Ab out t hi s s a mp le
This is a sample of my e-book:
“What big Tubers don't tell you”.
If you like the content so far, consider purchasing the e-book:
https://www.socialvideoplaza.com/en/book-how-to-start-a-youtube-channel-for-beginners
Table o f c o nt e n ts
( in compl e t e v e r s io n )
T e r ms
In this book I will use terms outlined as below:
SEO
Search Engine Optimization.
The knowledge of optimizing content to be found by search engines like Google,
Bing and YouTube.
Watch time (minutes)
The amount of minutes that a video is watched by a viewer.
If 1 viewer watches 6 minutes out of a 10 minute video, the watch time minutes for
this video is 6 minutes.
If 1 viewer watches 2 minutes out of a 6 minute video, the watch time minutes for
this video is 2 minutes.
The YouTube algorithm ranks videos based on accumulated watch time minutes on
a channel called Channel Authority.
Session watch time
The amount of time that viewers watch videos on YouTube before leaving the
platform.
Since session watch time increases the time that viewers spend on the platform, this
is a ranking factor for your channel.
Audience retention
How much of your video do viewers watch? Expressed in a percentage.
If every viewer watches your video from beginning to the end, that is an audience
retention of 100%.
If every viewer watches 2,5 minutes out of a 10 minute video, that is an audience
retention of 25%.
An audience retention around 50% is regarded as a good video by the YouTube
algorithm.
CTR
Click Through Rate in percentage.
The number of viewers that actually click on your video when they see the
thumbnail.
YouTube says that half of the YouTube channels have a CTR of 2 - 10%.
(2% being bad, 10% being good)
Impressions
How many times did YouTube show your video thumbnail (and title) to users of the
platform?
The impressions can come from the YouTube home page, in the recommended
section (on the right of your screen), at the end of a video, a video card or every
other place on YouTube.
Recommended videos
Videos that the YouTube algorithm recommends.
This can be in the recommended section, but also at the end of a video or on the
YouTube home page.
YouTube home page
the first page you see when you enter YouTube.com in your internet browser.
Creator Studio / YouTube
Studio
This is the part of YouTube where you can manage everything that has to do with
your videos.
For example: upload a video, see an overview of your videos, delete videos, edit
title of your videos, see statistics of your videos etc.
Channel watermark
In the bottom right corner of every video you can display a little graphic.
When a viewer clicks that watermark they subscribe to your channel.
This is why a lot of creators have a graphic that says: ”subscribe”
Channel (home) page
Every channel has a home page.
When you click on a channel name (for example under a video on YouTube), you’ll
be directed to the channel home page.
Here you can see the channel header, the community tab, video tab and the
welcome video.
Channel header
This is a graphic that is displayed on the top of your channel home page
Community tab
In the community tab you can post texts, pictures and polls that subscribers will see
in their video feed.
(Video) watch page
A page where you watch a YouTube video
Content
content = video + title + thumbnail + description
A lot of people think that content is only the video, but it is the combination of all
those factors.
Thumbnail
the graphical ‘movie poster’ that represents your video.
You can upload a custom thumbnail for each video
Clickbait
A title, thumbnail or description that does not represent the content of a video very
well, with the intention of driving more views.
YouTube buries clickbait videos directly by not ranking and suggesting them
anymore.
The formula that YouTube uses for detecting clickbait:
clickbait = high CTR + low audience retention
Channel authority
Your reputation on YouTube measured in total accumulated watch time minutes on
your channel in total.
The more channel authority you have, the more likely you are to be ranked higher.
YouTube algorithm
The formula that YouTube uses to present a video to you.
There are a couple of algorithms, for example:
The recommended section on a YouTube watch page, the search algorithm and
the homepage algorithm
CPM
Cost Per Mile, in other words: the revenue (cost) per 1000 plays.
The CPM varies per niche, depending on what advertisers are willing to pay.
(Video) card
A video card in the YouTube jargon has nothing to do with your graphics card in
your computer.
YouTube shows an ‘i’ icon at the top right corner of video.
In the video editor in YouTube Studio you can add text (called a card) that is
showed when a video is playing.
Those cards can contain a link to a website, link to a video, a link to a playlist and a
poll.
Sub for sub
channel owners agreeing to follow each other’s channel in order to grow.
Sub for sub will hurt the growth of a YouTube channel more than it gains.
See chapter: “how to grow”.
CTA
Call To Action. Request people to subscribe, download your ebook, click the like
button, etc.
A-roll
A-roll is the footage of the main storyline of a video.
The guy talking to the camera and explain to you how you can make a million
dollars is A-roll.
In a news story, the host talks about a cat that is rescued out of a tree by the fire
department, the A-Roll is the footage of the host talking about the fire department
and the cat.
Using only A-roll can get boring to watch, therefor we use B-roll.
B-roll
B-roll is the supporting footage for the A-roll and shows what it is the story is about.
B-roll is the footage that is ‘pasted’ over the A-roll.
B-roll can be anything visual: video footage, a photo, a graph, screenshot of a
website or a newspaper.
In a video where a guys tells you how to make a million dollars, the B-roll is the
footage that shows 100 dollar bills.
In a news story, the host talks about a cat that is rescued out of a tree by the fire
department, the B-Roll is the footage of the fire department rescuing the cat.
weighted score / ranking
a weighted score takes in account your viewing and search behavior in the past
unweighted score / ranking
a unweighted score doesn’t take your viewing and search behavior in the past.
This is basically a representation of a new / clean YouTube account.
Channel Art
Your profile picture and the banner above your channel page are channel art.
NAS
Network Attached Storage.
A device that is used over the network for extra storage.
A NAS has one or more hard disks or a SSDs in it.
More drives create redundancy to recover information if one drive fails.
You r f i r s t s t e p s
How to start
Just start!
It’s just as simple as that.
Don’t keep thinking about it, just start!
Even if you don’t have the knowledge to do so.
Everything you will learn along the way, from camera presence to uploading a video, from search engine optimization
to editing your videos.
So, no excuses, just start!
You don’t need a 2000 dollar camera to start.
You can start really easy with recording on your own mobile phone.
The cameras in these phones have become phenomenal over the years.
Just make your first video with the approach you think is best.
Along the way, you will bump into all kinds of hurdles that you have to solve.
Your first video will take the longest to make, because you have to figure out everything.
Your fist video is going to be bad - but even worse than bad, is not making any video at all.
Only by making videos you can learn.
To be honest, I totally underestimated my skills.
With my experiences in editing home videos, working for a local television station and having attended theatre
school, I thought that I was going to crush it.
Well, that was far from the truth!
I had to learn the rules of YouTube and get far more confident on camera.
But I only could have learned by making more and more videos, not by quitting.
Topic
If you have a topic in mind
If you are considering a topic, make sure that it is a topic that know a lot about and that you love it to the
bone.
The topic has to be broad enough to fill a whole YouTube channel about, but niche enough so you stand
a chance against the competition.
Consider if your video is repeatable, can you make more video’s like this?
If you find it hard to come up with more topics, you might consider another topic.
How much time does it take me to make a video for the channel?
Is this amount of time something you are willing to spend on every video?
If you don’t have a topic in mind
Find a channel topic that is a good fit for you.
You need to have fun doing it for 5 or 10 years.
But what is a good fit?
I’m going to show you my process when I wanted to start a new channel.
I wanted a channel that fits me like a glove.
I did a discovery process that helped to find out what my best fit was.
I’ll show you this process step by step with my personal examples.
Step 1:
Over the course of the next 2 weeks, write down every topic you have an interest in.
Don’t think about if it is achievable or not, it’s supposed to be a brainstorm session.
Negativity obstructs the creative process, there is no place for it in this step.
My list when I wanted to start a new channel was:
• Dutch translation / language channel
• computers and programming
• trivia quizzes
• humor / comedy / anecdotes / satire / sketches
• doing business
• curiosity / (computer) science channel
Step 2:
After two weeks, sit down and think about all the possibilities that those channels have, what you can do with them?
Try to find channels on YouTube in that niche, see what they do.
What can you do that they don’t?
What great ideas do they have? Can you do it better?
Do you have other (topic) ideas that they don’t? Most ideas come from watching others.
What kinds videos can you make?
Is the content discoverable by Google and YouTube?
How many subscribers do they have? How fast did they grow? How long has the channel existed?
My list looked something like this:
• Dutch translation / language channel
I would like to teach people Dutch spelling because the language is highly irregular and 90% of the Dutch forget
what they learned at elementary school.
The Dutch language is a strong suit of mine.
I also could help immigrants with the Dutch language and explain why things are the way they are.
Topics could be:
- “d”, “t”, “dt” and the mnemonic aid: “’t Kofschip”
- why “e” sounds like "ee" and sometimes not
- the “e,i,o,a,u, ei, ij, ui, oe, au, ou, eu” sounds
There are possibilities for books and courses.
Channels: learndutch.org, not many others
• Computers and programming
Explain computer components, programming languages (C, Java, PHP, Object Pascal), security issues,
philosophy and ethics.
There are possibilities for courses about programming languages.
channels: Computerphile, Tom Scott, both big channels
• Quizzes
I want to do curiosity driven quizzes with questions about general facts and knowledge.
Every episode is a pub quiz with 30 - 50 questions.
Possibilities to sell pub quiz packages.
Channels: De Online Pubquiz, not many others
• Humor / comedy / anecdotes / satire / sketches
I want to write sketches for a weekly episode.
I want to change that up with funny anecdotes: non-sexy cartoon pyjama for girls, with granny dancing falling in
the dog basket together, laughing during funeral with my grandmother.
The amount of topics are endless.
I don’t want to be a prank channel, I can’t see the humor in those.
Channels: Jay Foreman, Zach King
• Doing business
I have been an entrepreneur since I was still in college.
There are an endless amount of topics.
Huge amount of possibilities for books, speaking gigs and courses.
Channels: Dan Lok, Sunny Leonarduzi, Smart passive income
• Curiosity / (computer) science channel
I want to go to interesting places on this earth and tell the story about it.
possible topics: series: sightseeing beautiful cities in the Netherlands, (computer) science
The amount of topics are endless.
Channels: Physics girl, Smarter every day, Veritasium, Tom Scott
Step 3:
Now make a list of demands and things that you don’t want.
Think of all the negative things that you couldn’t think of before.
Then strike all your “bad” ideas.
My list of demands was:
• the channel needs to be bankable with a huge commercial potential. I need to make money within a year.
ebooks, courses, sponsorships, you name it…
• I need to be able to make episodes fast. If I need to, on a daily basis.
Content needs to be batch-able.
Available time is an issue, it’s not my only YouTube channel. So I want a low amount of research and preparation.
• Possibility of enough topics
• I hate investing money in every single video when I start
• Worldwide viewing potential, The Netherlands is too small.
Those demands took a huge hit on my list:
• Dutch translation / language channel
I see a limitation in the amount of topics and the growth potential is minimal.
There are only 17 million people in The Netherlands and the borders for immigrants are pretty much closed.
I target the illiterate and the people that are willing to learn. That is an oxymoron in itself.
On top of that, the illiterate are not known for being employed in the highest paying jobs or even employed at
all.
So, selling courses or books can be quite tricky.
• Computers and programming
I see potential in the amount of topics and growth.
But, although I like tech, I’m afraid I don’t like it enough to it for 5 days a week.
When I had a job as a computer programmer I started to hate it.
• Quizzes
There is a potential here: I couldn’t find big channels with this concept.
That means two things: nobody thought of it, or there is no interest in the topic.
To think that nobody thought of the concept is maybe a bit naive.
Pioneering is a risky move.
I’d rather choose a strategy that someone has proven to be successful.
I presented quizzes for 10 years and became an expert in the field, but I started to hate it.
The energy to start is not positive for me, on top of that: I finally want to do something else with my life.
Also, making good questions takes a lot of work.
I need to do a lot of research for just one question, if you don’t, you lose your credibility, someone will point out
in the comments that something is wrong.
If I want to gather watch time minutes, asking questions that take only 10 seconds to ask (and 15 minutes of
research a pop), that is only a 5 minute video (30x10 seconds).
• humor / comedy / anecdotes / satire / sketches
It’s hard and exhausting to be creative all the time, any form of stress or pressure is killing for creativity.
This channel leans heavy on my creativity,
For sketches I need to go shoot on locations, I really need a cameraman for that.
I like it, but I’m a bit skeptical about this idea.
• doing business
There is a huge potential.
I see the researched channels doing incredibly well, not only in subscribers/views but also commercially.
There is a potential to sit down and talk about topics from experience that require little to no research.
• curiosity / (computer) science channel
Super fun to do with a lot of potential topics.
I’m curious by nature and want to learn all the time.
But batching content is difficult (location based shoots) and you need a lot of research.
You need to go on locations, that takes up a lot of time and money to travel.
Channels like Tom Scott have videos of a couple of minutes, that is not very “fertile” in terms of watch time
minutes
From all the ideas I like this one the most.
My remaining list is now:
• doing business
• curiosity / (computer) science channel
Step 4:
Take two weeks for the next step.
Write down as many video topics for the remaining channels on your list.
This has three advantages:
• The channel that you have the most ideas for, you won’t have any trouble coming up with topics in the future.
• The channel with the most ideas, has the most potential. That’s a huge hint of which channel idea you should
pursue.
• If you choose the channel with the most topics, you have already a huge list of video ideas to start with. It saves
you time in the future.
In my case, I’m not doubting about the amount of topics for the curiosity channel, but for the business channel I
started writing down topic after topic, 41 in total!
And I drafted up 7 scripts already.
This one is obvious: It’s gonna be the business channel!
Step 5:
The last step is the most tangible.
Make a video for the channel you chose.
Go through the whole process from research, scripting to editing, uploading, titles and subtitles.
You may feel ill at ease, but do you get a positive vibe?
Is it something you see yourself doing for the next five years?
Yes? You found your channel!
If not, try to make a video for the channel that was second on your priority list after the elimination process.
The reason why I work in increments of weeks, because of the way the creative process works.
You can not push it.
When you try to come up with ideas on the spot, you don’t reach a full range of ideas.
You might have ten ideas up your sleeve, but when you try to come up with them on demand, you may only come up
with three.
When I have an argument with someone, I always think afterwards: “I should have said that”.
It’s the same thing.
Inspiration comes in the weirdest places and comes when you don’t think about it.
Your assignment is still in your head over the course of a week.
If you are busy with other things, then you get the most brilliant ideas.
If you want help with picking a good channel name, maybe the channel name generator on
https://www.socialvideoplaza.com/en/tools/channel-name-generator can help you.
It takes time
You have to bear in mind that YouTube takes a lot of time, effort, patience, videos and skills.
When I’m talking about time, I don’t only mean the time that you spend per video, but also how long does it take for
you to get a foot in the door of the YouTube algorithm.
Besides being good on camera, editing a video and SEO you have to see the fun in learning the rules of the YouTube
game.
Your first 100 subscribers are the most difficult to get. This takes the longest.
It can take a year or half a year, depending on the content and the niche.
Then your next 100 subscribers are a little bit easier to get and take up less time than your first 100 subscribers.
The next big step is your first 1000 subscribers.
It takes forever!
If you have reached 1000 subscribers, your next 1000 take up less time than your first 1000.
This rules applies to 10,000 subs, 100,000 subs and a million subs.
Growth (and revenue) on YouTube is exponential, and that’s logic when you think about it.
With every video, you accumulate more watch time minutes and a little bit more channel authority which boosts your
ranking a bit.
For example:
Let’s say, you have videos that attract 100 watch time minutes each.
You would gain slightly more watch time minutes with every new video, because your channel authority is grown.
With more authority comes more promotion and more viewers watch your video.
This could look something like this:
video #
week
watch time minutes per video
total accumulated channel watch time minutes
(=channel authority)
1 first week
100
100
2 second week
101
201
3 third week
103
304
4 fourth week
106
410
5 fifth week
108
518
6 sixth week
114
632
video #
week
… …
watch time minutes per video
total accumulated channel watch time minutes
(=channel authority)
…
With your first video, you have no authority whatsoever, after your 10th video you start to gain some traction, after
your 50th you gain some more traction, and so on.
You need a lot of watch time minutes to get a foot in the door.
You have to be in the YouTube game for the long haul.
You have to put in a lot of time and effort.
Quick successes are rare on YouTube.
You can only judge if a YouTube channel is successful after 3 years of consistently uploading videos.
It is said that a business takes on average 5 years to make a profit.
So, do the math, 3 years is on the short side.
Every topic is different, every niche is different and every channel is different.
Every channel has a different grow curve, even in the same niche.
It depends heavily on the content, video quality, background, host, competition, promotion, time of year etc, etc…
there are a slew of factors that work for you or against you.
You are your own unique channel, with your own unique growth curve.
Most people get discouraged after a few months/years of no apparent success.
The only way you are ever going make it, is to persist.
Pull through to those first few years.
Most people quit before they even had the chance to be successful.
The majority of creators who start a channel, don’t make it to the 10,000 subscriber milestone, only a small
percentage.
It may look easy, but most big creators had to work really hard to get to the point where they are now.
My DJ channel took me a year to grow to 400 subscribers, only a few months later I hit the1000 subscriber mark.
I had 10,000 subs a year later.
With my DJ channel I was lucky to bump into a subject that continues to draws views till this day.
I wasn’t that lucky with my retro gaming channel.
The gaming “niche” is saturated, maybe that is why it took me much longer to figure out which content got
subscribers into the door.
I was only a year in before I knew what I wanted to make.
The only way to figure out what you want to make is to actually do it!
Sitting on the couch and doing nothing didn’t get me there.
…
C on t e n t
Content = not only your video
A lot of people mistake YouTube content for the video itself.
But it’s far from the truth.
YouTube considers content everything that has to do with your video (including the video itself).
The video in itself is meaningless, it’s not searchable, it’s not relatable (in the sense of similar video topics); a video is
just a set of bytes.
YouTube tries to get a sense of what the video is about by looking all the other data that you provide and YouTube
can extract from the video file.
So, what is content?
The words in the video & closed captions
In the video editor in YouTube Studio you have to select the video language, so YouTube can do speech recognition.
YouTube transcribes the video for a couple of reasons:
• To get a sense of what the topic of the video is;
Keywords are used in the search algorithm.
If you have done your research then you know what your target keywords are.
Make sure to mention them at least once (rather more) in your video.
Words in the beginning of your video are more important than at the end of a video.
So make sure you mention your keyword phrases at the beginning of the video.
I make video scripts so I can sprinkle in the search keywords here and there, especially in the beginning.
I have found that that is lot harder when I improvise the video entirely.
Experience learned me that videos with deliberate usage of keywords tend to do better in search
• To get the context of sentences:
If the creator is talking about X in the first sentence, he probably means Y in the second.
For example: I’m talking about software for music production.
When I say the word ‘logic’, I will probably mean the software ‘Logic’ and not the context of the word ‘logically’.
• To detect bad language:
Your video will be flagged if it’s against the Community or Ad-friendly Guidelines.
YouTube even detects the beep-frequency and regards it as bad language.
Using bad language is weighted more heavily at the beginning of the video than at the end.
The language is important to determine bad language.
The word “cock” is pronounced the same in Dutch, but we mean the profession of cook.
The word “ass” sounds the same in Dutch, but we mean ash tree.
• To detect natural language:
To prevent creators gaming the YouTube system, detecting natural language is important.
YouTube has a reference library of word frequency ratios for every language.
If your video deviates too much from those ratios the video gets flagged.
A 10 minute video that only has the text “best mortgage” repeated over and over again for the whole length of
the video is flagged.
The word frequencies are out of ratio of a normal language in this example.
The video is not a valuable addition to the platform, but likely to rank very high in the search algorithm if not
detected.
This method is known as: keyword stuffing.
You can “stuff keywords”, but only in a natural flow of a language.
In other words, you can bend sentences to fit your needs, but they also have to fit the needs of the viewer.
• The deaf and hearing impaired can follow your videos as well by reading the closed captions.
The speech recognition fails on many occasions and is the cause of a lot of false positive flags (demonetization i.e.).
Accents for example (foreigners speaking English i.e.) are tough for the speech recognition algorithm.
Therefore it’s a good idea to add subtitles.
You can correct the mistakes that the speech algorithm made, so you can improve the searchability of your video.
Every video YouTube has auto generated subtitles, the fastest way is to use those as a basis and edit them.
You “only” have to correct the mistakes; the timing is already in place.
Title
The title is probably the most important search and CTR factor.
Thoughtfully crafting a video title is a skill on its own.
The title needs to be a representation of the video content, it needs to be short, it needs to be enticing to click on and
contain search keywords.
Your video title is equivalent to the headline of a newspaper.
A title can raise a question that you (as the viewer) want answers to.
Those titles are curiosity driven.
When we take a look at two titles: “10 things you didn’t know about yellow” and “the color yellow”, both describe the
video accurately, but I only want to click in the first.
The title must represent the video, expectations are set for the viewer by the title (and thumbnail).
Those expectations must be met, otherwise people will drop off or click the thumbs-down button.
Titles may be edgy but never click bait, YouTube kills click bait videos immediately.
If you want inspiration for compelling headlines, go to the book store or the grocery store and check out the covers
for gossip magazines.
You will notice that there are just a couple of headline templates that are used over and over again.
Here are some compelling titles with the template underlined:
• “10 things you didn’t know about the color yellow”
• “The best kept secrets about the play and pause button” instead of “play pause button tutorial”
• “hidden features of the utility menu”
• “mysteries of the jog wheel”
• “best plugins for chords”
• “the most deadly snakes”, “the most extravagant X” , “the most awkward Y”
• “the 5 most powerful questions ever”
• “top 10 best free daws”
• “10 psychological tricks to get her to like you”
• “secret formula of song arrangement”, “one simple formula for song arrangement”
• “unknown features of the hot cue”
• “the truth about X”, “the shocking truth about X”, “the undiscovered truth about X”
• “you did not know this about the tempo function”,
• “what you didn’t know about the tempo function”
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“the 10 secrets you don’t know about X”
“debunking myths about the quantize function”
“don’t start a YouTube channel before you watch this”
“how to start a YouTube channel”, “how to become successful entrepreneur”
“the ultimate tax shelter” (teaser + curiosity driven)
“how does a pilot know when to descent a plane?” (curiosity driven)
“do have planes have keys” (curiosity driven)
“block every online ad with this” (curiosity driven)
“why you have to duck lower frequencies in a song”
“why is it dangerous to pee on an electric wire”
“why can’t we do X without Y”
“What nobody tells you about X”
“How to make 1 million dollars - What They Don't Tell You”
“what really happened to X” (that can be a product or famous person).
“forbidden tactics / tricks to change peoples minds”
“don’t watch this if you have enough money” (tell people they shouldn’t do something)
“If you watch this you never have to be lonely again”
“If you do THIS and you’ll be blind for life”
“before buying a house watch this”
“the best and only video you have to watch about success”
“can you solve this riddle?”
“the software that everyone talks about” (curiosity drive)
“the X that disrupted the Y industry
On the website https://www.socialvideoplaza.com/en/tools/channel-name-generator you can find a free title
generator that helps you with constructing compelling titles for your YouTube videos.
Description
A proper description is the second thing (next to the title) that is vital to be found, it tells the YouTube algorithm what
the video is about.
A lot of creators don’t use the description: that’s a wasted opportunity!
The first few lines are the most important.
The first 3 lines are the ones that are shown in the search results list when you search for a video.
A viewer can determine whether to watch the video or not based on those words, so make it compelling.
The first few lines are also the most important for the YouTube search engine to determine the topic of the video.
You can put your script in your description, so Google (or YouTube) knows better what the video is about.
You can also use the description to put links to your crowd funding platform, website and social media.
In my videos I try to add value to the description (affiliate links, contents of the video, a list etc) and refer to that in the
video, so people read the description and hopefully see the other stuff you put in there.
Thumbnail
The thumbnail is the movie poster of your video.
It’s the graphic that sells your video to potential viewers.
Of the ‘holy trinity’ of importance (title, description), the thumbnail is number three.
Some creators use stills of their video, but you can have a far better CTR when you design a custom thumbnail.
Basic photo editing skills may come in handy here.
Using stills is difficult because the quality is never as good as a photo.
Stills are often blurry because of the motion in the video, also you can’t zoom in without losing quality.
It’s hard to find a good still where you are not looking like a complete idiot and represents the video well!
Serious YouTubers take a separate photo for their thumbnails.
When you take a separate photo you can look the way you want and try different variations and pick the best photo.
I make my thumbnail photos in batches, so I have a library of pictures to choose from.
I found that making pictures in front of a green screen is a huge time saver to get rid of the background in photo
editing software.
A good thumbnail also tells a story.
For example:
when I’m making a video about laptops for music production, I take a picture of me with my laptop (pointing at the
laptop), replace the background with a screenshot of software to make music.
Now every viewer that sees the thumbnail knows that the video is about music production and about laptops.
Studies have shown that these thumbnails work well:
• thumbnails with high contrast and bright colors
• thumbnails with human faces thumbnails with emotional facial expressions. I call them “ee, oh, ah”-photos.
• if you use text, use a maximum of 6 words
• try to gain interest in some way
Your thumbnail has to stand out against the rest, so a lot of YouTubers make a couple of different variations and paste
them in a mockup of the YouTube home screen in their photo editor.
A lot of creators don’t realize that YouTube does text recognition on thumbnails.
This to check for violations for of their Community and Ad-friendly Guidelines (like bad language i.e.).
YouTube never said that they use this text for search, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they do.
Hashtags
As of the writing of this book hashtags have not proven their full potential yet.
Nobody knows exactly how to use them, YouTube is very vague.
Therefore few creators and viewers use it.
I wouldn’t be surprised if YouTube would deprecate this feature later.
A hashtag is a search term, but at the same time, not.
You can put a hash sign (#) followed by keywords without spaces in your video description, like “#musicproducer”.
Use as few as possible so to give them more weight if you use them.
You can use a maximum 15 in total, YouTube will penalize you in ranking for using more.
A hashtag is only useful when big channels use them.
When viewers click on a hashtag of a video, they see a list of videos that use that hashtag.
That list is not a regular ranked list (where channel authority is king), also smaller channels are in there and content
freshness is a ranking factor.
As a small channel you can get in that list when you serve fresh content.
Using hashtags can be a useful strategy for a small channel.
Tags
Tags were used in the past as search terms, but their significance for search has declined to almost nothing (in
contrast to popular belief).
Title, description and thumbnail are far more important for the algorithms to understand what a video is about.
If you do keyword research, note them down, so you can use them as tags, but otherwise don’t bother much about
the tags.
I wouldn’t be surprised if they disappear from the video editing page within the next couple of years.
Tags help to determine what a video is about, so it can establish a correlation between other videos with the same
tags.
After all: two videos with the same topic should have the same tags.
If you hope to show up as a suggested video to a viral video by copying the tags, I have to disappoint you.
A couple of years ago that would have worked, but that trick has lost is power.
It was misused, so YouTube lowered the importance of tags.
The algorithms have taken over the role of the tags, which is harder to misuse.
The first couple of tags are more important than the last.
Sorting your tags in order of importance is useful.
Start with the specific ones and end with the more general topics.
For example: a video about how to use an equalizer (in music production), the first tags could be:
“how to use an equalizer”, “how eq works” and I would close with:
“DAW software” and “music production”.
You see that the first ones are specific and the last ones are more general?
There are tools out there (VidIQ, Tube buddy and Morning Fame) that can help you with tags.
Those tools can determine the priority of tags as search terms.
If you are smart you use them also in your description and title.
Comments
The content of comments (and the amount of comments) are used as a ranking factor in YouTube search.
You as content creator should moderate your comment section, if you don’t, YouTube will remove your comment
section or even terminate your channel.
YouTube has made it abundantly clear in the 2019-comment fiasco that they don’t want to take any responsibility for
comments.
YouTube points the finger to the creator as the responsible party.
Although the American Federal Trade Commission doesn’t agree and fined YouTube heavily for it.
The Community Guidelines also apply to comments posted by viewers.
If you can’t moderate, you have to disable your comments, according to YouTube.
But fewer comments means less promotion, so very little creators are taking that route.
The weird thing is, that properly moderating comments is fairly impractical.
The comments-section in YouTube Studio provides no viable way to do this (when I wrote this).
You can see new comments posted, but there is no way to spot replies on existing comments.
You might think that deleting comments will hurt your promotion.
But that is not the case, under the hood they still count as a comment.
When you delete a comment, it becomes invisible for viewers and creator.
This is YouTube’s incentive for creators to moderate their comments.
Types of content that work
Regretfully there is not a specific formula that works for every audience and every channel.
But there are types of content that generally tend to do very well.
In this chapter I’ll discuss them with a strong focus on the value for the viewer.
Tutorials (how to…)
The easiest way to give value to people is by explaining how things work.
Tutorials are also easiest to be found in the search results on YouTube (and Google).
If you want to start a new channel, the tutorial can be an easy starting point.
Fashion
Women love fashion.
Keeping your fans up to date about the latest and greatest can be very lucrative.
Your value is the ‘food’ you provide for hungry fashionistas.
Bikini
Sex sells, and skimpy clothed women drive a ton of engagement (and thus promotion, which means extra views).
A lot of female creator combine fashion with bikinis.
The value for men is obvious.
The value for women: the style and the fit of the bikini.
Do bikini hauls and your channel will grow like crazy, add a Patreon and you are financially solid for the next 10 years.
But a bikini channel is risky, the Community Guidelines forbid sexualizing content.
Showing a women's butt in a thong is regarded as sexual.
You can’t monetize a bikini channel because you risk a Community Guideline strike or channel termination.
This may seems kind of prude at the first glance, but if you think about it: it was kind of unfair to other creators who
pour their heart and soul in carefully researching, writing, preparing, shooting and editing content to grow at a
normal rate.
Starting a YouTube channel and growing in 6 months to 200k subscribers with only 10 videos in a bikini is kind of
‘unhealthy’.
Even if you decide to risk it, there are also two long term downsides to a bikini success.
First, do you really want to be famous for taking your clothes of and showing your underwear?
Can you still do this is 10 or 20 years?
What if your looks aren’t as great anymore and some hotter and younger version of you comes along that now drives
all the attention?
Second, you know everything about turning men’s heads, but do you actually know how to make proper video
content?
Do you know how to write a video script? How to create a storyline? Attention span? Ranking videos?
Have you learned to work for your success? Have the perseverance to grind and develop a ‘real’ business/YouTube
channel?
Violent, harmful and dangerous content
The second thing (after sex) that sparks engagement is violence.
Harmful and dangerous videos are really good candidates for going viral.
Danger is assumed with being badass which is cool.
I think because a lot of people aren’t badass enough themselves, they get a rush (the value for the viewer) of watching
violent videos.
The funny thing is that in Europe we tend to have a negative approach towards violence and a more positive towards
sex in movies, while in America it’s exactly the other way around.
But which continent has the biggest porn industry?
But also in the aftermath of the 2019 comment controversy, the Community Guidelines are stricter around violence
than ever before.
News channels
Bring the latest and greatest to your followers.
Because news is very broad and you have to compete against established news organizations, it is wise to search for a
niche like tech news (although there are a ton of tech channels already out there).
With a news channel you can’t really make evergreen content.
Entertainment
Entertainment is very broad and overlaps some points in this list.
The entertainment factor is the value you give.
Entertainment is difficult to discover for the YouTube algorithm, you can’t really search for it in YouTube search.
You need to have a great personality, great content, great story and on top of that: something to show every day.
It takes a while for people to start caring about you in a way that they keep coming back.
But when viewers do start to care, they become loyal fans and consume every video you make.
Whereas a tutorial channel, if subscribers don’t like the topic, they skip it.
Vlogs fall also under this category.
Reviews of products
In the eighties and nineties people went to a store for advice when they wanted to buy a product.
Nowadays in the information age, people search online.
Because YouTube has sound and moving images it is a really good medium for reviews.
The value you give is the information about a certain product.
Controversy
Controversy sparks engagement, which is fuel for a YouTube channel.
Mac vs PC, Men vs Women, contradicting political views, conspiracy, aliens, going against a popular belief (the earth
is round) etc etc.
Personally I don’t want to moderate the comment sections for these channels, the things people say in the comments
is beyond your comprehension.
Keep an eye out on the Community Guidelines, there are limitations to what you can do and say.
Stupidity / scandal
We humans love to feel superior to others and like to see other people fail.
The emotion of pride in superiority is the value for the viewer.
This can be “innocent” (someone falling on the street), or serious (uncovering the lies of a company or politician).
Video structure
You may not notice it, but most YouTube videos are constructed in a certain way.
A way that the viewer unknowingly expects to look like, otherwise it feels weird.
A book doesn’t end with the introduction.
This structure is developed and tweaked by movies and television shows over the years and is adapted to the
YouTube ecosystem.
The structure might slightly vary from different types of content, a vlog has a different tempo than a tutorial.
But you might be surprised that the structure is pretty much the same.
If you are aware of this structure, you’ll see this structure everywhere.
What is the structure of a successful YouTube video?
In the order of sequence:
The hook
Getting viewers in the door is difficult, but once they are in the door (they clicked on your video), you have to grab
their attention so they keep watching.
The hook sets an expectation for the video.
A good hook shows the viewer the mystery, question, problem, dilemma or information you’ll learn:
■“Why are bananas curved?”
■“How to prevent falling down the stairs when you are drunk?”
■“How to get tan in 3 days”.
You have communicated crystal clear what viewers gain from watching your video.
The viewer decides in the hook if he is going to watch the video or not.
You have 5-10 seconds to convince the viewer to watch the video.
The hook confirms that viewers clicked on the right video for them.
Everything has to be right: the video quality, the sound quality, the personality of the host, the looks of the host, the
knowledge of the host, can you actually understand what the host is saying? Does the content confirm the
title/thumbnail (not clickbait), is the content actually the content that the viewer is looking for? Is the content on the
right knowledge level?
The hook has to be compelling and give the viewer information about the contents of the video.
A lot of vlogs use a clip of the vlog as teaser to get viewers in the door.
If that clip is not interesting enough, viewers go away and watch another video.
So that clip has to be darn interesting!
A tutorial can contain an abbreviation of the infromation you are going to learn with some shots about the material
you are going to show later in the video.
Writing a compelling hook can be quite challenging.
If I make a not-so-interesting tutorial about the play button of a DJ player, I make sure that in the hook I ask questions
that DJ’s want answers to, things they hadn’t realized they didn’t know.
“I noticed that a lot of DJ’s don’t know what the flashing sequence of the LED means around the play button”
Only at the end of the video I give away the answer.
This way you can reach and audience retention of 50% on a video about the play button, the most dull and common
button on every MP3 player in the world!
In movies they use the beginning of the movie to hook you in.
Mostly they start with the atmosphere.
You see New York in the rising sun, you see the sky scrapers, the Statue of Liberty, you hear a fun upbeat melody, you
see people walking on the street, you see a yellow cab, a woman getting out of a cab, slamming the door and ripping
her coat that is stuck on the taxi door while she walks away.
You know this is going to be a romantic comedy.
Another scenario:
You see New York, the last bit of sunlight after a long day, you see the silhouette of sky scrapers against the dark blue
sky, you hear an eerie slow melody, you see the tires of a yellow cab racing by that suddenly stops and you see the
shoes of a man slowly getting out of the cab.
You know this is going to be a serious gangster movie or horror.
They movie makers tell you that you walked into the right movie or not.
Movies take more time for the hook, 5 to 10 minutes to “dress” the movie.
Sometimes they start with a mystery you want answers to.
They can take 5 to 10 minutes because it’s a social convention not to walk out of a movie theater if you don’t like what
you see.
After all, you paid to see the movie.
In YouTube land, viewers are not that patient.
Another video is just one click away.
Netflix original movies are produced for an impatient audience.
They do not extend the hook for 5-10 minutes.
The viewer is taken right into the mystery, question, problem or dilemma of the movie.
Television shows also work with the hook in a similar way as YouTube videos do.
At the beginning of a talk show you see clips of what is coming up.
They raise questions you want answers to.
Bumper
The bumper is the part where you present your show, program or channel.
Television and movies also use bumpers.
The bumpers of movies about a certain secret agent have become famous over the last 50 years.
Everybody who grew up with the B-Team knows the theme song of the bumper by heart.
In the bumper you can show the viewer what your channel is about.
What kind of content do you make?
I like to show tiny video clips so people can see what I do with the channel and at the end of the bumper I show
people a photo of my face and a text of what I do: music production.
The bumper has to fit and represent the video and the channel.
A lot of creators see the bumper as the vanity moment to boost their ego.
They think: “Yes, I can have a bumper like a real television show”.
They jump into advanced animation programs and make a beautiful bumper.
Don’t! This is YouTube with 99% amateurs; it’s not a professional cable show!
Often the bumper misrepresents the quality of the video or content in the wrong way.
You don’t want your viewers to think: “If the bumper is so good, why is the rest of the video garbage?”.
A bumper has to add something to the video,
If viewers see the bumper, they have to be enticed to subscribe because of all the other content on the channel.
A bumper has to be short, just 2-5 seconds or so.
A longer bumper makes people want to skip or click away.
Five seconds is not worth the effort to move your mouse to skip the bumper or click on another video.
A lot of creators mistake the bumper to be mandatory, but it’s not, it’s completely optional.
If you don’t have a good bumper that fits, just avoid it altogether.
I know a couple of big channels that don’t even use bumpers.
Sponsor message (optional)
If you have a sponsor, a good place could be right after the bumper, where people actually see the advert.
Keep it short (just a couple of seconds), you don’t want lose viewers.
Call to action (optional)
Right after the bumper you can choose to do a CTA.
You can do this at the end of the video, but let’s be honest, most people don’t make it to the end.
A call to action can be a request to like the video and subscribe to the channel.
Keep the CTA short, otherwise it takes too long for viewers to get to the meat of the video.
You can also choose to use an animated graphic to remind people to subscribe, while the video is playing.
This is the ultimate road in the middle with the best of both worlds: a CTA and progressing the video to prevent
people clicking away.
Introduction (optional)
The hook hooks people in, in the introduction you can explain what the video is about and what you are going to do
in the video.
Prevent the introduction to have overlap with the hook.
The hook can ask the question that the viewer wants to be answered and the introduction can be the part with the
overview of the video.
Sometimes the introduction can be nothing more than to mention the table of contents.
If the hook was also your introduction, or the introduction doesn’t add anything useful, skip the introduction
altogether.
This is also the part where you can introduce yourself, what kinds of videos you make and what your mission is (in
other words: why should people subscribe).
Here you can also display your relevant expertise, like “I helped millions of entrepreneurs all around the world to
double their revenue, I wrote 500 books, I can lift 10 people with my thumb, I spoke at the UN conference, I’m
declared a saint in 3000 countries”… you get it.
Meat of the video
Yes, finally! The meat of the video!
I say finally, because some creators drag this moment out for 2 or 3 minutes, that’s far too long.
The number one complaint I got in the comments was not getting to the point quickly enough.
Nowadays I strive get to this part of the video within 30 seconds.
Judging by the audience retention graphs, this works very well.
The meat of the video is what the video is all about: the information of the tutorial, the actual vlog, the actual prank of
the video.
End of the video / end screen
Do it quick and painless, or don’t do it at all and end the video immediately.
You can do a CTA in this part for liking the video and subscribing to the channel.
In the chapter about improving audience retention I talk in depth about the end of the video and the end screen.
Understanding the algorithms
In this book I say “the YouTube algorithm” a lot, but there is actually more than one algorithm.
For every part of YouTube there is separate algorithm with a different purpose.
YouTube is very secretive about the specifics of these AI (artificial intelligence) algorithms they use for YouTube.
There is a common understanding on how these algorithms work because YouTube released vague descriptions
about them called “common practices”.
But we can take a peek at what is going on by looking at Google’s algorithms to understand them better.
There are six official algorithms that YouTube talks about in their “common practices”, let’s take a look at each of them
in this chapter.
Google’s algorithms
Google put its artificial intelligence algorithms, called “Google Brain”, a couple of years ago into YouTube.
The algorithms may be the same in core, but they are probably modified to fit YouTube’s needs.
They changed the parameters perhaps of the AI and trained it with other samples.
That does mean that there are striking similarities between the two and I wouldn’t be surprised if they were
connected and update each other on a daily or hourly basis.
By looking at Google’s algorithms it sheds at least some light into the otherwise proverbial black box.
Keep in mind that AI constantly learns: what works today, won’t work tomorrow.
Cloud Vision
Cloud Vision is an AI algorithm that interprets images.
It detects facial expressions, text and objects.
The algorithm tries assigning labels to the image.
It also detects if the image is spoof and the likelihood of adult content.
I’ve seen a strong relationship between videos with terrible view counts and the algorithm misinterpreting the
thumbnail.
Cloud Vision detects most thumbnails of my bad videos as spoof and assigned tags that had nothing to do with the
video content whatsoever.
Nowadays I check my thumbnails in Cloud Vision and tweak them if it makes a mess of the tags.
You can check your own thumbnails by searching in Google on: ”Cloud Vision try it”.
Be aware of the colors you use, before you know it, you seek love from men in stead of talking about software.
Cloud Video Intelligence
Video intelligence is basically the video version of Cloud Vision.
It detects the content of every single frame in the video, probably by using Cloud Vision for every frame.
Video intelligence also does speech recognition and even can make a distinction between individuals A and B by
detecting who said what.
From all data of all of the individual frames and the speech recognition combined, it determines the topic of the
video.
For YouTube this data is combined with the title, thumbnail and description.
The reason why tags are pretty much obsolete nowadays is, because the “opinion” of the algorithm has much more
weight than user input via tags.
You can specify a video category in the video editor in YouTube studio.
However YouTube doesn’t use this anymore, because the algorithm takes care of that nowadays.
Using a lot of topic related b-roll on a “talking head” video, might help the algorithm to determine the topic.
You can check out the data Cloud Video Intelligence generates with a pre defined set of videos, Google on: “Cloud
Video Intelligence demo”.
Natural Language
The natural language AI is used by Google to understand content of websites.
This is used by YouTube for its interpretation of titles and description.
I suspect also a strong connection between Cloud Video Intelligence for its speech recognition.
Natural language detects sentence syntax (verbs, nouns), sentiment (positive/negative) and topic.
It even detects entities and relevance to other similar topics and websites.
If you want to take Natural Language for a spin, Google: “Natural Language API-demo”
YouTube search
The search algorithm is probably the first algorithm you will think of when it comes to YouTube.
You type in a search query and the algorithm determines by looking at your content, which is the most relevant to
your query.
To rank, keyword research is important.
As a small channel: find a topic with high search volume and not much competition.
Do not target a topic that has 100 videos already from big channels, target a topic with just a couple of videos with
competition from preferably smaller channels.
In chapter “ranking factors” I’ll talk in depth about discoverability.
Suggested videos
The suggested videos are the videos on the right side of your YouTube watch page (on the desktop).
This is an algorithm that suggests videos based on:
• personal prior activity
• topic (related to the current video)
• channel authority (gathered watch time minutes of the lifetime of a channel)
Home screen
The home screen is the first screen you see when you visit YouTube.
This is a mix of videos you might be interested in, videos of your subscriptions and videos watched by similar viewers.
Notifications
YouTube has a notification algorithm to notify viewers of a new video on their favorite channels.
This can be the channels you’re subscribed to, but also channels you watch a lot (but are not subscribed to).
In order to receive those notifications, subscribers need to activate notifications explicitly by clicking the bell icon next
to the subscribe button on the video watch page.
There are three notification states:
• all
• personalized
• none
As a creator you get a quota of 3 notifications per day. So if you upload 6 videos a day, only 3 notifications are sent
out to subscribers.
In the video editor in YouTube Studio is an option “notification to subscribers”.
If you uncheck that box, no notifications will be sent.
That can be handy in a couple of cases:
• If you upload 6 videos a day, then you can pick the 3 notifications you want to send to viewers
• Sometimes you publish a video that you don’t want your viewers to see, for example: you made two versions of
one video, but your subscribers only need to see one.
• I sometimes cut up a larger video into smaller videos.
I don’t want to notify my subscribers of every video (after all, it’s double content and I don’t want them to skip my
notifications).
Cutting up a video has a couple of advantages:
• I can target a specific search keyword in every video, that otherwise would be lost
• I can make multiple videos about one topic, so I have a higher chance to be found.
For example: I made several tutorials of one DJ player about individual topics and one big video with all topics
about the machine.
I supply in both needs with the same material.
• People are searching for a specific solution for their problem, if they encounter a 1 hour video and have to find
in the video what they are looking for, they might not find it.
They might also be inclined not to click on the video in the first place when they see the video length (and
rather click on another video that will answer it their question directly).
Be aware that if subscribers skip a video notification, they might not be notified in the future.
How tolerant the notification algorithm is, depends on the channel authority.
If you skip a video notification of a small creator with 1000 watch time minutes, you will never be notified again, but
when you skip 50 notifications of a channel with 100 billion watch time minutes, you will be notified until the
hereafter.
Skipping a notification is seen by the promotional algorithms (suggested, home, search etc) as a bad video.
After all, your subscribers aren’t interested in your video, why should the algorithm promote the video to non-fans if
even your fans aren’t interested.
Use your notifications wisely.
A notification is send to viewers when you change the state of the video to “public” (directly or scheduled).
When you change the state of a video to “private” after it was “public”, the notification will refer to a non existing
video.
You get only one notification per video.
If you flick the switch from “public” to “private” and back again to “public”, the notification is only sent the first time the
video was public (not the second).
Do not publish exactly on the hour.
Do it on 5:15 PM instead of 5:00 PM sharp.
Every creator publishes exactly on the hour, so your notification may get buried between 20 or 50 other notifications.
Your subscribers may not even see your notification.
The promotional algorithms see a subscriber not reacting to a notification as a subscriber skipping a video.
The reason why I say 5:15 PM (and not 5:30 or 5:45) is because the YouTube notification system on the website, puts
the newest notification on top (and a lot of phones and email programs work the same way).
If other creators publish at 5:00 PM sharp, your notification goes on top for 45 minutes before the next round at 6:00
PM.
In other words, your notification is more likely to be seen.
Notifications can be sent to:
• your phone by the YouTube App (users need to allow phone notifications on their device explicitly)
• online via YouTube.com site
• via email
In YouTube Analytics you can see how many subscribers have enabled notifications and how many subscribers
actually react on a notification.
Trending
The trending algorithm displays videos that are popular on YouTube in the country, based on videos that have fast
growing views.
Subscriptions tab
This algorithm displays videos of channels that a viewer is subscribed to.
The algorithm makes a selection, so not all videos of all channels are displayed.
The videos that are displayed can be the latest video of a channel, but it doesn’t necessarily have to be.
The algorithm makes a selection of videos to show.
Other algorithms
I am sure that there are much more algorithms at work, than only the ones that YouTube mentions in their “common
practices”.
Just to mention a few, so you get a whiff of what is going on behind the scenes of YouTube:
• The speech recognition algorithm.
This algorithm translates speech to written text for closed captions (subtitles).
This algorithm gets a lot wrong, but I’ve seen it become better over time.
• Community Guidelines and Ad-friendly Guidelines algorithm
An algorithm that checks against violations of the Community Guidelines, like hate speech or discrimination for
example.
This algorithm checks all the content: the closed captions, the title, thumbnail (image recognition is another subalgorithm), description etc.
• Filtering comments algorithm
The algorithm that looks at comments and determines if they are spam.
YouTube takes this a step further and can determine if a comment has a positive or negative character and filter
on that.
• Video format algorithm
The algorithm that is responsible for converting your video file format into YouTube’s own format with the best
possible quality with the highest possible compression rate to save disk space.
• Content-ID algorithm
Finding matches in your content that are in YouTube’s copyright protected material library (audio and video).