Category: YOUTUBE TUTORIALS

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Embed a YouTube Video Without Suggested Videos

Post author By Alan Spicer - YouTube Certified Expert
Post date 19 January 2021
1 Comment on Embed a YouTube Video Without Suggested Videos

One of the great things about YouTube is the ability to embed videos on other sites.

Not only does it open up a whole new realm of possibilities for viewer retention if you choose to allow your videos to be embedded, but it will enable you to incorporate useful videos into your blogs and other content.

To do this, all you need to do is add “?rel=0” to the end of the URL in your embed code. As an example, here is the embed code that YouTube outputs for which we have added the argument and highlighted it so you can see where it needs to go;

<iframe width=”560″ height=”315″ src=”https://www.youtube.com/embed/PO9rEOcWo6M?rel=0” frameborder=”0″ allow=”accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture” allowfullscreen></iframe>

In the past, YouTube has been very relaxed about how their content is shown, making for an excellent resource for those who need video content but can’t host it themselves.

Unfortunately, things are a little less relaxed these days.

One symptom of that is a change in YouTube’s attitude to displaying recommended videos on embedded videos.

Specifically; you used to be able to opt-out of having recommendations show up on embedded content, but that option has gone.

It used to be the case that you could click a checkbox when getting your embed link to let YouTube know you didn’t want recommendations popping up at the end, or, if you were pressed for time and knew your stuff, simply add a “rel=0” argument to the URL.

We’re sorry to say there is not presently a way around this change in YouTube’s thinking. But, as with many YouTube limitations, there are alternative approaches to consider, and information to unpack.

We can’t tell you how to embed a YouTube video without suggested videos popping up at the end, but we can help you understand why this is the case now, and how to make the most of a bad situation.

Why Would You Want to Remove Recommended Videos From Embedded Content?

The primary reason you might want to prevent recommended videos from showing up on embedded videos is if you are making video content specifically as a companion to something external to YouTube.

This could be an accompanying video for a written tutorial, or a short clip from your phone of an event you have written about in your blog.

In cases like these, you might not want things popping up that could lead your viewers away from your site. Suppose you go to the trouble of creating a companion video for your blog post.

In that case, you almost certainly don’t want people clicking on an unrelated recommended video at the end and falling down the YouTube rabbit hole, losing interest in your content.

Retention is one of the most significant factors of success when making online content of any medium. A small number of people who view a lot of your content can be worth considerably more than a large number of people who only look at one thing and never come back.

Turning recommended videos off didn’t guarantee that your blog or site would retain viewers after the video was finished, but it at least removed the possibility of them being lured away by a keyboard playing cat!

Why Did YouTube Make This Change?

Though we’re confident we can accurately guess why YouTube decided to force recommended videos on embedded content, it’s worth mentioning that we are guessing. YouTube has its moments when it comes to transparency, but they don’t explain every action they take.

Ironically, the most likely reason they made the change to force recommended videos into embedded content is the very same reason we mentioned above for why someone might want to remove them; retention.

There are many metrics that YouTube consider important when judging the success of a video or channel, but retention is up there among the big ones. In other words, if a viewer arrives on YouTube, watches the first minute of a video, and leave the site never to return, YouTube probably isn’t going to recommend that video much in future.

YouTube wants people to stay on their platform because the longer people are on YouTube or watching YouTube videos, the more opportunity YouTube has to serve them ads and make money. If they allow you to disable recommended videos on embedded content, whether or not a viewer continues watching YouTube content is entirely out of YouTube’s hands, and they don’t like that. Sure, filling their screen with recommended videos doesn’t guarantee the viewer will stick around, but it does increase the chances. And at least YouTube got to try.

Not Fair?

The first reaction to learning YouTube has made this change is often that it isn’t fair for them to force you to show recommended content on your site in this way.

It’s worth remembering that YouTube is essentially providing a very expensive service for free. Very few free services come without compromise. For example, to watch a YouTube video, you have to accept that there will be ads. However, if you decide to pay for YouTube Premium, you will no longer receive ads, because YouTube is using your subscription fee instead of the ad revenue you might have generated.

It may not seem fair at first glance, but the unavoidable reality is that YouTube has to pay its bills like every other company, and this is just another way they ensure they can keep doing that without having to charge you to use their service.

It is also worth noting that, if YouTube were a subscription-only service, they would not need to do things like this. Granted they probably wouldn’t allow embedded videos at all, but they wouldn’t need to take steps to keep people on their platform for as long as possible. Consider Netflix, who are entirely subscription-based. They are getting paid whether you are on their service for five minutes of fifty hours. In fact, in that business model, it actually becomes beneficial to have users spend less time on their platform since they get paid the same subscription fee regardless but more watch time means more costs in bandwidth.

Silver Lining?

So, you can’t disable recommended videos in your embedded content, but you might not be forced to accept that YouTube is going to serve up other YouTuber’s content on your website.

We mentioned above that the way you would have removed recommended videos in the past was to either check the option when you get your embed link or add an argument to the URL. Well, that argument still has a purpose. Now, if a video has the “rel=0” argument, the recommendations shown will only be from the same channel as the video that is being embedded. It may not be perfect, but at least your viewers will be getting lured away by more of your content.

To do this, all you need to do is add “?rel=0” to the end of the URL in your embed code. As an example, here is the embed code that YouTube outputs for which we have added the argument and highlighted it so you can see where it needs to go;

<iframe width=”560″ height=”315″ src=”https://www.youtube.com/embed/PO9rEOcWo6M?rel=0” frameborder=”0″ allow=”accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture” allowfullscreen></iframe>

There is no option for this in the settings you are presented with when you click to embed the video, so you will have to add the code manually. You will also need to be sharing a video from a channel with at least one other video for this to work—YouTube can’t recommend other videos from the same channel if there aren’t any!

It’s also worth noting that the above method only applies to situations where you are inputting the full embed code. If you are using a platform like WordPress, the embed code that is part of the platform may not recognise arguments or may overwrite your arguments with its own.

Are There Alternatives?

Unfortunately, not if you want to use YouTube to embed your videos. You could use other platforms, such as Vimeo, or DailyMotion, but those platforms have their own foibles to deal with, and this is a YouTube blog, so we’ll leave that to someone else. You could always host the videos yourself, but this can be a very costly road to go down, especially if you expect to get a lot of traffic.

Video hosting requires a lot of bandwidth, not to mention storage, hence why YouTube is so keen to squeeze the most revenue from each viewer. If you are dealing with a one or two videos on a low traffic site, you might be able to get away with hosting the videos yourself. If you have plenty of traffic on your site, however, hosting your own videos could very quickly land you with a huge bill from going over the bandwidth allowance that your web host provides.

The best option, in our opinion, is to use the method outlined above to ensure any recommended content is from your channel, and make the most engaging content you can. If everything goes to plan, your viewers won’t disappear off into YouTube Land because your content will have held their attention. And if they do, they’ll be disappearing off to another of your videos.

One final thought on alternatives; consider how important it is that your post exists outside of YouTube. If it is relatively short, consider putting it in the video description rather than an external post. This eliminates the problem of rogue YouTube suggestions at the end of the video, and it could help with the SEO of your video!

When are Embedded YouTube Videos Useful?

If you’re sitting there wondering why anyone might want embedded videos on their site, first off; kudos for reading this far into the post! There are plenty of situations where embedded videos are useful, and we’re going to give you a few examples. Before we do that, we’ll say that the reason for embedded videos is nearly always the same; companion content.

It may be that the page you are embedding the video on is the companion, rather than the video itself (example below), but this is nearly always the fundamental reason you would do this.

Video Alternatives

The first and most obvious situation where an embedded video would be used is when the video and the written content on the page it is being embedded are the same content in different mediums.

The video would usually come with a caption informing the reader that there is a video version of the post if they prefer, with a similar note about the written version in the description of the video on YouTube.

Additional Content

Videos can also be used to provide additional detail or context to an article. For example, if you were writing a post about camping in the woods, you might embed a video on how to build a campfire, rather than write a whole section about it in the post itself.

This is particularly useful for reducing the amount of text your post needs to get your information across while not reducing the amount of information you are conveying.

Video Breakdowns

Though the video is being embedded in your post, there is no rule that states that the video has to be secondary content. The text could be supplementary to the video, such as expanding on things said in the video. It could even be a breakdown of the video, such as a deep dive on a newly released movie trailer.

Demonstrations

Typically more common on business websites than blogs, demonstration videos can help to show a reader what the text on the page is talking about. For example, a business that sells high-tech computer-controlled heavy machinery might embed a video showing that machinery in action.

Final Thoughts

We don’t like not being able to answer the question being posed at the top of the post. Unfortunately, when it comes to how to embed a YouTube video without suggested videos rearing their head at the end, there is no solution to get around it, only alternatives and compromises.

As with all immovable obstacles in life, this should be seen as an opportunity to grow and improve in other areas. Make your content more engaging so that people are less likely to click off to another video at the end. Make more content for your channel so you can at least take advantage of the ability to limit the suggested videos to your own content.

Any excuse to improve your content should be seen as a good thing.

Tags embed, embed video, embed youtube video

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How to Add Captions to YouTube Videos

Post author By Alan Spicer - YouTube Certified Expert
Post date 5 September 2020

There are plenty of reasons why you might want to add captions to your YouTube videos beyond mere accessibility. Which is not to say, making your content more accessible to deaf and hard of hearing people is not a good enough reason alone.

We won’t try and tell you that adding captions to a video—especially a long video with a lot of words—is an easy task, but YouTube does make the process as frictionless as possible for you.

In this post we’ll go through the process with you, as well as laying out the reasons why captioning your videos is a good idea, and how you can make your life a little easier in the captioning process.

How to Add Captions to YouTube Videos

Captions can be added to your YouTube videos from within YouTube Studio.

Log in
Head over to the left-hand menu and click on “Subtitles”
Find the video you want to caption and give it a click.
Click “Add Language”
Next, click “Add” and begin scrubbing through your video, adding subtitles at the appropriate points.
Once you are done, simply click “Publish”

The subtitles editor features several shortcut keys to make your life a little bit easier, and you can find a full list of those on YouTube’s subtitles help page.

There are other options available, such as auto-syncing, which lets you add your transcription without any timecode information.

From there, YouTube uses speech recognition and your transcription to put all of the subtitles in the correct place. This is a very useful and time-saving option, but it does rely on speech recognition technology, which means it is only available for subtitles in the same language as the video.

For the same reason, it is not an ideal option for videos with poor audio quality, or where the words being said are not clear. YouTube also states that it is not recommended for videos that are over an hour long.

Another option available is to upload a closed caption file that already has the timecode information sorted. Of course, you will still have to create that closed caption file before you can upload it, but this option at least means you can use other applications to do that if YouTube’s built-in system is not to your liking. You can find details about what kind of closed caption files YouTube accepts through the subtitles help page linked above.

And, finally, YouTube has the option to caption your videos using speech recognition technology automatically. Automatic captioning has the obvious advantage of it requiring considerably less effort on your part; however, there is a tradeoff.

Speech recognition has made immense leaps and bounds in terms of accuracy over recent years, but it is not perfect, and the chances of it transcribing your video with 100% accuracy are minimal.

And, of course, the accuracy of this process will fall if the video’s audio quality is poor, or the spoken words are not particularly clear.

Bonus Method: Captioning Services

If you have a bit of money to spend on your YouTube channel, or if your channel is already at a stage where it is making money and you want to reinvest some of that in your channel.

You might consider a captioning service like Rev – I use them for all of my YouTube videos and can help boost audience retention and build on international audiences.

For a modest sum—typically around $1-2 per minute of video—you can have your videos captioned for you, getting all of the benefits of automatic captioning, while significantly reducing the inaccuracy rate you would expect from Google’s automatic option.

Captioning OTHER People’s Videos on YouTube

In some cases, you can also caption other people’s videos, which can be a great way to give a little back to a creator you like.

This is also an excellent opportunity to flex your bilingual muscles if you speak (or write) more than one language, or if your native language is different from that of the language used in the video.

The YouTuber in question has to allow subtitle contributions, so this is not an option on every video. For those videos where it is an option, simply head over to that video and click the menu button below the video (the three dots). In there you should see an option to “Add Translations”. Clicking that will take you to the same transcriptions editor we talked about above, with the difference that this will show any previously added or auto-generated transcriptions.

Up top you should see a “Switch Language” link which will allow you to select the language you want to add subtitles for, and, once you are ready, you can click edit and get transcribing!

Making Captioning Easier

Unfortunately, there is no way around the fact that captioning is something of a long and laborious process—especially for longer videos—but you can make your life a little easier with a bit of forward-thinking.

For example, many YouTubers plan their videos out in advance. And, if they don’t write an actual script, they at least tend to sketch out the beats of what they are going to say when the camera starts rolling.

If this is you, consider extending this process to a full script, and stick to that script when you record the video. In doing so, you will already have a transcription for your subtitles ready to go when you have uploaded your video. Remember; YouTube’s speech recognition may not be perfect, but it is incredibly close when given the correct words to use.

Writing a proper script may also help you tighten up your content, making the video more concise and digestible, while also reducing the amount of time you have to spend editing slip-ups and tangents out of your footage.

Of course, scripted videos are not for everyone. Some people are far more comfortable turning the camera on with little more than a vague shape of what needs to be said in their mind and letting the creative juices flow. We would not recommend forcing a script upon yourself if you are this kind of YouTuber.

But if you are already scripting—or partially scripting—your videos, you are most of the way there to captioning your content.

Why Should I Caption My YouTube Videos?

There is an ethical element to consider in the sense that, as a civilised society, it could be argued that we have a responsibility to help those who need a little extra help whenever possible.

Captioning your videos makes it possible for people who are deaf and hard of hearing—two groups of people who fall into that category of occasionally needing a little extra help—to consume your content.

However, if the ethical argument doesn’t do it for you, there are also some numbers to consider. For example, around 466 million people worldwide have disabling hearing problems. While it’s true that not all of those people will be on YouTube, it still represents a sizable portion of a potential audience that you could be reading. And this doesn’t count fringe cases, such as people who just find it easier to watch content with subtitles, or people who do not speak your language but can read it.

Another reason is search engine optimisation (SEO).

There is only so much information you can organically pack into your video descriptions, and formatting it in a way that is useful to your viewers doesn’t always lend itself to SEO.

However, the actual content of your video is as pure as it gets in terms of SEO, and research has shown that Google likely indexes YouTube subtitles, with captioned videos seeing a noticeable increase in views over videos without captions.

The final reason we will give you for captioning your videos is environmental factors. No, not the environment, we’re talking about the environment your potential viewer is in at the time they might want to watch your video.

If you’ve noticed all those videos that pop up on Facebook and Twitter that have captions burned in, you might have reached the natural conclusion that this trend implies. That is trend is more people watching videos in situations where they can’t have sound on. This could be on a busy commute when they have forgotten to bring headphones, or in a situation where they are not, strictly speaking, supposed to be checking their phone.

Viral video makers have cottoned on to this trend, and that is why they burn subtitles into those social media clips.

Putting captions on your videos allows people to consume your content in those situations where they can’t listen to it, which, for the right type of video, may represent a significant amount of views.

How Much of a Benefit is Video Captioning?

We teased you with talk of increasing your audience through video captioning, so it’s only natural to want to know what kind of increase we’re talking. After all, captioning can be hard work, as we’ve explained, so you may want to do a cost-benefit analysis on whether the additional work is worth your time.

Studies have shown that adequately captioned videos can see as much as a 13% boost in the first two weeks—with a 7% increase over the lifetime of video—over uncaptioned videos.

While we’re not talking about doubling your audience here, a potential increase of around 10% is nothing to be sneezed at. For a video that gets 100k views, that would mean an extra 10k views.

Of course, pure view count would be a limited way to consider the benefits of captioned videos. Those additional views also represent potential subscribers and long term viewers. Especially when you consider that people who need captions in order to enjoy content on YouTube have far fewer options available to them owed to the fact that so many YouTubers don’t caption their videos. In this respect, captioned videos are something of an underserved market.

Not quite a niche, as the interests of people who need closed captioning are just as diverse as those who don’t, but a market that will welcome additional content regardless.

Foreign Languages

Before putting the time and effort into translating—or paying someone else to translate—your content into other languages, take a moment to consider the usefulness of the video to the people who speak those other languages.

Generally speaking, you can assume that someone living in a particular country will at least have a basic grasp of the native language of that country.

Of course, there will always be exceptions, but you usually assume that content that is specific to a certain country doesn’t necessarily need translating to languages other than the primary language of that country.

As an example, a video about how to apply for a building permit in Texas, America, is unlikely to get many views from people in central Europe. That means it would not be the best use of your resources to have your video translated into German, as all of the countries where German is the primary language are located in central Europe.

This is not to say you should actively avoid translating your content, of course. If you have money or time to burn, it certainly won’t hurt your channel to have it translated into as many languages as possible.

But if you are having to weigh up the pros and cons of translating it to other languages, consider where those languages are spoken, and how likely your content is to be viewed in those regions.

That being said, the reverse can also be true.

As a counter-example, a video about how to obtain a building permit in Los Angeles would greatly benefit from being translated into Spanish, due to the large Mexican population there. In this case, the content is specific to a relatively small geographical region, but that region can be considered bilingual.

As with many things on YouTube, it is all a matter of doing your research and knowing your audience. You don’t need to become an expert in foreign languages to determine best when and when not to have your videos translated; a simple Google search should be enough.

Tags add captions, add subtitles, rev, rev.com, rev.vom, transcription, youtube captions, youtube subtitles

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How To Make A SECOND YouTube Channel with the SAME EMAIL

Post author By Michel Gerard
Post date 30 August 2020

You have one reliable email address and you want to make two, three, four YouTube channels. I’m here to tell you how you can add a YouTube channel using your same email address.

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

How To Make A SECOND YouTube Channel with the SAME EMAIL

Hello and welcome back to another video. I’m Alan Spicer your YouTube certified experts. If you want to start your YouTube channel, grow your YouTube channel, or put your brand out there, YouTube is the second largest search engine on the Internet, and you should click “Subscribe“ then start creating.

Now the time may have come for you to either split your channels into niches or to start again, but you want to still use the same email address. That’s not a problem. I can help you start a second, third, fourth channel without you needing to have multiple email addresses, let’s go to the computer.

Okay, so you’re looking to start a second channel using the same email address. What you do when you log into the account of the email address you currently have, I’m going to use this one. For example, you go up to your avatar in the top right-hand corner and click “Settings.”

In here, you’ll see something like this. This is a brand new account, but it works exactly the same. You’ll see here, “Your account” and “View additional features” or “See all my channels or create a new channel.”

I have a few channels that I currently manage, or a few channels that I use for testing.

Now you click “Create a new channel.”

It will then ask you to pick a name and I’ll use “Pink Waffles” as an example.

Click “Create.”

You now have a new channel and you go through to customize the channel. You click that big “Customize Channel” button.

You now have the choice to add a channel description, change the avatar, add some channel art, right?

You do it out like you normally would, and it’s all under the same email address.

So once again, I go up here, and then I can flip through any of the accounts all under the same email address.

You can always see more, but that way you have multiple channels under one email address.

Final Words

If you need help with more YouTube features that you have overlooked, there is a playlist here, go out there, and start creating.

Tags create a second youtube channel, how to create a second youtube channel with same email, make a second youtube channel with same email

TIPS & TRICKS VIDEO YOUTUBE YOUTUBE TUTORIALS

How To Report Videos on YouTube – Flag YouTube Videos

Post author By Michel Gerard
Post date 30 August 2020

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

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

How To Report Videos on YouTube – Flag YouTube Videos

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

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

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

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

Let’s go to the computer.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Then, you click “Submit.”

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

Final Words

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

Tags flag, flag video, report video, youtube video

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

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

What are YouTube Cards?

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

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

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

Video
Playlist
Channel
Link

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Video Watch time is Important.

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

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

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

Mention the YouTube Cards in Your Video.

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

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

YouTube Video Card Example.

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

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

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

YouTube Playlist Card Example.

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

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

YouTube Channel Card Example.

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

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

YouTube Link Card Example.

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

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

How To Add Cards to YouTube Videos.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Displaying Cards on the End Screen of YouTube Videos.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tips for Placing Cards.

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

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

Use your Analytics.

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

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

Choose Custom Text Wisely.

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

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

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

Conclusion

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SOCIAL MEDIA TIPS & TRICKS VIDEO YOUTUBE YOUTUBE TUTORIALS

How To Add A Watermark To YouTube Videos

Post author By Michel Gerard
Post date 19 August 2020

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

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

How To Add A Watermark To YouTube Videos

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

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

You should click “Subscribe,” and start creating.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

To remove it, you click “Remove.”

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

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

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

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

Final Words

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

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

Go out there, start creating.

Tags add watermark to youtube video, watermark, youtube watermark

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

How To Monetize A Facebook Page without Ads

Post author By Michel Gerard
Post date 19 August 2020

How would you monetize your Facebook page without adverts?

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

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

How To Monetize A Facebook Page without Ads

1) Use relevant affiliate links

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

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

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

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

2) Add digital products

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

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

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

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

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

3) Consider a newsletter

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

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

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

Anyway, back on point…

4) Selling advertised posts

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

So, charge them for it.

5) Starts an associated podcast

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

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

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

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

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

6) Raising money for a charity

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

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

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

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

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

Final Words

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

Tags monetize, monetize facebook page, youtube channel

SOCIAL MEDIA TIPS & TRICKS VIDEO YOUTUBE YOUTUBE TUTORIALS

THIS WILL DOUBLE YOUR YOUTUBE CHANNEL GROWTH

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

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

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

THIS WILL DOUBLE YOUR YOUTUBE CHANNEL GROWTH

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You should compare yourself with you.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Does my business rants do better than my YouTube brands?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Final Words

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

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

SOCIAL MEDIA TIPS & TRICKS VIDEO YOUTUBE YOUTUBE TUTORIALS

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

Post author By Michel Gerard
Post date 19 August 2020

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

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

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

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

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

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

What is general gameplay?

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

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

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

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

Now that seems normal, right?

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

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

So why would you do this?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Final Words

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

Go out there, start creating!

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

TIPS & TRICKS YOUTUBE YOUTUBE TUTORIALS

How To Contact YouTube – Chat To A Human

Post author By Michel Gerard
Post date 15 August 2020

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

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

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

Direct Chat with YouTube – YouTube Adds Partner Support Instant Messenger

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

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

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

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

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

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

Now, I think that this is quite important.

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

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

Please leave a comment down below.

Final Words

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

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

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

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

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

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

Unlimited YouTube Video Ideas In Minutes

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

DO THIS FOR UNLIMITED YOUTUBE VIDEO IDEAS 1

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

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

DO THIS FOR UNLIMITED YOUTUBE VIDEO IDEAS

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So, “How to * cake?”

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

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

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

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

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

Final Words

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

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

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

SOCIAL MEDIA TIPS & TRICKS VIDEO YOUTUBE YOUTUBE TUTORIALS

HOW TO ADD TIME STAMP CHAPTERS TO YOUTUBE VIDEOS

Post author By Michel Gerard
Post date 14 August 2020

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

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

HOW TO ADD TIME STAMP CHAPTERS TO YOUTUBE VIDEOS

Let’s go to the computer.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So I could make time stamps like this.

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

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

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

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

Final Words

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

Tags time stamps, youtube chapters, youtube videos

HOW TO GET MORE VIEWS ON YOUTUBE VIDEO YOUTUBE YOUTUBE TUTORIALS

How To Record 4K 60 FPS Video on Your Mobile (iPhone and iOS Devices)

Post author By Michel Gerard
Post date 7 August 2020

How To Record 4K 60FPS Video on Your Mobile (iPhone & iOS Devices)

So you want to record in 4K and you want to do it on your mobile phone at 60 FPS.

You don’t have to have a DSLR nowadays. You don’t have to have a powerful, stupid webcam. You can record fantastic footage, even in 4K on your mobile phone.

[embedyt]https://youtu.be/biT9eUB2J90[/embedyt]

How To Record 4K 60 FPS Video on Your Mobile (iPhone & iOS Devices)

Now, most people will be focusing on 1080p right now, and there’s no real difference in uploading to 4K just yet, but maybe you want to get ahead of the curve. Maybe you want to record at 60 FPS to slow it down at certain points.

I get that 4K video can be confusing – I have deep dived into 4K vs 1080p for YouTube in my blog. We look at resolution, bit rate and even look into whether is does better on YouTube in search.

I’m going to show you how to do it on this phone.

Now you get out your phone, you hit the “Settings” menu and you scroll all the way down to “Camera.”

In here, you’ll see your QR code settings, your grid, whether you’re recording in HDR or whether you’re recording in Slow-mo.

But the most important setting is your video record and mine is currently set to 1080p at 30 frames per second.

But as you click through, you’ve got a choice of settings here: 720 at 30, 1080 at 30, 1080 at 60, 4K at 24, which is normal for talking heads. Then 4K at 30 frames per second, which is normal if you’re just chatting like this, and 4K at 60 frames per second, most efficient.

Now you’ll also see on the screen that it will break down roughly what this means to you.

You’re looking at 720 if you’re going for small file sizes, 1080p at 60 frames per second if you’re looking for normal and smooth video.

4K at 24 frames per second is the movie look, and 4K at 60 frames per second, it gives you more leeway, a little bit more flexibility, the ability to slow the footage down if you need to.

Why do you want to slow it down?

Well, the human eye is used to seeing things in cinemas and on games at 24 or 30 frames per second, these are the things that you normally see on TV. 60 frames per second is what you’re used to maybe on PC and stuff like that and 60 frames per second gives you the chance to do slightly slow movie shots.

But if you really want to go for slow-mo, try 240 frames per second on the iPhone. I’ve done a video here and if it’s not there quite yet, I’ll add a link in the description when it arrives.

Final Words

But if you really want to go for slow-mo, try 240 frames per second on the iPhone. I’ve done a video here.

Tags 4k, 4k on iphone, iphone, mobile, mobile videos, record on mobile, record video, record videos on mobile, record youtube videos on iphone, video speed

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

How Important Is Video To Business? [Brand Building]

Post author By Michel Gerard
Post date 6 August 2020

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

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

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

How Important Is Video To Business? [Brand Building]

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

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

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

And he called like Facebook and LinkedIn.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Final words

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

Tags more video views, videos for business, youtube videos

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

What Are YouTube Categories? [Do They Matter?]

Post author By Michel Gerard
Post date 5 August 2020

What are YouTube categories?

Now, this is one of those questions that many people ask. It’s just they have no idea. If you’re jumping onto the YouTube platform right now, then there are many legacy features that have been around for literally over a decade now that used to be much more specific for this platform that has slowly got less and less important over time.

[embedyt]https://youtu.be/iMXkmoG4zIg[/embedyt]

What Are YouTube Categories? [Do They Matter?]

Categories specifically put you in buckets based on what content you create, how to, style, business, money, food, finance, people, education.

I’ll be honest, I’m not totally sure what the list is anymore, mainly because it doesn’t matter.

Back when the platform was in infancy, you highlighted specifically what your content was about. If yours was comedy, then there would be specific areas on the site. You could go to only comedy videos and there would be specifically only people videos.

The way the YouTube algorithm currently works, it doesn’t matter. What you need to focus on is the title, the descriptions, kinds of your tags, and then the audience that it pushes out to.

There is no relation to the category you are in to the views that you get. If I was to switch this video from educational to gaming, I’m not going to get more gamers watch these videos.

Now, there might be something way back in the legacy algorithm that specifically recommends you against specific things, but it’s highly unlikely nowadays.

This machine is very powerful and very clever. So you shouldn’t be homing over the fact that what I do, ‘how to videos’, am I an how-to in style or am I an educational channel?

What you need to focus on is the content you create on a regular basis. If you stick to one niche and you’re not doing cooking on Thursday, knitting on Friday, and then skydiving on Sunday, followed by car repair on Tuesday, as long as you’re niched, then YouTube knows that’s your niche.

Because over time you have a hundred videos and those hundred video tags, all points into that kind of direction that say a hundred of your videos are all about cars. All of those tags would all be automobile based, and old cars, spark plugs and repairs.

It is very highly unlikely that out of those 100 videos, you’ve tagged it like a knitting pattern tutorial.

That’s one of the reasons why focusing on a niche can be so important and powerful mainly because it establishes your niche in your viewers’ mind, rather than YouTube in itself.

It’s just one of those questions that nags at you, because it’s still there. It’s still in the system and it hasn’t been removed.

Final words

It’s just like people saying, “Do you get paid for likes?”

I’ve got a video here, and if you’ve got a question about anything, no matter how small or weird or stupid, leave it in the comment section and subscribe, so you get to see the answer.

Tags youtube categories, youtube niche, youtube tags, youtube traffic

TIPS & TRICKS VIDEO YOUTUBE YOUTUBE TUTORIALS

How To Record In Slow Mo on iPhone 240FPS

Post author By Michel Gerard
Post date 3 August 2020

So you’re looking to recording slow mo, 240 frames per second on an iPhone SE and anything that has a brand new iOS.

Why turn into 240 frames per seconds?

Very good question.

[embedyt]https://youtu.be/2sdnwtemJyM[/embedyt]

How To Record In Slow Mo on iPhone 240FPS

Your TV and any other thing that you normally watch, like films and things, are normally at 24 to 30 frames per second. That’s what our eyes comfortably see.

When you skip to 60 frames per second, that gives you the chance to slow things down a little bit, but 240 frames per second allows you to do mega slow mo on footage without it looking jittery.

Basically what this allows you to do is in theory, slow it down to 10 times slower than 24 frames per second, because it takes 10 times more frames, 240 frames per second.

So how do we do this?

Well, you open your phone, you click on settings and you scroll down to “Camera.”

In here you have all of your settings for your grid, your recording format, whether or not you’re being efficient or not, your resolution in which I’ve talked about, whether or not you want to recording 4k or 1080p, there’ll be a video severing the codes up here.

But what you’re looking for is the “Record Slow-mo” setting.

Mine is currently set to 720p and 240 frames per second, but you can have 1080p at 120, 720 at 240, and 1080p at 240.

So, how does it affect you?

Well, the smaller, the resolution and smaller the frame rate, the smaller, the file, the higher the resolution, the higher the frame rate, the larger the file, and will take longer to edit with or render out, or it takes up more memory on your phone.

Slow-mo footage can be fantastic. It gives you that little bit of flexibility, just like recording in 4K.

If you need help in understanding the difference between 1080p and 4K footage I have a large deep dive blog that will drill into the benefits and flaws of both formats.

Final Words

If you want to know how you can record in 4K at 60 frames per second on your iPhone and any latest device, there is a video right here where if it’s not quite uploaded yet, there’s a playlist here on how you can make better videos.

Tags 240 fps, iphone video, mobile video, record in 4k, record in 4k on iphone, record in 4k on iphone se 2020, slow motion video, slow-mo

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

YouTubers Paid For Likes? [The Myth]

Post author By Michel Gerard
Post date 31 July 2020
1 Comment on YouTubers Paid For Likes? [The Myth]

Do YouTubers get paid for likes?

I get asked thousands of times, thousands of random questions. So, I thought I’d start answering them directly.

[embedyt] https://youtu.be/VdmjEiP1Jps[/embedyt]

Do YouTubers Get Paid For Likes?

In fact, if you have a question that you’d like answered, leave it in the comment section of the video, and I’ll make a dedicated response just to that, just for you. And of course, anybody else that wants to hear the answer.

So, do YouTubers get paid for likes?

YouTube is a weird platform. It’s all based on engagement. So based on who watches, how long they watch and how they interact with you. No doubt, many of times you’ve sat there and you’ve watched PewDiePie or MrBeast, or you’ve watched people like Graham Stephan, and they’re always like “Smash that like button, help me in the YouTube algorithm.”

They’re not too far off the truth if I’m honest, but there’s not a monetary value.

You clicking on that like button down there, you know, just test to see how the button works.

You clicking on that little button down there and turning it blue hasn’t made me any money. That won’t directly pay me 10 cents, that won’t give me coffee or an ice tea at the end of the day. But what it does do is show YouTube that I’m engaging enough to warrant some kind of emotional response, whether it’s a like, or a dislike, whether it’s a comment, whether it’s a share. And that engagement is very good for a YouTuber.

Let’s say that this video is 10 minutes long. I hope it’s not, but let’s say this video is 10 minutes long and you watch it for nine and a half minutes, and then you leave a comment, and then you click on another suggested video that I’m talking about at the end or on the right-hand side.

Well, that shows YouTube that I was able to bring you in, engage you for long enough to care to leave a comment, and then leave based on the suggestions that I’ve given you or the suggestions they have on the right-hand side.

You may have flipped off to one of my videos, or you may be on a video IQ,, or you’ve dived into a PewDiePie video.

YouTube doesn’t necessarily matter where you disappear to just yet. They like the fact that I’ve brought you in, engaged with you, kept you happy enough to want to watch more on YouTube, and then disappear.

So that Like, it’s kind of a small endorsement of that video, but, and this is where people get it twisted. So there’s a Dislike. Is that engagement enough that you felt that what I’ve communicated with you is either right or wrong, where you agree or you disagree, or you’re leaving a downvoting some way shape or form?

Maybe, I’ve asked, “If you like cheese, click vote up, and if you hate cheese, click vote down.”

That’s what you need to bear in mind. It’s an engagement. You’ve made people feel something enough that they’ve not just ignored the video and bounced away after 30 seconds, they physically had to go out of their way to press something on their screen or click something on their computer.

It’s this engagement that then YouTube evaluates.

So, let’s say this video gets 10,000 views and there is 8,000 likes and 2,000 dislikes and hundreds of thousands of comments.

YouTube looks at that and goes, “Okay, 8,000 likes 2,000 dislikes, that’s 10,000 like dislikes, and then there are hundreds of thousands of comments. Okay? So this is clearly engaging enough that people want to ask questions and have a conversation compared to another video where there are 10,000 views, but no likes, no dislikes, no comments. Nobody cares enough to engage. Nobody cares enough to comment or question or build some kind of discussion.”

So the video with likes, dislikes and comments will always rank over the one that doesn’t have any engagement.

What you should be focusing on is audience retention and engagement, and not have to worry about, “Oh, if I click on that, he’s going to get paid.”

Yes, if a video does better in search, and gets more views because of it, then maybe more people will see the adverse place against it, and then they will get paid.

Or in the case of some channels, it’s not about the adverts. Maybe they’ve turned off adverts entirely. What they’re trying to do is engage enough to build the brands, that in the long run, you trust them to buy coaching from them or some kind of thumbnail pack in which you want to improve your thumbnails, and maybe there’s a link in the description, and if there isn’t, keep checking my website in the future.

So that Like in itself, that individual click that you’re just about to leave on this video… No, doesn’t pay me directly, but in the long run it could help me make more money and that’s the same with any other YouTuber and any other video online.

Final Words

Now, if you want your question answered directly and in depth, leave it in the comment section below. I don’t care what it is. It could be as stupid or as simple as you think it needs to be. I can clarify it for you, and then maybe we can make a habit out of these frequently asked questions deep dives, or you can binge this video right here and this playlist on how to make better videos.

Remember to subscribe and I’ll see you soon.

Tags paid for likes, youtube algorithm, youtube engagement, youtube likes

HOW TO MAKE MONEY ONLINE TIPS & TRICKS YOUTUBE YOUTUBE TUTORIALS

Add Mid Rolls To 8 Minute Videos on YouTube

Post author By Michel Gerard
Post date 30 July 2020

YouTube will be adding mid rolls to eight-minute long videos at the end of July.

I’m going to show you how you can turn this setting on, so you can get the most out of your YouTube channel, boost your CPM revenue, making a little bit more money, especially just before Christmas and all of this US election stuff.

[embedyt]https://youtu.be/0e9q6lBD5K8[/embedyt]

Add Mid Rolls To 8 Minute Videos on YouTube [From July 2020]

Now, for some of you that already have videos over 10-minutes long, you know how this works. You can either automatically place things in based on the YouTube algorithm, and it will generate adverts in seemingly the best places, but it’s not always perfect. Or you can add them yourself using the video editor.

I did a video on how to add to your own mid rolls. I’ll put it in the info cards up here.

Now, all it’s doing is moving from 10 minutes to 8 minutes.

So now there’s more videos that are relevant. It may even be that they’ve noticed on the platform that people are just under the 10-minute threshold.

How many videos have you seen recently that are nine minutes and 30-odd seconds?

So, this moves it a little bit down and four minutes with a mid roll seems about right.

What you need to do is go to your Monetization page and you will see a warning.

You can click here to see more information, which basically says that we’re going to be readjusting them for eight-minute mid rolls.

You don’t always have to use the mid rolls if you don’t want to, but there’s also this option setting where you can now choose between: “Yes, I want to opt in. No, I don’t want to.”

If you opt in, it will help you set all of your future videos from eight minutes on, and even retro set the old ones for you as well.

Final words

If you want to know how these mid rolls work, once again, there’d be an info card here, or if you want to make money outside, I’ve done a play list and a video that you can see here somewhere on this screen.

I’ll see you soon.

Tags mid rolls, youtube ads, youtube advertisement, youtube revenue