Hello, how do you start a second YouTube channel?
It's a very good question and one that I’m asking myself right now, so I’m going to
create a brand new second YouTube channel in real time, in front of you right now, right
here.
Let's do it, because by the end of this you and me are both gonna have a second YouTube
channel.
Let's dive straight in... oh hello, I’m Neil by the way.
I usually help high-achieving performers and creators just like you to get ideas out of
your head, out to here on YouTube, but today we're going to do more than that!
We're going to... we're going to branch out onto a new frontier and we're going to take
those ideas out onto a whole second channel!
I’m going to show you the way that you're probably looking up, which is to create a
second YouTube channel as a spin-off, or a brand account, from your main YouTube channel
and I’m going to do that very quickly...
And then I’m going to explain why I’m NOT going to create my second channel that
way.
There are some really big security risks.
I’m going to talk you through, and show you how I actually am making my second channel.
But let's dive in to YouTube studio.
So the way to make a second YouTube channel in 2020, and who knows maybe 2021, you click
on your face - or your avatar - on the top right hand side of YouTube studio.
You can see it brings up this menu "your channel", YouTube, switch accounts, and sign out.
You can't seem to do it at the moment in YouTube studio, so the only place that I found in
2020 is to go into YouTube - the main YouTube.com - and then click on your avatar there.
At the top it shows you the google accounts that you are logged into.
I’ve blurred that for security reasons and I’m going to explain those security reasons
to you a bit later, and it's sort of why I’m not going to make a second YouTube channel
using this method... but let's do it anyway.
Here's the menu buried all the way down here you can see a cog icon and the word settings
- so we'll click on "settings" and this takes you into your YouTube account settings.
It's actually YouTube.com/account and you can use that url to go straight to this page.
There's a section down here "add or manage your channels" and if you click on that option
it opens up the channels and brand accounts that your login lets you into.
On this page you can see some attempts I’ve made in the past to make a second channel.
I’ve got three other second channels, one of them I think's a goer - this train channel
here.
I think I’m going to change the the name of that channel.
Up here is a big button labelled "create a new channel"
Should we press it?!
Boom!
It opens up this page "brand accounts".
What on earth is a brand account?
"This brand account can have a different name than your personal account."
Your YouTube login gives you one personal YouTube channel.
As soon as you want to make a second channel, or more YouTube channels, they have to be
brand account channels, so you can give the YouTube channel a name.
"My super awesome second YouTube channel" and then when you hit "create"...
Boom, my super awesome second YouTube channel!
So you can customize the channel and upload some channel art, and there's a friendly message:
"upload a video to get started" so you can upload your first video immediately...
and over here is the YouTube studio button, and your channel dashboard looks the same.
The way that you jump between your main channel - your first channel - and this second channel
is with the avatar in the corner...
So it's giving me an "M" because the channel is called "my super awesome second YouTube
channel".
If I click on that it gives you the options for this channel.
One of those options is switch accounts and this menu brings up all the channels that
are linked to this account.
If I click that I return to the YouTube studio dashboard.
I do not think you should make a second channel that way.
I think I need some scary music or some sinister music?
Yeah that that should do the trick.
There have been some really high profile examples of big channels that have been taken over
by hackers or phishing attempts.
The links are in the the description and basically hackers have used their channels to push some
spam accounts to make money, but this has also been happening to some very small creators
as well.
It's just that we don't get to hear about them because they don't have the profile of
these large YouTubers.
Nobody knows why, but it takes YouTube about two months to recover the account and return
it to the owner.
When the channel is handed back it's completely wrecked because it's been used for spamming
all of its metrics have dropped.
Sometimes the videos have all been deleted...
This is a video by Roberto Blake: he explains the problem and he explains how it's happening
and it's pretty scary.
These hacking attempts and phishing attempts manage to get around the security that YouTube
says that you and I should have.
I’m going to be following Roberto Blake's security advice with this.
The first step is to log out of google.com or open up an incognito window so that in
the eyes of google.com you're an outsider.
You can start a new life!
From here we're going to create a brand new email address that will only ever be used
to log into the YouTube channel.
No one in the world could take a guess at what this email address is.
To do that, if you click on sign in at the bottom left here you can see it says create
account.
Is it for myself or to manage my business?
Nobody seems to know the best answer to this existential question so I’m going to go
to "manage my business" because I’m all about handling my business!
And then for username this is tricky.
Don't give a username that a hacker or a phishing attempt can take a wild and crazy guess at.
So my advice here is to not call it my super awesome second YouTube channel - which you
can't do anyway because it's got to be 30 characters long but you get my point.
Don't call it the name of the channel, call it something completely different and then
make up a password.
The next question that pops up is "verify your phone number"
Google asks you if you want to attach that phone number to this account.
I think that might cause problems if you use your phone number for other accounts so I’m
going to skip that.
Then you have to agree to the terms and conditions - of course we're going to read them - and
you get this reassuring confirmation screen: "your google account is all set!
Now add your business profile" Well I don't have one of those, so now you
are into google on this completely new identity and that's the identity that we're going to
use to create a YouTube account, so let's go to YouTube.com.
I’ll click on the avatar in the top right hand corner, and we have the familiar menu
options here.
The top one is "create a channel" "Your creator journey begins, pursuing your
creative passions".
Do you create a personal account even though it's on a completely different email address?
Do you create it as a personal account or as a brand account?
But just to be on the super super safe side I’m going to create what's called a brand
account, so "create a channel using a brand or other name and picture".
You can use your brand's name or another name.
I’m going to call it ikea-dad and I’m going to tick this box: I understand I’m
creating a new google account.
So you can see how this is like a Russian doll of accounts within accounts.
Nice work!
Finally!
We've done it!
Your channel ikea dad has been created.
I can now upload a profile picture.
The next section is tell viewers about your channel.
Is it "ikea" or "ikea"?
Here dad, see you at the checkouts, and you can add links to all your other sites and
social media places, and here's your channel!
You get the two options that you're very familiar with: customize channel and YouTube studio.
If I click on "customize channel" it's 2020 but "create channel" still throws you to classic
studio, so you can create a new banner... oh no... you can't create it.
Add channel art...?
So I have this problem on my other account.
I can't believe that I can't get in to upload a banner.
Leave me a comment if you get this as well, because that sucks.
Let's click on "add channel art"...
It's the same problem.
The only way I can get it to work is to go into a completely different browser - in this
case Microsoft Edge.
From there I go into YouTube again and sign in with my brand new google login.
Then I click on my avatar on the top right hand corner, then "my channel", "customize
channel" and then I click the "add channel art" button again... and finally the pop-up
window works just as it should... so I can select a photo from my computer, upload it,
and there it is.
My lovely new banner for my new channel, and exactly the same as with our first channel
we can crop and resize this picture to fit all those different devices.
Hit save and boom!
There it is.
Our banner art is finally on our second channel!
Let's go into YouTube studio.
"Hello new YouTube studio".
Yes!
And all the settings are there so we've done it!
We have set up a second channel.
How are you going to do it?
Leave me a comment below, are you going to go the first way, which is to create a second
channel from your main channel?
Or are you gonna do it my way and create a whole new identity and just make a clean start
on a completely different identity?
Be great to hear from you and it'd be great to see links to your second channel.
Put them in the comments below and of course if you want to follow my ikea-dad second channel
you can follow how my second YouTube channel does in real time, and I’ll be posting updates
on this channel...
And I know that you'll want to know how much YouTube pays me per 1000 views: that's on
this video here.
This is what YouTube thinks you should be watching next!