I got a question from the sugi who wrote
and asked this can you make a video
covering captioning and subtitles and
how they affect reach revenue and views
my question that Tim is the business or
economic side of captioning
how long before investment becomes
neutral does it increase income hey guys
my name is Tim Schmoyer and welcome to
video creators this channel is all about
helping you grow a YouTube audience so
you can spread a message that reaches
people and changes their lives and
sometimes captioning can help you reach
people with your message and get more
exposure but let me let me kind of
explain how it works because it's not
quite as cut and dry as yes captions I'm
gonna make your videos go viral or did
you know there won't there's been a lot
of research done about this and I'll put
some links in the description below
that'll talk more about it but yes
captions do make a difference and to
know it's not because of all the
keywords that are in it and three
sometimes they're worth doing sometimes
they're not let's talk about let's talk
about some of that some people will say
that you need to repeat your keywords
over and over and over again in your
captions because that gives Google more
information reinforcing like hey this
videos about captions because I said the
word captions 15 times right and that
repetitive thing it doesn't doesn't work
that's like a 2010 way of thinking about
YouTube however it has been shown that
captions do tend to lead to longer watch
time and the reason for this is that the
primary people who use captions are not
deaf they're not the hard-of-hearing
it's not the people in the library who
forgot to bring their headphones and so
now they're just gonna read along it's
actually people who are listening but
they pay attention better when they can
read along with a dialogue that's
happening in the video
sometimes these tend to be English the
second language type people but it
doesn't have to be sometimes just some
people prefer to read along and it helps
retain their attention better so
captions can help your videos get more
watch time which can then lead to your
video performing better in search and
other discoverable areas across YouTube
but it's not because of all the keywords
that were crammed into that
so at what point do you captions
actually pay off and you actually make
more money on the video than you paid to
have the captions created in the first
place that's a hard question and it's
different for everybody the research
I've seen indicates that you will get
the most bang for your buck from those
captions if you publish the video with
those captions already in place or at
least have them on there very soon after
your video goes live so I tend to invest
into captions on the videos that I
really want to go as big as possible I
want to get maximum exposure for me
those tend to be my discoverable videos
my community oriented videos I don't
really tend to invest in the captions on
those because those videos are just
gonna go through my subscribers
subscription feed and then a week from
now no one's probably watching that
video anymore
now YouTube does have an automated
captioning system perhaps you've noticed
that is terrible through those automated
captions that YouTube gets they hold no
weight at all for anything most people
don't even use them as far as I can tell
so I would just go ahead and disable
those and then upload a custom captions
file onto the videos that you have those
made for the service that I use is
rev.com not sponsored but by them
although I wish I was but they are
linked up down there below it's about a
dollar a minute per video now so far
this whole conversation has been about
YouTube videos however if you're
uploading your videos also to Facebook
then captions are almost like an
absolute necessity unless there's no
dialogue or are you talking in your
videos over and over again videos that
have captions are more likely to get
people to stop and watch those videos in
their newsfeed on Facebook and those
videos tend to get somewhere around 50
percent more views if they have captions
on them because it's more accessible to
more people who would watch a video
without the sound turned on which is
surprisingly a lot of people in facebook
so to answer your question that the
Snooky yes it can impact views and
revenue and things but from a watch time
perspective not just because you put
captions on it and - does it increase
income well that's gonna be something
for you to test is to
every channel I told you my approach to
captioning and I think that you should
learn from the other people are gonna
comment on this video and give you their
insights and input to on how they
approach captioning on their videos and
if that's you comment down there below
and help him out to me let us all know
what you do and how to use captions and
this is your first time here I would
love to have you subscribed or just all
about helping you grow a YouTube
audience so you can spread a message
that reaches people and changes their
lives - thank you for letting me be a
small part of that subscribe and I'll
see you guys again on Monday for a live
stream see that