- You better believe
that a picture is worth a thousand words.
So, your YouTube thumbnail is worth a lot more.
This is the first impression for your audience
that's gonna get you those clicks, views, subscribers,
exactly what you want.
So, stay tuned.
(inspiring music)
In a sea of YouTube videos,
how do you get yours to stand out among
the clickbaity titles, the YouTube celebrities,
and the obviously hilarious cat videos?
Well, in this video I'm gonna show you exactly how.
So, let's go over to my office.
I'm gonna show you.
Before we get started, we're gonna make the thumbnail
for this video.
Okay, this is how to make great thumbnails for YouTube, go!
(shutter clicking)
Fail. (wah-wah-wah)
How do you get your videos to stand out
and make people click on yours instead of all the others?
Well, today I want to talk to you
about why your YouTube thumbnails are so essential
to your long term and overall YouTube success.
And if you wanna skip the guess work
and be so efficient on YouTube like me,
if you click the link below,
I'm gonna show you how we create 60 days
of social media video content in only eight hours.
So, click the link below to get that.
So, here's the thing, you're scrolling on YouTube,
you're searching for a video and you see all these options.
Like, there are over 4,000 hours being uploaded to YouTube
every single minute, which can be really overwhelming
when you're trying to find something that you wanna watch.
So, how do you pick what you wanna watch?
Typically you can go with a name that you recognize
and if there's not a name you recognize
then what do you look for?
The thumbnail.
You look for that engaging image
that caught your attention,
that maybe you get to see some of the personality
or get a glimpse at what the video is going to be about.
Now, there are some key elements you need
when creating a thumbnail
and I'm gonna show you every single step of the way
how you can do it yourself, how you can outsource
to find someone to do it for you,
and how to get the video thumbnail
that gives you the best click through rates.
Now, before I go into all that,
what does that even mean?
What's a click through rate?
Why is that important?
Now, here's the thing, when people are looking
at their YouTube analytics,
they're looking at typically the views,
the subscribers, yeah that's all great.
It shows us that people are watching.
But what's more important
is looking at your click through rate and your watch time.
That means the retention.
How long people are actually watching your videos.
That's also the metric that YouTube is looking for
to make sure that these videos actually have authority,
that they're keeping people on their platform.
Why is that important?
Because YouTube is going to reward the channels
and the content creators that keep people
on the YouTube platform.
So, when they see that people are watching
a lot of your content all the way through,
and when they see that people are clicking
your thumbnails compared to everyone else,
it's gonna boost your videos in the ranking
and allow you to show up in front of more people
when they're searching for content like yours.
So, the goal you wanna aim for when it comes
to a click through rate on your thumbnails is 4%.
And if you look at your analytics
and you don't see that 4% number, time to go back,
redesign the thumbnail, and try again.
The great thing about YouTube thumbnails
is you can change them out.
With YouTube videos, learn from it, see where people
are dropping off, and make a better video next time.
You do not wanna delete a video and re-upload it
because we wanna retain all of the ranking stats we have,
the likes, the comments, the views, so hold on to that.
So, what makes a thumbnail click worthy?
I'm so glad you asked.
You wanna have a big image of the subject
or whatever it is you're talking about
or if you're the face of your videos, have a picture of you.
And then the title next to you or another image
that demonstrates what the video is all about.
Now, when it comes to the text, also make it big.
And know that your thumbnail is pretty small.
So, if you have anything that's too small of text,
you're not gonna be able to catch that person's attention.
Now, when you're putting words on your thumbnail,
also know that you do not have to put
the entire title of your video
as the words on that thumbnail.
So, if you have a video, for example, that's like,
how to train your dog.
You don't have to have the full, how to train your dog.
You could have, puppy training,
or you could have a picture of your puppy sitting
and maybe a little speech bubble that says, sit.
Or something like that, that it demonstrates
what the videos about without having
to take up all of the space.
A really great channel to look at how they do
their thumbnails is Russell Brunson's YouTube channel.
His thumbnails are my favorite to study
and to look at for inspiration.
So, to recap, you wanna have a big picture of yourself
or whatever the subject is of the video,
and words or demonstration that reiterate
what the video is about.
Now, if you're someone that's like,
I'm not that good at graphic design,
I don't know how to design a thumbnail,
I'm gonna show you how you can either do it yourself
with little to no graphic design training,
or outsource it while still not spending a lot of money
and saving your time.
One of my absolute favorite programs to use is Canva
and you'll see on my YouTube channel,
I have tons of Canva tutorial training videos.
So, that if you wanna learn how to do graphic design,
or if there are little projects you have to do
that you don't want to outsource,
or just wanna be able to do it in house,
they will teach you exactly how to do that.
Canva has already, YouTube thumbnail designs, templates,
that you can use and just replace the words,
replace the pictures with exactly your branding.
So, I'm gonna show you exactly how you can do that.
So, this is the Canva homepage
and right here you can click what you would like to design
and if start to type in YouTube,
you'll see there are awesome templates that you can design
your channel art or your thumbnails.
So, let's click on thumbnail and as we get in there,
you'll see that YouTube already has amazing templates
that you can just plug and play and use right here.
So, you'll see all these templates are even themed.
There's for music channels, for food channels,
beauty, tutorial, you can scroll through here
and look at all of the options.
So, let's just look in the food YouTube thumbnail ideas
just for this example and you'll see
there are so many ideas you can just keep scrolling
and scrolling and finding so many more.
We can even go down to tutorial videos
and there's tons of options that you can use.
Pay attention to where this says free, right here,
'cause there are some thumbnails
and some templates, some images,
that you can use that are paid.
So, if you wanna do it for free,
you can absolutely use these.
So, here's one.
We just actually talked about how to train your puppy.
We can use that one and work with that.
So, as you'll see right here
because there's watermarks,
this is one that you have to pay for.
So, what we can do is keep this,
'cause this is a great template,
I like that the words are big,
the picture of the subject is big.
What I can do is delete the image, my text is still here,
although you can't see it, I'm gonna change the color
just so that you can in this situation
and what we can do is go to elements and look for photos
and I'm gonna look for a puppy.
And look, here's another option.
Let's pop that one into place,
I'm gonna drag it to fill up the full screen,
I'm gonna position the image behind the text.
There we go.
How to train your puppy, ready to go.
I can download it to my desktop
and use it right on my YouTube thumbnail.
How easy was that?
Now, if you're someone that you're like,
I'm still not interested in doing that.
I'd rather outsource it and save my time.
You can use sites like UpWork or Fiverr
and find people who are so skilled at this,
that who are amazing at making thumbnails.
All you have to do is put up an ad,
exactly what you're looking for, or there's tons of people
on Fiverr who are already advertising their services
as YouTube thumbnail experts,
and you can pay them as little as $5.00.
Now, one last thing, when you're uploading a video
and if you don't see the option for how to upload
a custom thumbnail, it's because you haven't verified
your channel yet.
So, all you have to do is go to YouTube.com/Verify,
enter your phone number, it's gonna send you a text
to make sure you're not a robot and voila,
you'll have the ability to upload your custom thumbnail,
every single time.
So, this is really important to remember,
getting that 4% click through rate on your videos,
is what YouTube is gonna see
to know that your video is successful,
has authority, and keeps people on their platform.
And as a result, it's going to boost your videos
in the rankings and show it to more people.
Which, ideally is what we want.
We want to use YouTube as the search engine it is,
that when people are looking
for the content that you provide,
the value that you can give them,
then they're gonna look at your videos every time.
Potentially binge watch your other videos
and then become a raving fan, maybe even a customer,
and love your content for as long as you're putting it out.
So, I can't wait to see all of your amazing thumbnails
and the success on your YouTube channel once you crush it
with your thumbnail design.
And if you need more support,
I have a Canva guide in the link below.
How to make amazing designs and save your time and money
in the process and also, we're gonna teach you
how to create 60 days of social media and video content
in only eight hours.
If you want that, you can also click the link below.
Thanks so much for watching.
If you like this video, hit the thumbs up,
comment below, and of course,
subscribe for more weekly videos.