Ask any YouTuber and they will tell you that generating significant views and subscribers isn't easy. But with the right strategy and tools, any video creator can build an engaged subscriber base when they understand what those subscribers want to watch.

Appealing to an audience to watch content you are passionate about making is just the first step, you need to know how to reach them and get your videos discovered. Our guides to how to guide more views on YouTube will give you the best tips to succeed on the platform.

YouTube Views

How To Get More Views on YouTube

Do you want to make money on YouTube? Millions of creators are earning a very good living from monetizing the platform and uploading content that drives huge views and engagements. Whether that YouTube income is from advertising revenue, merchandise sales, or brand deals, or subscriptions, we keep you updated with best practices and ideas.

YouTube Monetization

How To Make Money on YouTube

Getting thousands or even millions of YouTube subscribers is a dream for most creators. In the articles below, we'll show you how to turn casual viewers into long-term fans. 

YouTube Subscribers

Want to see how your channel is performing? Read these YouTube analytics articles to discover what's working and what isn't. You'll learn how to identify which videos have the most Watch Time, clicks, audience retention, revenue, and more.

YouTube Analytics

Watch Time is arguably THE most important metric on YouTube right now, and creators won’t be able to monetize their content without 4000 hours of it. But what is it and how can creators increase the amount of Watch Time their videos attract? We keep you updated on the best practices around Watch Time, and how you can increase how much your video content generates.

YouTube Watch Time

YouTube Shorts content is set to explode! 

All the latest tips, tricks, and rock-solid advice you need for this new feature.

YouTube Shorts

Do you know how to do keyword research so you understand what videos people are actually searching for on YouTube? Do you know how to create a custom YouTube thumbnail? Do you know how to create a Playlist on YouTube?

vidIQ has a ton of tips that will help every creator maximise their video content. We publish content every week to keep you up to date with all the best practices.

Tips & Tricks

YouTube Tips & Tricks

Why do YouTube videos get demonetized? It’s a valid question, especially when someone takes the time to film, edit, and upload a video. Most creators try their best to make positive, original content for viewers around the world. What are they doing wrong in terms of making money and staying monetized on YouTube?

Google AdSense 101 - How to Benefit from Ad Revenue on YouTube

Most of the time, it's a lack of information. Creators know the basics of YouTube's rules, but they don't always know the fine details. And overall, people are just ready to record!

: A set of rules to ensure everyone’s safety on YouTube

 An explanation of which videos are suitable for advertisers

: A set of terms and conditions for placing ads on YouTube videos

: A set of terms and conditions for how viewers and creators operate on YouTube

Violating any of the four could lead to demonetization. Here's how to avoid that outcome.

What Does ‘Demonetized’ Mean on YouTube?

If YouTube demonetized a video, that means it restricted 

 ads from appearing. That includes every type of ad available to creators: display ads, overlay ads, sponsored cards, and skippable and non-skippable video ads. You won’t earn Google AdSense revenue for demonetized content.

Turning off ads is just one form of demonetization.

. This option bars you from all the money-making features: Google AdSense, Super Chats and Stickers, Super Thanks, merchandise shelves, Channel Memberships, and YouTube Premium revenue. It’s like being kicked out of the 

How to Tell If a YouTube Video Is Demonetized

After uploading a video, you can see its monetization status in less than an hour. It takes a while because YouTube is making sure the video is suitable for ads.

In the YouTube Studio, there are seven monetization icons

. Each one tells you the status of a video’s earning power.

 YouTube is checking your video for ad suitability.

 Monetization is on, and your video is eligible for most ads.

 Monetization is on for a song cover, but a music publisher claimed the revenue.

 Monetization is on, but YouTube is still determining who will get paid.

 Monetization is on, but ads are limited.

 You turned on monetization for the video, but YouTube won’t show ads.

 You turned off monetization for the video.

 means your video is demonetized, as shown below.

How to Check a Video’s Monetization Status:

Log into YouTube and click your profile icon in the top right corner. Select 

Find the video in question using the search bar at the top of the page.

. You’ll see one of the seven icons (shown above) indicating your video’s status.

Videos that aren't advertiser-friendly won’t earn much revenue. Here are 14 ways to avoid demonetization on YouTube.

? One of the requirements for monetizing your content is to avoid being repetitious. That means you shouldn't post videos with no recognizable differences on your channel. Your content needs a healthy dose of variety, from the audio tracks you use to the topics you cover.

That doesn’t mean you can’t explore one topic in depth. You can create similar videos as long as the bulk of each one is different. Take a look at the 

, for example. We share tips for gaining 1,000 subscribers all the time. But the advice changes as we discover new methods, which means we’re always talking about something new within the context of gaining subscribers.

2. Add Something Valuable to Repurposed Content

Using another creator’s intellectual property, such as songs, video clips, and images, could lead to one or more 

 on your channel. You’ll get these alerts when your video contains media that doesn’t belong to you. Copyright claims aren’t the end of the world, but YouTube might demonetize the video(s) in question or only give you partial revenue.

Can I Still Monetize My YouTube Channel If I have a Copyright Claim?

 happens when you reuse someone’s content without adding something new or transformative. If you’re posting a reaction video, for example, add some commentary that brings a fresh perspective to the original event, opinion, or narrative.

YouTube says it's OK to monetize reused content when:

You’re using brief clips for a critical review.

You’re adding original commentary to an event (movies, sporting events, etc.).

You’re adding an original storyline to edited footage from other creators.

Your best bet, of course, is to use your own content. But at the same time, YouTube understands that there are thousands of reaction channels out there. And guess what? Lots of creators are making money with that format.

3. Don’t Be Spammy, Deceptive, or Participate In Scams

YouTube wants every viewer to have a positive experience. And no user can do that while being tricked or misled by deceptive videos and comments. If you’re on the platform for the wrong reasons – like running scams and leading people to shady websites – YouTube might demonetize your content.

To stay on YouTube’s good side, don’t:

Repeatedly post content about making fast cash.

Lead viewers to websites with harmful software (viruses, information theft, etc.)

Use misleading thumbnails, video descriptions, and titles to “trick” viewer into clicking.

Promote “get rich quick” content or pyramid schemes.

Sell engagement metrics, like views, comments, and subscribers. That includes Sub4Sub, a type of spam where creators ask people to subscribe to their channels.

Post comments to gather information from viewers or drive them off of YouTube.

Live stream content that doesn’t belong to you.

Check out the image below to see an example of comment spam. Notice how the circled comment is impersonating the owner of the video, finance creator Graham Stephan. If you look closely, you can tell that “Replied_by Graham Stephan” is a bogus account.

This user is trying to drive people away from YouTube. Practices like this will get you demonetized.

Read more about spam, deception, and scams on YouTube’s support page

YouTube doesn’t tolerate hate speech of any kind. If you want to successfully monetize your videos, don't say (or type) harmful, offensive things. YouTube will demonetize your content if you're inciting violence or hate against specific groups.

Avoiding hate speech is easy. Think of all the ways people discriminate against others, and simply avoid saying those things in your videos. 

The most egregious hate speech revolves around age, sexual orientation, gender, race, disabilities, religion, immigration status, and veteran status.

Are there certain “demonetized words” on YouTube? Is it possible to say the wrong thing and lose all your ad revenue?

YouTube won’t demonetize a video for containing words like “hell” or “damn.” That’s considered light profanity, and most people aren’t offended by those terms. It’s the vulgar words that will get you into trouble, like repeatedly dropping F-bombs or constantly saying “b*tch.”

Can You Swear on YouTube and Still Make Money?

Here is a list of words that lead to demonetization:

Even when misspelled, adding these words to any element of a video (titles, thumbnails, etc.) is against the rules.

Our advice? Minimize the profanity in your videos. It's an easy way to get full monetization.

6. Don’t Show Dangerous or Illegal Activities

Want to make sure YouTube doesn’t demonetize your video? Avoid showing clips or images of bodily harm, gruesome injuries, and death. These themes are disturbing to viewers and scare advertisers away.

Logan Paul’s 2017 “suicide forest” video

. This was a huge scandal. Paul uploaded a YouTube video showing a dead body, and people around the world were deeply disturbed. He later shared a video of himself tasering dead rats. Eventually, 

YouTube temporarily demonetized his channel

Posting illegal activities is a bad idea too. You’ll have a better chance of monetizing your videos if you don't show:

glorifying dangerous acts results in demonetization or worse.

 If you can expect certain injury or death from an activity, it’s not suitable for YouTube.

7. Avoid Posting Sexually Explicit Content

YouTube will demonetize any video that gratifies sex. This type of content focuses on nudity, sex scenes, and pornography. If that’s the creator’s intent – indulging in sexual scenes – the next step is a no-brainer for YouTube. There will be no ads on the video, zero AdSense revenue, and (possibly) a channel termination.

Clothed or unclothed, YouTube states that showing genitals, breasts, or buttocks in an indulgent way violates its monetization policies. Also, sexual fetishes of any kind and in various formats (video, text, images, audio) are not allowed.

Read more about nudity and sexual content on YouTube’s support page.

8. Use Royalty-Free Music From the YouTube Library

Music copyright is a deep subject on YouTube. But for the purpose of monetizing videos, you only need to know two things:

Never use someone’s music without their written permission.

Did YouTube demonetize your video? Here are 14 ways to make positive content that stays monetized no matter what.

14 Ways to Avoid YouTube Demonetization

Have you ever wanted to disable the likes and dislikes count on one of your YouTube videos? You can do it and we show you how, but then question whether you should or you shouldn’t.

When you are logged into YouTube, you should see your channel logo in the top right-hand corner of most YouTube screens. If you click on that, you have the option to go to 

 (this is currently in beta, but will become the standard as 2019 progresses.) Go to the ‘Videos’ tab where you’ll see a list of your uploads, with the most recent first. Select the video that you want to amend the likes to dislikes count for, and then click on the advanced tab at the top.

Now there’s just a very simple change required on this screen. If you scroll down, you should see a checkbox that says users can view ratings for this video. Something to take note of at this point is that, although the count is disabled, viewers can still like or dislike your video and that will be reflected in the video list on your analytics.

So, that’s how you do it. Now let’s answer the question of whether you should. From a viewer’s perspective, if they cannot see the likes to dislikes on a video, there’s one burning question that’s going to be in their head. And that is, why? At the very least it raises curiosity because most people will find it a little suspicious. The default conclusion that viewers will likely come to is that the video creator has hidden the public stats because there’s too many dislikes on the video and they don’t want the viewers to see that. This often falls into the same question as why 

YouTube creators hide their subscriber count

. By default, both subscriber counts and likes to dislikes counts are shown publicly.

On the other hand, in the defense of the video creator, sometimes their videos are being maliciously attacked by random numbers of mass dislikes, which they cannot control. YouTube has recognized this is a problem and they want to address it with your help. 

 from the YouTube Creator Insider team where they talk about this exact topic.

If you want to take your YouTube channel to the next level then make sure to download vidIQ. It will help you research YouTube, analyze videos, audit your own channel, and take actionable steps 

Did you know that you can hide the likes and dislikes count on any of your YouTube videos? We show you how in this easy guide.

How to Hide Likes & Dislikes on YouTube Videos

Congratulations, you've hit the requirements on YouTube to monetize your content - 1,000 subscribers, and 

. It was hard work but you’ve applied for monetization, but then you got stuck in review for weeks, even months. It's frustrating to be stuck in this limbo with no information about when it's going to be resolved and no real way to 

. Until now, because we got an awesome comment from one of the members of our vidIQ community telling us their channel had been in review for three months, and after trying this strategy they got their channel approved in two days. And we wanna share that with you right now.

Asking YouTube for Feedback on Monetization Review

First off, click on your channel logo, and then click on Creator Studio. When you reach your dashboard, click on Channel and then Monetization to get to the monetization screen. SIf your YouTube Channel has been under review for some time then click on ‘Help and Feedback.’ This will bring up a small popup with a range of options, and you want to click ‘Send feedback’. This brings up the Send feedback tool in the middle of the screen, and it takes a screenshot of what's currently on your desktop. In other words, your monetization requirements, which you've met, and allows you to type in a message to YouTube. To give you a little bit of help with what to write, I asked the community member, My Name Is Andong, what he posted to YouTube, and this is what he wrote.

"Hi, YouTube team. "I've been under review for monetization since whenever. "I am well over the required watch time "and subscriber counts. "Please let me know if everything is okay "or who I can get in touch with "to move my application forward."

Now, I don't know about you, but that seems like a very reasonable request to me. Once you've typed it out, you can click on the Send button. Fingers crossed, let's see what happens. Now, a quick disclaimer here, we're not guaranteeing that YouTube are going to respond to your feedback. However, we do know that there's thousands of you out there who are desperately trying to resolve your in-review situation. And it is very hard to contact YouTube, so any opportunity to give them a bit of a nudge is worth a try. Good luck with your monetization requests.

So your YouTube Channel meets the monetization requirements of 1,000 subscribers & 4,000 hours of Watch Time, but it's still under review and it has been for a considerable length of time. What can you do about it? We show you!

How to Speed Up the 'YouTube Channel in Review' Monetization Process

 has reached an incredible arsenal of (at time of writing) 304,131 subscribers! What did we learn from the journey? This is not going to be a perfect list of how-to tips and tricks to get to 300,000+ subscribers. These are my personal views and opinions from a genuine YouTube enthusiast.

Custom Thumbnails are KEY to Success on YouTube

I have made a lot of YouTube videos. I think around about 1,500 at this point. But for a very long time there is something I always neglected because I wanted to make the video and just get it out there onto YouTube. What I didn't spend much time on was thumbnails. A lot of channels have questionable thumbnails, which doesn't do their YouTube brand any favours, but since vidIQ began focusing on the very best thumbnails for our YouTube videos, our click-through rates have increased from 2.5% to 5% in just one year. That's much more views for effectively the same amount of work, just doing it better. Just as readers judge books by their covers, viewers judge videos by their thumbnails. If you can improve your thumbnails that can have a massive and positive impact on the entirety of your channel.

Improve Something by 1% on EVERY YouTube Video You Create

Something I am a strong advocate for, is striving to improve with every video that you make. Whether it is thumbnails, lighting, camera presence, voice narration or editing, you should always be looking for that 1% where you can get better. Trying to improve 100% every single video is going to drive you insane. But if you can come away from every single video thinking, I like that new thing that I tried there. Or that was some really tight editing, or I like the way I presented at that particular point in the video then that is one more step in the right direction.

Experiment With Your Content as Often as Possible

This next tip may fly in the face of YouTube experts and indeed myself recommend. And that is to experiment as often as possible. Now the reason I say this is because it comes from a foundation of consistency. If you are a regular visitor to vidIQ, you should have a general sense of the type of content that we create. We want to help educate you on your YouTube journey. Get more views, more subscribers, grow your channel, ultimately and potentially earn an income from it. I've been doing that for a couple years now here at vidIQ. Showing you how to use all of our tools and general tips about getting more views and subscribers.

But we decided to do last year was to follow YouTube news stories a little more closely and report on them if we found them interesting to our audience. It's why we jumped on ‘

’ as soon as they came out and the reason we rank number one for that search term now.

Going Viral: PewDiePie vs T Series on YouTube

. This started out as an experimentation in fame hacking. Seeing if we could latch on to a trending topic and add our own unique analytical spin on things. We didn't realize it at the time but we'd stumbled on some viral content. Now while we we're experimenting, we also practice what we preach. When those videos started to do really well, what else could we do but double down on them and make more content on the already successful stuff on our channel.

YouTube Watch Time: How we Increased Our Numbers

Now people may say that it's all down to PewDiePie versus T-Series stuff. And while I agree it has helped a lot, it's not what we are banking our channel on. These are the baseline numbers I'm more interested in. The day-to-day watch time hours that have increased around 75% in the last nine months. Outside of the viral hits, this is our bedrock. Our subscribers, our fans, the people who are watching this video and are invested in a channel at a much deeper level than anything our PewDiePie versus T-Series content could ever achieve.

Now as is always the case, when you start to create alternative content to what your community is used to, you will get push back. And we have here at vidIQ. But here's the ironic thing, we haven't produced less content than what we normally would do, in fact we're doing more content. On our 

, we're doing videos on a Monday, live stream on a Tuesday, news on Wednesdays and Thursdays. And beginner's guides on Fridays. What's changed is we're creating a lot more content that includes stuff about PewDiePie versus T-Series. And that is bringing in a lot more exposure for the channel and building a bigger community for the stuff that we're really interested in. Which is helping you grow your channel.

Now I know this post is not full of really useful tips and tricks. Make better thumbnails, make viral videos. That's hardly going to help you day to day. But consider this my open letter to the vidIQ community. This is the type of stuff I learnt in my last nine months getting from 200 subscribers to 304,131 subscribers.

Want to know how to grow your YouTube Channel to over 300K subscribers? Take a look at what vidIQ did to reach that goal and what you can do to build up your subscriber base right now.

How to Generate 300,000 Subscribers for Your YouTube Channel

Did you know that by adding a hashtag word in your YouTube description, you will trigger their appearance just above your YouTube video title? These hashtags are now an official source of categorizing your content on the platform, and they are clickable, and therefore searchable on YouTube. They allow the viewer to perform one click searches for particular search hashtag terms.

If you want to know how to use these hashtags for your videos, just 

click on this full tutorial to find out more

Use hashtags as a way of keeping viewers watching your content. Whether you use your Channel name as your hashtag, or a popular slogan you have, or you have a series of videos, whether it be Fortnite tips, beauty makeup challenge or the best Trump memes, use hashtags for consistency.

You have a limit of three hashtags per video. You can include them in the title or the video description. We've found that if you include them in the video description, then it adds them above your title. If you add the hashtags to your title it doesn't add them to above your title. So, add the hashtags to your description so it sits there just nicely above your title and save the title for really delivering that strong message that gets people to click on your videos.

These hashtags have a range of policies that must meet the community guidelines on YouTube much like all metadata on the platform. So, don’t use spaces, no over usage of hashtags, no harassment, no sexual content. Keep on the right side of YouTube and you shouldn’t have any issues.

Consider adding hashtags to your legacy content, particularly if you’ve uploaded videos with different topics.

Think about your future videos. If you consistently upload content around a certain theme then add 2-3 hashtags to your default description so you never forget.

Be patient. Hashtags can take a few minutes to appear so just keep refreshing the screen until you see them.

Some users are reporting that their hashtags are jumbled up with random spaces where they don't expect them to. That seems to happen when there are emojis in the vicinity of your hashtags. If you are having problems trying to represent hashtags properly in your videos, maybe just clean up the text and characters around your hashtags, especially emojis, and that should fix the issue.

Did you know you can test the performance of your YouTube hashtags? Just go to YouTube Analytics, then Traffic Sources and YouTube Search, and your hashtag results will appear like all of it YouTube searches in those analytics.

YouTube Hashtags - are they a legitimate way to grow your Channel? Here’s 8 things you need to know about them.

YouTube Hashtags: What Are They and How to Use Them!

If you’re thinking about deleting your YouTube channel it’s a fairly easy process. On any YouTube page, click on your profile icon in your top right-hand corner of your screen, and select ‘Settings’, then ‘Advanced Settings’. Now, this is where things start to get a little scary. At the bottom of this screen is a "delete channel" button. Don't worry, if you click this button, nothing happens just yet, as you will first need to provide your password. Once you do that, then you will be on the big decision-making screens.

How to Permanently Delete Your YouTube Channel

Let's start with permanently deleting your channel first. This will delete your videos, the users subscribed to your channel, all forms of engagements, your subscriptions to other channels, and your search and watch history. It also removes not only the videos you have created, but your preferences as a video viewer.

If you feel that this is a step too far, then consider the "Hide Channel" option instead. This will make private your channel, likes, users subscribed to your channel, and your subscriptions to other channels. What it will also do is permanently delete comments you posted, but it will not delete your search and watch history. You will be asked to tick all of the checkboxes to confirm you understand what will happen to your channel. This option however, does allow you to re-enable your channel at any time. When your channel is hidden from public view, you may see the message, "Your YouTube channel has content but is disabled," on your YouTube video manager page.

If you do want to quit YouTube, here's my personal advice. Think really, really hard before you click that button. If you're finding the whole process too frustrating, if you think YouTube is against you, or you're simply burnt out, there is nothing wrong with taking a break. Many video creators do this. I have struggled with the pressures of YouTube in the past. I took an entire year off when I moved to a different country. But when I came back, I had a new fire lit within me. So, even if you think YouTube is not the right fit for you right now, things can and will change. And if you do decide to carry on with your YouTube venture, then don't forget that vidIQ is here to help.

Do you want to delete your YouTube Channel, or simply hide it while you take a break and consider your options? We show you how.

How to Delete (or Hide) a YouTube Channel

I'm sure you all have your own horror stories of when you've accidentally deleted your YouTube videos - it’s more common than you think. But there’s a quick and easy solution videos, just pop onto Youtube and download it from there.

When you are logged into YouTube you should see your channel logo in the top right hand corner of most YouTube screens. If you click on that, you have the option to go to 

. This is currently in beta, but will become a standard as 2019 progresses.

This is your new dashboard or analytics homepage and from here you want to click on the Videos tab. This will list all of your videos, with most recent first.

When you roll your mouse over these it will show three dots. Click on this and you should find yourself with a download option. And this part's a bit of a no brainer. Click download to save it to your computer.

You can't officially download other peoples YouTube videos

 although you can download them to watch offline if you are part of the YouTube Premium Service on a mobile application of Youtube.

And there's also this extra little tidbit that you might want to know if you're downloading your own videos from YouTube. The file that you download from Youtube is a radically different beast of the one you originally uploaded. First of all you'll notice just how small it is. In this case, ten percent of the size of the original. You'll also notice that by default the resolution is set to 1280 by 720 which may differ from the original. If nothing else this is a testament to the compression technology over at YouTube because other than resolution, I can't tell a difference.

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

 then make sure to download vidIQ. It will help you research YouTube, analyze videos, audit your own channel, and take actionable steps 

Forgot to back up your YouTube uploads? There's a new method of downloading your content from your YouTube Channel and we show you what you need to do.

How to Download a YouTube Video: New Method

The old saying that readers will often judge a book by its cover is true, and the same goes for viewers that judge videos by their thumbnails. So ensure that you have custom thumbnails enabled on your YouTube Channel so you can upload your own images to the viewer as they browse for something interesting or entertaining to watch.

How To Enable Custom Thumbnails on YouTube

When you are logged into YouTube, you should see your profile logo in the top right hand corner. Click this and then go to settings. From here you need to click on the view additional features link, which will then show you all the YouTube features that are available and whether or not you have access to them.

There are no views, subscribers, or watch time requirements to unlock custom thumbnails. All you need to do is verify your YouTube account. And you can do that from this very screen. Next to your profile logo and channel name at the top, you will find a blue verify button. Click that to start the process. To verify your YouTube account, Google will send you a verification code to a phone number either through an automated voice or text message, which you can choose on the screen. Do note so you can only verify two YouTube accounts per phone number, per year.

Once you put your phone number, click submit, and you should see this screen that asks you for that verification code. Whichever solution you decide to use, you should almost instantly get a ping on your phone in this example I requested a text message, which sent me the verification code. Now all you need to do is go back to your computer, input the six digit verification code, click submit and that will verify your account. Which instantly gives you access to adding custom thumbnails to your videos.

Why Custom Thumbnails on YouTube are Critical to Success

Now for a very quick demonstration on why custom thumbnails are so important. This video you see on screen is about how to download a thumbnail from YouTube. But the current thumbnail for this video that's been selected by YouTube automatically is a rather useless picture of myself that tells the viewer absolutely nothing. But with the help of a custom thumbnail, we can tell a much more colorful, intriguing, and direct visual story that might just earn this video an extra click.

Here's a very simple way to look at it. We increase the number of clicks we get on our videos, (this is called click through rates) by more than 100% simply by making better thumbnails. So remember, you can make a fantastic video, but if you can't get people through the door then it is a waste of time. Pay attention to that first impression.

Enabling custom thumbnails is one of the easiest but most important things you can do for your YouTube channel. We show you how.

How to Enable Custom Thumbnails On YouTube

If you’re new to YouTube, or you just want to up your YouTube game, then learning how to create the most effective custom thumbnails is absolutely essential. Just as readers judge books by their covers, viewers judge videos by their thumbnails. It's unavoidable. You have just a tiny window of opportunity to grab that person's attention and draw them into your video. So let's jump into how to make custom thumbnails.

Custom Thumbnails on YouTube: Your Winning Feature

When you upload a video to YouTube, the platform will select a few options for thumbnails based on the content of the video. But the chances are very, very high that the frames selected will be off the mark and tell the viewer absolutely nothing. But with the help of a custom thumbnail, we can tell a much more colorful, intriguing, and direct visual story that might just earn this video an extra click.

And here is the good news. To start using custom thumbnails, you don't need a single view, subscriber, or minute of watch time, but you do need to verify your YouTube account. Verifying your YouTube account to unlock custom thumbnails, along with lots of other things, has just jumped to the top of your YouTube priority list. Get it done now. Now you've got access to custom thumbnails, let's have a look at some of the technical aspects of how to create them.

The minimum recommended resolution is 1280 by 720. If you go any higher, then you're gonna face two problems. First of all, when you start to create really high resolution images, when you shrink them down to thumbnail preview size, they can look a little weird. But more importantly, YouTube has a very restrictive file size when it comes to thumbnails. You have just two meg to play with. Keep that in mind if you intend to create really complex images. And finally, make sure to save your thumbnails in one of the following file formats. JPEG, GIF, or jiff, BMP, and PNG.

Another advantage of creating thumbnails at this resolution is that it matches the aspect ratio of how 99.9% of your potential audience will see them, which is the classic 16 by 9 widescreen shape. If you stick to these basic YouTube thumbnail principles, you should be off and running.

Custom Thumbnails on YouTube: The 10% Rule

Pay attention folks, because if there is one thing you take away from this guide, it's this next tip. It is absolutely crucial for the success of your thumbnails. When you design your thumbnail, you get the whole experience, but everybody else gets a smaller experience, and I like to call it the 10% rule. At full size, this thumbnail looks colorful, but pretty basic. There are maybe three elements to it. A person, and object, and a background. However, when you shrink it down to 10% of its original size, is everything you saw before still recognizable and easy to understand? It's the same for YouTube thumbnails as seen on mobile devices, although this might be more the 25% rule, or the 30% rule. Basically when you create your custom thumbnail, make sure to shrink it down to 10% of its size to see how everybody else is gonna see that thumbnail when it ends up on YouTube.

Great Custom Thumbnails: Higher Click Through Rates

Hopefully every YouTube content creator is aware of their click through rate. Every time a viewer sees one of your thumbnails, that counts as an impression. Every time somebody clicks on one of those thumbnails, that is a view, of course And you can calculate the click-through rate from that. For example, let's say your thumbnail is shown 100 times, and it's clicked on 10 times, that's 10% click-through rate. Basically, click-through rate is a representation of how powerful and effective your titles and your thumbnails are.

To review the click-through rate on your channel, you will need to go to the new YouTube Studio beta. From the dashboard screen, click on Analytics, and then from the top row of tabs, click on Reach Viewers, and finally Impressions to click-through rate box. A question that's often asked at this point is, what is a good click-through rate? And YouTube's answer is between 2% and 10%. But what I would say is forget all that and set your current click-through rate as a benchmark and aim to improve on that. The reason I say that is because it's impossible to compare your click-through rate to anybody else's because the type of content, and the style of a channel, and the size of a channel, amongst many other things, can have a huge influence on how many people click on your thumbnails. All that you should be doing is working with the numbers you know and understand. Working with somebody else's numbers is going to drive you utterly insane. The exciting thing is that as click through rate goes up, so does everything else!

Custom Thumbnails: Keep on the Right Side of YouTube

Time for a little bit of fun. Did you know that Google can tell you all sorts of things about your thumbnail, which are unnervingly accurate, including, really importantly for YouTube, whether or not your thumbnail is safe. A great tool for checking a thumbnail is safe is 

, and it’s free to use right now. All you need to do is upload a thumbnail to it and it will spit out the following information. It can tell me, with 94% confidence, that the main emotion in this thumbnail is surprise. It knows this thumbnail contains a person, a man, in fact, and it can even pick out the traffic sign. It's even trying to pick out specific body parts and actions. Perhaps the most important tab, however, is the last one, Safe Search. This tells us how safe Google thinks the image is, and we know that YouTube does analyze thumbnails to ensure that they are safe for the viewer. So if you do create a thumbnail that is a little edgy, it might be a good idea to run it through this first. Cloud Vision is certainly an impressive glance into the world of artificial intelligence.

Beyond the video content itself, custom thumbnails are probably the most important YouTube tool you have in your arsenal. Take a look at our essential guide and get it right first time, every time.

How to Make Custom Thumbnails - The Essential Guide!

As the PewDiePie vs T Series battle continues we’re taking a look back at all the high points and learnings from the race for the Channel with the most subscribers on YouTube. In this post, we ask if PewDiePie really tried to hack YouTube in a bid to hold on to his crown?

 that automatically played at twice the speed as normal. This naturally intrigued us as it brought Watch Time and playback speed into focus. Let's talk about the theory first. You can change playback speed on any YouTube video by going to settings, clicking on speed, and then changing it to a quarter speed or double speed. With some very rudimentary math, that means that you could watch a ten minute video at double speed, and it actually only takes you five minutes to watch. And a lot of people do that, including myself. If I am very short on time, and it's a very conversational video, then I'll watch it at double speed, just so I can get through it quicker and watch more content with the time that I have.

ICYMI: As the PewDiePie vs T Series battle rages on we take a look back at the stunts pulled, including the time PewDiePie may have tried to hack YouTube Watch Time in a bid to hold on to his crown.