- As a small creator, finding your way around YouTube
you are bombarded with tips, strategies, and facts.
- Don't post shorts, they're gonna hurt your channel.
The Trending section on YouTube is only for the elite.
Tags are the only way to get ranked, dude!
- Now, many of these people would claim these are truths,
but they are in fact myths.
And what we're gonna try and do today
is debunk 13 of the biggest offending YouTube myths.
- Before we do that, though, let us know in the comments
what are some YouTube nonsense myths
that you've often heard.
- By the way, keep watching until the end,
because we may have a couple of extra myths
that we're gonna debunk.
So let's get this off with myth number one,
longer videos lead to better YouTube rankings.
Dan, discuss.
- No, the truth is that a one-minute video
can be just as viral as a 20-minute video.
The most important thing creators need to remember here
is you get your point across
regardless of how long you think your video should be.
- What video length doesn't take into account
is Session Watch Time.
For example, a viewer could watch a video
if it's only two or three minutes long,
be really satisfied by it,
and end up binge watching a lot more content
from that single creator.
So instead of watching one 12-minute video,
they're watching 10 two-minute videos.
And now you can appreciate how valuable that can be
to the YouTube recommendation engine.
- Honestly, the people who are telling you
you need to make videos of a certain length
are probably just thinking about videos that are longer
can display more ads.
- However, if you are making longer videos
for the sake of it,
either to get over eight minutes
to put adverts on your videos,
or because you think making longer videos,
getting more watch time
leads to more positive metrics
that could actually impact
the satisfaction the viewer gets from your content.
Take an example, such as "Beluga."
He's ballooned in size,
over 10 million subscribers,
millions of views every single video.
That's slightly because viewers are binge watching
multiple videos on each channel in one session.
- Myth number two.
You absolutely have to have text on your thumbnails.
- Well, this is where we get to the conversation, Dan, of
it depends what kind of videos you're making.
For example, when you talk about vlogs, storytelling,
they don't really need text.
An engaging visual image can be more than enough.
- The mission behind your thumbnail in most cases
should be to convey some kind of story or emotion
and draw in some kind of curiosity.
One thing I like to tell new creators who are struggling
is that your thumbnail
could really be a visualization of your title.
If you can keep people from having to read your title
and just get the entire point of the video
by looking at a simple thumbnail,
you've just won the click.
- However, let's think about educational and how to content,
that tends to favor text on a thumbnail
because it needs to instantly communicate a solution
rather than creating mystery or intrigue.
So in some cases, text can be really valuable,
but, Dan, what I think we'll both agree on
is that there should be a text limit.
Don't try and write sentences on your thumbnails.
Two or three words is a good standard.
And while we're on the topic of text on thumbnails,
Dan, apparently you have to have a beautiful face
on your thumbnails as well.
- This, again, kind of depends.
- Oh, it always depends on YouTube.
- Yes, it's our favorite thing to tell people.
For example, in the gaming space,
a lot of times the games you're playing on your channel
have very features, characters, points of interest.
And in a lot of cases, it might be better to lead with those
rather than just a picture of you.
Save the space on your thumbnail
to make the most familiar-looking thing
the centerpiece of that thumbnail
- It is often about having something
that's instantly recognizable to the viewer.
So in some cases,
if you're doing a new story
about a popular sports star, say Shaq,
or you're covering a YouTube creator,
Graham Stephan, for example,
you would want to have their face on the thumbnail.
On top of this, if you are building your own brand
and you're building a community
where they become very familiar with you,
then having your own face on the thumbnail
might be ideal as well.
- On this channel, we actually use our faces
quite a bit in thumbnails,
and oftentimes it depends on the point
we're trying to convey.
If we feel like a face
is going to bring out a lot of emotion in that thumbnail,
you may see it appear.
Sometimes we try thumbnails where we have a version of it
for one video that has our face
and a version that doesn't.
- Also to try and create an associated mindset.
If you're fearful of something, or surprised,
there's a new YouTube feature and it looks awesome,
we try and convey that perhaps in our thumbnail.
But at the same time
we're gonna use recognizable elements from YouTube,
such as the real time graph and the metrics panels,
because we assume our viewers
are gonna associate with those YouTube elements.
- [Dan] Earlier in the video I joked around about how tags
are the only way to get ranked on YouTube.
This is actually myth number four.
- The truth is tags exist on YouTube,
and that's pretty much it.
If you are worried about the myth of YouTube tags,
then you worried about the wrong things.
99% of your optimization efforts and strategy
should be guided towards the thumbnail and the title.
- YouTube themselves has said multiple times now
that the tags are a great place
to include common misspellings
for maybe the keywords that you're trying to rank for.
- We've seen many examples on YouTube
where larger creators now
are just not even bothering with tags
because they know their audience,
they know they're gonna turn up and watch their content.
The smaller channels, education channels,
they may still be using tags
because it provides the creator
with some education for themselves
in terms of keyword research.
And they're just including that keyword research
in the video tags.
But ultimately, you should be spending
no more than 30 seconds
inserting tags into your videos.
And you do that with the vidIQ boost tool,
either for the recommended tags
or you could search for a video on YouTube
and simply copy the text from that video
and place them straight into your video.
But what about when it comes to the videos themselves, Dan?
Because apparently there is a myth floating around
that a bad-performing video
will completely cripple your channel.
- That's something that a lot of people
are actually very afraid of,
but rest assured,
again, YouTube coming to us with this information
and saying, no.
Videos on YouTube are all treated individually.
So having one video that completely flops
does not necessarily mean your next video
is going to be affected by that somehow.
- Now, when you started your YouTube channel and journey,
you were effectively experimenting all of the time
to see what works.
And ultimately you should always be experimenting
with your content to become a better creator,
but you get to the point
where you have an established audience
and you want to treat them with respect
in terms of a content that you make.
But that should always give you the license
to experiment every once in a while.
- Absolutely 100%.
But a lot of creators make this mistake
of experimenting a little too much.
So just as a counterpoint,
you don't wanna be experimenting with random types of videos
day in and day out.
Every creator should really practice having
some level of consistency in their content,
posting once a day consistency.
I'm talking about the consistency of the topics
that you cover in your channel.
They should always appeal to the same audience
because at the end of the day,
you are here on our channel to get more subscribers.
And if you want to build up those returning viewers,
you're really gonna have to make videos
that they're gonna wanna keep coming back for.
Now over time, if a pattern develops
that the videos that you make and not appearing
in a viewer's watch history anymore,
then the user recommendation system
is maybe gonna start to think
that the viewer needs to be shown other videos to watch.
So that could impact the distribution of your content.
So you do need to be aware of that.
Now, one as an example of when we made content
that we knew wasn't gonna perform well back in February
when the conflict in Ukraine began.
It was a very personal and important thing
that we wanted to talk about on "vidIQ."
We knew it wasn't YouTube education.
We published those videos.
As you can see here, they didn't get that many views.
But once we returned to our regular programming,
so to speak, YouTube education,
the audience very quickly came back.
So these two videos didn't severely impact
the whole performance of the channel.
- Myth number six, you need expensive equipment
like cameras and microphones and sweet gaming PCs
if you ever wanna rank on YouTube.
- So there is a certain element approved to this
in the fact that if you have higher quality footage,
high quality audio,
that is gonna be more of a satisfying viewing experience
for the audience,
but that shouldn't be seen as a mandate
for what you must improve indefinitely on your channel.
- So would you say that in certain topics
maybe this is more important than others?
For example, if you're a tech channel,
I think I would expect somebody reviewing
high-end tech products
to have some high-end tech themselves.
Meaning I wanna see nice, clean shots,
minimalistic design in their offices,
and I want some high quality audio.
- Yeah, it's similar with a photography channel as well.
You would expect the thumbnails
to be of a very high standard,
but let's switch this to a vlogging channel.
They're likely filming in a very spontaneous way
where they don't have time to think about
shot composition lighting and perfect audio environments.
They're running and gunning.
A story is what's important there
and the experience far more than any of a production values.
It's a much more raw view and experience
which a viewer likely appreciates.
- One thing I'm always reminding creators of,
just while we're on this subject,
is that nobody knows
that you have amazing production quality
if you haven't yet won the click
with a fantastic title and thumbnail.
And the reason I bring up titles right now
is because our next myth is actually
that you have to clickbait people in order to get the click.
- Ah, clickbait.
Hey, what a filthy word that is in the YouTube universe.
The truth is, the concepts of click bait is misinterpreted.
Your titles don't need to be clickbaity,
but they do need to generate an element of curiosity.
- I look at clickbait as kind of two different sides, right?
You have good clickbait and you've bad clickbait.
Now, bad clickbait
is when you straight up lie to the viewer.
You have a title and a thumbnail
that don't deliver on the perceived value of your video.
Good click bait is when maybe you push the envelope
just a little bit,
and you tease something, people still watch the video.
But at the end it was good clickbait
because they ended up getting that value
from the video by the time they finished.
And maybe if you did something
that upset them a little bit at the start,
you're completely forgiven
because, again, you've delivered on that value.
- You also have to remember this about YouTube
and being a creator.
You have an artistic license in everything you do,
be it the way you film edit.
That can extend to a certain extent to your title.
And when we think about the types of titles,
there are seven different forms of curiosity
that we've explored in the past.
Challenging assumptions, being oddly specific,
more on that later.
But for now, Dan, the more subscribers,
the better your videos rank on YouTube, right?
- Absolutely not.
There was a time
where YouTube displayed subscribers more prominently
across the website,
but they've since learned that it's far more valuable
to better understand an individual viewer's interest
and not necessarily trust
whenever they hit the subscribe button.
So these days,
YouTube is much better
at serving you content you wanna watch,
regardless of whether or not
you've subscribed to any one channel.
- Now, with a little bit of insider knowledge here,
the head of Discovery at YouTube,
who goes by the name of Todd,
has actually said that there are certain algorithms in place
to ensure that small channels do get a fair shot
when they're competing against well established channels
with millions of subscribers.
Another thing to consider is this,
the YouTube recommendation system
is not necessarily looking at subscribers.
What I mean by that is,
let's say somebody subscribes to your channel
and then doesn't watch anything for six months,
whereas another viewer watched something from you
a few days ago.
Who is YouTube likely to suggest that video more to?
It's not the subscriber.
It's the person who's directly engaging
your content right now.
We see this over time when we're auditing channels
that get more views than subscribers.
And this is where YouTube has successfully tested it
with the core audience on the channel,
and now they're testing it with new audiences.
And they're getting positive signals
and it builds up that snowball effect
of more viewers being shown your content.
Speaking of content and subscribers, you actually,
I don't know if you knew this, Rob,
you have to have like a ton of videos
if you wanna actually start
getting subscribers in the first place
- Really, is that true? - That's a thing.
- I question that.
You could make a hundred terrible videos,
and then on video 101,
you're still gonna get no views and no subscribers.
And let's be honest about this, Dan,
we've seen this repeated so many times
with let's play gaming channels who fall into that trap.
On the other hand, we've seen examples
of channels that have made one or two videos
and already they're getting thousands of subscribers
and millions of views.
- In fact, quite recently, during one of our live streams,
we audited a channel that on their very first video,
eventually hit half a million views and counting.
Now, we can see this using our own vidIQ
historical data tools.
It does take them a little bit of time
to kind of get up and running,
but eventually YouTube finds an audience,
again, for their first video,
and it's still getting views even today.
- Speaking of first videos, or videos hurting the channel,
what about YouTube Shorts?
They're bound to hurt my channel, right Dan?
- You do not wanna be making YouTube Shorts
unless you wanna miss out on a great opportunity
to get a lot of views and not harm your channel.
I don't know where this is coming from.
YouTube Shorts I like to think kinda live in their own
little bubble on your channel.
And that's actually being confirmed a little bit by YouTube.
In a recent talk, they explained that
when somebody watches a lot of YouTube Shorts
from a content creator,
YouTube doesn't necessarily automatically recommend
the long form content from that creator.
And that's a challenge that YouTube are trying to deal with,
the relationship between different viewing experiences.
Eventually YouTube are gonna bridge that connection,
but for now, this is why you could get
millions of views on Shorts
and then hardly any views on long form content
because the recommendation system just isn't up speed yet.
- Ultimately, if this is something you're concerned about,
you can do one of two things.
Either you can make sure that your YouTube Shorts
and your long form videos
always appeal to the same exact type of viewer.
Or of course, you can make a whole separate channel
and just put your Shorts on that one.
And once you do that,
in either case you're gonna get probably a lot of views.
And everybody knows, Rob,
that you have to get a lot of views
if you wanna make literally any money at all on YouTube.
It's the only way to make money.
- The smart business-minded creator
will tell you that's completely false.
While you can make money
from views on your videos through adverts,
it is a small trickle of passive income.
Very easy to set up, but you're really missing out
on many, many more business-making opportunities
on your content and channel.
- There's a lot of ways.
You could be getting brand deals,
You could be doing some affiliate marketing.
You can have sponsorships.
You can even start your own YouTube membership program.
- So it sounds like, Dan, there's plenty of ways
to make money on YouTube,
but this is all tied into a subscriber count, yeah?
- No.
The number of subscribers you have on YouTube,
well, I mean, past getting a thousand subscribers
and reaching the monetization goals,
has no effect
on the money you're gonna bring on your channel.
- Indeed.
It's more to do with the views
when we talk about ad revenue,
but on top of that, you have to start to learn CPM.
The amount you make per 1000 views
is influenced by the topic you're making videos about,
where those videos are being watched, and the time of year.
- Subscribers and money aside,
you need to worry about having
the biggest numbers across your channel.
You need a lot of subscribers, you need a lot of views,
you need a lot of everything
if you actually wanna be a successful influencer on YouTube,
isn't that right? - Nope, not true.
There are tons of opportunities
regardless of your subscriber size.
- You're right, I...
Fine, I can see.
Listen, smaller channels can make money on YouTube
even before they get monetized
as we kind of discussed a little bit earlier
- Recently, we spoke to a creator who had just monetized,
but then they landed their first brand deal
that earned way more than all of the ad revenue
they'd earned in about six months.
And that's because they pitched themselves
to the right brand
knowing the problems that they could solve
for their audience.
- Okay, because we like you
and you did stick around to the end,
we're actually gonna give you a few bonus myths.
- Ugh, I was ready to clock off, but all right, Dan.
Let's look at this myth.
You never appear in YouTube Trending
because it's a place reserved
for high profile elite creators.
- So this is something that creators
are actually really annoyed by.
They go into the Trending sections
and they see late night talk show clips
and high profile music artists taking over these spaces.
But if you dig a little bit deeper,
you can actually find sections
that YouTube is laid out on their own
that feature Creator on the Rise Artist on the Rise.
So there are spaces for smaller channels
to make their way into the Trending sections on YouTube.
And related to those Trending sections on YouTube,
another myth we see a lot
is that you have to actually publish your video
at a certain time.
That's the reason you're not getting
into those Trending sections.
- Come on, Dan.
YouTube's not that antiquated.
It's not looking at the video content once every 24 hours.
- It says it on the script.
- No, the script is wrong.
The truth is the Trending list is revised every 15 minutes
so that means that you could publish your video
at any point in the day.
And if it's being picked up by a large audience
it could start to trend.
So the key thing here is to publish your content
when your viewers are online,
not at midnight when you think YouTube Trending
is just gonna start checking the videos
to see what's going on.
- Okay, now earlier you had said
we were gonna talk about something else.
Is that another myth or something,
'cause you just blew everybody off.
- It's not another myth.
We were talking about titles,
and I teased these seven stages of title curiosity.
And so if you wanna learn more about
writing fantastic titles
and a tool
that's gonna help you automatically generate them,
then I suggest, Dan, let's do this together,
point here and watch this video.