So how do you make awesome looking custom thumbnails that get you more views on your
YouTube videos ? even if you don't have any graphic design knowledge at all
I'm gonna show you how in this quick and easy tutorial right now
Hey what's up guys Sean here with video influencers helping you build your influence income and
impact with online video and on this channel we do interviews with video influencers as
well as tips and
strategy videos just like this one so if you're new here you know consider subscribing
but as you know custom thumbnails are one of the most important parts of actually
getting people to
watch your videos and for having success on YouTube in general but it can be hard to make
thumbnails
like the pros so let's jump into some quick and easy tips right now and hey before we
jump over and
make the thumbnail we are going to talk about how to make a screen shot from your video
and use that
for your thumbnail but the very best thing that you can do is to take a separate photo
intentionally for
your thumbnail so first I'm going to take a couple of photos with my smart phone that
we are going to be
able to use in the thumbnail
ok guys so like I said the first thing we are going to do here is we can grab a screen
shoot of the video .
now I'm using the snipping tool and I'm on a PC you could do a screen capture and you
can capture the
whole screen I am just going to take a picture of a frame of a pause YouTube video your best
place to do
this might be actually in your video editing software or making your video full screen
if you
wanted to grab a screenshot like this next you want to jump over to canva.com and canva
is entirely free
it is a super cool design site and that's where we are going to design our custom thumbnail
starting here on this screen once you are sign up for your account say use custom dimensions
what you want to do is do is 1920 by 1080 that is HD resolution dimensions and that
is going to be the
dimensions of your custom thumbnail so just put those numbers in there and then what you
wanna do
is you can go to uploads and upload either the photos from a custom thumbnail shoot were
you take
some intentional photos or the screenshot so with that screenshot there you can see
that one here
and all you gotta do is drag it in and you can scale it up and then put text on there
and use your
screenshot however you want but I'm going to use one of these photos from the shoot
I just did
just now sitting here with my iPhone and this just shows you can make great thumbnails even
without
necessarily like a great camera because it's the front facing camera of my iPhone and it's
not even the
greatest quality and so I was able to just put those in there but one of the things I
recommend is that if
you have a DLSR or something that you take some high quality photos for your thumbnail
and the
first thing that you wanna do is you actually want to make it a little more contrasty you
want to
up the saturation and you want to sharpen it the way you do that on canva is if you
go to the blur tool
if you go that way it makes if blurry but if you go the other way it makes it sharper
and there's been
research done and stuff to say that thumbnails are more effective if they are about 30% over
saturated
and 30% over sharpen because it's so small you want the image really to pop is not going
to be this big
right and there is my crazy face sorry about that so then what you can do is you can add
text and the
way I like to make my text to pop out and make it readable is by adding a shape first
and so in this case
we can bring in a nice rounded corner box here and put a shape where our text is going
to go
and then we can change the color of it you can grab extra colors and maybe grab a dark
gray
shade or something just like that and then what we can do is grab out text and simply
put it in here
how with whatever out video is about and so I usually like to do kind of block text but
of course
whatever your style is and we could say weird trick for YouTube kinda matches my face and
change the
text to white and we should be good to go now a couple of principals for good thumbnails
is
you don't want to use too many word right ? because is so small you want it
to be as kinda big and readable as possible so there you go and another thing that you
can check out
in canva is that if you go over to the search bar here you can come up with just search
YouTube
you can come up with cool designs and cool shapes and stuff so actually can bring in
like a logo
and maybe put this down here and that could be like kinda sitting in my hand even though
my hand
kinda got cut off and we can get rid of this text and boom there you go and what I like
I said what I like
to do is usually have like a nicer image for the thumbnail that we actually take intentionally
so this kinda gives you a look into our world of what like Benji and I would do for a video
influencers
shoot is we would put the camera on a timer on the DSLR and shoot custom you know intentionally
photos that are going to be use for our thumbnails right ? so in this case we can go weird trick
for or just
weird trick 'cause the YouTube logo is there yeah alright and then that can be just move
down here
you can rotate a little bit and like I always like to do I think that having it be really
readable is important
one of the best ways to do that is probably throw an element behind it that just really
makes it pop
on the page and then what you do is click on this and say back and it sends that to
the back
YouTube weird trick and just like the other photo even if it is with your DSLR go a head
and sharpen it up a little bit up the saturation a little bit contrast maybe move the image
around and
there we go YouTube weird trick and then all you gotta go is say download and say high
quality image
and that will save into your computer and then just hit save and then will cut over
to my media channel
and so we are inside creator studio and we are on the videos themselves and we're in
the place
where you edit your stuff of course we have your default three options to pick thumbnail
or your change
icon custom thumbnail right here go to your folder and pick out the thumbnail that you
wanna
upload which would be this one and then that one would update right there if I wanted to
change this
thumbnail now just in case you don't have this option here one thing that you need to
do is turn on your
account for monetization so if you go to YouTube settings and go to view additional features
you want .
to make sure that your account is set up for monetization right here once it is it doesn't
actually mean
you have to monetize your videos it just means monetization needs to be turn on and so once
that's
turn on the ability to do custom thumbnails will show up on your channel
so hey before you go I wanna let you know about one more thing custom thumbnails will
definitely help
your video but they are just one part of overall YouTube success and so a lot of you probably
already
downloaded our free guide but if you haven't yet is a check list for 19 things to do every
time you
upload a YouTube video and it will help your video just get more views and help your channel
get more
subscribers and so I'll link it up in the YouTube card and put it in the description
below so definitely
check that out but hey you are ready to make custom thumbnails and remember it's always
best if you
can take some pose shots during your video shoot so that you've got a really nice photo
for your custom
thumbnails and then just use free software with canva.com
two questions of the day optional number one what kinda videos are you creating on YouTube
and are
you going to be using this thumbnails for ? and the second question is maybe you have
a different
software or a different way you create custom thumbnails I'd love to hear about it in the
YouTube
description and as always some of the best tips and conversations happens from the video
influencers
community in the YouTube comments so make sure to connect down there
so hey thanks so much for checking out this video definitely subscribe for more videos
just like this one
and don't forget to download the 19 tips check list as well that'll be helpful and hey if
you appreciated
this video I would appreciated if you hit the like button and until next time keep crushing
it and we
will talk soon
oh my back my back hurts oh in the middle of a shoot day
im in the middle of a batch shooting day and I'm exhausted but hey if you haven't seen
the video on
consistency batching is one of the tips in the YouTube card YouTube card will link link
to that video if
you've never seen it