Category: YOUTUBE

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SOCIAL MEDIA TIPS & TRICKS YOUTUBE

Can I Use YouTube Videos on TikTok?

Can I Use YouTube Videos on TikTok? 1

Given the size and reach of TikTok in today’s Internet-centric society, you could be forgiven for thinking the video-sharing platform had been around for much longer than the four years it has. And, like most social media platforms that centre around video-sharing (YouTube, Instagram, Vine, etc) TikTok has made many stars and a lot of money for its more successful users. It makes sense, then, that YouTubers would be looking to expand their brand to this relatively new upstart.

Of course, making content for YouTube is already a lot of work, so adding a new platform to create content for may feel a bit like an overwhelming task. The next logical question is “can I use YouTube videos on TikTok?” Doing allows YouTubers to get a footing on TikTok by leveraging their already significant body of work, exposing them to a new audience in the process.

But, is it allowed? Can you use YouTube videos on TikTok?

Yes, you can use YouTube videos on TikTok. There is no rule on the platform about not uploading content that exists elsewhere online. That being said, it should be your content.

Using Other People’s YouTube Videos

TikTok may not have a specific rule against uploading duplicate content to their platform, but they are subject to the same rules regarding copyright as every other user-generated content platform on the web. This means that they have a mechanism for reporting copyright infringement.

If you upload someone else’s YouTube content without permission, that YouTuber could get your TikTok taken down for copyright violation. Furthermore, while it is highly unlikely in this type of situation, that YouTuber could decide to sue you for damages.

Now, being realistic, the chances of someone going through the hassle and expense of suing you over a TikTok video are very slim. But it could happen, and you have to accept that risk if you decide to use someone else’s content in your TikToks.

Of course, you could ask that YouTube for permission to use the content, removing all of the risks in the process. You could also rely on fair use, but as we’ve talked about both on this blog and on the YouTube channel, fair use is a tricky thing to wield effectively, and can easily backfire on you if you rely on it to avoid ending up in legal trouble.

Using Your Own YouTube Videos on TikTok

Using your own YouTube videos eliminates this risk, of course. As we’ve mentioned, TikTok does not have a rule against uploading content that exists elsewhere on the web, and you own the content you’re uploading. So, unless you plan to put in a copyright complaint against yourself, you should be good to go.

The question then turns from can you do it to how do you do it.

The important thing to remember when cross-posting content across different platforms is that no two platforms are the same, and you need to tailor your posts to suit the platform they are being published on.

This can come in the form of hard limits, such as the length of the video. TikTok videos have an upper limit on the length of 60 seconds. In contrast, unverified YouTube users can upload videos as long as 15 minutes, and verified have no upper limit (though there is a limit on size).

Clearly, then, just uploading your YouTube videos wholesale to TikTok will not be an option in most cases. But beyond the hard limitations, there are other things to consider, such as the fact that TikTok users consume content differently from YouTube users. Or, more accurately, people go to TikTok for a different experience than they expect at YouTube.

TikTok is primarily a light-hearted platform where the content is humorous and entertaining. It is not impossible to succeed with more serious content, but it is less common. If you can make your TikTok video fit that light-hearted mould, you will stand a better chance of success.

You will also need to determine what your goal is. If you are just looking to grow a following on TikTok, you can focus on succeeding on TikTok alone. If you are looking to use TikTok to drive traffic back to your YouTube channel, you will have to find a way to balance your content between being entertaining and engaging enough to draw TikTok users in, while still leaving something for them to want that they will be prepared to head over to YouTube for.

Can I Use YouTube Videos on TikTok? 2

Can You Make Money on TikTok?

An ideal scenario in the world of content creation is one in which you can earn revenue multiple times for the same content. In this case, that would be uploading a YouTube video and earning revenue there, and then uploading that same content (modified as per above) to TikTok and earning more money there.

Well, good news! You can make money directly through TikTok in a very similar fashion to the YouTube Partner Programme. The TikTok creator fund shares a huge pot of money to its top performing content.

The bad news is that the barrier to entry is quite steep. In order to make earn revenue through TikTok, you have to be at least 18 years old, have at least 10,000 followers and have had at least 100,000 video views over the last 30 days. No small feat. Still, if you can reach those levels using your YouTube content, you will be growing your revenue disproportionately to the additional effort you’re putting in.

Final Thoughts

Like other popular video-sharing platforms, TikTok represents an excellent opportunity to expand your brand, drive additional traffic to your YouTube channel, and generally increase your skillsets when it comes to creating content.

The important thing is to remember that every platform is different, and what works on YouTube isn’t guaranteed to work on TikTok (or Instagram or Snapchat, etc). Always try and spend some time on the platform before uploading content to it. Get a feel for what works so that you can apply that to your own TikToks.

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
SOCIAL MEDIA YOUTUBE

Can YouTube Detect VPN?

Can YouTube Detect VPN?

VPNs—virtual private networks—are a great way to ensure privacy when using the Internet, as well as gain access to region-restricted content that you would not otherwise have been able to view. When it comes to using a VPN with YouTube, there are many questions arise. Things like “is watching YouTube through VPN allowed?”, and “can I inflate my view count using a VPN?” We’re going to touch on those questions in this post, but first, let’s tackle the title question.

YouTube can certainly detect VPNs, though it is not an immediate process. Detecting VPNs involves the tracking of multiple data points across many users, but it can be done, and it is in YouTube’s best interests to do it.

How VPNs Work

This being a site primarily for YouTubers, we won’t try to explain VPNs in technical detail (nor are we qualified to!) so feel free to search yourself a more detailed explanation, but a base understanding of how VPNs work is necessary in order to understand how YouTube can detect VPNs in the first place.

Essentially, a VPN is an encrypted network within the wider network that is the Internet. The data travelling back and forth in that VPN is only visible to users who are part of the VPN. Think of it as similar to entering the subway, tube, or another underground transport network of your choosing. A person watching you come out of the transport network knows you have exited at that point, but has no way of knowing where you entered.

This allows users to get around things like geographical restrictions on content since their connection is routed through the VPN and emerges at a node that is in a geographical region where the content is available. This can also help users to have a greater degree of anonymity. While you can use things like “incognito mode” in Chrome, there will always be ways in which your online identity can be guessed at—if not outright locked in—because you are still accessing the web from your computer in the same geographical location. VPNs can throw any interested parties a little further off your scent by masking your geographical region.

How YouTube Can Detect VPNs

One of the key points about using a VPN is the IP address you appear to be connecting from. That is, the IP address that YouTube thinks is yours. Many VPNs—especially free ones—use the same IP address for several users. Depending on the popularity of the VPN, there could be thousands of users connecting through the same IP address. For YouTube, this would be a big giveaway, especially if many of those users are logged in.

This can be avoided by using a VPN that will grant you a dedicated IP address, meaning you will always be connecting from the same remote IP address and you will be the only one using it. This isn’t the best option for anonymity, but it’s great for getting around regional content restrictions since YouTube can’t reliably distinguish between your dedicated VPN IP address and a regular IP address.

If you are using a free VPN service—or a paid one that uses shared IP addresses) and YouTube (most likely YouTube TV specifically) is blocking you, you can always try another service in the hope of finding one that YouTube hasn’t cottoned on to yet, but the only way to be relatively sure that YouTube won’t catch you VPNing them is if you get a dedicated IP address.

Why Use A VPN For YouTube?

The main two reasons to use VPNs to view YouTube content are regional restrictions and anonymity. Regional restrictions we’ve covered—some content is made unavailable in certain parts of the world, mostly because of licensing but also sometimes because of political matters. Whatever the reason, using a VPN can allow you to access that content. Whether you see this as an unethical practice will depend entirely on your own worldview. We’re not here to judge.

There is also a version of regional restrictions which is almost the precise reverse of what we have just described. In some parts of the world—such as China, North Korea, Iran, and more—YouTube is blocked by the government. Again, where you stand on the ethics of this is your business, but using a VPN can enabled citizens of countries that block YouTube to get around the censorship.

Anonymity is pretty self-explanatory. Some people value their privacy, or perhaps have a pressing reason why they need to ensure they remain anonymous. In any case, using a VPN will make it considerably harder to identify that person when they are using sites like YouTube… assuming they don’t log in to their account, of course.

Do VPN Hurt YouTubers? 1

Using VPNs To Inflate YouTube Views

If you peruse threads about YouTube and VPNs, you’ll invariably find someone asking about using a VPN to boost their view count. This is a non-starter for a couple of reasons.

Firstly, it is one hundred percent not worth the time it would take to make any meaningful boost to your view count. If you had thousands of people working at it, you may be able to make a meaningful difference, but if you can get thousands of people to do that, why not just get them to watch your video legitimately?

Secondly, even if you fool YouTube regarding your VPN access, the platform still has ways of ensuring that every view is legitimate. If you watch your own video a thousand times, even if you do it through a VPN, YouTube will likely scrub those views from your view count, meaning you’ll have wasted your time.

Final Thoughts

Ultimately, YouTube is only concerned about VPNs when they affect the platform’s ability to generate revenue. Thousands of users coming from the same IP address makes it harder to track individual users, and thus display relevant ads. A dedicated IP address gives YouTube something to track, meaning they can advertise to you even if you are technically anonymous, so they’re not likely to clamp down on that kind of VPN access.

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
YOUTUBE

Can I Use YouTube Videos For Facebook Ads?

Can I Use YouTube Videos For Facebook Ads? 1

Facebook has proven itself to be a powerful marketing tool over the years, with many people using Facebook—rather than Google or other search engines—to get search for things online and generally consume content. And, of course, with over 2.5 billion monthly users in 2020, the sheer number of eyeballs on the site makes it an invaluable resource for advertisers.

The more instances there are of your content online, the less value each individual instance has. However, when it comes to Facebook ads specifically, just make sure your video doesn’t violate Facebook’s policies regarding ads, make your ad engaging, and you should be fine. 

Being a primarily YouTube-centric blog, we’re obviously going to be taking a YouTube angle on this, specifically whether or not you can use YouTube videos for your Facebook ads. On the face of it, this should seem like a no brainer, but, if you’ve read this blog before, you’ll know that there are always little wrinkles to make matters more complicated.

Using YouTube Videos for Facebook Ads

Now, there are a few different ways in which using YouTube videos for Facebook ads can be taken, so let’s cover each separately to avoid any confusion.

Advertising a YouTube Video Link

It’s stretching the definition of “using” a YouTube video, granted, but advertising your YouTube content on Facebook is one way in which you are using YouTube videos for Facebook ads.

The answer to this one is short and sweet; yes you can.

As long as the content of the video does not violate any of Facebook’s advertising guidelines, you can pretty much advertise whatever you like, including YouTube videos. There are question marks over the effectiveness of this strategy, however, but we’ll talk about that in a little more detail below.

Using YouTube Videos In Facebook Ads

There is a bit of mystery surrounding this aspect of YouTube videos as Facebook ads. Technically speaking, using a YouTube video wholesale would count as duplicate content, which Facebook isn’t entirely keen on. Like most platforms, Facebook would rather have content that you can only access on Facebook because it gives users an added incentive to go there.

Now, advertisements would, you would think, be exempt from any kind of duplicate content policy on Facebook, but the truth is we simply don’t know. It could be that Facebook ads that are directly ripped from YouTube have poorer performance, or that they get taken down if they are found out.

In any case, it’s probably worth not putting a YouTube video in your Facebook ads without some kind of modifications to make it unique. Fortunately, there are plenty of ways to do this. For example, many Facebook ads incorporate subtitles baked into the actual video. This allows people who are scrolling through their feed somewhere where it would be inappropriate to play sound to follow along with what is happening in the video.

Another trick you can use is to change the aspect ratio of the video. Most users viewing Facebook are doing so on their phones, and that typically means portrait mode. Cropping your video to suit portrait viewing (assuming it wasn’t already a portrait video) is another way to alter the content so that it is not just an identical copy of your original YouTube video.

Using Other People’s YouTube Content in Facebook Ads

From Facebook’s side of things, the case for using other people’s YouTube videos in your Facebook ads is pretty much the same as using your own. Facebook may look poorly on direct duplicate content, but there’s no explicit rule against it.

Where you might run into problems, however, is with the person whose content you have used without permission.

We’ve talked at length about what you can do with other people’s videos on this very blog, but as a general refresher, you should always assume you need permission from the creator unless they have explicitly said permission is not needed, or they have published their video under a public domain license.

Content creators whose content you use in your ads without their permission will be able to get your ad taken down via a copyright claim, and then your ad won’t be achieving anything! In reality, if you have a relatively small online presence, you probably won’t get noticed by any copyright holders, but the fact that you might not get caught is rarely a good reason to do something you’re not supposed to.

Are Facebook Ads a Good Way to Promote YouTube Videos

Things get a little messy when discussing this topic. Facebook is undoubtedly an excellent way to promote things, however, it has been shown that native Facebook video outperforms links to YouTube videos almost all of the time. Of course, if your ad is a native video of the content you want to promote, why would a viewer click through to YouTube? They can watch the content right there on Facebook.

One of the more effective ways to go about this is to use Facebook as a kind of showreel, much like you would with Instagram or TikTok. Select highlights from your content that are entertaining and stand well on their own and use those for your Facebook ads, with the aim being to drive the viewers to your channel for the “full fat” experience.

Can I Use YouTube Videos For Facebook Ads? 2

Final Thoughts

While this post has been specifically about using YouTube videos for Facebook ads, it is generally a good idea to avoid duplicate content regardless of the context. The more instances there are of your content online, the less value each individual instance has.

This does not mean never re-using content—the highlight reel method we mentioned above is a great way to find new viewers from other platforms—but taking a video you have uploaded to YouTube and putting it out unchanged in other places around the web will always have a diminishing effect on the original video, since viewers will have several places they can view it, reducing the incentive to head to your channel.

When it comes to Facebook ads specifically, just make sure your video doesn’t violate Facebook’s policies regarding ads, make your ad engaging, and you should be fine. If you can do that without using a YouTube video completely unchanged from its original state, all the better!

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 YOUTUBE

Can YouTube Ban You From Commenting?

Can YouTube Ban You From Commenting?

A very common question that gets asked about YouTube is whether or not the platform can ban you from commenting on videos, and it can be a very misleading question for one simple reason; it is YouTube’s platform, they can do what they want. The more appropriate question, then, is does YouTube ban you from commenting on videos? And the answer is a little complicated.

Firstly, YouTube does not seem to be openly banning people from commenting. They may ban people from the platform entirely, but that’s a different matter. Of course, if you are banned from YouTube, you are banned from commenting.

Now, onto the trickier side of the topic.

Censored Comments

YouTube has been caught actively removing comments with specific words in them. This process appears to be automated and does not seem to carry any other penalty with it. That is, nobody seems to be getting banned or even warned about their comments. The comments just… disappear.

Crucially, however, those commenters can go on commenting after YouTube has decided to take one of them down. Not a ban, then. Of course, the phrases that YouTube has targetted here seem to be mostly bot-fodder, so maybe they are banning those accounts but no one is complaining about it because the banned accounts aren’t real.

Blocked Commenters

YouTube may not be banning people from commenting overall, but individual YouTubers can certainly ban you from commenting on their videos. Of course, this only affects you if you try to comment on that specific YouTuber’s content, and saying it affects you is being a bit loose with the term.

In reality, a YouTube block is more what is known of as a “shadowban”. In other words, your comments will be hidden from the YouTube channel and no one else will be able to see them, but you will still be able to make them and will have no way of discerning that you have been blocked other than guessing from the lack of engagement. Well, unless the YouTuber explicitly tells you, that is.

Shadowbanning (also called “muting” on other platforms) is an effective way to stop troublesome commenters because they don’t know they’ve been blocked. In contrast, if YouTube told you that you were banned from commenting on a specific channel, you might go and make a new YouTube account so that you could comment from there instead.

Banned from Commenting on YouTube and Social Media? 2

Disabled Comments

The other way in which your commenting abilities may be curtailed is when comments for a particular video are disabled entirely. YouTubers have the option to disable comments when they upload a video, but don’t worry, this isn’t just you. If comments are disabled, it’s affecting everyone the same.

Of course, a video with disabled comments may not be down to the YouTuber not wanting discussion of their content. YouTube will automatically disable comments on videos that are either made for children or prominently feature children. In these cases, the YouTuber will not have a choice about the comments, as YouTube’s terms state that content for children has to be treated in this manner.

I’ve Been Blocked, What Now?

As with any situation like this, the first thing to consider is whether the blocking reflects poorly on you. Sure, some YouTubers are just very easy with the block button, and the fact that you were blocked by them may say more about them than you. That being said, it can’t hurt to take a moment to truly think about how things unfolded. If, on balance, you find that the YouTuber was probably justified in blocking you, it may be something you will want to work on in future.

There are other possibilities, however. For example, you may conclude that the YouTuber was justified in blocking you, but you are still comfortable with the way you handled the situation and do not feel the need to change your behaviour. In this situation, there is little to be done but move on. You do not wish to change and the YouTuber does not wish to engage with you.

You may also conclude that you were being perfectly civil/reasonable and that the YouTuber was entirely out of line in blocking you. Once again, there probably isn’t much to be done. If you are a YouTuber of a similar size and you consider the point of contention important enough, you could perhaps open a dialogue that way, but the chances are you will once again have to put the situation behind you and move one.

One final note in this regard; if you are not sure who the reasonable party was, there is no harm in telling the tale to someone who can be unbiased and getting their opinion. Just remember that you will have to represent events fairly if you want to get a useful answer.

When I Should I Block?

That was all well and good for someone who has being blocked, but what if you’re the one doing the blocking? If you’re a YouTuber who is dealing with a commenter you would rather not be dealing with, when should you hit that block button?

The first thing to consider is whether the commenter is being disruptive or creating a negative experience for other commenters, or if they are just rubbing you the wrong way. It might be that they get on with your other viewers but you don’t like them, in which case we’d suggest leaving them be and just ignoring their comments. If they are making the experience bad for everyone, however, drop the banhammer!

The other thing to consider is what kind of community you want to foster. For example, if you are trying to run a family-friendly channel and a particular commenter repeatedly swears or says unsavoury things, it may be worth asking them to tone it down. If that fails, block.

For channels with large followings, this would obviously be an impractical approach, but if you set these ground rules early on when your channel is small, you will usually find that your community becomes self-policing once you start hitting the kind of numbers that are impossible to manage alone.

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 MAKE MONEY ONLINE SOCIAL MEDIA YOUTUBE

Can I Use YouTube Videos for Commercial Purposes?

Can I Use YouTube Videos for Commercial Purposes?

When it comes to using services for commercial reasons—especially free services—there is often a lot of murky language and grey areas to wrap your head around. We’d like to be able to say that YouTube is different, but unfortunately, the waters here are just as muddy as everywhere else.

Let’s start with the simplest answer we can give. Yes, you can use YouTube videos for commercial purposes… sometimes. If you own the content and it conforms to YouTube’s community guidelines, there is nothing to stop you from uploading videos for commercial purposes. However, there is more than one way to use YouTube for commercial purposes, and that’s where things get less clear.

As with many things like copyright and licensing, there is a lot of this topic that falls under the umbrella of “technically no, practically yes”. That is, technically no you’re not allowed to do it, but practically you should be fine.

Don’t worry, we’ll walk through this in more detail, but before we do, please remember that this is a YouTube blog, not a legal one. Nothing here should be taken as legal advice, and you are ultimately responsible for your own decisions.

Uploading Videos for Commercial Purposes

The most straightforward use of YouTube videos for commercial purposes is the uploading of your own content that you have full rights to, and that is in full compliance with YouTube’s terms and guidelines. Examples of this might be uploading a promotional video for an online course, a showreel for your acting portfolio, or a walk-around video of a car you are selling.

In each of these cases, the video is technically being used for commercial purposes, however, it should be noted that complying with YouTube’s terms doesn’t just mean things like not having nudity or hateful language, it also means accepting YouTube’s presentation. Your video will almost certainly be shown alongside ads, and those ads might not always be to your tastes. This can be a real problem when dealing with branding, but that is the agreement you enter when you upload content to YouTube.

Embedding Videos for Commercial Purposes

Embedding videos is where things get a little more complicated, since YouTube’s own terms of service state that you cannot;

“use the Service to distribute unsolicited promotional or commercial content or other unwanted or mass solicitations (spam)”

The problem with this is that YouTube makes no real attempt to draw a line between spam and legitimate distribution, and the use of the word “unsolicited” is very vague. For example, if you embed a YouTube video on your blog, nobody could reasonably call it unsolicited, since people are coming to your blog to read your content, so the solicitation is implied.

But what about a forum post, or a Facebook comment?

The reality is that the vast majority of situations in which you would embed a YouTube video for commercial use will not get you in trouble with YouTube, but it is important to remember that vague language in the terms and conditions, particularly if your YouTube channel is a critical component in your income.

Playing YouTube Videos for Commercial Purposes

YouTube’s terms also state that the service is only for personal, non-commercial use, which rules out things like publicly screening videos. Publicly screening videos could include anything from showing a YouTube video at a speaking engagement to playing one at a party with paid entry.

There is no obvious legitimate path through YouTube’s terms to allow this use of YouTube content, however, there is a way around it. If you own the content, or if you can get permission from the owner of the content, you can cut out the middle man. As long as YouTube are not the rights holders of the content in question, their only issue would be you using YouTube to play the content, but if you’re not using their service, it’s nothing to do with them. That being said, it is against YouTube’s terms to download videos through unofficial means, so you could still be in breach of YouTube’s terms with this method. It is unclear how YouTube could ever effectively enforce this particular term, however.

Of course, this doesn’t mean you would be completely off the hook. If you used someone else’s content without their permission, they could still take issue with it, but that is the case for any use of content that you don’t own the rights to.

Additional Factors

It should also be noted that YouTube does not allow the use of any content on their site that is not a user submission. Again, we straddle the uncomfortable line between technically true and practically false here. Technically it would be against YouTube’s terms of service to include a screenshot of the YouTube website in a video that you are using commercially. Practically speaking, unless you are playing your commercial video during halftime at the Super Bowl, it’s unlikely anything will come of it.

User submissions—that is, videos uploaded by YouTubers—are covered by the usual terms and licenses, but everything else—such as artwork—is completely off-limits. That means not even for non-commercial use.

Can I Use YouTube Videos for Commercial Purposes? 1

Summing Up

As with many things like copyright and licensing, there is a lot of this topic that falls under the umbrella of “technically no, practically yes”. That is, technically no you’re not allowed to do it, but practically you should be fine.

That being said, you are taking a risk if you go against that “technically”, no matter how unlikely it is. If you decide to do something that breaks the YouTube terms of service, you should be prepared for the possibility that you may be found out, and that YouTube may take action against you.

The only way to be completely safe when using YouTube videos for commercial purposes is to ensure you are the rights holder of the content in question, and that any screenings of the content that are not for personal use should use your own copy of media, not the YouTube platform. Remember, YouTube does not own your content once it is uploaded.

It’s also worth remembering that content you upload can be similarly used by other people. For example, an informative video about how to use your latest product could be hijacked by a competing firm.

It always pays to think through all of the implications.

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 YOUTUBE

Does YouTube Count Views From VPN?

Does YouTube Count Views From VPN?

The quest for more views has become something of an art—or perhaps more accurately a science—in recent years, with YouTube experts trying to whittle out any and all means of increasing that number. Of course, the first step to being able to tease out these tips and tricks lies in understanding how everything works.

Does YouTube Count Views From VPN? – YouTube will count views from VPNs but these can sometimes be removed if they do not meet location and account checks. There are many factors that can harm video metrics via VPNs.

In this post, we’re going to be looking at the way YouTube treats views that come through a VPN—or virtual private network. As is often the case, there is no simple yes or no answer to whether Youtube counts views from VPNs; it all depends on the circumstances around the view, such as whether you are logged in to a YouTube account, and the “reputation” of the VPN network in question.

But first, let’s get a little grounding in the subject.

Best VPNs For YouTube

What is a VPN?

In essence, a VPN is a private network that operates across a public one. One way to think of a private network is your home network. If you have more than one device connected to your internet router at home, those devices form a private network that cannot be accessed from outside without credentials. Anything that happens in that network is hidden from the world, just as anything you do in the privacy of your home is hidden from the world.

Every device on a VPN will have some software that can encrypt and decrypt data. Any network traffic from those devices is then encrypted and sent over the public Internet to another device on the VPN which will then decrypt it and read it. Sticking with our house analogy, it would be a little like you and a neighbour building a tunnel between your houses so that you could visit each other without anyone seeing you.

Why Use a VPN?

The next question you might be asking is… what’s the point? Let’s stick with our (admittedly flawed) house analogy for a bit longer. Imagine we extended our network of privacy tunnels to encompass hundreds of houses across a large area. Now let’s say you were out doing a spot of retail therapy and you realised you were being followed by an assassin.

We don’t know why the assassin wants to get you… maybe they don’t like you building all the tunnels. Just go with it.

Now, you could run home, but then the assassin would know where you live. Instead, you run into a random house that is part of your network of tunnels. Now, the only thing the assassin knows for sure is that you went into that house, but they have no way of knowing where you went after that.

Of course, in this analogy, there are very visible tunnels all over the place, and it would be much easier for the assassin to figure out your whereabouts than it would for an online party to follow a user on a VPN.

As far as the assassin goes, granted you probably won’t be getting “chased” online, but you may want to avoid having your online activities tracked by the likes of Facebook and Google. Another reason to use VPNs is to access region-specific content. For example, Netflix presents you with the content library for the region you are in regardless of your nationality, place of residence, or where you signed up for your account from. That means that if you are a UK Netflix user on holiday in America, you’re going to get the US Netflix library.

So no Friends for you.

Using a VPN, you can access Netflix through a node that is in the United States, so as far as Netflix is concerned, that is your geographical location. The assassin watched you go into an American house.

Do VPN Hurt YouTubers? 1

Are VPNs Detectable?

There is nothing obvious about a VPN connection from the outside—there are no visible tunnels like in our analogy—but VPN networks can be outed over time, and their addresses flagged as part of a VPN. This doesn’t necessarily mean YouTube will block those addresses (though VPNs that are used in malicious attacks tend to get blocked), but it will change how they handle users coming from those addresses.

Does YouTube Count Views From VPN?

So, if you view YouTube through a VPN, does YouTube count those views? Firstly, if you are logged in to a valid YouTube account, YouTube won’t particularly care that you are using a VPN. Only a small amount of the data they want to track is related to your location, and with a logged-in account, they can be sure of the rest of that information.

As for anonymous views… we simply don’t know.

What we do know, however, is that if you were thinking of using this method to increase the view count on your video, you would definitely be going against YouTube’s terms of service by “artificially inflating” your view count. Of course, whether they could tie the behaviour to you specifically is a different matter. Another thing to consider is that it would take far more time to make a meaningful impact on your view count this way than it would to just grow your channel organically!

Why View YouTube Through a VPN?

Hopefully, you’re not trying to inflate your view count as mentioned above, but you may do it for other reasons. One example is to view region-specific content. It’s a relatively small number of the total YouTube catalogue, but some videos are locked out in certain regions, and this would be a way to view those. Another reason would be simple to view YouTube without your viewing history being tracked.

Final Thoughts

On balance, YouTube probably does count views coming from VPNs when those views are not suspicious. If the user is behaving like a bot or viewing the same video over and over, that may lead YouTube to decide to discount those views. The most relevant factor, however, is that this would be a terrible and ineffective way to gain views, so it’s probably not worth worrying about whether those views count.

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 YOUTUBE

Can I Use YouTube Videos On My Website?

Can I Use YouTube Videos On My Website? 1

YouTube is not just a form of entertainment, it is also an invaluable resource for information, education, and citation for other websites. Of course, the Internet can be a hostile environment when it comes to copyright and ownership if you get on the wrong side of things, so it’s only natural to ask; can I use YouTube videos on my website?

As with most YouTube topics, there are some caveats to the simple answer, but that simple answer is yes, you can use YouTube videos on your website in most cases.

Worried about those other cases? Don’t be, we’ll explain in more detail below, but we can confidently say that this is one area of YouTube where you should be safe from accidentally running into trouble.

Using YouTube Videos On Your Website

The firstthing I did when starting to promote my YouTube videos was to set up a wordpress website with Desert Web Solutions. This gives you a place to share and grow an audience without relying to heavily on YouTube directly.

The first thing to note here is that YouTubers have an option when they upload videos, they can make their content embeddable or not, it’s that simple. If you go to a video and the “Share” button is enabled, the YouTuber who has uploaded that content has decided to make it embeddable, which means you’re free to include it in your site.

It’s as simple as that.

Of course, there are still things you can do to run afoul of YouTube’s terms of use. For example, any kind of interfering with the embed’s functionality—such as hiding controls or preventing links back to YouTube from working—can get you in trouble. The embed itself is also the only acceptable way to view YouTube videos other than through YouTube itself, so finding alternative ways to incorporate YouTube videos into your site—even if they are your videos—is not allowed.

Now, this only applies to original content, meaning content that the YouTuber has created themselves, and does not contain any potentially copyrighted material in that content. If it is entirely original content and the YouTuber has enabled embedding, you are good to go. The YouTuber will still get any ad revenue generated (if they are eligible), and there is still a chance the viewers will subscribe through the video. Good times.

Copyrighted Content

We stressed that the content had to be original, and that is because YouTubers do not always upload original content. There are many instances of YouTubers uploading a copyright song or clips of a TV show or movie. In these cases, those YouTubes are rarely the copyright holder, and as such, are not in a position to grant the rights to embed that content in your website.

Now, if we’re being realistic, the worst thing that should ever happen to you, in this case, is the video getting taken down and your website being left with a broken embed. The vast majority of the time, copyrighted content either gets taken down or has the revenue diverted to the copyright holder. In the event that a copyright holder does decide to go after someone who has infringed their copyright, that activity would almost certainly be limited to the person who uploaded their content or YouTube itself. It is highly unlikely they would go after every website that has embedded their content.

But they could.

As with many things in life, you are taking a risk if you decide to knowingly embed copyrighted content. The risk may be small given the likelihood that any copyright holders will come after you, but you have to accept that, if that happens, the consequences will be just as bad as if the risk had been high.

Can I Use YouTube Videos On My Website? 2

Embedding Your Own Content

The simplest situation here is you creating your own content and then embedding it on your website. You can still run into problems if your content includes someone else’s content, but assuming it doesn’t, you are in complete control of what you do with it, and YouTube allows you to embed videos, so it’s all good.

Exposure Vs Obscurity

It can be worth considering the size of the website you are planning to embed a YouTube video on if that video belongs to someone else for a couple of reasons. For example, if the site is a small, unknown blog, you probably don’t need to worry about upsetting any copyright holders because, in all honesty, it will never be noticed.

On the other hand, if your site is a major traffic source, you could reach out to the YouTuber about potentially working together, since having their video on the site could represent a significant traffic source.

Make it Relevant

All talk of potential copyright pitfalls aside, it’s worth touching on your choice of YouTube content when embedding videos on your website. Choosing videos that mesh well with the page you are embedding them in doesn’t just benefit you as the webmaster, it benefits the YouTuber whose video you are using.

It should go without saying that the video should be related to the content, but there are typically several examples of any type of video on YouTube. Try to find one that suits your web page in tone and style. If you are delivering a guide on how to change a car battery and your tone is comedic and playful, don’t include a video by a YouTuber who is deathly serious. At least, not if you can find a more lighthearted alternative.

Final Thoughts

Embedding YouTube videos is a great way to add a multimedia aspect to things like blog posts and articles. Finding the right videos to go with your written content (or images) can substantially enhance the overall post.

Like everything with YouTube, there are proper ways to go about embedding content and, for the most part, they are straightforward to easy to avoid getting yourself warned or banned. The biggest mistake you can make is trying to mess with the functionality of YouTube’s embed since the worst you’re likely to face from the content itself is the video being taken down.

As always, we’d recommend sticking within YouTube’s guidelines, even when the risk of getting caught looks so vanishingly small that it will probably never happen.

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

Can YouTube Audio Library Be Used On Instagram?

Can YouTube Audio Library Be Used On Instagram?

YouTube goes to great lengths to ensure it doesn’t run afoul of any copyright laws, and those lengths include providing an entire audio library for YouTubers to use in their content so they don’t need to use copyrighted music.

But how generous is the terms and licensing on YouTube’s music library? For instance, can YouTube audio library be used on Instagram? What about Facebook? TikTok? Or even just your own independent movie project?

We’re going to dive into this topic in more detail, of course, but the short answer is yes, you can use YouTube Audio Library files on Instagram, as well as other platforms. But, as always, there is a little more to know before you go grabbing all the music.

What is YouTube Audio Library?

YouTube Audio Library is a collection of audio spanning several genres and types of music. It is accessible to YouTube users only, though the licenses on the files are creative commons, meaning they are free to use, you just need access to YouTube Studio to get to them. And, of course, there is no cost to open a YouTube account and get access to YouTube Studio.

In the past, YouTube Audio Library was a separate part of YouTube that could be accessed publicly, but it was moved into YouTube Studio relatively recently.

The audio available in YouTube Audio Library can be filtered by several aspects, including length, genre, mood, and whether attribution is required. You can play the audio directly from YouTube Audio Library, so you don’t need to download it to decide if it is right for the content you are making.

Can YouTube Audio Library Be Used On Instagram? 1

YouTube Audio Library Licensing

Now we get to the meat of this topic—the licensing of the audio you can find in this library. As of right now, all of the audio is licensed under Creative Commons, meaning it is free to use for any personal or commercial endeavour. There are two flavours of Creative Commons license available; non-attribution and attribution required.

These are pretty self-explanatory, but the attribution on attribution required audio is the only requirement—you can still use the audio however you see fit. Of course, you are free to give attribution on the non-attribution audio as well, but you are not required to.

It should be noted that YouTube can make changes to their services at any time, so it is always worth making sure that the audio you are choosing is clearly stated to be Creative Commons licensed. It is well within the realm of possibility that YouTube could start adding audio that is specifically licensed for use on YouTube only. Should this happen, it’s worth taking an extra second to verify the audio you’re using is freely licensed to avoid getting in legal trouble with YouTube.

Using YouTube Audio Library on Instagram

Being legally allowed to use the audio in YouTube’s Audio Library on Instagram is one thing, but how do you actually go about it? Well, in 2021, it’s probably not as easy as you might have expected.

Instagram does have a feature for adding music to videos… if those videos are Stories (Instagram’s version of Snaps or YouTube Shorts). The music sticker allows you to simply drop the sticker onto your story, pick the song and section, and away you go. Unfortunately, you can only choose from the selection of music Instagram provides.

The music available here is all licensed copyrighted music of the sort you would expect to hear on the radio, not Creative Commons audio from YouTube Audio Library. If you want to overlay Adele’s Someone Like You over your short video, that’s fine, but if you found something on YouTube Audio Library that you really like and want to use, you’re going to have to bring in some video editing software.

What that video editing software is will largely depend on what you’re comfortable with, but given that this post is primarily about using YouTube Audio Library with Instagram, it’s safe to say you’ll be looking for a mobile video editing app, rather than a fully-featured production suite for PC or Mac.

There are several free options available, of course, but just about all of them have restrictions that can only be removed if the app is paid for (or subscribed to in some cases). Some of the more common restrictions include having a watermark in the video and restrictions on how long the video can be. The good news is that these apps are rarely expensive to purchase the premium version of.

Some popular mobile video editing apps are;

  • KineMaster
  • Magisto
  • VivaVideo
  • Quik
  • FilmoraGo

Once you have a video editing app that you are comfortable with, simply head over to YouTube Studio and the YouTube Audio Library, find the audio you want to use, download it, and pull it into your editing app. From there you will have to refer to the instructions for using your specific app, but it should be relatively straightforward. After all, these are lightweight apps intended for making quick edits, not professional editing suites intended for making cinematic masterpieces in!

Final Thoughts

This post focuses on Instagram because Instagram is probably the most common platform for this kind of activity (after YouTube itself, of course), but the same rules apply elsewhere. The audio in YouTube’s Audio Library is freely available to use as you please (assuming the chosen audio is licensed under Creative Commons, as mentioned above), and that means you can use it anywhere.

Incidentally, if you are interested in learning more about Creative Commons, follow this link to their website, which has a wealth of information and news about it. It never hurts to understand more about the licenses you are relying on when creating content.

If you benefit from the music found on YouTube Audio Library, it may be good karma (if you believe in that) to throw a little attribution the way of the audio’s creator even if it wasn’t a requirement in the first place.

Then again, maybe you’re not looking to get freely licensed music out of YouTube, maybe you want to get copyrighted music into YouTube…

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
SOCIAL MEDIA TIPS & TRICKS YOUTUBE

Why YouTube Age Restricted My Video?

Can YouTube Employees See Private Videos? 1

Moderating YouTube is a practically impossible task for mere humans to undertake, which is why YouTube has taken to using algorithms and AI to lessen this particular burden. Of course, this can sometimes lead to incorrect judgements and, more often, correct judgements that are called into question due to the fact that it wasn’t a human being that made them.

Age restriction is one of the more tricky things that can happen to your video because it’s not always clear why it happened. Demonetisation is—most of the time at least—relatively straightforward.

If your video has a lot of bad language, is about a controversial topic, or is generally adult in nature, you can expect it to get pulled from the eyes of paying advertisers.

But when your content is age-restricted, there are a number of limitations that come with it, and it may not seem fair if your content isn’t intended for younger audiences.

Age Restriction: Things to Note

Understanding some of the logic behind age restriction judgements can help you stay on top of things and avoid unexpected notifications on your videos. Here are a few things to think about when considering your videos in this context.

YouTube Doesn’t Care About Intent

YouTube’s hands are legally tied when it comes to content that is consumed by underage viewers. The COPPA regulations that caused so many changes to YouTube in the not-so-distant past are a little broad in scope, and YouTube has been forced to be similarly broad with their application of it.

In practical terms, this means that it doesn’t matter if your video is meant for children. If the majority of your audience is underage, your content—and probably your channel—will be treated as though it is a channel for younger viewers, and that means age restriction.

Age Restriction Does Not Equal Demonetisation

It can sometimes feel like having your videos age-restricted is the same as demonetisation, especially when compared to the earning performance of non-age restricted videos, but unless YouTube explicitly says your video is not eligible for monetisation, you are not demonetised.

The problem is that the aforementioned COPPA regulations dramatically reduce the amount of information that YouTube can collect about the viewer when that viewer is a child. This, in turn, dramatically reduces the number of advertisers that are interested in having their ads shown on those videos.

The main advantage of online advertising is the wealth of information that can be gleaned in real time. Where TV advertisements have to rely on vague demographics, YouTube can deliver specific information on a per user basis. This is extremely appealing for advertisers because it means they get more bang for their buck—more likelihood of their money resulting in customers—but COPPA’s restrictions remove that advantage. The net result is that fewer advertisers are interested in spending their money on videos where they can’t be sure what kind of viewers are watching.

AI and Algorithms Make Mistakes

People make mistakes, so it stands to reason that automated methods made by people can make the occasional gaff as well. Unfortunately, because those mistakes are made by machines, it can sometimes be difficult to get them overturned. One of the more common examples of this is facial recognition.

If YouTube’s AI overseers spot a child in a video, it will put certain restrictions in place, such as disabling comments. You can turn comments back on, but YouTube will automatically turn them off again. Getting human intervention from a company like this with as many users as YouTube is, needless to say, difficult.

Negatively Affected Users Are a Minority

From YouTube’s perspective, the number of users who are negatively affected by things like false flags—or even who are negatively affected by accurate flags—makes up such a small percentage of the overall user base that YouTube have little or no intention of expending the resources needed to it perfect. In other words, if you are one of those statistically insignificant YouTubers who are affected by these problems, there is little sense in waiting for it to get better.

Why YouTube Age Restricted My Video? 1

How to Avoid Getting Age Restricted

For YouTubers who make content for kids, or whose channels often feature children (such as family vlogs) there isn’t much you can do other than drastically changing your channel’s content.

One of the most obvious things you can do is making sure that your video is not set as “for children” when you upload it. If this box is checked, YouTube won’t do any verification, it will just assume your video is correctly set as children’s content and treat it is as such.

For YouTubers who do not make content that falls into this category and who have correctly set it up in YouTube Studio, the main thing to avoid is having children in your videos. You can usually convince YouTube’s algorithms that your content is not for kids—even if it is a very child-centric topic—if your content is mostly not for kids. But the presence of a child in your video will cause that video to be flagged for age restriction regardless of how often you make that kind of content.

Finally, if possible, try not to focus too heavily on topics that are predominantly associated with children’s content. As much as things like Minecraft and Fortnite may be perfectly good entertainment for adults, the reality is that most of the people watching videos about those things will be children. If you exclusively make videos on those topics, you greatly increase the chances of YouTube thinking your content needs age restricting.

Final Thoughts

Age restriction, unlike full-on demonetisation, is not the end of the world for YouTubers who rely on revenue from YouTube’s Partner Programme. We’d be lying if we said the earning potential isn’t greatly reduced, but it is not removed altogether. Ultimately, you should make the content you want to make, and consider tweaking things to suit your financial goals, rather than changing your channel wholesale.

There are always other ways to monetise your content.

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
YOUTUBE

Can YouTube Employees See Private Videos?

Can YouTube Employees See Private Videos?

Whatever the reason you make your video private, it’s a safe bet you don’t want anyone peeking at them. We know our private videos are safe from the prying eyes of the common YouTube user, but what about YouTube employees?

Yes however, It could be argued that if you are concerned about YouTube employees—or the employees of any online service you use for that matter—seeing your private content, you should probably just not use those services.

This is excluding sensitive information like passwords and payment information, of course, which should be encrypted and not visible to anyone but you.

Now, if we’re being totally honest, the answer to this question is going to involve a lot of guesswork. We simply don’t know what YouTube employees have access to on the back end. What we do know is that you have no expectation of privacy from YouTube with any content you upload to their servers. You accept various terms of service and, for all intents and purposes, you are granting YouTube the right to do pretty much what they want with your content. Within reason, of course.

What we’re saying is, regardless of whether YouTube employees can view your private videos or not, you should probably just assume they can. But, with that being said, let’s explore this topic a little more.

What Kind Of YouTube Employee?

The first thing we should establish is what kind of YouTube employee we are talking about. For example, many YouTubers have reported contacting YouTube support regarding an issue and being asked to make their video public or unlisted because the support agent could not view it. Of course, there could be question marks raised over whether this counts as a YouTube employee since this kind of technical support is often outsourced… and these days even automated.

So, it would seem the front line of technical support cannot view your private videos, but it is safe to assume that there are people who work at YouTube who can, the question is why would they ever need to?

Can YouTube Employees See Private Videos? 1

Why Might A YouTube Employee Look At Private Videos?

The first thing we should do is address the elephant in the room; YouTube employees looking at private videos for fun. This is one of those awkward topics that probably doesn’t have a good answer. Officially, this will not happen. YouTube will not permit its employees to just look at private videos without good reason. Practically speaking, there may not be a way of knowing if an employee is doing it.

Again, we would say the best approach is to just assume that someone, somewhere is looking at the content you are uploading to YouTube, even if private.

This isn’t the horror show that you might think. Any YouTube employee viewing your private videos will almost certainly be operating under restrictions, and will not be allowed to just share your content or start talking about it with others, or else they are acting against YouTube’s internal policies, and will not want to risk being caught.

Another reason that a YouTube employee might be viewing your private videos is for the purpose of review, such as in response to a copyright dispute or appeal. If any kind of complaint is lodged against your content, it will likely still be reviewed by YouTube even if you have since made it private.

Legal Matters

If your content becomes the subject of a legal matter, making it private will not keep it from the eyes of the relevant parties. Indeed, it is highly likely that deleting the video altogether will not be enough to prevent law enforcement agencies from viewing it.

There is no advice here save for don’t break the law, and certainly don’t upload footage of you breaking the law to YouTube.

Private Video View Counts

You may have noticed the view count on your private videos incrementing ever so slowly when you check. This may look like evidence of sneaky peaking by YouTube employees at first glance, but remember that YouTube counts your viewing in its metrics. If you are opening your private videos to find dozens of extra views, something is certainly amiss. But if your view count is just climbing up one at a time, that’s just you looking at your own video!

Robots

Though bots don’t increase view counts, they do get to “view” your videos, private or not. We say view in quotation marks because the way a bot views content is not really analogous to the way we view content. Bots are very singular in purpose, and if your video doesn’t contain the specific thing a bot is looking for, the bot won’t have anything to report about it.

This is relevant because a great deal—perhaps the vast majority—of reasons why YouTube might be viewing your private content can actually be taken care of by bots. This is an ideal world for YouTube since bots are cheaper, faster, and there is no risk of privacy violations. This should also put your mind at ease since you know bots are not going to judge you for any embarrassing content you’re not ready for the world to see.

Copyright Grey Area

Copyright violations are flagged by the aforementioned bots even if the content is private, this much we know. What is less clear, however, is the process after that. Copyright holders have the ability to review a copyright violation—especially when it is appealed—but do they still get that same ability when the potential violation is in a private video?

Clearly, there are some questions that would be nice to have YouTube answer explicitly.

[[ VIDEO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XlKKcZ6vo7Y ]]

Final Thoughts

While you are probably safe from having YouTube employees sneakily watching your private videos in the vast majority of cases, we find still find it best to just assume that there is no such thing as truly private when it comes to putting content online using free services such as YouTube. That way, you’ll never be caught off guard if it happens!

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

Can YouTube Accounts Be Hacked?

Can YouTube Account Be Hacked?

Online security has never been such a big part of our collective awareness, and with more and more people finding a way to make their living through YouTube, the prospect of having your YouTube account hacked is more than just an inconvenience, it can be a threat to your livelihood.

Can YouTube Account Be Hacked? – Yes! Any social media can be hacked but its all depends on how far you are willing to go to secure your account.

With that in mind, it’s natural to wonder about how likely it is that your YouTube account could be hacked, and, fortunately, the answer is “not easily”. However, as with any matter of online security, the best protections in the world can be undermined by user error. In this post, we’re going to look at the potential ways your YouTube account could be hacked—as well as how likely they are—and cover how you can keep yourself safe.

How Can YouTube Account Be Hacked?

When talking about hacked accounts on platforms like YouTube, there are a few likely candidates for how it can happen; hacking YouTube, data breaches, and hacking you.

Hacking YouTube

Now, we’ll be honest, this is a very unlikely way for your account to get hacked. Getting hacked is very bad for business, and companies like Google are not interested in anything that is bad for business and have a lot of money to throw at the problem.

The chances of someone breaking into YouTube’s system and accessing your account that way is very low. That’s the good news. The bad news is that, should it actually happen, there would be nothing you could do to prevent it. You would just have to hope the damage isn’t too great and that YouTube can sort out the mess afterwards.

Data Breaches

Data breaches can occur because someone has hacked into a system as we talked about above, but they can also just be a disgruntled employee walking out of the office with a thumb drive full of data. The data will usually be a list of names and passwords that will then go on to be sold on the dark web. Nefarious parties then purchase these usernames and passwords and try them on several platforms to see what works. Incidentally, this is also why it is important not to use the same username and password on different platforms.

The good news here is that an increasing number of services monitor for these kinds of leaks, and can notify you if your username and password emerge on one of them. The other good news is that avoiding this problem is as simple as regularly changing your password, and services that suffer data breaches will usually force you to reset your password.

Does YouTube Track You?

Social Engineering

Social engineering is probably the most common type of “hacking” today, and it doesn’t involve typing reams of code in a dark, seedy room, or sneaking into a server room at some high-power corporation. The reality is far more mundane.

Social engineering can come in many forms. For example, someone could literally just strike up a conversation with you in the street and find out enough information to get access to your accounts. All those backup security questions such as our mother’s maiden name are a liability if someone really wants to get at you since they can be easily found out. Have you ever shared one of those “Your Drag Queen Name is Your Grandmother’s First Name and Your First Car” posts? Putting information like that out publicly makes it very easy for any malicious parties to get the information they need. And with AI constantly making life easier for them, they needn’t be looking at you directly to find this information anymore.

Phishing is also a form of social engineering, with the most common form of it is sending a spoof email pretending to be a service or bank, asking the user to log in to their account to deal with some urgent matter. The login page is fake, however, and the malicious parties behind it log the username and password you enter for using themselves. Other versions of this tactic include intercepting traffic going to a legitimate site and redirecting it, and hijacking unattended browser tabs and rewriting them with malicious code.

Protecting yourself in these instances is a matter of general good practice when using the Internet—don’t download files from untrusted sources, don’t click on links from suspicious emails, and never give your username and password out.

Protecting Yourself

For the most part, keeping your YouTube account safe is a matter of common sense. Don’t use a password that you use for other accounts, and try to change that password occasionally. Certainly never give your password to anyone else. Always enabled 2-factor authentication on your Google account, preferably using your phone as the second factor, as this will mean any malicious party looking to break into your account would also need to have access to your phone.

Final Thoughts

While we would be lying if we said that you have the power to prevent absolutely every possibility of your YouTube account being hacked, the vast majority of ways in which it could happen can be prevented by relatively simple steps taken by you, and most of those steps are straightforward and should be considered common practice for anyone using the web.

It is also worth remembering that many of the “up close and personal” methods of gathering information about you are labour-intensive. A spammer could send out a million phishing emails with the click of a button, but someone feigning a romantic interest in you to get information has to put the work in. Another way of looking at this is phishing emails, data breaches, and hacks are not personal, but somebody who gets to know you to find out your place of birth and the name of your first pet so they can gain access to your account is going after you specifically.

And, regardless of external attacks, it’s always a good idea to keep your own backups of your videos. Especially if you have an established channel with hours and hours of content.

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

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 YOUTUBE

Can YouTube Play Dolby Atmos?

Can YouTube Play Dolby Atmos? 1

The average Internet connection speed is increasing, and with Internet coverage becoming more and more ubiquitous, it is becoming increasingly common for consumers of entertainment to get their fix online through the likes of YouTube. But what about those consumers who want the best, most immersive experience possible? 4K streaming is already available through many streaming platforms, but what about sound?

What is Dolby Atmos? – Dolby Atmos has become the standard for immersive surround sound, having moved from cinema screens to homes and become affordable enough for the average audiophile to afford.

Of course, the fact that you have a Dolby Atmos system in your home doesn’t mean anything if you don’t have any Dolby Atmos ready content to play through it.

So, does YouTube support this immersive audio platform? No, unfortunately, YouTube does not support Dolby Atmos. Content uploaded to YouTube is compressed for bandwidth efficiency reasons, and all audio is reduced to standard stereo 2.0. The exception to this rule is YouTube TV, however.

What Is Dolby Atmos?

If you’ve been reading this so far and asking yourself “what is Dolby Atmos?”, don’t worry, we’ve got your back.

Dolby Atmos is a proprietary audio format created by Dolby to provide an immersive 360 degrees sound environment that is akin to what you’d experience in a cinema. The platform works with any number of compatible speakers (though a minimum of four is recommended) and is calibrated to the specific layout of the room and the speakers to provide the best fidelity and most immersive experience possible.

Of course, this experience is only available using content that is made to work with Dolby Atmos. The amount of available content is growing by the day, but it is far from ubiquitous.

Can YouTube Play Dolby Atmos

As of the time of writing this post, regular YouTube—that is the freely available YouTube where anyone can upload content—does not support Dolby Atmos nor has any plan been announced to support Atmos in the near future.

This is likely due to two main factors (though we’re speculating, of course). Firstly, the user-generated content aspect of YouTube’s business is one of the hardest to make profitable. You only have to look at the fact that the overwhelming majority of YouTubers have less than a thousand subscribers to see that the overwhelming majority of the content uploaded to YouTube is not profitable. If there are only a dozen people watching the content, it is not going to generate enough ad revenue to pay for the cost of storing and delivering it.

Adding the additional information required by Dolby Atmos means more data storage and increased bandwidth when someone streams the content, which means more expense for YouTube if that content isn’t making enough to pay for itself.

The other reason is the lack of demand for it from creators. Of all the users uploading videos to YouTube, only a minuscule fraction might be in a position to take advantage of support for Dolby Atmos. Leaving aside any technical challenges in creating Atmos content, how many YouTubers do you watch that need it? PewDiePie certainly wouldn’t gain anything from having Dolby Atmos audio.

Can YouTube Play Dolby Atmos?

Can YouTube Music Play Dolby Atmos?

Like the main YouTube platform, YouTube’s music streaming service does not support Dolby Atmos. Again, there is no word at the time of writing this post that YouTube plans to implement Atmos, but again, we find it unlikely that YouTube would go to the trouble.

While much of the music available on YouTube Music is made by professionals with music label backing, the vast majority of that music is not made to take advantage of Dolby Atmos. And, since there is an enormous catalogue of music available, it may be some time before Dolby Atmos-ready music makes up any kind of significant portion of the music on that platform. If ever.

Can YouTube TV Play Dolby Atmos?

Again, no Dolby Atmos here. YouTube TV brings us a little closer, however, as a new “4K Plus” tier providing 4K content and Dolby 5.1 surround sound was announced earlier this year. This isn’t quite Dolby Atmos, but it does offer a more immersive surround sound experience for those who have a compatible sound system.

Again, there is likely a return on investment factor at play here. Adding that additional Dolby Atmos information makes delivering the content more expensive for YouTube, and while YouTube TV is probably the most likely to be in a position to take advantage of Atmos, the majority of its content will still be Dolby 5.1 at best, or just plain stereo 2.0.

Will YouTube Add Dolby Atmos?

In the fullness of time, it is entirely possible that YouTube will start adding Dolby Atmos to its offerings—assuming Atmos isn’t replaced by a better alternative before that happens.

Granted, the vast majority of the content is still likely to not be made for Dolby Atmos, but as bandwidth gets cheaper and more available, it will represent less of a cost to YouTube to deliver it.

Final Thoughts

So, presently YouTube does not offer Dolby Atmos on any of its various services, and there doesn’t seem to be any intention to add those services in the near future. YouTube TV comes closest, offering Dolby 5.1 sound for 4K Plus users, but that is a service only available in the United States.

The reality is that the economics and a lack of realistic demand for Atmos make it a questionable business decision at this stage for YouTube, so there won’t be a real impetus to add the feature. This may be unwanted news for those precious few YouTube creators out there who can and want to make use of Dolby Atmos, but for the overwhelming majority of us, it doesn’t make much difference.

On the other hand, if you are reading this, not as a creator, but as a consumer with a shiny new Dolby Atmos system and you want some content to play through it, Netflix and Amazon Prime both support Dolby Atmos!

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
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
SOCIAL MEDIA YOUTUBE

Banned from Commenting on YouTube and Social Media?

Banned from Commenting on YouTube and Social Media? 1

Shadowbanning is one the more useful—and one of the more insidious—tools at the disposal of social media platforms today. Which of those you deem it to be will largely come down to how you use the platform, but it’s still nice to understand how things work, whether they affect you directly or not. But first, the title question;

Yes, YouTube can ban you from commenting. It’s worth remembering that YouTube is a private company and, for all the talk about what they might be doing, they can do whatever they want when it comes to how they manage their platform. If they believe you are violating their terms of service, they can remove you from that service. And they are entitled to change those terms at any time.

When it comes to shadowbanning, we can say with certainty that it exists on YouTube, largely because YouTubers have the power to shadowban commenters themselves. But we may be getting ahead of ourselves here; what is shadowbanning?

What Is Shadowbanning?

Shadowbanning is essentially the same as muting somebody on a social media platform, with the only real difference being that the platform itself is the one doing the muting, not other users.

Unlike blocking or banning someone, the shadowbanned user has no obvious way of checking whether they are shadowbanned. There are third-party services that check for this kind of thing. And, of course, you can always ask someone else on the platform, but without the help of an external party like that, a shadowbanned user will not be able to tell that they have been shadowbanned.

So what happens when you get shadowbanned? For you; nothing. You will be able to continue commenting as though nothing has changed. The difference is no one else will see your comments. To everyone else, it will be as though are just not commenting.

You may get suspicious when your comments are getting no engagement at all, but it will always be possible that people just aren’t paying attention to you.

Am I Shadow Banned On YouTube?

So, how do you tell if you are shadowbanned on YouTube? If you’re the kind of commenter that gets a lot of engagement most of the time and that engagement suddenly stops, you can probably assume you’ve been shadowbanned. If this sudden loss of engagement coincided with you saying something that might have violated YouTube’s community standards, you can up the likelihood of being shadowbanned.

If your comments are suddenly not getting engagement on a specific YouTuber’s videos, that YouTuber has likely decided to mute you from their comments. Unlike any kind of official shadowbanning from YouTube, being banned by a YouTuber doesn’t require any specific behaviour or rule violation. Effectively, YouTubers can shadowban anybody they like for any reason they like from their own channel.

In this case, your only recourses are to either try and contact the YouTuber outside of the comments section and ask them to rethink their decision, or to start up an alternate YouTube account to comment on those videos and try not to do whatever it was that made them shadowbanned you in the first place.

How To Avoid Getting Shadowbanned

The first thing to do is to make sure your comments don’t break any of YouTube’s guidelines. Any kind of abusive behaviour, hate speech, or harassment will likely land you with some kind of punishment, whether it be a suspension, shadowbanning, or outright banning from the platform entirely.

When it comes to being banned by YouTubers themselves, as we mentioned above, it’s entirely up to that YouTuber why they ban people. It could be for swearing in the comments of a family-friendly channel, it could be just that you have an avatar that the YouTuber doesn’t like. The comments section of their videos is there for them to shape, and YouTube does not impose any restriction on how they go about it.

For this reason, we can’t offer any universal advice for not getting banned by a YouTuber other than to not do anything that will rub the community the wrong way. If you’re new to the channel, hold back on commenting until you’ve gotten to know how things are a little. Once you have the lay of the land, you’ll know what you can say without ruffling any feathers in a way that the YouTuber in charge considers acceptable.

Banned from Commenting on YouTube and Social Media? 2

Does Shadowbanning Affect My Account?

To our knowledge, being banned from commenting by a YouTuber does not have a detrimental effect on your account as a whole, other than not being able to comment on that specific channel. That being said, if you go around getting yourself banned from every channel you comment on, it will hardly be good for your YouTube experience, and it may bring you to YouTube’s attention, causing them to take action of their own.

If you are shadowbanned by YouTube themselves, however, that means YouTube has already taken notice, and you should be wary of putting any more black marks on your record. A YouTube shadow ban may just be the beginning.

Final Thoughts

It’s often tempting to use words like “censorship” and “unfair” when talking about YouTube (or any social media platform) and their policies on banning or shadowbanning users. However, it is important to remember that these are private platforms, and they are not beholden to any particular standard when it comes to things like what they allow.

Of course, the world is constantly shifting in this technological age, and it may soon be the case that companies like YouTube have to allow certain (or remove) certain types of comments. For now, however, it is entirely up to YouTube how they manage user-generated content, including comments, and your primary recourse, if you don’t like the way they handle it, is to use another platform.

We realise this isn’t the most constructive recourse due to YouTube being so big, but that is the nature of the world. If you want to use YouTube, you have to play by YouTube’s rules, even if they seem unfair.

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 MAKE MONEY ONLINE SOCIAL MEDIA YOUTUBE

Can YouTube Shorts Be Monetized?

Can YouTube Shorts Be Monetized? 1

YouTube has not been one to shy away from making changes in a bid to keep up with the competition in recent years. From giving YouTubers the option to provide paid memberships to their users as an alternative to services like Patreon, to adding live-streaming to compete with Twitch.

I recently dived deep into everything we know about YouTube shorts – One of their more recent additions is YouTube Shorts, which could be seen as a move to compete with the likes of Snapchat, Instagram, and even Facebook to a degree. Of course, in typical Google fashion, not everything they implement is clearly explained and easy to understand.

YouTube Shorts’ rollout left a lot of questions for users due to its almost unofficial system of placing a hashtag in the description. Things are more clear now, of course, but now that Shorts are a more integrated part of the YouTube platform, many users still have questions over the monetization aspect of it.

Yes, YouTube Shorts CAN be monetized! From 2023 YouTube will be adding adverts to YouTube shorts and revenue shared with creators 45/10/45 with the 10% being for music licensing.

What Are YouTube Shorts?

You might be reading this and wondering “what the hell is a YouTube Short?”, but don’t worry, we’re going to fill you in.

YouTube Shorts are essentially YouTube’s answer to Instagram and Facebook Stories. They are short videos—less than 60 seconds to be precise—that are intended for continuous consumption. In essence, YouTube wants viewers to sit and watch several Shorts one after the other, with the ultimate aim being to keep those viewers on the website for longer. Many of us will happily sit through a 10-15 minute video, and if YouTube can put the right Shorts in front of a viewer, that 10-15 minute window could see them viewing 15-30 Shorts (many Shorts are much less than 60 seconds). These videos are primarily made for mobile viewing, something that is evident when you look at the portrait aspect ratio. While regular YouTube is the kind of experience you can set up in front of your computer or laptop head off down the rabbit hole, YouTube Shorts is more of a “kill five minutes at the bus stop” kind of experience.

Where Is The Money?

If you think about this from a YouTube-centric point of view, you might notice a problem with YouTube Shorts when it comes to generating revenue. If the aim is to keep users watching these short videos, you can’t really go sticking advertisements in between because it will dramatically increase the chances of the viewer clicking away. YouTube knows this, of course, which is why they don’t run advertisements on YouTube Shorts.

With that in mind, where is the money coming from?

In short, the answer is nowhere. With no ad being run against YouTube Shorts, there is no money coming in for those views. It could be argued that there is some revenue coming from YouTube Premium users, but that money is coming in regardless. And, since there are no ads on YouTube Shorts, they are unlikely to bring in new YouTube Premium subscribers since the biggest attraction of that service is the removal of ads.

Why Have Shorts If There’s No Money In It?

Just a quick note; there’s no money for YouTube. YouTubers can still get paid, more on that below.

Ultimately, as much as we might like to believe that our favourite companies are acting in our best interests, all decisions ultimately come back to money. YouTube Shorts may not directly make YouTube money, but their inclusion has been judged good for YouTube’s bottom line in the long run.

The most obvious way this works is by exposing viewers to more content. As mentioned above, in the same amount of time you might take to watch one 15 minute video, you could watch 20 Shorts. The more content you watch, the better idea YouTube’s algorithm gets of what you like, and the more successful it can be at recommending content to you. That in turn increases the likelihood of you sticking around, which increases the opportunity to serve you ads. There is also an argument to be made that adding this alternative way of consuming media may attract users that wouldn’t typically spend that much time on YouTube, though we’re not sure TikTok will be quaking in their boots at the thought of YouTube Shorts.

YouTube Shorts Fund Explained

We’ve teased you enough. How do you make money from YouTube Shorts? Through the YouTube Shorts Fund. Since there is no revenue being directly generated from YouTube Shorts, YouTube has to create their own incentives for creatives, and they’ve done this in the form of the YouTube Shorts Fund.

This is a $100M fund set up to reward creators. Bonuses are awarded monthly to creators who have had success with their Shorts, with YouTube stating that they’ll reach out to “thousands” of creators each month to award between $100 and $10,000, which is paid directly into your AdSense account. There is no stated qualification criteria, such as a certain number of views, so the recipients of these bonuses would appear to be entirely at YouTube’s discretion at this stage.

There are some criteria you have to meet in order to be eligible for a YouTube Shorts Fund bonus, however;

  • Have uploaded at least one eligible Short in the last 180 days
  • Channel must abide by community guidelines
  • Channel must not be uploading unoriginal content or content with watermarks (like the TikTok logo)
  • Creator must be in an eligible region (see link above)
  • Creator must be 13 years (or the age of majority outside of United States)
  • Creators under 18 must have a parent or guardian accept terms and set up an AdSense account.

Channels do not need to be monetized in order to be eligible for the YouTube Shorts Fund, however, but you will still be eligible if you are part of the YouTube Partner Programme or an affiliate under a Multi-Channel Network.

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 YOUTUBE

Can YouTube Ads Be Blocked?

Can YouTube Ads Be Blocked?

When talking about blocking YouTube ads, there are two ways in which it can be done; as a YouTuber, and as a YouTube viewer.

  • As a YouTuber, you can choose to block certain ads from your videos, such as would be the case if you are running a family-friendly channel and do not want certain brands associated with your content.
  • As a YouTube viewer, you might want to block ads which, as even many YouTubers who make their living from those ads can admit, can get a little excessive at times.

Whichever it is, we will cover the details of how you go about it and what it means for both you and the YouTubers or viewers in this post, so let’s dive in!

Blocking Ads as a YouTuber

So, as we mentioned above, YouTubers can block certain types of ads from appearing with your content. More specifically, you can block certain URLs from showing up in your AdSense ads (the ads at the side of your videos), and you can block ads in sensitive categories from showing up before, during, or after your videos.

It is no longer possible to opt-out of ads entirely, however. It used to be the case that being ineligible for the YouTube Partner Programme—or choosing not to participate it—meant that you would not see any ads on your videos. YouTube has since changed its policies to state that it will run ads on content regardless of whether the YouTuber uploading it is part of the YouTube Partner Programme.

You can’t block all ads, and you can’t block specific ads, but you do have some control over what ads are shown on your channel.

Can YouTube Ads Be Blocked? 1

Blocking Ads as a YouTube Viewer

There is all manner of ad blockers available in various forms, such as browser plugins and stand-alone applications. These use various tricks—such as denying access to certain URLs—to keep ads from cluttering your pages and interrupting your content.

In theory.

In practice, this is an arms race, and ad providers—including YouTube—are constantly finding new ways to stop ad blockers from working. Ad blockers are also ineffective at stopping the disruption that ads cause in many cases. For example, they may prevent an AdSense ad from loading, but the space dedicated to that ad could still be there.

Similarly, YouTube does not verify its ability to load an ad before breaking up the video you are watching, meaning that your viewing will still be interrupted by ad breaks in most cases. The difference lies in the fact that once the video has been interrupted, you will get an awkward pause while YouTube tries to load the ad, and then a half-hearted request to click on a button when the ad didn’t load.

What this means is that in many cases, you are making a personal stand against ads, but not actually avoiding the disruption they cause.

Is Ad Blocking Ethical?

Bearing in mind that you will often still suffer a disruption of some kind, is it ethical to block ads anyway? This is one of those questions that has a very simple answer.

In short, no, it is not ethical to block ads on YouTube. Whichever way you look at it, you are depriving revenue of someone who is providing content for free. Whether that someone is your favourite YouTuber or the YouTube platform itself is irrelevant. You may disagree with something the YouTuber (or YouTube) is doing, but the proper response to that would be to not watch their content. If you are consuming their content, it is only fair that they be compensated for providing it. And, whether you are viewing it for enjoyment or hate-viewing, it’s worth remembering that your ad views may be keeping them going. If you stop, they may stop, too.

If you want to keep supporting your favourite YouTubers but think the ad placements are egregious, you might consider YouTube Premium. The content may no longer be free, but the ads are gone and you are still supporting those YouTubers.

What the Law Says About AdBlockers

The law is a tricky beast at the best of times, and that doesn’t change here. Also, remember that laws may differ depending on where you are in the world. Generally speaking, however, AdBlockers themselves are not illegal.

As a user of the Internet, you have the right to filter your browsing experience however you see fit. Or, to put it another way, nobody has the right to make you watch something you don’t want to.

However!

The catch here is that platforms like YouTube also have the right to decide to who to serve their content to. If they decide to withhold access to their content from people who use AdBlockers, you would be in violation of the relevant laws by circumventing that.

Or, to sum it up more succinctly, you are well within your rights to block ads, and YouTube is well within their rights to refuse to show you videos if you do.

Final Thoughts

Ads can certainly be a nuisance. And, as mentioned above, even YouTubers who make a living from ad revenue can probably admit the pairs of unskippable 18-seconds ads, seeming ad breaks every two minutes, and unskippable ads that are longer than the video you’re trying to watch is a bit much. Unfortunately, however, no one is forcing you to watch YouTube, and your only legal and ethical recourse to excessive advertising is to stop giving YouTube your custom.

You can, of course, complain about things to YouTube representatives, or try similar avenues such as raising social media awareness, but things like that typically require a lot of interest to get noticed and take time to build up that interest.

Ultimately, the best way to get around ads on YouTube without still being disrupted by the attempt to serve the ads and without depriving your favourite creators of their earned revenue is to purchase YouTube Premium. This way, you get your content ad-free, and they still get paid!

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 YOUTUBE

Does YouTube Track You?

Does YouTube Track You?

It seems we can’t go anywhere on the Internet without worrying about being tracked by someone. Online security is a more pressing matter than ever, with so much of our lives being online, it makes sense that we’d all be more concerned about keeping our privacy private.

Being a Google company, there won’t be many people out there who are naive enough to think that YouTube doesn’t engage in a little tracking of its own, but there are levels to that tracking. So, if you’re looking for a short answer to the question posed in this post’s title, yes, YouTube can and does track you, but if you’d like to know a bit more about what that tracking entails, keep reading.

Logged In Vs Anonymous

The first distinction to make here is the difference between a YouTube user who is logged in and one who is not. Obviously, when you are logged in, YouTube knows a great deal about you and is able to explicitly keep a detailed log of your activities. Indeed, their tracking in this respect is a feature of the platform. YouTube can’t make recommendations based on your interests and viewing history if they do not keep track of what that viewing history is! This, unfortunately, is an unavoidable aspect of using the platform. There is no way to opt out of being tracked in this regard, even if you pay for YouTube Premium to get rid of ads. Ads are, ultimately, the reason for tracking you in the first place, since advertisers want to serve you the most relevant ads possible.

But YouTube can’t be sure that you won’t cancel your Premium subscription in the future, and if and when that happens, they want to have all their data on you for the ads they’re going to start serving you again.

Of course, anonymous users are not exempt from being tracked on YouTube, but they have a little more privacy than their logged in counterparts. For one thing, YouTube does not have the user data that you enter when you sign up for an account, such as your date of birth, gender, and other information of that nature.

Still, YouTube (and any other platform for that matter) can keep personalised records for anonymous users thanks to their “digital fingerprint”. This is a swath of data that they can read about you, such as the device you are using to view YouTube, your IP address, what operating system you have… even what fonts you have installed! All of this information makes combines to paint a picture almost as unique as a fingerprint, and certainly unique enough for YouTube to keep tabs on you.

Again, this is all for the purpose of advertising. YouTube will try to build as accurate a picture of you as possible so that they can serve the most relevant ads. The more relevant the ads, the higher the chance that you’ll click them, and the more you click those ads, the better the perceived performance of YouTube as an advertising platform resulting in more advertisers being willing to put their money into YouTube.

Does YouTube Track You? 2

Is Being Tracked by YouTube Bad?

People have varying opinions about the ethics of companies like YouTube tracking your online activities but it’s worth remembering that YouTube is a service that—if you’re not paying for YouTube Premium—is free, but being free to you does not mean YouTube do not still have monumental bills to pay from all the bandwidth and employees and more.

Tracking the people who use their service is part of the mechanism by which YouTube makes money, which is an integral part of them being able to provide the service at all. At the end of the day, you are choosing to use YouTube, and in doing so, you agree to the way they run the platform, which includes tracking you. If you are not comfortable with the tracking, you don’t have to use YouTube.

This may seem like an impractical alternative since YouTube is pretty much the only game in town for a certain kind of content creator, but it is, ethically speaking, the only alternative to accepting the tracking you will face if you use their platform.

Can I Avoid Being Tracked by YouTube?

With that being said, what if you still want to circumvent YouTube’s tracking? Well, the first thing to note is that it is impossible if you are logged in. Logged in users will always have their viewing history and viewing habits logged.

If you are prepared to use YouTube without being logged in, you can get around YouTube’s anonymous tracking to a degree by doing things like using different devices and proxy servers. Of course, most of us only have access to a limited number of devices, which makes this a rather limited solution, but there are also virtual machines as an option.

Deleting YouTube History

You can’t control everything YouTube stores about you, but if you are a logged-in user, you can choose to erase your viewing history, which constitutes a significant part of the data YouTube keeps on its users.

To do this, head over to the Watch History on YouTube and click “See All”, where you will find a variety of controls at your disposal These include the ability to clear all of your watch history, pause your watch history (so views won’t be recorded to your watch history), as well as controls relating to search history and comments. You can also remove individual videos from your watch history from within the video page itself.

Final Thoughts

Tracking is, unfortunately, an unavoidable reality of the modern Internet. Privacy is an understandable hot-button issue, but the fact is many web services and online platforms we rely on would not be able to deliver the services they do if they couldn’t track their users in this manner.

That being said, you are not completely powerless. If this is an important thing for you, you can try using YouTube logged out and through a proxy.

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.