this kind of channel.

How Do Virtual YouTubers Work?

There are a few stages to the process of running a virtual YouTuber channel, and they can each seem a little daunting to the uninitiated.

While it is true that the technology behind much of this is both remarkable and complex, the end-user experience is actually quite simple. It is often a statement on how far technology has come that we can do things on our phone that would have taken a team of experts and a lot of expensive equipment weeks or months to do in the past.

Let’s take a look at the different stages involved and what they entail.

Avatar Creation

We’re going to call this the first step on the road to a virtual YouTube channel. Now, granted, the actual first step would be coming up with a premise for your channel, as well as things like a format and possibly making branding decisions. However, that first step is not unique to virtual YouTubing, since you should be doing that with any new YouTube channel.

A digital avatar is something you can animate that will serve as the on-screen personality. It may just be something to look at while the YouTuber talks, or it may be a fully-fledged persona, like a character that the YouTuber is acting the part of. We’re going to give you three examples of different styles of virtual YouTuber to illustrate (pun intended) the methods used.

It should be noted that not all of these examples refer to themselves as virtual YouTuber, though that does not mean they don’t technically fit the definition.

Old School Animation

Our first example is a channel called Code Bullet. This style of virtual YouTubing is perhaps the most time consuming, and we’d only recommend this as an artistic choice since the money you might need to spend to use the other two methods could easily be justified by the time saved in not doing things this way.

Code Bullet creates videos where he does things like tries to create an AI that can play Tetris, or an AI that can play the perfect game of Snake. The on-screen visuals are accompanied by an illustrated avatar of a human body with an old-school computer monitor for a head.

Now, if you were to adopt this method and animate every frame, you would be in for a difficult time indeed. Code Bullet videos have been known to creep over the half-hour mark on occasion, which would mean a lot of work if he were creating smooth animations for the entire thing.

As it turns out, Code Bullet has a few tricks up his sleeve to lighten the workload. Firstly, his avatar is not on-screen the entire time, which reduces the amount of animation required. And, secondly, the avatar is not properly animated. Instead, individual poses are drawn, and the avatar snaps between them. It would make for a jarring animation style in a cartoon or animated movie, but it works well for Code Bullet and suits the style of video.

For this style of digital avatar, you would need some artistic flair to be able to create the artwork, or perhaps hire an artist or enlist the help of a talented friend to do it for you. It would be ideal if you could do it yourself because you would always be able to get new illustrations as you need them. As we said, though, this method is easily the most time-consuming.

Live 2D Animation

For this style of digital avatar, you would still need the artwork to create your avatar, but the ongoing process of running the channel will be much easier. Our example for this kind of avatar is Gawr Guru, a VTuber who plays videos games through the persona of a girl with questionable maths skills but impressive gaming skills. These 2D avatars are “rigged” so that they can be animated naturally, almost to the point that they look three dimensional.

This is done by moving parts of the 2D animation together so that the overall effect is one of natural motion. For example, move the face to the right a little while keeping the head stationary and you get the effect of the avatar looking a little bit to the side.

There are many applications available for the creation of these very things, making the process of creating a ready-to-animate digital avatar as easy as the average character creator in a video game. Some of these applications also take care of the animation part of the process (which we’ll get to shortly) while others just handle making the avatar itself. It is also possible to pay other people to create a rigged avatar for a relatively small price. The main downside to this style is that the technology is limited in terms of what you can do with the avatar. The above example of moving the face slightly works to great effect… but only if you move the face slightly. If you move it a lot, it starts to look unnatural. And, of course, you can only the parts of the avatar you have the artwork for. The software can’t guess at what the back of your avatar’s head looks like.

How do Virtual YouTubers Work?

Live 3D Animation

Opting for a 3D avatar is probably the most costly option in time or money (or both) in terms of getting things set up. Once you are ready to go, however, the operation of a 3D avatar is no more complicated than a 2D avatar, but with the added bonus that you have far more options in terms of movement.

Our example for this style is AI Angel, a virtual YouTuber who makes a lot of types of content along the same lines as an account like PewDiePie, but does so from the persona of an artificial intelligence.

3D avatars are complete three-dimensional models, meaning they have no limitations on what angle you can film them from, what positions you can put them in, or what props you can have them work with.

The downside to this style is that it takes a lot more work to set up—especially if you want your avatar to look realistic (cartoonish avatars are easier to make). It will also require more computing power, the more detailed your avatar and their environment are. A relatively simple avatar probably won’t tax your system too much, but if your computer is already straining to live stream, record video, and play video games at the same time, adding a complicated 3D avatar into the mix might be the straw that broke the camel’s back.

Animating the Avatars

Once the digital avatar is ready, it’s time to think about animating it. This section only applies to the live 2D and 3D animation styles—if you are using the traditional illustration method mentioned above, your animation style is drawing more frames for your avatar. Like we said; it’s not the quickest method.

The main benefit to having rigged avatars is that they can be animated in real-time; there just needs to be something to animate them. Fortunately, there is plenty of software to take care of this.

Now, you could animate your avatars by hand, though it would be an incredibly time-consuming way to go about it. Granted, it would be much quicker than the traditional method of drawing each frame of your avatars animations, but it would still be far more time-consuming than the alternative.

The alternative in question, of course, is motion capture.

Motion capture works by tracking parts of your body and translating them to the same parts of your avatars body. So, you raise your hand; the software sees that your hand is raised and raises your avatar’s hand. The two most common ways of achieving this motion capture are through video-based motion recognition, and through the use of motion-sensitive devices like virtual reality controllers.

The trade-offs between the two are fairly straight forward. Using motion-sensitive devices such as a VR headset and controllers will usually give you more accurate movements, avoiding the kinds of jerky stuttering movements that can sometimes happen with inaccurate motion-capture. The downside, however, is that you have to wear said devices. This may not be an issue for you, but most people would probably opt to carry out a task without a bulky VR helmet on if they had the option.

Conversely, video-based recognition is much less invasive. It tracks your movements through your webcam, or the camera on your phone, making it far easier to use and more natural feeling. If you hadn’t already guessed, the downside to this method is that it is less accurate, and the range of motion it can track is more limited. For example, if you were to spin around three hundred and sixty degrees, a VR setup would be able to detect that, whereas a video-recognition-based system would likely get confused.

How do Virtual YouTubers Work? 1

What to Styles and Methods to Choose?

So, you’re ready to start a virtual YouTube channel of your own? Fortunately, the decision-making process is relatively simple here. Firstly, we can almost universally discount traditional animation as an option. Unless you absolutely must have a particular style that can’t be replicated with live animation methods, the additional time it takes to animate your avatar just isn’t worth it.

As for the choice between live 2D and 3D animation, if you intend to do a lot of movement—especially if you are animating a lot of your avatars body and not just the upper part—you should go with 3D. The range of motion available to you with a 2D avatar will not do the trick. On the other hand, if you do not need all that freedom of movement, 2D avatars are easier to make and less resource-intensive on your computer.

As for the method of animating your live avatar, you may be able to rule out VR devices on cost alone. If you have a VR headset and controllers already, or money is no object, and you can afford to buy one, that’s great. But if you don’t have one, you could be looking at a lot of money to get one, which may be enough of a reason to go video-recognition-based. If both options are on the table, go with the VR option if you intend to make a lot of body motion that needs animating. Otherwise, a good webcam and decent lighting will be a far more sensible option.

Top 5 Tools To Get You Started on YouTube

Very quickly before you go here are 5 amazing tools I have used every day to grow my YouTube channel from 0 to 30K subscribers in the last 12 months that I could not live without.

1. VidIQ helps boost my views and get found in search

I almost exclusively switched to VidIQ from a rival in 2020.

Within 12 months I tripled the size of my channel and very quickly learnt the power of thumbnails, click through rate and proper search optimization. Best of all, they are FREE!

2. Adobe Creative Suite helps me craft amazing looking thumbnails and eye-catching videos

I have been making youtube videos on and off since 2013.

When I first started I threw things together in Window Movie Maker, cringed at how it looked but thought “that’s the best I can do so it’ll have to do”.

Big mistake!

I soon realized the move time you put into your editing and the more engaging your thumbnails are the more views you will get and the more people will trust you enough to subscribe.

That is why I took the plunge and invested in my editing and design process with Adobe Creative Suite. They offer a WIDE range of tools to help make amazing videos, simple to use tools for overlays, graphics, one click tools to fix your audio and the very powerful Photoshop graphics program to make eye-catching thumbnails.

Best of all you can get a free trial for 30 days on their website, a discount if you are a student and if you are a regular human being it starts from as little as £9 per month if you want to commit to a plan.

3. Rev.com helps people read my videos

You can’t always listen to a video.

Maybe you’re on a bus, a train or sat in a living room with a 5 year old singing baby shark on loop… for HOURS. Or, you are trying to make as little noise as possible while your new born is FINALLY sleeping.

This is where Rev can help you or your audience consume your content on the go, in silence or in a language not native to the video.

Rev.com can help you translate your videos, transcribe your videos, add subtitles and even convert those subtitles into other languages – all from just $1.50 per minute.

A GREAT way to find an audience and keep them hooked no matter where they are watching your content.

4. PlaceIT can help you STAND OUT on YouTube

I SUCK at making anything flashy or arty.

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

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

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

5. StoryBlocks helps me add amazing video b-roll cutaways

I mainly make tutorials and talking head videos.

And in this modern world this can be a little boring if you don’t see something funky every once in a while.

I try with overlays, jump cuts and being funny but my secret weapon is b-roll overlay content.

I can talk about skydiving, food, money, kids, cats – ANYTHING I WANT – with a quick search on the StoryBlocks website I can find a great looking clip to overlay on my videos, keeping them entertained and watching for longer.

They have a wide library of videos, graphics, images and even a video maker tool and it wont break the bank with plans starting from as little as £8.25 ($9) per month.

Categories
DEEP DIVE ARTICLE TIPS & TRICKS YOUTUBE

Why do YouTubers Jump Cut?

Why do YouTubers Jump Cut? 1

While the depth and breadth of content that can be found on YouTube has grown immensely since the early days of wall to wall vloggers, it seems as though the jump cut will forever be considered synonymous with YouTube.

YouTubers use jump cuts to speed up the pace of the video, to hide mistakes and/or to keep you engaged for longer than just simple talking head videos. If you are moving around the screen it helps the video flow better and gives the viewer something new to focus on, preventing viewer fatigue. 

That being said, even today there are plenty of channels that make use of the technique, with perennial favourites like Philip DeFranco—who arguably helped push jump cutting to the forefront of YouTube consciousness—still doing their thing all these years later. But why do they do it? Or, for that matter, what is it?

We’re going to answer both of those questions and more, so settle in, and let’s get started.

What is a Jump Cut?

The proper definition of a jump cut is a sudden transition from one scene to another. That is, no fading in and out, no special effects, just one frame you are looking at one scene, and the next frame you are looking at a different one.

This is the definition of a jump cut as it applies to things like television and cinema, but the YouTube variant is a little different.

In the context of YouTube, a jump cut does not need to cut to a different scene, and often doesn’t. Jump cuts on YouTube are far more often used to cut from one part of a scene to a later part of a scene, essentially snipping out the intervening footage. This is possible because the idea of YouTube jump cuts is established. What would once have been considered messy, unprofessional editing is now a style, and viewers have become used to it and don’t wonder what’s gone wrong with the video when jump cuts happen and the YouTuber snaps from one position to another.

Of course, it is still a jump if it does cut from one scene to another—the established definition still applies when relevant—it is just that, on YouTube, it is more often used in this manner.

Do YouTubers Use Their Real Names?

Why do YouTubers Jump Cut?

So, now that you know what a jump cut is, why do YouTubers use them? There are a few reasons why this technique is so popular, so we’ve broken them up into the big ones.

Give the Video More “Punch”

You don’t need to be an expert in psychology to understand that the average attention span of a human being, shall we say, not what it used to be. Sure, the subject matter of a video can be enough to draw people in if they are interested enough, but on an online platform like YouTube, dry, slow content will not bring in the new viewers.

Jump cuts allow a YouTube to speed up the flow of their video so that the beats of the content hit closer together, leaving the viewer less time to become disinterested and click away to something else.

Reduce “Dead Air”

On a very similar note to the last one, jump cuts provide a handy method for cutting out some of the more awkward pauses, sniffles, sneezes, and mistakes that might otherwise have required a reshoot of a particular part of the video.

As we mentioned above, the fact that jump cuts are now something viewers are used to makes it possible to use jump cuts to edit out mistakes without having to worry about continuity between the remaining footage. If the YouTuber suddenly cuts from one position to another, that’s just the style of the video.

Keep the View Time Down

If you have a lot to get through, jump cuts can be a great way to keep the overall time of the video down, since excessively long runtimes can be off-putting in certain niches.

Keep the Editing Time Down

Jump cuts are quite possibly the lowest-effort method of cutting a video together, short of paying someone else to do it for you. Almost all YouTubers start out doing everything for themselves, including editing. And, when they are trying to upload multiple videos a week—often around a job or education—anything that saves time on the overall process of making the video will be welcomed. It is said that, on average, you will spend five hours editing for every one hour of footage you recorded, so this is certainly an area to focus on when trying to save time.

Fast Talking is More Persuasive

One way or another, you are trying to persuade your viewers of something. You might have a point you are trying to get across or the persuasion might just be that you want them to keep watching. Well, it turns out fast talkers are more persuasive and, while a jump cutting YouTube might not be a particularly fast talker in day to day life, jump cuts allow them to create the impression of fast speech by cutting out the gaps between sentences.

Comedy

A well-timed jump cut can be pretty funny. That’s all there is to this one.

Monologuing is Hard

Granted, scripting makes things a lot easier, but sitting in front of a camera and talking for three to ten minutes solid is no easy task. And, unless you are planning on hosting a late night show, it’s not a skill that has a great deal of use in mastering. With jump cuts you can dive into your monologues without worrying about getting through the whole thing in one take.

When Not to Use Jump Cuts

As long as that list of reasons why YouTubers use jump cuts is, they are not perfect in all situations, as most things aren’t. Here are a few reasons to steer clear of using jump cuts in your YouTube videos.

You Want the Viewer to Digest What You’re Saying

Jump cuts are fine for getting relatively light information across. The aforementioned Philip DeFranco makes good use of them, but DeFranco covers daily news and entertainment stories. He occasionally dives into big topics, but there’s rarely anything you need to fully engage your brain on.

For something like a VSauce or a PBS Spacetime, a jump cut format would be wholly inappropriate, because the presenters want the information to get across in a methodical, thorough way, and bombarding you with key points on something like the physics of a black hole will likely overwhelm you (unless you happen to be an astrophysicist of course).

Why do YouTubers Jump Cut?

You’re a Slow Talker

All the notes about how fast talkers are persuasive and how “dead air” can be a turn off for the viewer aside, some people are just slow talkers, and it’s not always something you can do anything about. This isn’t a death knell in your YouTube dream’s coffin, of course, but you need to play to your strengths. If you can string fast sentences together, jump cutting works. But if you speak slowly, jump cuts will look awkward and stilted.

It Reduces Your Watch Time

Now, let’s be clear, we are not suggesting you stuff your videos with awkward silences and drawn out sentences just to increase the watch time, but if your content sits well without the jump cuts, this could be a reason not to add them.

As most of you probably know, watch time is one of the most important metrics to improve when you are looking at boosting your visibility in the YouTube algorithm, not to mention increasing the revenue you get from the YouTube Partner Programme. The more time people spend watching your content, the more ads YouTube can show and the more likely they are to promote your videos in the future.

Just remember, this only works if people watch your videos. Having a thirty-minute video will do you no good if viewers click away after two minutes because the content is boring.

The Non Sequitur Jump Cut

All the talk so far has assumed the jump cuts being used are done so in a linear fashion, such as would be the case if someone recorded a five-minute monologue and then used jump cuts to edit out all the “uhm”’s and “ah”’s.

A well established convention on YouTube is the non sequitur jump cut, which is almost like a regular jump cut, only instead of cutting from scene to scene, it is cutting from one train of thought to another. This is often used to interject small asides, almost like footnotes in a book, and allows the YouTuber to add more context to a topic, or interject their personal take on something they are talking about in otherwise neutral tones.

Final Thoughts

The jump cut, like many techniques and tools at a YouTubers disposal, is a powerfully useful thing when used correctly. And, like most useful things, it can be overdone. If you cut too often, you can very easily give your video a white noise feel, where the information is coming at the viewer so fast that it is hard to absorb.

Used correctly, however, it can make a video punchier, more entertaining, and better-flowing. And, like all things on YouTube and in life, you can learn how best to utilise jump cuts with practice… but looking at other YouTubers who do it well won’t hurt, either.

Top 5 Tools To Get You Started on YouTube

Very quickly before you go here are 5 amazing tools I have used every day to grow my YouTube channel from 0 to 30K subscribers in the last 12 months that I could not live without.

1. VidIQ helps boost my views and get found in search

I almost exclusively switched to VidIQ from a rival in 2020.

Within 12 months I tripled the size of my channel and very quickly learnt the power of thumbnails, click through rate and proper search optimization. Best of all, they are FREE!

2. Adobe Creative Suite helps me craft amazing looking thumbnails and eye-catching videos

I have been making youtube videos on and off since 2013.

When I first started I threw things together in Window Movie Maker, cringed at how it looked but thought “that’s the best I can do so it’ll have to do”.

Big mistake!

I soon realized the move time you put into your editing and the more engaging your thumbnails are the more views you will get and the more people will trust you enough to subscribe.

That is why I took the plunge and invested in my editing and design process with Adobe Creative Suite. They offer a WIDE range of tools to help make amazing videos, simple to use tools for overlays, graphics, one click tools to fix your audio and the very powerful Photoshop graphics program to make eye-catching thumbnails.

Best of all you can get a free trial for 30 days on their website, a discount if you are a student and if you are a regular human being it starts from as little as £9 per month if you want to commit to a plan.

3. Rev.com helps people read my videos

You can’t always listen to a video.

Maybe you’re on a bus, a train or sat in a living room with a 5 year old singing baby shark on loop… for HOURS. Or, you are trying to make as little noise as possible while your new born is FINALLY sleeping.

This is where Rev can help you or your audience consume your content on the go, in silence or in a language not native to the video.

Rev.com can help you translate your videos, transcribe your videos, add subtitles and even convert those subtitles into other languages – all from just $1.50 per minute.

A GREAT way to find an audience and keep them hooked no matter where they are watching your content.

4. PlaceIT can help you STAND OUT on YouTube

I SUCK at making anything flashy or arty.

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

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

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

5. StoryBlocks helps me add amazing video b-roll cutaways

I mainly make tutorials and talking head videos.

And in this modern world this can be a little boring if you don’t see something funky every once in a while.

I try with overlays, jump cuts and being funny but my secret weapon is b-roll overlay content.

I can talk about skydiving, food, money, kids, cats – ANYTHING I WANT – with a quick search on the StoryBlocks website I can find a great looking clip to overlay on my videos, keeping them entertained and watching for longer.

They have a wide library of videos, graphics, images and even a video maker tool and it wont break the bank with plans starting from as little as £8.25 ($9) per month.

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

How to Promote YouTube Videos on Instagram

How to Promote YouTube Videos on Instagram 1

Instagram is an incredibly popular platform, but it isn’t always obvious how you can leverage that platform to promote your YouTube videos. Firstly, you’re promoting a video and Instagram is centred around images. Second, Instagram descriptions don’t support links.

Sure, you can paste the link to your video into the description, but your followers can’t click it. And, you all probably know, introducing extra steps in a call to action is a big no no. You want your viewers to have as little effort between them and your videos as possible.

Still, Instagram is a valuable platform, and there are more options for promoting your videos than just posting an image and putting a link in your description. In this post, we’re going to talk about how to promote YouTube videos on Instagram, so settle in, and let’s get started.

Make Your Instagram Account Valuable

This is the golden rule when promoting YouTube content on other platforms; your presence on that platform has to have some value to the people on that platform in its own right.

If your Instagram account only exists to post links to your latest videos, there isn’t much of a reason for people to follow it. After all, if they just wanted notifying about your latest videos, they would subscribe to you on YouTube. The point here is that you’re trying to attract new subscribers. If a person on Instagram doesn’t know you, they’re not likely to follow you for new video updates. And if they don’t follow you, you can’t promote content to them.

So, make your Instagram account valuable in its own right. Post unique content that works in the Instagram ecosystem. And, when we say unique, it doesn’t necessarily mean you need to make entirely new content just for Instagram. You can repurpose your existing content, but you should make sure that it fits for the platform, which might mean re-editing, or clipping parts of your videos.

How to Promote YouTube Videos on Instagram

Put a Link in Your Bio

Instagram may not support clickable links in the descriptions of your posts, but they do support them in your Instagram bio. You can take advantage of this to put your YouTube channel link in there, or you can update the link to point towards your latest video.

Either way, be sure to mention in the description of each post that there’s a link in your bio, so anyone interested in seeing more from you will know where to go to find it!

Use Hashtags

Hashtags are incredibly useful on Instagram, perhaps more so than Twitter—the platform that spawned them. Instagram is very generous with hashtags, allowing you to pack quite a few into your description. And you can always comment on your own video to get more hashtags in there.

The important thing isn’t to get as many hashtags as possible, however, it is to get the right hashtags. You want your tags to be relevant to your content, otherwise you’re just going to be putting your content in front of people who aren’t interested. Even more importantly, you should try to find the most specific tags related to what you do. We’re not saying don’t use the incredibly popular tags that have millions of posts, but also try to zero in on tags that perhaps just have a few thousand posts, or even mere hundreds.

Tagging your content with these tags will increase the chances of it being seen by the people who are interested in those topics. Sure, there will be fewer people in those topics in total, but they will be more likely to see your post, and more likely to be interested in its content.

Don’t Limit Yourself to Pictures

Instagram is known as a platform for posting images, but it has long-since branched out into video content. Of course, the video-viewing experience of Instagram is very different to YouTube, with shorter content being the order of the day.

Regular Instagram posts can be no longer than 60 seconds, while IGTV posts can be up to 10 minutes. If you are lucky enough to get verified by Instagram, you can post IGTV posts up to 60 minutes in length.

Think of Instagram as a cross between a bite-size version of YouTube and a teaser platform, where you can post enticing clips and smaller versions of your YouTube content to lure viewers over. But always keep in mind that the content you post (on average) should have value for your Instagram followers in its own right, and not just be a pure advertisement for your YouTube channel.

Link to Your Instagram Account on YouTube

This may seem a little counterintuitive seeing as this post is about promoting YouTube on Instagram, but as sad as it may seem, numbers matter. An account with plenty of followers will occupy a more authoritative space in the mind of people checking out your account than one with hardly any followers.

So, while it’s a very indirect way of helping, promoting your Instagram account through your YouTube channel—even if it’s only a link on your channel page—can actually help you in promoting your channel through Instagram. As always, be careful not to shove anything down your followers or viewers throats. Promote, but don’t go over board.

How to Promote YouTube Videos on Instagram 2

Don’t Neglect Stories

Instagram stories are an ideal medium for promoting your YouTube videos because they are short, they support hashtags, and you can insert links into them, giving your viewers a direct way to get to the content. And, with the addition of YouTube Shorts, you can use the same promotional videos for both Instagram and YouTube.

Final Thoughts

Like most popular social media platforms, Instagram is a valuable tool for promoting your YouTube content, but only if you approach it correctly. It is a different platform to Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, and all the other big players, and it needs to be treated as such. If you go in expecting to use Instagram exactly how you use Twitter, or just post your latest videos, you probably won’t find much success.

Top 5 Tools To Get You Started on YouTube

Very quickly before you go here are 5 amazing tools I have used every day to grow my YouTube channel from 0 to 30K subscribers in the last 12 months that I could not live without.

1. VidIQ helps boost my views and get found in search

I almost exclusively switched to VidIQ from a rival in 2020.

Within 12 months I tripled the size of my channel and very quickly learnt the power of thumbnails, click through rate and proper search optimization. Best of all, they are FREE!

2. Adobe Creative Suite helps me craft amazing looking thumbnails and eye-catching videos

I have been making youtube videos on and off since 2013.

When I first started I threw things together in Window Movie Maker, cringed at how it looked but thought “that’s the best I can do so it’ll have to do”.

Big mistake!

I soon realized the move time you put into your editing and the more engaging your thumbnails are the more views you will get and the more people will trust you enough to subscribe.

That is why I took the plunge and invested in my editing and design process with Adobe Creative Suite. They offer a WIDE range of tools to help make amazing videos, simple to use tools for overlays, graphics, one click tools to fix your audio and the very powerful Photoshop graphics program to make eye-catching thumbnails.

Best of all you can get a free trial for 30 days on their website, a discount if you are a student and if you are a regular human being it starts from as little as £9 per month if you want to commit to a plan.

3. Rev.com helps people read my videos

You can’t always listen to a video.

Maybe you’re on a bus, a train or sat in a living room with a 5 year old singing baby shark on loop… for HOURS. Or, you are trying to make as little noise as possible while your new born is FINALLY sleeping.

This is where Rev can help you or your audience consume your content on the go, in silence or in a language not native to the video.

Rev.com can help you translate your videos, transcribe your videos, add subtitles and even convert those subtitles into other languages – all from just $1.50 per minute.

A GREAT way to find an audience and keep them hooked no matter where they are watching your content.

4. PlaceIT can help you STAND OUT on YouTube

I SUCK at making anything flashy or arty.

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

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

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

5. StoryBlocks helps me add amazing video b-roll cutaways

I mainly make tutorials and talking head videos.

And in this modern world this can be a little boring if you don’t see something funky every once in a while.

I try with overlays, jump cuts and being funny but my secret weapon is b-roll overlay content.

I can talk about skydiving, food, money, kids, cats – ANYTHING I WANT – with a quick search on the StoryBlocks website I can find a great looking clip to overlay on my videos, keeping them entertained and watching for longer.

They have a wide library of videos, graphics, images and even a video maker tool and it wont break the bank with plans starting from as little as £8.25 ($9) per month.

Categories
LISTS TIPS & TRICKS YOUTUBE

9 YouTubers Who Don’t Show Their Face

8 YouTubers Who Don't Show Their Face 8

We give a lot of advice on this blog about how you can make it as a YouTuber in a huge variety of ways, and one of those ways is being a YouTuber who doesn’t show their face.

But, while we stand by our advice, we know that sometimes examples are more effective. Which brings us to this post!

We’ve pulled together a selection of successful YouTubers who never (or very rarely) show their face in their videos. We’ve also tried to pull YouTubers from a wide range of niches, just to show that it can be done no matter what your content is about.

So, with that in mind, and in no particular order, here are eight YouTubers who don’t show their face!

8 YouTubers Who Don't Show Their Face 9

Mediation Mindfulness

A meditation channel dedicated to self care, mindfulness, meditation and music to study to. An ever increasing niche on YouTube of channels that offer useful content without showing their face.

The Meditation Mindfulness channel uploads videos of relaxing scenery, sounds, locations and black screen videos to help people study, sleep and relax.

8 YouTubers Who Don't Show Their Face

SovietWomble

SovietWomble is a British gaming YouTuber who is just a little shy of four million subscribers at the time of writing this post. His videos show highlights from his gaming sessions—often with a cast of regular gaming buddies—accompanied by humorous subtitles and other visual elements.

While Soviet puts a lot of variety into his channel (within his overall niche) by trying different games, he does not show his face on camera.

8 YouTubers Who Don't Show Their Face 1

Kizuna AI

At a little under three million subscribers (on one of her three channels), Kizuna AI is proving that it is possible to achieve massive success as a VTuber.

VTubers are YouTubers who present themselves as a digital character. Sometimes this character is animated, sometimes they are controlled by real-time motion capture techniques.

Kizuna AI is essentially a vlogging channel, though what she is vlogging is the fictional life of the Kizuna AI character.

8 YouTubers Who Don't Show Their Face 2

CodeBullet

CodeBullet is another channel sitting a little under three million subscribers. This channel could technically be classes as a VTuber as well, as the person behind the channel never shows his face, with a hand-drawn animated character taking the spotlight instead.

What makes this different from Kizuna AI is the niche. CodeBullet—as the name suggests—is a channel about coding. Often involving random experiments in AI, such as training an AI to win Tetris tournaments.

8 YouTubers Who Don't Show Their Face 3

Daily Dose of Internet

Daily Dose of Internet is a clip channel, essentially curating funny and interesting clips from around the Internet and showing them in daily videos with a little commentary. The channel currently has just under twelve million subscribers.

Of course, the beauty of a clips video is that there is no need to have your face onscreen if you don’t want to, and the person behind Daily Dose of Internet takes advantage of that fact. While Daily Dose of Internet pulls generally popular clips from all walks of life, this channel model could be applied to any niche that is sufficiently popular.

8 YouTubers Who Don't Show Their Face 4

It’sAGundam

Fair warning; this channel falls well into the “controversial” side of YouTube, so bear that in mind if you decide to check it out. It’sAGundam is an online drama commentator channel. It could be thought of as a mix of a clip channel and a VTuber, but the content of the videos is about various things that have happened in the news, culture, and online, accompanied by the YouTuber’s sometimes-controversial takes on the situation.

It’sAGundam is currently sitting on over half a million subscribers, and never shows their face on camera, instead using a 3D avatar when needed.

8 YouTubers Who Don't Show Their Face 5

Ridddle

Ridddle is a channel that delivers interesting hypothetical scenarios that are backed up with various facts and informed speculation. Things like “what if the sun went out for 24 hours?”, and “what if you detonated a nuke in the Mariana Trench?” They also make videos on other interesting topics, such as the world’s most dangerous acid.

The videos are accompanied by a range of thought-provoking visuals, and the YouTuber’s distinctive voice for narration, but the YouTuber themselves is never on camera.

8 YouTubers Who Don't Show Their Face 6

HowToBasic

HowToBasic is a quirky channel that gives its viewers “how to” videos that… well they’re not meant to be taken seriously. Don’t follow the instructions in any of these videos! What typically follows is absolute chaos, often creating a lot of mess in the process.

Interestingly, the HowToBasic channel YouTuber not only keeps their face off camera, they also use computer-generated voices to narrate the video. This may be an appealing prospect for someone who is looking to keep their face out of the video for privacy reasons or security concerns.

8 YouTubers Who Don't Show Their Face 7

Planet Dolan

Planet Dolan is a channel that delivers a variety of content along the theme of conspiracy theories, unsolved mysteries, scientific oddities, and even countdowns of some of the weirdest things on the web.

What makes Planet Dolan different from a channel like Ridddle? Well, Planet Dolan is entirely animated, with the YouTuber behind it just narrating. Granted, this is a labour-intensive way to go about making faceless YouTube videos, but, for someone with a bit of artistic flair, this could be a really good option to let those creative juices flow and keep your face off of the screen.

Final Thoughts

Hopefully there’s something in the examples above that shows you that you have the tools to succeed on YouTube without showing your face. We’ve done our best to ensure every faceless YouTuber we picked is different, either in the style of their video or the niche they make content in.

This is an important point because, while we’ve only given you eight YouTubers here, there are far more that are hugely successful without showing their faces. The gaming and VTuber niches alone are full of YouTubers who stay off-camera, and there are plenty more in other niches.

Whatever your interests, whatever style of video you want to make, there is probably a way of doing it without being on-camera, so don’t let anything stop you from giving it a go!

Top 5 Tools To Get You Started on YouTube

Very quickly before you go here are 5 amazing tools I have used every day to grow my YouTube channel from 0 to 30K subscribers in the last 12 months that I could not live without.

1. VidIQ helps boost my views and get found in search

I almost exclusively switched to VidIQ from a rival in 2020.

Within 12 months I tripled the size of my channel and very quickly learnt the power of thumbnails, click through rate and proper search optimization. Best of all, they are FREE!

2. Adobe Creative Suite helps me craft amazing looking thumbnails and eye-catching videos

I have been making youtube videos on and off since 2013.

When I first started I threw things together in Window Movie Maker, cringed at how it looked but thought “that’s the best I can do so it’ll have to do”.

Big mistake!

I soon realized the move time you put into your editing and the more engaging your thumbnails are the more views you will get and the more people will trust you enough to subscribe.

That is why I took the plunge and invested in my editing and design process with Adobe Creative Suite. They offer a WIDE range of tools to help make amazing videos, simple to use tools for overlays, graphics, one click tools to fix your audio and the very powerful Photoshop graphics program to make eye-catching thumbnails.

Best of all you can get a free trial for 30 days on their website, a discount if you are a student and if you are a regular human being it starts from as little as £9 per month if you want to commit to a plan.

3. Rev.com helps people read my videos

You can’t always listen to a video.

Maybe you’re on a bus, a train or sat in a living room with a 5 year old singing baby shark on loop… for HOURS. Or, you are trying to make as little noise as possible while your new born is FINALLY sleeping.

This is where Rev can help you or your audience consume your content on the go, in silence or in a language not native to the video.

Rev.com can help you translate your videos, transcribe your videos, add subtitles and even convert those subtitles into other languages – all from just $1.50 per minute.

A GREAT way to find an audience and keep them hooked no matter where they are watching your content.

4. Learn new skills for FREE with Skillshare

I SUCK reading books to learn, but I LOVE online video courses.

Every month I learn something new. Editing, writing, video skills, how to cook, how to run a business – even how to meditate to calm a busy mind.

I find all of these for FREE with Skillshare – Sign up, pick all the courses you want and cancel anytime you need.

5. Shutterstock helps me add amazing video b-roll cutaways

I mainly make tutorials and talking head videos.

And in this modern world this can be a little boring if you don’t see something funky every once in a while.

I try with overlays, jump cuts and being funny but my secret weapon is b-roll overlay content.

I can talk about skydiving, food, money, kids, cats – ANYTHING I WANT – with a quick search on the Shutterstock website I can find a great looking clip to overlay on my videos, keeping them entertained and watching for longer.

They have a wide library of videos, graphics, images and even a video maker tool and it wont break the bank with plans starting from as little as £8.25 ($9) per month.

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TIPS & TRICKS YOUTUBE

Do YouTubers Use Their Real Names?

Do YouTubers Use Their Real Names?

When first starting out as a YouTuber, there are many questions you find yourself having to answer. Things like what kind of channel you are going to run, how often you are going to upload new videos, what demographics you want to target are all things you should be deciding early on. In terms of questions that are typically not thought to be a big deal, yet cause a lot of head scratching when it comes down to it, deciding what to call your channel is up there.

When making these tough decisions, it is only natural to look to other YouTubers—probably successful ones—to see what they did. So, do YouTubers use their real names? Sometimes. Many YouTubers do in fact use their real names, but many don’t. So what is the reasoning behind these decisions, and what should you do with your channel? We’re going to explore all of this and more in this post.

Why Do YouTubers Use Their Real Names?

So, we know that some YouTubers do and some don’t, the next step is understanding what influences that decision.

One of the main reasons to choose your real name as your YouTube name is branding. In truth, this is one of the best reasons to choose any name for your YouTube channel, but it applies just as equally to real names.

If you have—or intend to have—a related career outside your YouTube channel, you will probably want to build recognition of your name, and YouTube is great for that. An example of this might be a comedian or musician who is making content on YouTube while also booking gigs in the real world. A working comedian would be kicking themselves if they uploaded a viral hit to their YouTube channel and nobody knew it was them because the name was different.

You could just as equally use your YouTube name as a stage name in the real world, but the truth is, while “Be0wulf2077” or something similar might be fine as a YouTube name, it would raise a few eyebrows at open mic night.

Incidentally, we just made “Be0wulf2077” up, so apologies if someone out there is using that name.

Of course, this can work both ways. Perhaps you have a respectable career in the real world, giving very serious talks about important issues and such, and you don’t want people to associate that persona with your YouTube channel making mash ups of goats making cat noises. In this case, you might intentionally not use your real name on your YouTube channel.

There is also the apathy factor. Some people choose their real name for their YouTube channel simply because they can’t or don’t want to think of an alternative. This often happens when the point of the channel is to supplement something else, and the YouTuber is not necessarily interesting in being a YouTuber.

The other main reason a YouTube channel might not use the real name of a person is, of course, if that channel has more than one person running it, or if it is part of an organisation.

Do YouTubers Use Their Real Names? 1

Deciding Whether to Use Your Real Name

We’ve looked at why other YouTubers might use their real names, but what should you do? The first thing you should consider when deciding whether to YouTube under your real name is whether there is any reason you would not want to be personally associated with the content you are producing.

Now, in a world where people are increasingly losing their jobs over everything from mere political opinions to outright hate speech, the first thought that comes to mind here will probably be someone saying controversial things online who doesn’t want their employer or family to know about it. And that is certainly one situation where you might want to keep your YouTube life separate from your real life, but it is not the only reason.

Another example is teachers who, while doing nothing wrong, would nevertheless prefer to keep their YouTubing activities away from the attention of their students.

The point here is that if, for whatever reason, you want or need to keep your YouTube content separate from your real life, the decision on whether or not to use your real name has been made for you.

However, as a counter to that line of thinking, if you have any aspirations of making a career for yourself that is related to or centred around the kind of thing you are making YouTube videos about, we would argue you should use your real name. Branding is important, even when that brand is yourself. If your long term and wider aspirations tie in with your YouTube channel, it would be foolish not to leverage any success you get on the platform into a real world PR booster.

Choosing a Name

If you have read all of the above and come to the conclusion that you would rather not use your real name on your YouTube channel, the question remains; what do you call yourself.

Granted, the exact name you choose will be determined by your channel, content, persona, and your personal preferences. That being said, there are some things to bear in mind when you are picking your name.

Easy to Read and Find

The first priority should be choosing a name that is not too difficult to remember.

If your name uses numbers for letters and includes four special characters, people are going to struggle to remember how to type it, and you would be surprised at how many potential subscribers just give up at the first hurdle.

Something simple that sticks in the mind would be ideal, but at the very least make your name straightforward and easy to remember.

Content Appropriate

While this one is more of a guide than a rule, if you can choose a channel name that suits the type of content you are making, that will help it stick in viewers minds.

There is a lot of subjectivity about this, but it doesn’t necessarily mean calling your makeup channel something like “Makeup Videos”.

Try word association exercises; ask people what the first things that come to mind when they hear a potential channel name are, and if those things are nothing like what your channel is about, choose a different name.

Do YouTubers Use Their Real Names? 2

Demographic Appropriate

This one mainly only applies to family-friendly content, but there are other situations in which it could apply.

If you are directing your videos at a specific demographic, don’t have a name that will alienate members of that demographic.

The primary example here being having a name that is offensive on a family-friendly channel, but another (albeit far-fetched) example might be a name like “Satan Lives!” on a channel making Christian content.

Is There an Advantage to Using Real Names?

There are some advantages in the sense of what we have laid out above; perpetuating your name in a related field, for example. However, these advantages are not inherent to any kind of name. The key factor there is that you use the same name in your off-YouTube ventures, but that name doesn’t have to be your real one.

Ultimately, the way to benefit from your name is to ensure it is easy to remember and, if possible, related to your content. As any YouTuber who has tried to capture audiences in a foreign language to their own will tell you, using your real name doesn’t always guarantee that it will be easy to remember. A long Cyrillic name, for example, is very difficult for English speakers to recall. In situations like that, it may be worth giving your channel an alternative to your real name from a pure SEO perspective.

Another reason you might want to shy away from using your real name is if you are running a channel that you have ambitions of turning into something more than a one-person vlog affair. If your channel includes—or grows to include—other onscreen personalities, it can make things complicated if one of the people whose name is on the channel decides to leave. Changing an established name is never ideal, and, while it is sometimes necessary, there is no harm in taking steps to make it less likely.

Final Thoughts

Ultimately, the answer to the title question of this post—do YouTubers use their real names?—is “sometimes”. There is no rule on YouTube that you have to use your real name publicly, and there is no inherent advantage from the perspective of your channel’s success. There are, however, plenty of reasons why you should and why you should not use your real name. As ever, the key is working out which ones apply best to your situation.

We can say that the name of your channel is often more important than it is given credit for. And, at the risk of crippling new YouTubers with doubt and indecision, it is definitely something you should put a good amount of thought into before setting any decisions in stone.

But don’t let indecision stop you. It’s not ideal, but you can always change your name later.

Top 5 Tools To Get You Started on YouTube

Very quickly before you go here are 5 amazing tools I have used every day to grow my YouTube channel from 0 to 30K subscribers in the last 12 months that I could not live without.

1. VidIQ helps boost my views and get found in search

I almost exclusively switched to VidIQ from a rival in 2020.

Within 12 months I tripled the size of my channel and very quickly learnt the power of thumbnails, click through rate and proper search optimization. Best of all, they are FREE!

2. Adobe Creative Suite helps me craft amazing looking thumbnails and eye-catching videos

I have been making youtube videos on and off since 2013.

When I first started I threw things together in Window Movie Maker, cringed at how it looked but thought “that’s the best I can do so it’ll have to do”.

Big mistake!

I soon realized the move time you put into your editing and the more engaging your thumbnails are the more views you will get and the more people will trust you enough to subscribe.

That is why I took the plunge and invested in my editing and design process with Adobe Creative Suite. They offer a WIDE range of tools to help make amazing videos, simple to use tools for overlays, graphics, one click tools to fix your audio and the very powerful Photoshop graphics program to make eye-catching thumbnails.

Best of all you can get a free trial for 30 days on their website, a discount if you are a student and if you are a regular human being it starts from as little as £9 per month if you want to commit to a plan.

3. Rev.com helps people read my videos

You can’t always listen to a video.

Maybe you’re on a bus, a train or sat in a living room with a 5 year old singing baby shark on loop… for HOURS. Or, you are trying to make as little noise as possible while your new born is FINALLY sleeping.

This is where Rev can help you or your audience consume your content on the go, in silence or in a language not native to the video.

Rev.com can help you translate your videos, transcribe your videos, add subtitles and even convert those subtitles into other languages – all from just $1.50 per minute.

A GREAT way to find an audience and keep them hooked no matter where they are watching your content.

4. PlaceIT can help you STAND OUT on YouTube

I SUCK at making anything flashy or arty.

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

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

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

5. StoryBlocks helps me add amazing video b-roll cutaways

I mainly make tutorials and talking head videos.

And in this modern world this can be a little boring if you don’t see something funky every once in a while.

I try with overlays, jump cuts and being funny but my secret weapon is b-roll overlay content.

I can talk about skydiving, food, money, kids, cats – ANYTHING I WANT – with a quick search on the StoryBlocks website I can find a great looking clip to overlay on my videos, keeping them entertained and watching for longer.

They have a wide library of videos, graphics, images and even a video maker tool and it wont break the bank with plans starting from as little as £8.25 ($9) per month.

 

Categories
TIPS & TRICKS YOUTUBE

How to Edit YouTube Videos for Free

How to Edit YouTube Videos for Free 2

Editing your videos is a significant part of a successful YouTube channel, and one that is often neglected by channels that ultimately do not find success. The problem with editing is that it is very time-consuming. Indeed, a rough guide for how long it will take to edit a video will tell you to expect to spend five times as long editing as you did recording.

Think about that for a second. If you record two hours of footage, you’re probably going to be spending around ten hours editing. And you might end up with fifteen or twenty minutes-worth of video when you’re done.

Of course, there are several ways to make the editing process a little less painful, but they all involve spending money, something that many YouTubers—especially new YouTubers—might be reluctant or can’t afford to do.

We’ve put together a little guide on how to edit YouTube videos for free, but fair warning; there are no easy shortcuts.

Give up on the Idea of an Editor

Many YouTubers, once they start to find a bit of success with their channel, find it worth their while to hire an editor to take care of their editing needs. It is often possible to find an editor quite cheap, especially if that editor is taking on multiple YouTuber’s work.

However, we are not looking for cheap here, we are looking for free.

It is not impossible that you could find someone prepared to take on your editing for free—especially if you are a well-known YouTuber, and they are looking to build experience—but it is unlikely that any such arrangement would last for long.

Unfortunately, the only way to get your editing done for the low price of free is to do it yourself. Your other option, of course, is to work on your initial recording to the point that it doesn’t need editing, although you can easily find yourself in a situation where you spend as much time preparing for a video as you would have editing it.

How to Edit YouTube Videos for Free

Plan Your Time

There’s no way around it; you can’t save money on editing without spending time in its place, and, as we mentioned earlier, editing takes quite a bit of time, so you’re going to need to plan your time accordingly.

If you don’t make allowances for the time you will need to spend editing, you will soon find yourself with delayed videos, or sitting up editing until the early hours of the morning because you underestimated how long it would take.

It may take a few videos to get a sense of how much time you need, but set aside enough time to edit your videos in your schedule.

Pick a Free Editing Solution

Most YouTubers will tell you they use something like Adobe Premiere, but professional software means professional prices, and that’s off the table for our free editing guide.

There are plenty of free alternatives, including YouTube Studio itself, although they generally have fewer features and less powerful functionality. Still, you don’t need a great deal to get basic editing done, and if you’re not planning on adding Hollywood-grade effects, you can probably get by with one of the following free options;

  • YouTube Studio
  • Windows Movie Maker
  • Apple iMovie
  • Videoshop – Video Editor
  • Windows Photo App
  • Videorama

Learn the Ropes

Once you’ve picked an application or service to edit your videos in, you need to know how to use it. Fortunately, there are generally plenty of helpful resources and tutorials for free video editing software.

Take a little time to familiarise yourself with the software you intend to use so that you don’t have to learn “on the job” when you’re editing your videos.

How to Edit YouTube Videos for Free 1

Is Editing Really That Important?

As hinted at above, it’s not editing that is important as such, but the quality of the final video. That is the thing that makes the difference between a slick video and a stilted mess. You can achieve that by working to make sure your video is free of mistakes and awkward silences, but the chances of you achieving that goal are pretty slim—there will always something that needs editing out.

Exceptions to this are live format videos, such as live streams, and recordings of podcasts. It’s not that the video wouldn’t benefit from editing in these cases—indeed, many streamers produce edited highlight videos from their streams—but the raw, unedited nature of these formats is more accepted by the viewer.

What Should be Edited Out?

This question can’t really be answered definitively, since editing is in large part a creative process, but there are a few things you can assume should be cut out in most cases.

Mistakes are the obvious one, especially mistakes that you then repeat to correct yourself. Long, awkward pauses are another thing that should be removed, as they are generally uncomfortable to listen to. Finally, any unintended noises, such as coughing and sneezing, drinking, or animals making noises in the background can be very grating to your viewers.

If there is a significant mistake that you deem necessary to edit out, try to make sure the video remains consistent. If the part you have edited out ends up making part of your video not make sense, you will need to reconsider your edit, or re-record the part that you removed.

Final Thoughts

Even when you are paying for your YouTube videos to be edited, it doesn’t need to be expensive. There are many affordable editors in the market for reliable work, and many affordable software solutions if you want to learn yourself.

That being said, editing your own videos—even if it is only a temporary affair until your channel grows—is a valuable experience. It not only teaches you things to look out for when making your videos, things that can make the editing process much quicker, but it also makes you appreciate the editing process a little more, since you’ll know what is involved. It can also just be fun to learn new things!

Top 5 Tools To Get You Started on YouTube

Very quickly before you go here are 5 amazing tools I have used every day to grow my YouTube channel from 0 to 30K subscribers in the last 12 months that I could not live without.

1. VidIQ helps boost my views and get found in search

I almost exclusively switched to VidIQ from a rival in 2020.

Within 12 months I tripled the size of my channel and very quickly learnt the power of thumbnails, click through rate and proper search optimization. Best of all, they are FREE!

2. Adobe Creative Suite helps me craft amazing looking thumbnails and eye-catching videos

I have been making youtube videos on and off since 2013.

When I first started I threw things together in Window Movie Maker, cringed at how it looked but thought “that’s the best I can do so it’ll have to do”.

Big mistake!

I soon realized the move time you put into your editing and the more engaging your thumbnails are the more views you will get and the more people will trust you enough to subscribe.

That is why I took the plunge and invested in my editing and design process with Adobe Creative Suite. They offer a WIDE range of tools to help make amazing videos, simple to use tools for overlays, graphics, one click tools to fix your audio and the very powerful Photoshop graphics program to make eye-catching thumbnails.

Best of all you can get a free trial for 30 days on their website, a discount if you are a student and if you are a regular human being it starts from as little as £9 per month if you want to commit to a plan.

3. Rev.com helps people read my videos

You can’t always listen to a video.

Maybe you’re on a bus, a train or sat in a living room with a 5 year old singing baby shark on loop… for HOURS. Or, you are trying to make as little noise as possible while your new born is FINALLY sleeping.

This is where Rev can help you or your audience consume your content on the go, in silence or in a language not native to the video.

Rev.com can help you translate your videos, transcribe your videos, add subtitles and even convert those subtitles into other languages – all from just $1.50 per minute.

A GREAT way to find an audience and keep them hooked no matter where they are watching your content.

4. PlaceIT can help you STAND OUT on YouTube

I SUCK at making anything flashy or arty.

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

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

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

5. StoryBlocks helps me add amazing video b-roll cutaways

I mainly make tutorials and talking head videos.

And in this modern world this can be a little boring if you don’t see something funky every once in a while.

I try with overlays, jump cuts and being funny but my secret weapon is b-roll overlay content.

I can talk about skydiving, food, money, kids, cats – ANYTHING I WANT – with a quick search on the StoryBlocks website I can find a great looking clip to overlay on my videos, keeping them entertained and watching for longer.

They have a wide library of videos, graphics, images and even a video maker tool and it wont break the bank with plans starting from as little as £8.25 ($9) per month.

Categories
SOCIAL MEDIA TIPS & TRICKS YOUTUBE

How to Promote YouTube Videos on Pinterest

How to Promote YouTube Videos on Pinterest

There is a seemingly endless source of opportunities for promoting your YouTube videos on social media, from Twitter to Facebook, and everything in between. Pinterest is rarely the first option that comes to mind when deciding where to promote you videos, but it is very much a viable tool for promotion.

Granted, Pinterest is typically known more for its image-sharing than video promotion, but the fact that Pinterest is primarily an image-based platform can be misleading, as its real strength lies in sharing content of all kinds by leveraging the appeal of images.

In this post, we’re going to look at how to promote YouTube videos on Pinterest, but before we get into the how, let’s talk about the what.

What is Pinterest?

In the most basic sense, Pinterest is an image-sharing platform that allows users to “pin” images from around the web to their profile. Users can create boards (essentially image galleries), and in doing so, build up collections of images on a specific theme.

Crucially for the purposes of this post, pinned images come with a link to the place they were found, so that anyone interested in the image can click through to the place the image came from.

How to Promote YouTube Videos on Pinterest 1

Why Pinterest?

You may be asking yourself, “if it’s a platform for saving and sharing images, what does it have to do with YouTube?” The key point is that the links to the image’s source is included.

Another key point is the fact that Pinterest receives a lot of organic search traffic from search engines. You may expect that this would mostly be from people running image searches and seeing Pinterest results, but Pinterest shows up a lot in regular text search results, as well.

Of course, it would be better if the search results took someone directly to your video, but if the choice is between someone arriving at your channel via Pinterest and not arriving at all, I think we both know which is preferable!

How to Promote YouTube Videos on Pinterest

Now that you know what it is and why it can be useful in promoting your videos, let’s take it a step at a time. Here’s how you promote your videos on Pinterest.

1. Preparation

We won’t waste time telling you that you need an active YouTube channel—we assume you already have one of those if you’re reading this post—but you will need to make a Pinterest account. You’ll also want to create a board specifically for your YouTube pins. This isn’t just for the sake of keeping everything organised (though that is helpful as well) but it helps with SEO, as all the pins on the board will be related, which will add a little weight to the board in the eyes of the search engines.

Another thing you should do as part of your preparation is ensure that your videos are branded. This means making it clear in the video who you are. You want to leave a lasting impression on the viewer (in a good way) that they’ll remember. The reason for this is that Pinterest viewers don’t need to open YouTube to see your video; they can watch it right there on the Pinterest page. That means they won’t see your subscribe button, video description, or anything else that might lead them to click more of your content.

As a general rule, this kind of branding awareness should be considered good practice in any YouTube situation, so, if you’re not doing it already, consider this a good reason to get started, but not the only reason.

2. Get Your Video Embed Link

You’ll need to grab an embed link from your video, but this isn’t as simple as it sounds. You will need the long URL for your video, which may already be the one in your browser’s address bar. If the full “youtube.com” address is there, you should be fine to copy that. But, if you click the “Share” button, make sure you are getting the full YouTube address, and not a shortened link. Pinterest will reject those shortened links as they see it as spam.

Once you’ve got your link, you can head to the next step.

3. Upload Your New Pin

Over on Pinterest, click “Add a Pin”, drop your video link in the box, and click “Find Images”. Make sure it is your video that is selected, and then pick the board you created for your YouTube videos. Finally, add a description. This could be the same description you used for your video over on YouTube, but it could also be beneficial to write something new, so search engines don’t count it as duplicate content. Regardless of which route you take, it should have plenty of relevant keywords in it. You’ll have to keep it under the Pinterest description’s character limit of 500 characters, however.

You can also take this opportunity to get a link to your blog or something similar, as this should count as a high-authority link in the search engine’s eyes.

4. That’s All, Folks!

And you’re done. You can repeat this process for other videos, perhaps set up automatic sharing to things like Facebook, but other than that, you’re all set to reap the rewards of promoting your video content on Pinterest.

Final Thoughts

When looking to promote your YouTube videos, not every method or platform is going to be right for you, but you should never rule an option out until you are sure it won’t work. This is the mistake that many fall into with Pinterest by assuming it’s no good for their needs and never giving it a try at all.

Pinterest is a powerful tool for driving organic search engine traffic to your videos, and that can only be a good thing. If nothing else, it removes some of your reliance on the ever-changing YouTube algorithm, which makes it less likely a minor tweak by YouTube will send your traffic numbers plummeting through the floor!

Top 5 Tools To Get You Started on YouTube

Very quickly before you go here are 5 amazing tools I have used every day to grow my YouTube channel from 0 to 30K subscribers in the last 12 months that I could not live without.

1. VidIQ helps boost my views and get found in search

I almost exclusively switched to VidIQ from a rival in 2020.

Within 12 months I tripled the size of my channel and very quickly learnt the power of thumbnails, click through rate and proper search optimization. Best of all, they are FREE!

2. Adobe Creative Suite helps me craft amazing looking thumbnails and eye-catching videos

I have been making youtube videos on and off since 2013.

When I first started I threw things together in Window Movie Maker, cringed at how it looked but thought “that’s the best I can do so it’ll have to do”.

Big mistake!

I soon realized the move time you put into your editing and the more engaging your thumbnails are the more views you will get and the more people will trust you enough to subscribe.

That is why I took the plunge and invested in my editing and design process with Adobe Creative Suite. They offer a WIDE range of tools to help make amazing videos, simple to use tools for overlays, graphics, one click tools to fix your audio and the very powerful Photoshop graphics program to make eye-catching thumbnails.

Best of all you can get a free trial for 30 days on their website, a discount if you are a student and if you are a regular human being it starts from as little as £9 per month if you want to commit to a plan.

3. Rev.com helps people read my videos

You can’t always listen to a video.

Maybe you’re on a bus, a train or sat in a living room with a 5 year old singing baby shark on loop… for HOURS. Or, you are trying to make as little noise as possible while your new born is FINALLY sleeping.

This is where Rev can help you or your audience consume your content on the go, in silence or in a language not native to the video.

Rev.com can help you translate your videos, transcribe your videos, add subtitles and even convert those subtitles into other languages – all from just $1.50 per minute.

A GREAT way to find an audience and keep them hooked no matter where they are watching your content.

4. PlaceIT can help you STAND OUT on YouTube

I SUCK at making anything flashy or arty.

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

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

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

5. StoryBlocks helps me add amazing video b-roll cutaways

I mainly make tutorials and talking head videos.

And in this modern world this can be a little boring if you don’t see something funky every once in a while.

I try with overlays, jump cuts and being funny but my secret weapon is b-roll overlay content.

I can talk about skydiving, food, money, kids, cats – ANYTHING I WANT – with a quick search on the StoryBlocks website I can find a great looking clip to overlay on my videos, keeping them entertained and watching for longer.

They have a wide library of videos, graphics, images and even a video maker tool and it wont break the bank with plans starting from as little as £8.25 ($9) per month.

Categories
TIPS & TRICKS YOUTUBE

How Many Videos Should I Upload a Week?

How Many Videos Should I Upload a Week?

Upload frequency is one of those thing that it can be easy to get turned around on, since you can easily find opposing advice… sometimes from the same sources! In this post, we’re going to do our best to not only give you the information you need to answer this question yourself, but also explain why there are so many conflicting opinions on the matter.

And we’ll start by saying this; there is no definitive answer to the question of “how many videos should I upload a week?”. Like many aspects of success on the platform, it all comes down to your specific circumstances. Let’s dig a little deeper.

A Late Video is Better Than no Video

The first thing to note is that, whatever upload frequency you have been told is the key to success, it will not work if you can’t stick to it. Many YouTubers set themselves lofty goals that they can’t stick to at the start, with declarations like “I will upload a new video five times a week!”

This is especially difficult for new YouTubers, who are often balancing work, family, and school around their channel, so committing to making a lot of video content several times a week is a non-starter.

Unfortunately, it is very easy to get from not being able to stick to your arbitrary schedule to not uploading videos at all!

Whatever your chosen system for creating YouTube content, it should be one that you can stick to, and without burning yourself out. Now, don’t mistake this for “easy”. We’re not saying succeeding on YouTube won’t be hard work, but there is a difference between working hard and running yourself so hard into the ground that you never want to make another YouTube video again!

How to Make Gaming Videos Without Showing Your Face 1

The Content You Make is a Factor

Many new YouTubers make the mistake of deciding what their upload schedule should be and then trying to make their content creation fit that schedule.

This is the wrong way round, folks.

You need to take a good hard look at your content before deciding on your upload schedule. How long do your videos take to make? What are the upload schedules of competing YouTubers in the same niche?

To give a couple of examples, someone like Philip DeFranco uploads daily videos because he creates news-style content that needs to be up-to-the-minute. He also has the advantage of his style of video not being too intensive to make, as it essentially just consists of recording his video vlog-style and then editing bits of it.

In contrast, someone like Colin Furze makes content around his projects, building various strange contraptions. Sometimes a project can take months to complete—even longer—so it wouldn’t be realistic to expect to put out a video every day.

As far as competition goes, you shouldn’t have to worry about being “undercut” by someone uploading more frequently. Using the Colin Furze example, other inventor YouTubers can’t really upload more frequently than Colin without taking less time to make the videos. At some point, they would cease being direct competition.

Quality Shouldn’t Suffer For Your Schedule

One thing that often happens with YouTubers who find themselves struggling to maintain their pre-decided upload schedule is a dip in quality as they cut corners to get the video out quicker. A common example of this is skimping on the editing—one of the most time-consuming parts of being a YouTubers—and leaving mistakes and awkward pauses in.

The problem is, your content doesn’t just appear and then disappear (unless you delete it). Once uploaded, your content is there for all to see, and someone might stumble across a video that you uploaded months ago as their first introduction to you.

For them, it won’t matter that you have uploaded a new video every single day for the past two year; all they will see is the video they are watching, which you cut corners making and is not your best as a result.

With almost no exceptions, you will find more success uploaded better videos than you will by uploading more videos. If you have to take an extra week to make the video you’re making, do it. It will pay off in the long run.

Public Domain YouTube Channels for Free Footage

YouTube Prefers Consistency Over Frequency

And here we come to the most important point; YouTube isn’t all that bothered about how quickly you get your videos uploaded, but they are bothered that you do it consistently.

Being able to count on regular and reliable uploads is something YouTube likes, because they know if they promote a reliable channel, the viewers of that channel will always have a reason to come back. On the other hand, a channel that uploads once a day for two months and then doesn’t upload for an entire year can leave a sour taste in subscriber’s mouths, and YouTube doesn’t want that.

Of course, we’re not saying that you should settle for just getting a new video out every year and leave it at that—there are limits to the “consistency over frequency” theory—but if you have a choice between putting out weekly videos but not always hitting your target, or putting videos out every two weeks and never missing an upload, you should probably go for the latter.

Final Thoughts

YouTube’s algorithm factors a lot of things in when it decides whether to promote a video or channel or not, and, in all honesty, it would appear that watch time and click-through rates are more important to YouTube than any of the aspects related to the upload schedule.

As ever, this should not be taken as an excuse to abandon any notion of a proper upload schedule, but it’s worth noting that it is far from the end of the world if you can’t seem to nail that schedule.

And if we can leave you with one piece of advice; some videos are better than none. Don’t let the fear of failure stop you from making YouTube content, even if it means not uploading as often as you’d have liked.

Top 5 Tools To Get You Started on YouTube

Very quickly before you go here are 5 amazing tools I have used every day to grow my YouTube channel from 0 to 30K subscribers in the last 12 months that I could not live without.

1. VidIQ helps boost my views and get found in search

I almost exclusively switched to VidIQ from a rival in 2020.

Within 12 months I tripled the size of my channel and very quickly learnt the power of thumbnails, click through rate and proper search optimization. Best of all, they are FREE!

2. Adobe Creative Suite helps me craft amazing looking thumbnails and eye-catching videos

I have been making youtube videos on and off since 2013.

When I first started I threw things together in Window Movie Maker, cringed at how it looked but thought “that’s the best I can do so it’ll have to do”.

Big mistake!

I soon realized the move time you put into your editing and the more engaging your thumbnails are the more views you will get and the more people will trust you enough to subscribe.

That is why I took the plunge and invested in my editing and design process with Adobe Creative Suite. They offer a WIDE range of tools to help make amazing videos, simple to use tools for overlays, graphics, one click tools to fix your audio and the very powerful Photoshop graphics program to make eye-catching thumbnails.

Best of all you can get a free trial for 30 days on their website, a discount if you are a student and if you are a regular human being it starts from as little as £9 per month if you want to commit to a plan.

3. Rev.com helps people read my videos

You can’t always listen to a video.

Maybe you’re on a bus, a train or sat in a living room with a 5 year old singing baby shark on loop… for HOURS. Or, you are trying to make as little noise as possible while your new born is FINALLY sleeping.

This is where Rev can help you or your audience consume your content on the go, in silence or in a language not native to the video.

Rev.com can help you translate your videos, transcribe your videos, add subtitles and even convert those subtitles into other languages – all from just $1.50 per minute.

A GREAT way to find an audience and keep them hooked no matter where they are watching your content.

4. PlaceIT can help you STAND OUT on YouTube

I SUCK at making anything flashy or arty.

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

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

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

5. StoryBlocks helps me add amazing video b-roll cutaways

I mainly make tutorials and talking head videos.

And in this modern world this can be a little boring if you don’t see something funky every once in a while.

I try with overlays, jump cuts and being funny but my secret weapon is b-roll overlay content.

I can talk about skydiving, food, money, kids, cats – ANYTHING I WANT – with a quick search on the StoryBlocks website I can find a great looking clip to overlay on my videos, keeping them entertained and watching for longer.

They have a wide library of videos, graphics, images and even a video maker tool and it wont break the bank with plans starting from as little as £8.25 ($9) per month.

Categories
TIPS & TRICKS YOUTUBE

Can YouTubers See Their Subscribers?

Can YouTubers See Their Subscribers? 2

It’s natural to wonder what your favourite YouTubers know about you—what data is available to them. It’s also natural, if you are a YouTuber, to wonder if there are things available to you that you didn’t know about.

One such piece of information that often comes up is subscribers, and whether YouTubers can see who is subscribed to their channel. And the answer to that question is yes… but also no.

There is an option within the YouTube Studio dashboard to see a list of your recent subscribers. However, it only shows you subscribers who have opted to allow this behaviour. In your YouTube account, there is an option to keep your subscriptions private. Perhaps you’re subscribed to several channels about entertainment news and want to keep it private, we’re not judging.

But, if you chose to keep your subscriptions public, but then YouTube went and told every YouTuber you subscribed to that you’re on their list, it wouldn’t be very private, would it?

So, can YouTubers see their subscribers? Yes, but they can only see subscribers who have chosen to let their subscriptions be public. It should also be worth noting that, while you might have your subscriptions set to private, if you are regularly commenting on videos and joining in with live chats, people are going to be able to guess that you are subscribed, so if keeping that private is very important to you, you’ll have to bear that in mind.

Can YouTubers See Their Subscribers?

How to See Who is Subscribed to You

If you are a YouTuber and want to see who is subscribed to your channel, it is very easy to do so. Firstly, head into your YouTube Studio dashboard. Once you’re there, simply look for the “Recent Subscribers” card and click “see more” to view your subscribers. At least, the subscribers that have allowed you to see them.

You can filter subscribers into time periods, for example; the last 30 days, 60 days, etc. You can also sort them by various factors, including by their subscriber count.

How to Make Your Subscriptions Public or Private

If you want to change your own subscription visibility, either to allow YouTubers to see that you are subscribed to them, or to make it so they can’t see you… or even if you don’t care, but you’re curious what yours is set to, you can find the necessary option in YouTube’s settings menu.

Simply head over to YouTube and click your profile picture in the top right-hand corner. In the dropdown menu, find “Settings” and click it. It should have an icon of a cogwheel next to it. From there you should be presented with your settings page and a bunch of categories down the left-hand side. You want “Privacy”. Once in there, you should see an option called “Keep all my subscriptions private”, which you can toggle on or off depending on your preferences.

Why Hide Subscriptions?

Some people are just very private, and don’t want people to know what they watch on YouTube. That being said, there are also practical reasons. For example, if you are a YouTuber who makes controversial statements, there may be certain channels—or types of channels—that you do not want to be seen subscribing to as it might affect your reputation.

Given the way most of us use YouTube, there is also the prospect of long-since forgotten subscriptions causing problems. It is increasingly becoming commonplace for people to go deep diving in the online past of people they want to take down, and finding that you subscribed to someone eight years ago who has since become incredibly controversial, or perhaps committed crimes, would be exactly the kind of thing they would look for.

How to Hide Your Subscriber Count

Subscribers aren’t the only ones who have the power to make their subscribing habits hidden; YouTubers can also choose to hide their subscriber count, essentially making their subscriber situation a total mystery to regular viewers since even the subscribers who are public aren’t viewable to anyone besides the YouTuber.

If you want to hide your subscriber count, first you need to get back into YouTube Studio. Click on “Settings”, then “Channel”, then “Advanced Settings”. Scroll until you find a section labelled “Subscriber Count” and there should be an option underneath called “Display the number of people subscribed to my channel”. You can toggle this on or off as preferred.

Can YouTubers See Their Subscribers? 1

Why Would a YouTuber Hide Their Subscriber Count?

There can be any number of personal reasons to hide your subscriber count, but one of the most obvious and common ones is optics. As much as it shouldn’t be the case, we often let popularity cloud our judgement, and channels with low subscriber counts regularly get passed on because they are seen as lesser.

We should be content to judge a new (to us) YouTuber on the content of their videos, but many of us don’t. We find ourselves wondering “why have they got so few subscribers? There must be something off”, even when we are there because we have just enjoyed one of their videos.

Hiding your subscriber count is a way to eliminate this factor from the equation. Additionally, if and when your subscriber count reaches a level where you would no longer have to worry about it putting people off, you can always decide to show the number of subscribers you have then!

Final Thoughts

Ultimately, it is entirely up to you as a person with a YouTube account (whether you make content or not) whether you want to allow anyone to see what you are subscribed to. And you don’t need to have a “good” reason for that decision, nor do you have to tell anyone what that reason is. The same goes for YouTubers and their subscriber counts.

As the Internet continues to fill up with more ways to track your online presence and collect your data, online privacy continues to be a big issue, and you should be free to exercise as much—or as little—privacy as you want.

Top 5 Tools To Get You Started on YouTube

Very quickly before you go here are 5 amazing tools I have used every day to grow my YouTube channel from 0 to 30K subscribers in the last 12 months that I could not live without.

1. VidIQ helps boost my views and get found in search

I almost exclusively switched to VidIQ from a rival in 2020.

Within 12 months I tripled the size of my channel and very quickly learnt the power of thumbnails, click through rate and proper search optimization. Best of all, they are FREE!

2. Adobe Creative Suite helps me craft amazing looking thumbnails and eye-catching videos

I have been making youtube videos on and off since 2013.

When I first started I threw things together in Window Movie Maker, cringed at how it looked but thought “that’s the best I can do so it’ll have to do”.

Big mistake!

I soon realized the move time you put into your editing and the more engaging your thumbnails are the more views you will get and the more people will trust you enough to subscribe.

That is why I took the plunge and invested in my editing and design process with Adobe Creative Suite. They offer a WIDE range of tools to help make amazing videos, simple to use tools for overlays, graphics, one click tools to fix your audio and the very powerful Photoshop graphics program to make eye-catching thumbnails.

Best of all you can get a free trial for 30 days on their website, a discount if you are a student and if you are a regular human being it starts from as little as £9 per month if you want to commit to a plan.

3. Rev.com helps people read my videos

You can’t always listen to a video.

Maybe you’re on a bus, a train or sat in a living room with a 5 year old singing baby shark on loop… for HOURS. Or, you are trying to make as little noise as possible while your new born is FINALLY sleeping.

This is where Rev can help you or your audience consume your content on the go, in silence or in a language not native to the video.

Rev.com can help you translate your videos, transcribe your videos, add subtitles and even convert those subtitles into other languages – all from just $1.50 per minute.

A GREAT way to find an audience and keep them hooked no matter where they are watching your content.

4. Learn new skills for FREE with Skillshare

I SUCK reading books to learn, but I LOVE online video courses.

Every month I learn something new. Editing, writing, video skills, how to cook, how to run a business – even how to meditate to calm a busy mind.

I find all of these for FREE with Skillshare – Sign up, pick all the courses you want and cancel anytime you need.

5. Shutterstock helps me add amazing video b-roll cutaways

I mainly make tutorials and talking head videos.

And in this modern world this can be a little boring if you don’t see something funky every once in a while.

I try with overlays, jump cuts and being funny but my secret weapon is b-roll overlay content.

I can talk about skydiving, food, money, kids, cats – ANYTHING I WANT – with a quick search on the Shutterstock website I can find a great looking clip to overlay on my videos, keeping them entertained and watching for longer.

They have a wide library of videos, graphics, images and even a video maker tool and it wont break the bank with plans starting from as little as £8.25 ($9) per month.