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.

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 the platform by uploading content that drives huge views and engagements. Whether that income is from advertising revenue, merch sales, or brand deals, we keep you updated with best practises and ideas.

How To Make Money on YouTube

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.

YouTube Tips & Tricks

If you’ve put off creating your own YouTube channel because you’re overwhelmed with the choices you need to make or are panicking because you feel you lack the right skills to succeed, worry no more and welcome to the only resource you’ll need to fulfill your video creator dreams.

If this is your first time here, we have a 

 that aims to educate you on your YouTube journey. And if it is your plan to grow your channel, make sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel, and click on our notification bell so you don't miss any of our latest tips, tricks, advice, and news.

How to Start Your YouTube Channel: 10 Top Tips

We promised 20 tips to kickstart your YouTube channel, so let's start delivering on that promise with 10 tips in this post and 10 tips in the 

. All the tips are covered in this video too:

So amazingly, there are still some people out there who are thinking of starting a YouTube channel and have been for months, possibly even years. My advice to you is, ready or not, start now. And I'm not telling you this as a New Year's resolution. Every moment you hesitate or procrastinate, there are thousands of video creators starting their YouTube channel today, and gobbling up all your potential audience. You don't want that.

Feel the fear, do it anyway. Start, press record. Record whatever you want today. It doesn't matter if it doesn't end up on YouTube. You need to gain experience in getting in front of the camera, getting behind the camera, using your editing program. You need to start creating content to find out whether or not you enjoy making videos before you know whether or not you enjoy being a YouTuber.

Tip #2 Learn How YouTube Works, No Seriously:

The chances are, that the first video you make is going to absolutely suck. Fantastic, you've made a video. You've made the first step, and in six months’ time, you'll look back at that first video and think yeah, that really was terrible, but you've gotta start the journey somewhere. And with that, you've gotta start your YouTube channel somewhere as well, even if you're not ready. Create a YouTube account, upload a video to YouTube. You don't have to publish it, that's the important thing.

You need to gain experience going through the workflow of uploading videos. The last thing you want is having a brilliant video ready to upload, but you don't know how the YouTube system works. Again, experience is going to trump any advice any of us can give you, so record a video, upload it to YouTube. You don't have to publish it.

Tip #3 Develop a Strategy you Will Actually Follow:

While getting some practical experience behind you is obviously a good thing, you also want some form of strategy. So, answer these questions:

What do you want your channel to achieve on YouTube

, and when you're answering this, try and answer it from a viewer's perspective, not your perspective. So I don't want to hear about hitting 10,000 subscribers, a million views, or whatever. If your viewers know that you're in it for your own self-gain, they will see through it and immediately switch off. Viewers want to know what they can gain from the content, and you want to sell that as much as possible in your videos.

 Again, try and be as specific as possible. What age range? What gender, if you are going to a particular gender? What type of demographic? What are they interested in? You need to know who's going to watch your content.

 There are millions of gaming channels out there, hundreds of thousands of Fortnite channels out there. How are you going to distinguish your content from everybody else who's already on YouTube making content? You need to disrupt the status quo, not join it, because you'll never be seen.

how are you going to deliver this content?

 Is it going to be every day, once a week, at a particular time of the day? Think about when your audience is most likely to watch YouTube, and how much YouTube they can watch per week, and then tailor your content to those watching habits, and think about whether you're going to do video on demand, live streams, what's going to be best for you and your audience?

Tip #4 Find Your Niche and Build the Hell Out of It:

live streams, you'll know this one off by heart. Niche down. Let me give you a quick example. What's your channel about? If you're giving an answer such as, "My channel's about beauty, and it's about travel, "and it's about vlogging," then it's about too many things. 

. It should be about one specific topic, when you start your channel, because you need to appeal to a very specific audience.

Once you've grown your channel, and you've got millions of subscribers who fall in love with you, you can take them on a journey wherever you want, but to begin with, the audience is only interested in the content. They have no investment in you. Try and remember that. It's a cruel lesson to understand, but it will help you when you first start out on YouTube.

Once you've thought about and answered all of these questions, I want you to wrap it all up in a nice little present, called your value proposition. This is your elevator pitch. Try and tell your audience who you are, and why they should watch you, in around about six words.

. It tells you the who, YouTubers, video creators, and why they should watch, because they will learn how to grow their channels. But we've managed to do that in four words. Now it's your turn.

Tip #6 Invest in the Right Audio Equipment:

If you've just started out on YouTube, and you're wondering what your first tech upgrade should be, it is 100% audio, and here's why. Bad audio is so much more distracting than bad video, and everybody hates onboard microphones. 

So if you can, get yourself a dedicated microphone for your camera,

 and if you're recording from a computer, you can't go far wrong with a Blue Yeti.

Tip #7 Create a Formula with Template Videos:

Videos need structure, so when you make your next video, try to think of how you will develop a show formula, that you can use as a template for your future videos. Remember at the beginning of this video, I literally gave you a hook. An introduction, a teaser to what's going to be going on for the rest of this video. Then we have the branded intro, followed by an introduction to who we are for new viewers, a call to action to subscribe to our channel, and then we jumped into the meat of the content where we are right now, and at the end of this video, you'll see how we round this all up.

Your show formula will take time to structure, and it will evolve over the course of your YouTube journey. Try and keep an eye out for this when you watch your favorite YouTubers. As rough and as random as they might appear, there is always structure and story behind each video, and that's why you watch them.

Some people love analytics, others hate them, but there are a couple that are crucial to keep an eye on, whether or not you want to look at that analytics. The first is 

This represents how enticing your titles are, and how clickable your thumbnails are. Check the click-through rate for your channel as a whole, and on individual videos as you test. I'm not going to give you all of the same target to reach. Check what your current click-through rate is, and whether it's two, four, six, or eight percent. I want you to try and improve that by two to three percent this year. It will bring in so many more views.

The other metric, as it always has been, is 

. Generally speaking, the more watch time you get, the more YouTube is going to promote your content. But if you make shorter videos, that doesn't necessarily mean you must make longer videos, because your audience might not react very well to those longer videos.

What I will say is maximize the value of your watch time in the videos that you have. That's by looking at relative audience retention. How does your video stack up to similar videos, in terms of whether people are still watching or not, and try and improve the relative audience retention. Having said that, if your average view duration is 60, 70, 80%, you're doing really well, and it gives you a license to try testing longer videos.

Verify your YouTube account. That will give you access to the most important tool on YouTube, which is custom thumbnails. We've got a video here on how to do it.

Tip #10 Create an Engaging, Interesting Channel Banner:

If I see another generic cityscape, or rolling hills in the channel banner when we do channel audits, I'm going to rip out my hair.

10 more tips or creating and growing your YouTube channel

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 

Members of the vidIQ family that have upgraded to our Boost and Pro packages get immediate access to the Academy 

 so you can kickstart your YouTube success today! Access to the exclusive vidIQ academy will give you a huge advantage over your competitors from the get-go. 

Kick off your YouTube dreams with the tools you need to launch YOUR channel. We've got the top tips just for you!

How to Start a YouTube Channel: 10 Brilliant Tips

We at vidIQ have been creating YouTube Stories alongside the regular content we upload 

, and you have been loving them. And you’ve been loving Stories from other creators too.

Now, YouTube has added a brand new call-to-action button to its YouTube Stories feature which allows viewers to subscribe directly to the channel that published that content. That’s fantastic news for creators who want to boost their subscriber count.

YouTube Stories: Boosting Subscribers & Your Community

 in that they work best on mobile devices, and are an amazing way of keeping in touch with your audience when you're not creating longer content. Most of us take a couple of days, even weeks, to push out new videos, but with these bite-size pieces of content, you can stay in touch with your audience every single day.

, the maximum video length is 15 seconds. __15 seconds for a subscriber? I think that sounds worth it, don't you? __

Built into this new feature is one massive plus and one huge negative. We'll start with the negative first. Unfortunately for many of you, this feature is not going to be available right unless you have 10,000 subscribers. But as with all YouTube features, Stories will be rolling out to more and more creators in the future, so do make sure to check on your mobile device to see if you have access.

On the flip side, here's a really interesting thing about that Stories subscribe button I don't think YouTube has considered.

When you're not subscribed to a channel and you watch one of their Stories, you’ll see a subscribe button which allows you to, well, subscribe. Right up until that Story finishes you still have the ability to unsubscribe using the same button.

However, once you're subscribed to a channel and you watch more Stories, there is no unsubscribe button. I don't know whether this is a good thing or a bad thing, but ultimately you've got nothing to lose in pushing people to subscribe to your channel, right?

Tracking the Success of YouTube Stories in Analytics

And in more good news, you can actually track the success of your YouTube Stories in analytics. Just click on the ‘See More’ button on ‘Channel Analytics’ in YouTube Studio, then click on ‘Subscription Sources.’ YouTube Stories will be one of those sources and you can click the checkbox filter to see subscribers by YouTube stories only over the last 28 days.

Now, I am not for a second advocating that you should adopt a ‘subscribe to me’ mentality when it comes to YouTube Stories. What I am suggesting you do, as with all of your content, is provide value.

We've been experimenting with a YouTube story Q and A where people can ask us any question they like and I will respond with a YouTube story. We get tons of engagement, and whenever we run one of these mini YouTube clinics, we see a mini-surge in subscribers from YouTube stories.

Now, these are not channel-changing numbers, but I see this as another tool in your YouTube arsenal for growing your audience. Every subscriber helps.

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.

How do you get more YouTube subscribers in just 15 seconds? We show you how.

How to Get More Subscribers On YouTube in 15 Seconds!

As a YouTube creator you have a huge number of things to take into consideration - your video and audio set up, 

, thumbnail design, content ideas, and SEO for example. But there’s another piece of the puzzle that all creators have to consider - the legal side of content creation.

On this episode of TubeTalk we’ll focus on the legal aspect to brand and sponsorship deals. We’re joined by 

, an attorney who specializes in intellectual property law and contract law. What a perfect guest to discuss the legal issues that every YouTuber should be aware of. In this podcast you will learn:

How to protect yourself as a YouTuber in a brand deal

Why a solid contract is the basis of every successful brand deal

How to ensure you receive the money you were promised

Why US YouTubers need to set up an LLC to protect their personal liability

That, yes, even if you are a single creator, you need a legal entity behind you

What an operating agreement is and why it's so important

What are the rules of 'Fair Use' when using other people's content

What 'Intellectual Property' is and how it's protected

Subscribe to TubeTalk: The Video Marketing Podcast!

TubeTalk has been informing video creators and marketers since 2014, and is one of the most respected and listened to podcasts in the online video industry. Subscribe today so you never miss an episode! You can find vidIQ's TubeTalk at:

The Legal Issues All YouTube Creators Need to Know About: Podcast Snapshot

Liron Segev: What do all YouTubers need to understand about contracts?

 Nobody looks at a contract when everything's going well. It's only when things go wrong that everybody scurries around and tries to find a copy of the document to read it. You know what contracts really are in a nutshell are the rules for what happens when things go wrong. You have to make contracts your policy. Do not deviate from that. No handshake deals.

Liron Segev: You are an expert in intellectual property law, can you take us through the meaning of ‘Fair Use’ when it comes to using content that you didn’t create yourself?

 First thing to mention, since this is an international audience, is that fair use is not a thing everywhere in the world. Don't assume that just because you understand what fair use is or you think you understand what fair use is in the United States, that it's going to fly everywhere. That's the first one.

The second one is fair use is always going to be interpreted in the most conservative manner. Just because you slapped a filter on a painting of a storm trooper pointing his finger at you saying, "I want you for the Imperial Navy." Does not mean that that's a fair use of Disney's intellectual property. Just because you didn't get a cease and desist from Disney doesn't mean you are not exposing yourself to risk.

There's a four prong test for whether use is fair. There's commerciality, the amount and the extent of the stuff you take. Did you take the heart of something? Did you take a bunch of it or do you just take a couple of little pieces?

There's also a piece that deals with the effect on the market. For example, no one is going to walk into a supermarket looking for some soup and walk out with Andy Warhol's Campbell soup cans. There's no effect. There's no market effect on that use. That's another way we check to see if use is fair.

Now, the most common ways that we figure out whether use is fair or not, is to determine whether there's a educational exception, a parody and satire exception and a news based exception.

Regarding the educational based exception, If I am teaching you either remotely or in person, I can use pieces of other people's intellectual property to teach you about that intellectual property. That's why documentaries work. I don't need to go get Disney's permission to do a documentary on Disney. They're probably going to sue me anyway but if I'm smart, I bought a rider on my insurance policy to defend myself against a frivolous lawsuit by Disney.

Liron Segev: Can I take a Taylor Swift song and create my own version of that? Then things are just not so clear anymore.

 That last sentence is exactly it. If you take nothing away from this part of the conversation, understand that fair use is always a question of law. Whenever anyone says to you, I have a right to fair use, you know they're full of crap.

There's no such thing as a right to fair use. What you have is assert an exception to someone's absolute right to control their intellectual property. And you can always, always, always, always be dragged into court and forced to prove that your use is fair and that's usually a losing prospect because if you're a small business, great, you've spent $20,000 to have a court decide this use is fair.

Go ahead. Where are you going to get that $20,000 back? You're not, you just blew it. It's gone.

*Liron Segev: With fair use, who needs to prove that?

 The onus is on the user - to prove the use is fair. Disney does not have to prove that they own that content, you have to prove that the use of it is fair. Of course, they also have to prove they own they do that by submitting to YouTube a copy of the trademark filing or the copyright filing.

The way that this is applicable to content creators is that I see people use clips of stock footage or background music and I know those things aren't licensed. I recognize songs every now and again and I'm confident beyond doubt that this person did not license a that song for their content.

Odds are good if you're flying under the radar, nothing's going to happen to you but the problem is once you start to grow your business and hopefully that's what you're trying to do, you are no longer going to be flying under the radar and that strategy is not going to wor. Quite frankly, it's going to hurt you because if you're trying to get a brand deal, that brand is going to make you sign a contract that says you have properly licensed or own every single thing in that piece of content and they're going to require you to go out and get errors and omissions insurance. Here's how that works. If you lie, not only are you in breach of your contract.

Liron Segev: Let’s talk about intellectual property and trademarks

 Here is the best way to understand copyright and trademark in 30 seconds. Think about what the words mean. Copy right. It is the right to make copies of something. If you have the copyright, you and only you have the right to make copies of it or to authorize someone else to make copies of it.

Trademark is exactly what the word says as well. It is the mark of your trade. The Nike swoosh is a mark of the trade.

If you take only one thing away from this section, it is be really careful about using other people's intellectual property in your content unless you have permission.

Liron Segev: I'd love to hear your legal disclaimer right about now I just want to make sure we're above board and people do not misunderstand what we're saying in this podcast.

 Absolutely. There's two parts. The first part is the legal disclaimer. I am not your attorney. You should not rely on my advice to your detriment or otherwise based on anything you hear today. If you really need help in this area, I'm happy to have you as a client if you'd like to hire me but please seek a legal professional to help you. Don't try to do this on your own or Google it. I can't tell you the amount of people I've had to explain, well I'm sorry, your Google search is not the equivalent of my law degree.

Liron Segev: If people want to get more information, what's the best way to do this?

If you are publishing content on YouTube you need to know about copyright law, and if you are working with a brand you need to know about contracts. We discuss both in this week's TubeTalk.

The Legal Issues All YouTube Creators Need to Know About: TubeTalk 205 with Seth Polansky

Being a YouTuber is one of the most creatively fulfilling and rewarding experiences imaginable. Where else but YouTube can you have full creative control and share your imagination, talent, and point of view with nearly the entire world?

But being a creator can be kind of lonely sometimes too, especially when most of your friends and family aren’t YouTubers themselves.

I’m sure you can relate to this: You’re working hard to record and edit footage, select tags, design a thumbnail and all the other many things it takes to get a video ready for upload. You have a couple of different ideas for a title. You don’t know for sure which one is better. You wish you could ask someone, and not just your mother who thinks everything you do is great (thanks, Mom), but someone who actually GETS this whole YouTube thing.

Or what about times when YouTube throws another curve ball? Like the recent 

. When this happens, it’s natural to wish you had a whole crew of like-minded creators to discuss your concerns and talk through strategies for coping.

Fortunately, there’s a pretty cool place to do just that, and more. It’s the VidIQ Discord, and it’s for creators just like you who want to be a part of a positive, helpful community of YouTubers who want to see growth and meanwhile help their fellow community members grow, too.

, and you don’t even have to get VidIQ yet to join and start immersing yourself in the YouTube community:

Here’s a few examples of the coolest ways YouTubers use the VidIQ Discord:

Get channel feedback from like-minded creators.

Post a picture of it and a picture of your old one and get input on which one your fellow creators think will get you more subscribers.

Share insights about new and upcoming YouTube trends and features.

Weird new button in Creator Studio? Let’s all discuss!

Make friends with other YouTube creators all over the world!

Propose collaborations, commiserate over lessons learned the hard way, and most importantly, celebrate all victories big and small together with people who understand how much work it takes.

will get 3 months of VidIQ Boost for FREE, valued at $147!

 Pretty much all you have to do is join the Discord, have a VidIQ account, and use the entry form linked inside Discord to enter. Check out the “

” to see the entry form. The winner will be selected March 2, 2020, so hurry up and get in here!

Here’s the Discord link again, so you can find your YouTube peeps, and while you’re at it, enter to win those sweet, sweet THREE free months of VidIQ Boost: 

Being a YouTuber can often be lonely - so join vidIQ's new Discord community and find tips, tricks, friends, collaborators, and the latest advice on how to be a better creator.

YouTube Can Be Lonely so Join the VidIQ Discord Community Today!

What is the secret to success on YouTube? On this episode of TubeTalk, the YouTuber podcast, we’ll discuss the five principles with our very special guest 

. Scott practices what he preaches and has used the five principles process to drive 300,000 subscribers, and 100 million organic views across his YouTube channels in just 18 months. If you want to know what these principles are and how you can apply this formula to your own channel 

As well as running a number of successful YouTube channels. Scott is also the owner of 

, a Texas based convention for video creators and marketers.

The Five Principles of Success on YouTube

For anyone creating content on YouTube with the aim of increasing views and subscribers, there are a number of programming and audience development strategies they need to be aware of. YouTube expert Scott takes us through five of the most important:

#1 Find Your Focus Then Stay in Your Lane

Scott highly recommends focusing in on a topic or category that you are most familiar with, or are at a specialist at, and go all out on creating and promoting content about that theme on YouTube. At one time, creators could publish videos around a broad topic (for instance - family vlogging) and upload a wide variety of content from different angles. But as YouTube continues to refine its algorithm with the aim of surfacing relevant, quality content to viewers, creators need a single focus. In other words, you have to do one thing really, really well in order for the algorithm to like you.

Scott learned this lesson through experience last year when views tanked on his general ‘family’ content. While many other family-focused vlogging channels diversified and incorporated wider trends in their programming strategy, Scott made the decision to refine exactly what they wanted to offer their audience and double down, and triple down on content that has driven huge views and engagement. It’s a strategy that’s worked.

For any creator who is just starting out, Scott recommends that until you have established a base audience of people who are watching you, stick with one thing. Once you get into the hundreds of thousands, or even millions of subscribers and your daily views are in the hundreds of thousands or millions, then you can start to branch a little bit and do more of a variety because you have a core community of people that's large enough that will follow you wherever you go, whatever you do. At the beginning, the safest thing to do is to carve out your little niche on YouTube and focus exclusively on that for a good long while.

#2 Diversify Your Income from Video - Now

There was a time when you could predict your income from YouTube based off what you made in the previous year. Those days are long gone. Now, income can fluctuate month to month so YouTubers need to diversify where your income is coming in from. For Scott, that means not being reliant on Adsense income but looking at many other monetization opportunities including brand deals, product sales, affiliate links, lead generation etc. He advises any other creator looking to earn a passive income (or a more substantial income) to do the same.

Think of a product that you can sell and sell it from the beginning. Try and talk to brands early. Most companies now understand the power of influence on marketing, and so they're willing to deal with micro influencers, whether it be with product sales or with affiliate type of program or with just product trade for video time. Most brands now realize that's the power of YouTube and social video.

If you sell a product or service obviously your YouTube Channel is a great vehicle for sales or lead generation. Or, if there is a way to create a physical product around your channel (like an ebook) then that’s an opportunity for you to monetize too. Alternatively, you can leverage your subscriber base via affiliate marketing - essentially making money from that by linking out to something like an Amazon website or the company site that sells a product or service you promote. Every time somebody clicks on that link and buys something, you'll get a small commission. Scott does this and generates passive income across his YouTube Channels. As long as the creator discloses that affiliate links are being used via their terms and conditions, and in their ‘About’ section, an affiliate is a good way for pretty much every single niche Scott can think of.

*(Note: If you love vidIQ then consider becoming an affiliate - check out the 

#3 Understand Your Audience Purchase Power

Even more important than understanding your audience purchase power is to develop your audience purchase power. Just because you have a certain number of YouTube subscribers, doesn’t mean they will follow your lead and click through on those affiliate links. But if you are successful at promoting a product or service you can track activity on those affiliate links, and establish your purchasing power and your authority. That’s the kind of data you can then use to entice a brand as part of a deal. You can confirm you have an average of so many clicks and so many purchases made of the products you have promoted on your channel, and how much you will charge a brand based off that.

The best way to build purchase power is by promoting things that you are 100% passionate about. If you just take every crazy brand deal that comes your way then your purchasing power is going to be minuscule because people don't want the junk that you're pushing on them. But if you're promoting XYZ camera that has been amazing and these are the 15 reasons that I love it, then you're going to have more people who are going to want to purchase that camera based off of your testimonial or your review. Understanding and developing purchase power is massive.

YouTube is a marathon, not a sprint. Creators have to be prepared to be in it for the long haul, if they want to be massively successful. You can’t just throw one video up and then ask "Why aren't people watching?" because the YouTube algorithm doesn't work that way. You have to put in the leg work and you've got to do all of the right optimization things on the backend, like creating an awesome custom thumbnail and optimizing your keywords. It may be a few weeks before you start to pick up any traffic from the algorithm.

Creating just a few videos thinking you are going to become YouTube famous is not the case any more (unless you're bringing a massive audience over from Instagram, or Snapchat or TikTok). You've got to put in the time. There's no instant success anymore. Those very, very, very, very few channels that will blow up massively, they either making amazing content that nobody's ever seen before or they've got access to something nobody else has.

#5 Become an Important Part of Your Online Community

The fifth principle is about the importance of actually being part of a community, something Scott didn’t appreciate at the beginning of his creator journey. But as soon as he started to take it seriously he started to meet others in the family blogging community and build relationships with them, including collabs. He started to pick up tips about content creation and other aspects of being a vlogger. When you surround yourself with people that are doing the exact same thing that you are doing, you cut learning curves down because you learn from everybody else's mistakes and everybody else's wisdom at the same time. You get this masterclass just by hanging out with people that you are in the same boat with. And that's why it's super important to be part of your community, and attend video marketing and other similar events.

Also, jump onto online communities, like the thousands of YouTube groups there are on Facebook. There are things that are happening all the time where you can kind of build a little communities, sub-communities of creators. There are so many different ways that you can put yourself out there at different levels and get back what you're looking for.

vidIQ would like to say a HUGE thanks to Scott Simson for his time and his invaluable wisdom. Please subscribe to his 

. This has been TubeTalk episode 156 - tune in next week for the next for more help and advice for all things YouTube.

TubeTalk has been informing video creators amd marketers since 2014, and is one of the most respected and listened to podcasts in the online video industry. Subscribe today so you never miss an episode! You can find vidIQ's TubeTalk at:

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 

Finding huge success on YouTube is absolutely possible. Follow these five principles to unlock new achievements and help monetize your content.

The Five Principles of New YouTube Success: TubeTalk Episode 156

We all seem to have a love-hate relationship with YouTube. We produce a video, and it does well, we love it. We produce a video, and it does poorly, then all of a sudden we blame YouTube and its algorithm. But is their algorithm really at fault here? Or perhaps it's our content? This week's episode of TubeTalk, the YouTubers podcast, will fundamentally change the way that you upload content to your YouTube channel.

Joining us today is Matt Gielen, who is a YouTube strategist, and a consultant to Netflix, Nickelodeon, MTV, and Comedy Central. You might have heard of some of these names. Matt is actually a code cracker, not in a hacker kind of way, but unpacking the YouTube algorithm seems to be his specialty.

Why YouTube chooses to surface your video to non-subscribers

Why your Click Through Rate is so important

How user Watch Time history plays a huge role in the content they are served

How to pivot successfully so your new content works on YouTube

Why linking to your other videos in YouTube End Cards and descriptions is vital

Why viewer activity & engagement far outweighs a subscription to your channel

Understanding the YouTube Algorithm: Full Transcript

 So, Matt, one of your specialties is clearly understanding what this YouTube beast wants from us. Have you seen major changes in the algorithm and the way YouTube handles content?

 Yes and no. So, basically, the algorithm, in my view, was very, very stable for about a solid three and a half, four years. Once they made the switch to watch time, there were a bunch of little things that caused big waves for certain areas of YouTube, but it kind of got to a very stable point and stayed very stable for two or three years. Then starting in late August, September of 2018, things just started going crazy. Things were a bit stable between, I want to say, October and November, about eight weeks. Then right about December 15th, everything went crazy again, and then, again, on January 15th and then February 15th or 18th, somewhere in that range.

Basically, every six to eight weeks we're seeing these massive changes in what is or what isn't being promoted. Some of that is algorithmic, and some of that is structural and policy. By structural, I mean making very specific decisions as to what will be put into suggested or browse, which seems to be a layer overriding the algorithm in some capacity. Or from a policy level, where some big news story will come out. YouTube will add something to the policy layer. Everything goes crazy. Then the pendulum swings back after a couple of weeks, once they start getting their feet underneath them again in response to whatever the issue is that week.

We had the outbreak that caused a huge issue in the kid space. Then we had, most recently, the Steven Crowder, right-wing personality and conspiracy theorist war. That's probably the most fresh. There's been a lot of pretty major hiccups over the last, I guess, nine months now that have caused fairly radical swings.

But I think, even more importantly, we saw the introduction of the DPP optimizer, which is Google's attempt to create, quote, unquote, diversity in the feed, which we just put out a video on our YouTube channel, ‘Reverse Engineering the YouTube Algorithm: Part Three’, because it was a massive structural change to the algorithm. We released ‘Reverse Engineering the YouTube Algorithm: Part Two’, I want to say, in 2017, 2018, which was a Google whitepaper that explained how they created the algorithm. It basically said there's two main big filters, candidate generation and ranking. Well, the DPP optimizer is a third massive filter. What the optimizer essentially does is, if you have a feed, like in browse for example or the Facebook feed as an example, typically, the way they sort the items in that feed is from best to worst. User A is likely going to be interested in these 100 videos. We've ranked them from 1 to 100.

Well, for that user and for any user, the optimal actual layout of that feed might not be to go from best to worst. It might be like put the best one at spot seven. Put the worst one at spot 24. That's basically optimization by group as opposed to optimization by individual video. It's really fascinating if you read the paper, or you can watch our video to see an overview of it. YouTube has come out and said we want to provide more diverse opinions, or we want to provide a wider set of topics, and it's really not that. Basically, it's we want to hack your brain to make you stay on the website longer, and what we found was, by pulling more videos from your history and leaning a little bit heavier into collaborative filtering, we found that we can make you stay on our website longer. It's basically like, hey, we made a better heroin. It has nothing to do with exposing people to different opinions or exposing more creators. It's 100% solely based on the fact that we can get you to stay on our website longer if we pull more videos from your history.

 The longer you stay, the more ads they can serve. The better the business grows, all of that good stuff. YouTube's still a business at the end of the day. The interest isn't to shove you off the platform

 That makes sense. But now does that mean that YouTube looks at individual videos compared to a channel as a whole?

 Oh, yeah, I don't think they look at channels as a whole at all, actually, other than to make recommendations to audiences based on which videos to serve them next. So in part two and part three, they go into a lot depth, but basically saying, to program our website, we program to the individual. So each individual has a distinct watch history, and we look at their watch history in order to make recommendations to them for what they are going to want to watch in their next session.

So, for example, if you're a big fan of Rosanna Pansino and you have all of her videos in your watch history. What YouTube will do is, next time you come to the platform, they'll say, wow, this person always engages with Ro's videos every time we put one in front of them. She is just releasing a video, so let's put this video in front of that person, assuming that that video has done well with other viewers on the platform that also have similar watch histories or similar demographic information. So if you upload a video to your channel and your audience doesn't choose to click on it or, if they do, they don't stay on it for very long, you don't get good average view duration, YouTube will say, well, this video isn't very good when we serve it to people that are really engaged with this channel. Let's not serve it to any more people like that. Let's use that space for something else, whether it's another video from your channel, or a video from someone else's channel.

 Got it. What about your next video? So in other words, you served a video. It did really well. Is the likelihood of your next video being looked at more favorably, or is it each video on its own merit, good or bad?

 It's each video on its own merit, good or bad with one exception. Let's say you average 1000 views per week on your uploads. If you have a video that comes out and does 2,000 views in that first week, well, now you have doubled the number of people with one of your videos in their recent watch history. That is a strong signal to YouTube that your next video should be served to a wider set of people, because that previous video is in more people's watch history. So that next video might have a better chance of doing well because there are more people with one of your videos in their recent watch history.

So, yes, your videos are going to impact each other. It's a symbiotic relationship, where if you have a video that's doing really well consistently and that's bringing more viewers to your channel, it doesn't matter if that video was posted a week ago or 10 weeks ago or 5 years ago, those people that are watching that video within those last seven days, one months, two months, all have one of your videos in their recent watch history, even if that video is from long ago. So your new videos are going to be put in front of those people, which is one of the main reasons why, if someone shifts their content type and does it too abruptly, they can really struggle to grow that new content type because people aren't there for that new content type. They're there for that old content type, and that leads to eventual death spirals on YouTube, often.

 Could we be forcing relationships on YouTube between our videos? Obviously, we put end screens. We put in cards. We put in links in the description, put in a comment with links to our other videos. Does YouTube take all of that into account as well when deciding to suggest videos?

 Yeah. They absolutely do. I would say that that should not relieve the content creation or the channel manager of the onus of creating those connections. But, essentially, what you're describing is collaborative filtering or one of the things that goes into collaborative filtering. So you can look at collaborative filtering in a few ways. One of the ways you already kind of mentioned, where if you upload a new video and your viewers really love it and click on it a lot, they will serve it to more and more people that have one of your videos in their watch history, but maybe aren't as active on the platform or it's a little bit older. Then they'll serve it to people beyond that that just have expressed interest in the topic or have similar watch histories.

 The other aspect of it is, if a whole bunch of viewers watch video A and then they go on to watch video B, well, people who have watched video A but have not watched video B are more likely to be recommended video B because so many people who watched video A went on to watch video B. That's in suggested or even in browse. If you can create those kind of viewership paths within your content by end screens, playlists, call to action, links in descriptions, pinned comments, links on your channel, etc, then you are more likely to have YouTube promote more of your own content against your own content, but also put your content in front of similar viewers throughout the platform.

 To me, this makes complete sense. Shoppers that have bought A would also like to buy B. It's the same kind of Amazon mentality, but on videos, where they like this content, they're more likely to like that content - let me help them along with that. Now you've mentioned a lot about views, but you didn't mention subscribers. Are we making too much of a thing about subscribers because subscribers have changed over the time? Is it all about the views? Or are subscribers still a thing?

 I'm not sure, but I don't think it matters. So, generally speaking, I don't know if you watched my response video to Derrick from Veritasium's video, My Video Went Viral. Here's Why. Essentially, back when Google first released the One Channel, it was wrapped up with Google+, and it was a whole initiative that fell flat on its face and was absolutely awful. I mean, look, I love YouTube. YouTube has allowed me to be unbelievably successful and start my own business, and I will jump to their defense whenever I can, but sometimes we've got to call them out because sometimes they just make terrible decisions. It's not always their fault.

So during that time period, what they did was anyone who created an account was basically auto-subscribed to dozens and dozens of channels across many different verticals that had nothing to do with any interest they'd ever expressed. So you had these channels that went from a million subscribers, to several million subscribers, and most of their subscribers had never seen a single video from them ever before, had no idea how they were, didn't click on their stuff. A lot of them were like I can't get any viewership because you're putting my videos in front of people that have no interest in them because you auto-subscribed them.

YouTube was like, oh, well let's just make subscriptions unimportant. So it was like, wait, what? They're like, yeah, we screwed this thing up, and so we'll just keep screwing it up. Unfortunately, they can't undo that. So they were like, okay, now we're going to have people subscribe, and then they're also going to ring a bell. Then they're going to have options for that bell. Then even if they select some options, we still might not send stuff to them.

I've worked with channels across the board, big, small channels, everything in-between. Almost none of them get more than a handful of percentage points of their viewership from notifications. I can tell you on the Little Monster channel, we're brand new, so all of our subscribers are pretty fresh and pretty active. For us, I think it's like 3% is from notifications, which is, I think, the highest I've ever seen it. Over the last 28 days, it's our seventh biggest traffic source. It's responsible for 3.7% of our views, and that's 300 total views, and we've released 5 videos. It's just like, okay, I can't focus on notifications. I don't really have any control over that. Telling people to ring a bell is way less valuable than telling them to go on and watch more videos, so I ignore that.

Then if you look at subscriber views versus non-subscriber views, that can vary wildly. I've seen channels doing hundreds of millions of monthly views that have 3% from their subscribers and some that have 20% from their subscribers. But if you look at the traffic sources on that, it's all browse and suggested. So whether someone has subscribed to your channel or not is such a low impact signal from what I've seen, in terms of what gets suggested to them, that, really, exerting any sort of effort there is not nearly as good as exerting effort towards understanding your audience and your viewership, what they're interested in, and thinking about your programming towards that general audience, because YouTube cares far, far, far more about how someone has interacted with your content the last time it was put in front of them or the last several times it was put in front of them than they care at all about whether or not someone subscribed.

 So at the end of the day, we're once again circling all the way around back to the viewer. It's all about them, their experience, and what they would want to most probably see next, and then engage with it. Speaking of engagement, do you find, in your experience, that things like give the video a thumbs up and leave a comment ... Does that also add to good signals as well as the watch time and when somebody rewinds your video and watches it again?

 They are all taken into account, and YouTube said that they were looking at total time spent on site, including time commenting. It's like, yeah, they've been doing that for five years. It's called watch time.

The more engaged your audience is, the better. If someone's just passively viewing and it's kind of like they can watch or they could pass on it, well, you're kind of in a bad situation. You want people hyper engaged, if you can. Some of the ways to do that is to get them to like the video and to comment on it.

One thing they did say is we're taking things like what people like and what they dislike into account. It's like, well, are they saying like and dislike from the engagement or like and dislike based on the implicit signals that they're sending? Because if you look at Reverse Engineering: Part Three, I'm not sure if I cited it in the video, but in the actual paper they say that explicit signals are actually not very good from viewers, with the exception of surveys. But they're not surveying you after every single video you watch. They're surveying you on a session basis to say how was your last session. Are you satisfied with your time on YouTube? Because YouTube doesn't care about the individual video. They don't care about the individual creator. They care about the individual viewer. They want to know if the viewer's experience was good.

You can't be confident in the accuracy of their answer, and so they look for the signals that you don't consciously think you're sending by clicking on that one more video or clicking on that one thumbnail with the scantily clad girl. When you see that it's just some dude playing a video game, you're like, oh, I'm out of here. It's a guilty pleasure thing that you're not going to admit to, but YouTube sees those signals. They know exactly what you're doing. So they make those suggestions based, I think, far more on the implicit feedback than on the explicit of like, dislike, comment, survey kind of thing. But the one thing I haven't said yet, which is by far the most important thing, is click-through rate.

Click-through rate is the number of impressions divided by the number of people that click on it, It’s king, by far, 100%, and will be king until YouTube fundamentally changes the way they promote videos to people. By fundamentally, I mean, right now the way they promote videos to people, essentially, is by showing them a thumbnail and title. Now with the mobile feed going to a preview and now basically just playing videos in that mobile feed if you sit on it long enough, that's going to change things up a little bit. But right now it's click-through rate, basically.

Do you want a heads-up on cracking the YouTube algorithm going into 2020? This week's TubeTalk guest Matt Gielen brings you all the latest unmissable insights.

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