A quick heads up - we’re getting a lot of feedback that YouTube creators are just deleting videos after the announcement about COPPA, which seems to be completely the wrong thing to do. If you're unsure whether your videos are made for kids or not, play it safe in the short term and set that video to ‘Made for Kids’. And then, as we move into 2020 and we get a better understanding of how we should categorize our content, change it then, but deleting videos means you're losing the views, and you're losing potential ad revenue. It makes no sense.

YouTube is not banning you from making content for children. They just want you to make sure that you know what you're doing because you are liable for a fine if you get it wrong, and that fine, apparently, will be $42,530 U.S. dollars. Yes, that's correct, folks. This number is now actually a search term on YouTube, littering video titles because a huge number of creators have got it into their heads that they will be caught by the FTC and they will be fined $42,530.

We ourselves have been guilty of using that very figure in one of our thumbnails because it's simple to use and it creates a headline statement which is almost guaranteed clicks, but are all of us who are talking about this topic doing all of you a disservice? The only way to find out is to check the facts and go to the source, which is the FTC.

YouTube Channel Owners: "Is Your Content Directed to Children?

What are the possible penalties for violating COPPA? The Rule allows for civil penalties of 

All right, then, some key wording right out of the gate. This is not a fixed penalty. You could be fined up to that amount. If you're a video creator with 100 subscribers who has never monetized their content, and you break the COPPA law by accident, do you think you're going to be hit with $42,530? For legal reasons, I don't think I can say no with 100% certainty, but you know those bacterial wipes that say that they kill 99.999% of germs? That's how confident I am that you wouldn't get a $42,530 fine. Also from that FTC page:

The FTC considers a number of factors in determining the appropriate amount, including a company's financial condition and the impact a penalty could have on its ability to stay in business.

The vast majority of you watching this video are not companies, you're independent video creators, and in the same breath, not to be offensive, but most of you are either not monetized or make very little money from monetization on YouTube. Because you see, a lot of what the FTC is about to embark on with YouTube content creators is uncharted waters.

Here's a pop quiz. How many cases has the FTC investigated which have resulted in fines? If you said over 10,000, you're wrong. If you said over 1,000, you're still wrong. If you said over 100, you are still wrong.

The $170 million judgment against YouTube is 30 times larger than the largest COPPA civil penalty the FTC has ever previously obtained, and it is 10 times larger than the civil penalties we have obtained in all of our 31 prior COPPA cases combined.

To put this into perspective, there are millions of video creators on YouTube, and if just 1% of those creators violate COPPA, that's at least 10,000 content creators the FTC will have to investigate. Whatever way you look at it, 30 doesn't go into 10,000, especially when those 30 cases were investigated over the span of 20 years.

The FTC has stated that once its order has been effective for a period of time, the commission will conduct a sweep of the YouTube platform, determine whether child-directed content is being properly designated as such in order to ensure that the channels themselves are complying with COPPA. None of us knows what a sweep means in this instance. It's very unlikely to be people at the FTC watching every single video that's published to YouTube. It's likely to be more automated in some way.

From a very simplistic and somewhat naive viewpoint, it's all very well and good having an automated system go through the YouTube content, but surely, at some point, if the FTC is going to impose financial fines on an individual human being, then, at some point, there needs to be a human at the FTC making sure that the automated system got it right. Oh, no, wait. That's what YouTube does, and they often get it wrong. And I still can't wrap my head around this. Just over 30 cases in 20 years versus 23 million video creators uploading 500 hours of content every single minute. How is the FTC seriously going to deal with all of this content fairly?

And that leads me to believe that a lot of cases are going to fall to YouTube's automated machine learning. I wouldn't be surprised if only a fraction of the COPPA violations ever hit somebody's desk at the FTC. They're going to rely on YouTube to police their own content for many of the creators who are under a certain number of subscribers or views on videos, but that is just my opinion. It's not based on any facts right now, because it hasn't happened. We haven't got any cases to look at yet. And if it is left to YouTube's machine learning to police your content, what's much more likely to happen than a huge fine?

YouTube will recategorize your content as ‘Made for Kids’. You'll lose the personalized ad revenue. You'll lose comments, you'll lose stories, community tab, all those sorts of things, but you will not get $42,530 fine to pay.

The FTC is not out to impose maximum fines wherever possible. They will assess the financial conditions of the violator and their ability to stay in business. And for the vast majority of video creators, that sentence isn't even compatible. This is not your business, it's your passion. It's your creative outlet. It would cost the FTC so much to fine so many of you so little for it to not even be worth it, and when you start to investigate previous cases, you discover just how much trouble a company needs to get into.

In this case, a company called I-Dressup had 2.1 million registered users. A quarter of a million of them were known to be under 13. They were fined $35,000. What would that be the equivalent of in YouTube terms? Two million subscribers? In two other cases, the companies had fewer members or registered users on their books but were fined a lot more money. Today, the FTC has dealt with established money-making enterprises, and can only investigate them on a case-by-case basis.

The COPPA fines also seem to be calculated to be the revenue earned from targeted advertising. Again, for the vast majority of channels who are really worried about this, it shrinks the potential fine to a minuscule amount.

Now, I'm not saying this should be applied to every single channel. If you take a look at Jake Paul, for example, a huge channel, well-established, that has been accused of targeting merchandising sales to children under the age of 13, those are the types of channels who want to be looking over their shoulders, not the typical video creator such as yourself.

So, with all of this being said, does it convince you that if you continue to make videos on YouTube, you will not be hit with a $42,530 fine from the FTC? Yes, children's content creators are still going to be massively impacted in a negative way on the YouTube platform. They have serious questions to ask themselves as we move into 2020. I wish you all the best of luck on whatever decision you decide to make, but ultimately, YouTube, with its near two billion monthly active users, isn’t going anywhere.

If you want to take your YouTube channel to the next level and 

 then make sure to download vidIQ. Join over 1 million other users and use vidIQ to help you research YouTube, analyze videos, audit your own channel, and take actionable steps 

When it comes to COPPA, the FTC, and YouTube there is one shock and awe number that is scaring everyone - that potential $42,530 fine. Is this just clickbait or a very real threat for YouTubers?

How Likely Are You to Receive a $42,530 Fine Under YouTube's FTC COPPA Rules?

With over 1 million global users, vidIQ is the leading optimization and channel and video management tool for YouTube creators everywhere.

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Now a very reasonable question to ask me is, "Rob, why have you set 100 subscribers "as the first big YouTube milestone?" Well, let's be honest, getting to 10 subscribers is pretty easy because you could just ask all of your friends and family to help you get there. As for 1,000 subscribers, well, right now that's probably a little bit too ambitious, and that's a trap you don't want to fall into.

Throughout your YouTube journey, which hopefully is going to be a very long and successful one, you want to set yourself manageable targets. The obvious temptation is to target 

1,000 subscribers, along with 4,000 hours of Watch Time

, because it means you're halfway to monetizing your channel. The problem is, this is going to hurt your short-term, day-to-day mindset. Because you won't feel as if you’re making enough progress.

For some channels, reaching 1,000 subscribers can take many months, if not years. If you start with that mindset, and you're into day 17 or day 34, and you haven't yet reached 100 subscribers, how is that going to make you feel? And when you get frustrated, you might start resorting to bad habits and awful tactics early on.

Those include sub-for-sub, which is against terms of service, and as we all know, and never proves to be successful in the long term for successful channels. Spamming other YouTube channels with comments is also a no-no as those actions just center around the ‘me, me, me’ mentality of a YouTube video creator, and that get’s you nowhere.

Key to 100 YouTube Subscribers: Audience Trust

As we will always preach here at vidIQ, it is the value that you give to your audience that will get them to trust you and subscribe to your content. If you get completely desperate, you may resort to buying subscribers, which is the worst thing you can do on your channel.

First of all, it is against terms of service, once again, and it may resort in your channel being terminated. Those subscribers will offer absolutely zero value to your YouTube channel in terms of growing it through views, watch time, and creating a community.

So I personally believe that your first subscriber milestone should be 100 subscribers. When you first start your channel, you'll be getting a new subscriber every few days. Then you'll be getting maybe one or two a day, and then you'll be getting ten or so a week, and that should help you reach that goal as quickly, as hopefully, as possible. Let's give you a best-case-scenario.

#1 Kick Off Your YouTube Channel with Enough Content

You launch your channel, the first video goes up, and to your surprise, lots of people watch it. And then you've got nothing else to show them. It's always a good strategy to give your viewers a collection of videos to watch on your channel. So if possible, don't launch with just one video on your channel, or at the very beginning, you want to try and pump out as many videos as possible, which may be against the schedule that you end up doing.

For example, you might be wanting to post one video a week, maybe in that first week, you want to post three videos so that people who are finding your content have something to feed off of very quickly. It is often the case that viewers won't subscribe to the first video that they watch on a channel. It may take two or three videos to persuade them to push that red button. And if you have more than one video, you can start to communicate to your audience in all of the content that you produce, that it is on a topic that your audience is interested in.

If you can get your audience to enjoy your first piece of content, fall in love with your second piece of content, and then subscribe as a result of the third piece of your content, then you potentially have a viewer there for months, years, a lifetime possibly.

Now, I wouldn't recommend necessarily launching three or four videos at exactly the same time when you start your channel. You want to give each video a moment to breathe on the platform. If you have a batch of videos you want to upload to YouTube all at once, that is absolutely fine, just make sure that they remain private until you're ready to publish them. Then when you do publish them, stagger them by at least one day, and then if you don't intend to post on a daily basis on YouTube, probably give each video at least 48 hours.

Now as I say, three in the first week is probably perfect. You'll quickly learn that when your videos get released, you get lots of bonuses from YouTube, and you find that you have rapid view velocity in the first 24 hours. But if you launch them all at the same time, it's not giving YouTube a chance to distribute that content to the potential audience it's looking for. It might not be possible to sustain the volume of content you push out in the first week or month of your YouTube channel. But give your viewers as much as you are able to provide them when you first launch your channel.

The first subscribers to your channel, who you don't know in real life, are wondrous things. Just consider what's happening here for a second. Somebody somewhere in the world has found your content valuable enough that they want to be notified again when you release more content. And then it gets to ten subscribers, and that's a line of people waiting for a bus. And they've got to say something to them.

Then you get up to 25 subscribers, that is a room full of people, and then you start to get towards 100 subscribers, which is a hall full of people. Can you imagine standing on stage, and speaking to those people directly in real life? It's a terrifying prospect, but every single one of you is doing that every single day as you try to reach this first big milestone. Now these real-life people are very precious to you, and you want to treat them with that respect.

#2 Be Consistent and Focused from the Start

When you have such small sample sizes, if people are subscribing to particular videos on your channel, you want to make more of that content. Yes, we are drifting down the common topic of niching down, one of YouTube's most important strategies. But I'm going to try and keep it fairly light for this video.

Let's say you're watching television, and you come across a new sitcom, and you enjoy the first episode that you watch. You enjoy the characters, the comedy is on point with your type of humor, and you like the way the story is going. What happens if next week, you tune in and they remove half of the characters, there are new comedy scriptwriters writing all of the material, and the story has suddenly jumped the shark in some way? You're probably going to be turned off from that content.

Now that is a bit of an extreme case of course but on YouTube channels, this happens pretty much with all channels. To begin with, and I don't understand this, many creators are a little self-indulgent, because they want to create what they're going to enjoy making, and not realizing there's an audience out there who's already watched some of your previous content, enjoyed it, subscribed to it, and want to see more or less the same thing.

If you continue to deliver content that your subscribers have subscribed for, you will start to build momentum, I guarantee it. And remember, I've already said that the first video a viewer watches on your channel may not convince them to subscribe. However, due to the way YouTube's recommendations work, even if a viewer doesn't subscribe to your channel, they may see more of your content appear in their browse feeds or suggested videos. And if they watch a second video from you which is similar to the first, and they enjoy it more, then that will convince them to subscribe. But it has to stay on topic for the audience's watching habits.

#3 It’s OK to Ask Your Viewers to Subscribe

There's something I want to get you into the mindset of as early as possible in your YouTube journey. It's okay to ask people to subscribe to your channel. Some people have a real mental block about this. Maybe it's because they find it too embarrassing, or because they feel as if they're begging too much to their audience.

This is not the same as sub-for-sub. Remember, the viewer is already watching your video, and you are providing value to them. There's nothing wrong with reminding the audience, "Hey, if you want to see more of this content, "then it might be a good idea "to subscribe to the channel."

There are many ways to ask people politely to subscribe to your channel. For example, in this video, at the very beginning, what did we do? “Hello, I'm Rob, and welcome to vidIQ, the YouTube tool and channel that educates you on your YouTube journey. For more content just like this, make sure to subscribe to the channel, and do this so that you're the first to be notified when there are new videos released.” In 18 seconds, I told new viewers of vidIQ who we are, our value proposition, and why you should subscribe to your channel in a slightly inventive way.

As you continue on through a video, if you get to a point where you deliver something of real value, or a spectacular moment in a video, and that is your payoff to a certain extent, don't be afraid to put in a call to action there as well. And what I mean by a call to action is asking the viewer to subscribe, or something onscreen that you don't even address, it's just there, it just reminds the viewer, "Hey, if you're liking this, "remember to press that red button."

You can also add a subscribe watermark to your videos and this can be really effective for bringing in a few extra subscribers to every single video. We've got a dedicated video on this here:

And, don't be afraid to also put a subscribe link in your channel description, in the end screens, and maybe in a pinned comment. Give your viewers as many opportunities as possible to remind them that it's free to subscribe, and they'll get value from it because you're going to give your audience exactly what they're asking for.

#4 The First Few Months will be Frustrating but Keep Going

Something that's going to be really important throughout your YouTube journey is perspective. You may not like what I'm about to tell you, but it is the truth. When you start your YouTube channel, you have no authority, you have no influence, you have no social proof. From the audience perspective, they are asking the question, "Why should I subscribe to you?" "What makes you different as a video creator?"

From YouTube's perspective, the platform wants more data from your content. It wants to know which audience is watching your content, and for how long, and how successful it is, and whether or not to push that content to more people after they've watched it and indeed subscribed.

I am not going to lie to you, the first few weeks and months on YouTube can be a real uphill struggle. For many creators, hitting that first hundred subscribers was the most challenging thing they did on their channel. But then, hitting the next hundred subscribers wasn't so hard, and then the next hundred, and before you know it, you're up to five hundred, and then your coming into the thousand subscriber mark.

What needs to happen is a connection between the viewer and the content creator. When you build trust, you build a relationship, and you get onto a personal level, you somehow impact that viewer in an emotional way. That creates a bond where the subscription hopefully will happen, and then who knows what beyond that.

Now what I hope I've done throughout this video is establish some of those bonds so you can subscribe. You see what I did there? As this portion of the video suggests, accept and embrace the challenge. Think of it in a completely different mindset. Enjoy the journey.

You need to determine whether or not you enjoy making videos, that's what you're going to be doing the majority of the time. And it could take you 50 videos, 100 videos, six months, to understand whether you like that process. And if you're concentrating more on how you're going to deliver the content to your audience, and observing their feedback, rather than looking at that single metric of subscribers, or that single metric of views and Watch Time, I guarantee you will enjoy the process so much more. And before you know it, you may not even realize it, you'll surpass 100 subscribers.

And if you’re really serious about growing your YouTube views and subscribers, sign up for exclusive access to the 

 and learn how to launch a successful YouTube Channel in just 30 days.

Let’s take a look at some of the best strategies for reaching that first big YouTube milestone - 100 subscribers.

How to Get Your First 100 Subscribers on YouTube

 recently cracked 2.5M views, and usually, that would be a 

 cause for a celebration, but on this occasion, I'm not so sure. There are two fundamental questions that are wrestling with my conscience. Did I clickbait the YouTube community? And if I did, why is YouTube rewarding me for this? Allow me to explain.

Welcome to VidIQ, the YouTube tool, channel and blog that educates you on your YouTube journey. Of course, as video creators ourselves, we are also learning with every single video that we publish, and this particular one raised some very interesting moral questions.

It was never my intention to clickbait people into watching the video that now has over 2.5M views, but the general response and reaction to the video seems to be just that. Just to be clear, we never profit from any of our videos on YouTube. We don't monetize content here at VidIQ so there was never a financial aspect involved in everything that I'm about to tell you.

Let me explain. Say hello to the new YouTube Creator Studio, the video management and analytics suite we will all be using in 2020 whether we like it or not. The classic Creator Studio's days are very much numbered.

Now, when you think about this, it is a monumental shift for millions of video creators on YouTube. They've all been used to working with YouTube in a certain way for almost a decade, and now all of that is changing, and that creates a unique and lucrative opportunity for YouTube growth channels such as ourselves. We've capitalized on that with videos about how to delete a YouTube video, how to add subtitles to your videos, how to create a playlist, how to hide your subscriber count, etc.

Thanks to the new Creator Studio, the way you do a lot of things you’ve always done on YouTube has completely changed, and throughout 2019 we systematically worked our way through a 

big list of beginner's guides for the new YouTube Creator Studio

, and you can see the results. VidIQ's tutorials on these topics have positioned themselves at the very top of the search rankings on the platform.

Now as of time of recording, both the classic Creator Studio and new Creator Studio can be accessed by video creators, but when YouTube turn off access to the Creator Studio, all of those old tutorials on the classic studio will be obsolete, leaving our new studio tutorials ready to clean up.

We've already made the content, and we're well-positioned on YouTube so when it turns off the old studio, we hope to do even better, and we're hoping that YouTube is going keep this studio for years to come which means that our videos on these topics could stay at the top of the search rankings for years. That’s classic evergreen content, and this is a very rare and unique opportunity for us because how often does evergreen content suddenly become obsolete?

How often do you have the opportunity to create dozens of evergreen pieces of video to replace what was there before? We've done a detailed video on this topic and our success which you 

The Video That Went Unintentionally Viral on YouTube

One of those videos in that series was this:

Now, the video itself goes on for a couple of minutes about some fairly innocuous stuff about video formats, but it’s a 

 in the title of that video that has caused all of this success and commotion.

How to Download a YouTube video 2019: New Method

’ because it shows you how to download a video from your YouTube channel and also explains how you can download any video from YouTube to watch offline on the YouTube mobile app.

However, and I think we can all agree on this, when people search for ‘how to download a YouTube video’, they don't really want to know how to do either of those things I taught in that tutorial. They want to know how to download a video from YouTube to use however they want, which is all well and good, except it's against YouTube's terms of service. Section 5B of the 

Content is provided to you as is. You may access content for your information and personal use solely as intended through the provided functionality of the service and as permitted under these terms of service. You shall not download any content unless you see a download or similar link displayed by YouTube on the service for that content.

So unless you're using the download link in the YouTube Creator Studio or the download link from the YouTube premium service on the YouTube mobile app, you're trying to download YouTube videos in a way you're not supposed to do. And yet you're still searching for that solution on YouTube……

So what we have here is a disconnect between the value that's promised in the title of the video and the expectation of the viewer, and boy has this video paid for it in the comments. The video has over 700 comments now that mostly accuse us of clickbait, misleading the viewer into thinking we would show them how to download any video from the YouTube platform for free to use as they please.

That's the expectation, but we already know that expectation is against the terms of service, and it could be argued that it's also against YouTube community guidelines as well. Effectively, instructional theft.

But when you think about it from a certain point of view, we're doing YouTube a favor. We're showing people how to use YouTube's tools to legitimately download videos off YouTube. It's nothing illicit, illegal, or against terms of service. We are helping both viewers and YouTube, right? All of which brings us back to this single letter that in the context of downloading YouTube videos commonly refers to doing it the wrong way, whereas our video educates people on how to download a YouTube video the right way.

How the Video Title Got us into Trouble With YouTube

Now, it's not our fault that the majority of people searching for how to download a YouTube video are doing it with these ulterior motives in mind. That search term, that title shouldn't be forbidden, especially if we're doing it for the right reasons. I mean, if anything we're reclaiming this title for the benefit of YouTube.

And this is where I'm really wrestling with my conscience, is the video title misleading, is it clickbait? Yes, absolutely I agree that you could argue that the title of this video should be how to download your YouTube video, but that's why I included that little snippet of information that you can download any YouTube video if you have the YouTube premium service, and who hasn't done that in their own videos to allow them to be a little more broad and creative with their titles?

But on the flip side of the argument, viewers know what they're searching for when they want to download a YouTube video, and I know what I'm doing when I put a title like that. I'm trying to reach a much wider audience than the target audience my video might be intended for.

I keep having this argument in my head, and then I go back to the fundamental content of the video which does tell you how to download a video from YouTube. In hindsight, what I should've done to justify the title ‘how to download a YouTube video’ is explain the terms of service which only allow you to download a YouTube video with these tools from YouTube, but as you all know, hindsight is a wonderful thing for a video creator.

I have tried to fix this in the video by including more details in the video description and confirming in a pinned comment that the terms of service do not allow you to download any video you want in the way you're trying to do it because you've used the search term.

I had no idea how successful this video would end up being. As with all of the new Creator Studio beginner's guide tutorials we've made in this series, the video started off modestly, but momentum began to build and build some more and continue to build more so than any other video in the beginner guide series.

This is evergreen content in action and at its finest, and now incredibly, six months after the video was published it gets more than 10,000 views per day. I think it's important to reiterate at this point, clickbait or not, we have not monetized the content to profit from it, but I know that none of what I've just told you right now has really sunk in, has it?

All you're interested in is what happened here and here. Well, I'll tell you exactly what happened. 

. Yep, for many of you who believe our video is clickbait, here is your vindication. The video was removed because it violated YouTube's ‘Harmful and Dangerous’ policy, and the vidIQ channel was issued with a community guideline warning. What that basically means is that if you do something like this again, the channel receives an official community guideline strike and is restricted from posting content for a period of time.

Now, we can only assume that one of the 8,400 people who dislike this video reported it to YouTube which is well within their right, but you know what's also within our rights? 

So at this point, I am thinking we have vindication from YouTube that the video isn't clickbait since we won an appeal, and then the video got taken down again. The second time this happened, it seemed pretty obvious that YouTube had done a mass purge on this topic to get rid of all of the videos that were instructing users on how to break terms of service because the videos that are left in this search term suffer from the same problem as us.

All with very high dislike ratios, likely because the content educates viewers on what exactly they are allowed to do as opposed to showing viewers what they want to do, which by now we all know is against the terms of service.

__Oh, and of course we appealed the decision and won again. __

Do Clickbait Videos Attract More Views on YouTube?

All right, let's shift the focus a little bit now and let's say for argument's sake that this is deemed a clickbait video. My question now to YouTube and all of you is why is this video so successful? And does it support the notion that clickbait gets you more views on videos?

Let's take a look at the metrics. As you've already seen, the momentum of this video has been phenomenal, and that is caused by an impressive click-through rate of 13.3%. YouTube says that their typical click-through rate is between 2 and 10% so we're punching above our weight there.

However, we are already aware of the poor likes to dislikes ratio, and that would seem to suggest that it does not matter what type of engagement you get, just so long as you get some. It would also suggest that likes and dislikes metrics have little to no influence on the success of a video.

Then there is audience retention and average view duration. At 34% and 47 seconds respectively, these are numbers that defy the notion that more Watch Time and higher audience retention are key to a successful video.

I did have a very intentional strategy with this video and all of the beginner's guides that we do, and that is to frontload all of the valuable information because people are essentially searching for an answer to a question and I want to give it to them as soon as possible without all the fluff. The details come afterward, and although that does buck the trend of trying to keep people watching as much of your content as long as possible, for educational content, that does seem to work.

But of course, like a lot of things on YouTube, it all depends on what your audience wants, and for many types of video content, they want to watch a story. ‘How to download a YouTube video’ isn't necessarily a story that needs 20 minutes to be told.

So in summary, the majority of the viewers hate the video, and on average they watch it for just 47 seconds, and yet YouTube continues to pump more and more impressions into the video, driving it up to the top of the search rankings where it gets most of its traffic. Is clickbait the key to YouTube success? Is this the only metric that really matters on YouTube? I think you're expecting an answer here, and to be honest, I haven't got one. I'm still trying to work out if this video's actually clickbait or not.

Our mission here at VidIQ is to educate you on your YouTube journey, and whilst doing that, we also educate ourselves with the wonderful explorations into how YouTube works, and this video in particular certainly piqued my interest, and I hope this little story interested you.

One of our beginner guide videos on the vidIQ YouTube channel just hit over 2.5M views. But did we unintentionally clickbait YouTube by making it? Read on for the full story.

Did We Clickbait YouTube? [An Unintentional Case Study]

When it comes to the FTC, COPPA, and your YouTube channel, there's nothing to fear but the fear of itself. And of course, the scumbags who prey on that fear.

First of all, let's start with some good news. The 

 have now come into effect on the YouTube platform, and as far as I'm aware, not a single video creator has received a fine, 

As for the bad news, the FTC and COPPA rulings have now come into effect on the YouTube platform, and it's having a massive impact on kids' content creators. Those folks have lost many YouTube tools, including comments, notifications for subscribers, the community tab, and their videos do not have contextualized ads, meaning they're losing a lot of revenue from their videos.

Beware of Scammers Taking Advantage of YouTube COPPA Confusion

This is a slightly reshaped YouTube landscape that we are all still trying to adjust to in 2020. Unfortunately, some unscrupulous types have already adjusted to that new landscape, and are trying to take advantage of your uncertainty over the FTC and COPPA.

If you have been creating YouTube content over the last couple of months, you will have encountered these messages, informing of you of the COPPA laws, and how you need to set your videos appropriately for the correct audience.

However, have you seen one of these? An e-mail from YouTube telling you that if you don't review the latest terms and conditions within a set time period, your channel could be terminated. Thanks to Reddit user 

Looks pretty convincing, doesn't it? And given all of the hype around COPPA and the FTC, it might panic you into trying to fix this as quickly as possible by clicking on that link. Which is exactly what you don't want to do.

How to Identify That This is a Stone Cold Scam

There are two telltale signs that something's wrong with this e-mail. The first is a deadline. YouTube almost never gives you a deadline to resolve an issue. YouTube simply does it first, and then tells you. Anyone who's got a copyright claim, community strike, or had their channel terminated will agree with that.

The second problem is the sender's e-mail address. Eh, yeah, I don't think that's from YouTube. In almost all cases, when you receive information from YouTube, it will be from an @YouTube.com e-mail address. In some rare circumstances, it may come from @Google.com, so if it isn't from any one of them, it's almost definitely a scam e-mail.

YouTube themselves have said that they will share information about your channel over e-mail, such as channel growth and statistics, but they would never ask for personal information, such as your date of birth, PINs, or passwords.

Here's my general advice. If you ever receive an e-mail about your YouTube channel, telling you that you need to do something, don't click on any links in the e-mail itself, always go to YouTube first, and then find what you need through the dashboard. And that could be for copyright claims, community strikes, all of our information is available directly when you are logged into your YouTube account.

We all know how hard this YouTube journey can be, and the FTC and COPPA rulings don't help us with this, but don't make it easy for hackers to fool you and steal your account, and ruin absolutely everything.

Creators beware! There's a phishing email scam about YouTube and COPPA doing the rounds right now so please don't fall for it.

Don't Fall For This YouTube, COPPA, FTC Phishing Scam!

We recently discovered a channel on YouTube that hasn't published a video in nearly two years and yet in that time, it's been able to generate nearly $20,000 in revenue. How did we find this channel? Well, it was pretty easy, it's my very own channel. Oh yeah.

That's right folks, for those of you who don't know, I had a life before vidIQ, running my own YouTube tech channel called 

Now I've already chronicled that part of 

 in the creative stories that we did here at vidIQ. However, what I haven't looked at is what happened when I stopped making videos on that channel. I started working for vidIQ full time in October of 2017 and I had ambitions of continuing to run my other channel as a hobby on the weekends and when I had time.

But let’s be honest, a YouTube channel is all-consuming and I absolutely love what I do here in serving you the community. So I made the decision six months into my time with vidIQ to stop making videos on the Video Gadgets Journal. I simply didn't have time and I was worried that I was just going to burn out. And you know what? 

After 450,000 subscribers and over 30 million views

I am as passionate as ever about what I do here at vidIQ. But just because I stopped making videos for my channel, didn't mean I killed it dead. Because you see, for a lot of YouTube channels, they act like massive oil tankers in the sea. They are very slow to get moving and finding traction, so building up an audience, finding those first 100 subscribers, 1,000 subscribers, monetizing your content, it can take months, years.

For me, I was running my channel for about six to seven years. But when you stop making content, it doesn't mean that all of sudden those views stop. Those pieces of content are on YouTube forever and if people still want to watch them, they will do, even from the very first video that was published on YouTube. And you know what that means? Passive income.

Generate Passive Income on YouTube with Evergreen Content

Now to give you a little bit of background on what the Video Gadgets Journal did, it was a tech educational channel, where I showed people how to use mobile phones, and record iPhone screens in particular. It was essentially evergreen content. So what happens to a channel with content such as this when you go cold turkey? You might expect a channel to suffer a decline when there isn't a single piece of new content being published. But astonishingly, for almost a year, the channel maintained its traction. And whilst the decline has been steady throughout 2019, I'm astonished to discover that still, over 7,000 viewers a day find my years old content useful and relevant today.

First of all, just how cool is YouTube? The opportunity to upload content for free to the internet and then have people watch that content years into the future. Second of all, my old channel represents the power of search and suggested content when you are making evergreen videos. I made these videos to hopefully serve a user base for current technology. That technology is now two, three, four years old and yet people are still finding my videos at the top of the search rankings and watching this content.

It also speaks to how all of the work, effort, energy, and resources put into creating YouTube videos is front-loaded. You spend an intense number of days and hours to create the video and then once it's out there on YouTube, it can generate metrics, audience, community, and income for you for years to come.

So how does all of this translate into cash? Well, let's take a look. Without publishing a single video, for almost two years, and just relying on the content that's already on my channel, the Video Gadgets Journal has made over $19,000 in ad revenue alone.

Now the distribution of that income is fascinating in itself. In the second half of 2018, despite views staying stagnant, income doubled, supporting the eternal truth that advertisers spend most of their budgets during the holiday season.

And then, of course, you have the typical January slump, whether or not you're making content, you will always suffer from this. So my advice is if you do want to take a break at any time of the year on YouTube, January is your best bet. Ironically, we made a video all about this last year in January.

It is inevitable with the erosion of time that my channel will continue to bleed views and in the revenue. But I am utterly astonished that the channel has held up this well. I literally haven't touched anything on The Video Gadgets Journal in over 600 days and yet in that time, it has generated enough income to pay the rent.

The Power of Evergreen Content on YouTube

I've already explained some of the reasons why a YouTube channel can sustain itself in the broader sense, even if it's not pushing out any content. However, I think there are some subtle reasons why my Video Gadgets Journal channel is sustaining its life, even though it is currently moth-balled and this what I think they are.

I have already mentioned this concept dozens of times on the vidIQ channel, but it does bear repeating. Evergreen content, especially for search based educational channels, is the elixir of life. It is really difficult to establish yourself as evergreen content, but once you're there, it's incredibly difficult to shift you. Evergreen content is like when you're playing a video game and you're on an undefeated streak of some kind, and the game starts rewarding you with multiplying bonuses that just keep going and going and going.

And the reason I know evergreen content is so valuable to a channel is because I've repeated this success on the vidIQ channel.

We’ve created many videos on how to delete a YouTube video, how to add subtitles to your video, how to create a playlist, how to hide your subscriber account, etc but thanks to the new creative studio, the way you do them has completely changed. And throughout 2019, we have been systematically working our way through a big list of beginners guides for the new YouTube creative studio. And you can see the results, vidIQ's tutorials on these topics have positioned themselves at the very top of the search rankings.

Now as of time of recording, both the classic creative studio and new creative studio can be accessed by video creators. But when YouTube turn off access to the creative studio, all of those old tutorials on the classic studio will be obsolete, leaving our new studio tutorials ready to clean up. All of these new creative studio evergreen pieces of content follow a similar analytical journey.

It is not uncommon for evergreen content to tank very quickly after its launch. It's usually not a sexy topic, and only a small number of people may be searching for the keyword, but the power of evergreen content is that the same number of people will likely be searching for the term tomorrow, next week, next month, next year. And if your video delivers the value the expected audience wants, this is what can happen. Almost as many views per day as the day the video was launched.

This has been our side project throughout 2019, creating simple tutorials to do important things in the new YouTube creative studio. As you can see, some videos have been more successful than others, but each and every one of them is still getting views today and fingers crossed, those should be guaranteed views for years to come.

I followed this evergreen strategy more loosely with my old channel too, the idea being to create tutorials for mobile phones and screen recording tips for iOS devices. And today, those videos are still getting 10, maybe 20 views per hour. So the evidence is pretty clear and well-proven. Evergreen content will help sustain your channel in the long term, as demonstrated by videos like this:

Long-form Evergreen Video: The Key to Success

But we're already established that breaking into evergreen topics can be really difficult. So how do you make your content more desirable to your audience and to YouTube so that you find yourself at the top of the search rankings? Can you spot the common thread that ties all of these successful videos together? They're all long-form tutorial guides, often over 10 minutes, and they go above and beyond what most of the videos on the topic deliver.

When it comes to educational and tutorial content, generally, the viewer wants an answer to their question as quickly and efficiently as possible. So what I decided to do was give them every answer to every question they had, and essentially become the best in class for mobile phone tutorial content. Now of course, this didn't always work, there are many videos that I made that never got the evergreen traction. But those that did have stood the test of time.

As you will well know, if you are part of the 

, the longer the video, the more advertising you can plaster around the video and inside the video, so that not only do these evergreen videos get loads of views, but they also get huge dollops of watch time and ad revenue.

Now if you're a regular visitor to vidIQ, you will have heard me talk about this concept many times in the past. I feel like it bears repeating here because now I've got $20,000 of ad revenue to back this up - make content that works for your channel. The metrics are there, YouTube is telling you what works for your audience, and if you ignore it, then shame on you.

Even though the channel is dormant, thanks to vidIQ's channel audit tool, the data is still as clear as day. Views per hour, subscribers gained, total watch time, average watch time, all the metrics point to a strategy that works. So repeat that strategy.

A lot of people hate this idea of being pigeon holed into one particular niche on YouTube. But the way I see it is that YouTube has decided that you are the ambassador, the educator, the thought leader, the authority on a particular topic on YouTube and it wants to take the audience that is interested in that topic and serve them to your content. And it's all done for free. How cool is that?

And as proven, I've been able to take this concept and apply it to YouTube education with vidIQ. Those video creators with the talent will embrace this idea and take it wherever they want to with the topics they want to share with an audience. As I said at the top of this video, this success didn't happen overnight. It took me years to formulate that video strategy. But it is right now the reason, you are watching a vidIQ video with me in it, whilst I'm earning money passively from a channel I haven't touched in almost two years.

But here's one huge caveat about everything I've told you. It's all very nice earning this passive income. But relatively speaking, it is a tiny amount of the potential money you could earn from your YouTube channel. Once you factor in other YouTube tools, such as memberships and super chats, and then the things that you can do outside of YouTube, such a brand deals, sponsorships, you can earn many multiples of that icing on the cake ad revenue.

In many respects, ad revenue is the least reliable source of income for YouTube channels because at any point, YouTube could flick a switch, or advertisers moods could change. And that will leave you out of pocket. Don't get me wrong, I am extremely grateful for the millions of views that channel has generated and indeed the ad revenue. But it wouldn't sustain me in a full-time position on YouTube. And that's where vidIQ came in. The opportunity to turn my hobby, my passion, into a career.

Still unsure whether evergreen content is the key to real success on YouTube? Read how a dormant channel is still generating passive income without any new content.

How Much YouTube Paid Me for Doing ABSOLUTELY NOTHING!

I'm sure you're all aware of Super Chats at this point, a way for viewers to donate to your live streams. We’ve actually covered this, highlighting how a 

creator was able to earn $200 from just 48 minutes of live-streaming with less than 50,000 subscribers

But what if you could monetize your entire catalog this way, so that people could donate, like a tip jar, to any video on your channel? Yeah, that's coming to YouTube.

We've stressed this before when it comes to turning your YouTube channel into a business, try and rely as little as possible on YouTube ad revenue alone. There are so many more efficient money-making opportunities, including brand deals, sponsorships, merchandising.

The off-platform opportunities are almost endless, but it's always nice when YouTube adds another money-making opportunity. We've had Super Chats, we've had Memberships, and now we have something that YouTube are calling 

YouTube Viewer Applause & Revenue Generation

Now before you excitedly rush onto YouTube to enable this, a word of caution. As of time of writing, Viewer Applause is currently in beta, and open only to those invited by YouTube to test it. We will do a full-on tutorial once it's officially released, but here's what we currently know.

Of course, the prerequisite to all of this is that you will need to be in the 

From the new Creator Studio, if you click on the Monetization tab to the left, and then click on the Supers tab at the top of this page, you should see a toggle that will allow you to enable Viewer Applause. And from a creator perspective, that's pretty much it. There isn't any level of sophistication. Presumably, when YouTube rolls this out to everybody, you'll be able to go into individual videos and turn this off like you would do monetization on an individual video.

Now let's take a look at this from a viewer perspective, what can they do with your Viewer Applause? The viewer will see this Applaud button nestled in next to likes and dislikes, so when you click on this, you'll be given the option to buy applause and show your support.

Currently, this is only available on the desktop viewing experience of YouTube. There are purchase limits to Viewer Applause of $500 U.S. dollars a day, and $2,000 a week, those totals are combined with Super Chats and Super Stickers. A viewer can applaud a video as many times as they wish, but each applause is non-refundable, and it is important to stress at this point, it doesn't create a paywall on the video, this is all treated as a donation or a tip jar.

At this point, the look feel, design, button placement, and donation amount for YouTube Applause could all change based on tester feedback. Now in this sense, I've got to give YouTube some credit here, I've never seen such an open beta testing function.

YouTube is rolling out a new way for creators to make revenue on the platform. It's in beta right now but we bring you a sneak preview.

Posts Written By Rob Wilson

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