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.

Getting Views

How To Get More Views 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. 

Subscribers

YouTube Subscribers

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.

Monetization

How To Make Money on YouTube

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.

Analytics

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.

Watch Time

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

At vidIQ we have incredible insights into what viewers are searching for on YouTube. Not only can we confirm the top keywords being searched for, we can also show you how you can leverage that interest to create content around trending topics and tentpole events. That's going to give you a clear edge over other creators!

Insights

YouTube Insights

Your In-Depth Guide to Building a Successful YouTube Channel

Thumbnails are one of the biggest pain points for new creators, and an important one to solve. Thumbnails are the "book cover" of your video—something that needs to grab attention in just a fraction of a second. 

There are so many elements that go into making that winning thumbnail for your content, and it's simply not possible to address all of that here. So, 

 with expert, John Scott, to get all your thumbnail queries answered.

In this post, we'll walk you through the ideal 

, some key best practices for creating thumbnails that stand out!

12 Types of YouTube Thumbnails People Love to Click On

First impressions are critical in the endless ocean of YouTube content. The thumbnail plays a massive role in getting viewers to click on your video over countless others. For new YouTubers trying to gain traction, getting your thumbnail right can be the difference between a low-performing video and that ever-alluring viral hit. Here’s why size specifically matters:

: YouTube thumbnails appear across a wide range of devices—desktops, tablets, and, most importantly, mobile phones. Therefore, you need a thumbnail that remains sharp and eye-catching across all these platforms.

: Thumbnails with the correct size and dimensions ensure a polished, professional look. Low-quality, blurry images won’t just make your video less appealing—they’ll make it look amateurish.

 Faster Than Ever: 6 Ways to Make YouTube Thumbnails in Record Time

The Best Size for YouTube Thumbnails in 2024

When designing your thumbnail, the recommended size is 

 with a 16:9 aspect ratio. This size works across devices and ensures your thumbnail looks pleasing to the eye. Additionally, the minimum width YouTube accepts is 640 pixels but going lower than the recommended size is probably not a good idea. To keep things simple, here's what you need to follow.

: 16:9 (standard YouTube video aspect ratio)

https://www.oberlo.com/blog/youtube-thumbnail-size

Using the optimal size guarantees that your thumbnail will look crisp, regardless of the screen size it's being viewed on. It also helps your video stand out in YouTube search results and suggested video sections, making it an essential element of your overall video SEO strategy.

Best Practices for Creating YouTube Thumbnails

Creating a well-designed thumbnail is more than just getting the size right. It’s about crafting something that resonates with your audience and drives them to click. Let’s break down some important design strategies that’ll help your thumbnails pop in 2024:

Your thumbnail needs to deliver a clear message in a split second. Overloading it with too many details, colors, or text can be overwhelming, especially when viewed on smaller screens like mobile phones. Stick to one focal point and keep the design clean.

Text on thumbnails can be incredibly effective—if done right. Use 

 that stand out against the background. Avoid cramming too many words; instead, aim for short, snappy phrases that intrigue viewers. Also, contrast is essential. If your background is dark, make sure your text is light, and vice versa.

Your thumbnail should immediately grab attention, even when it’s displayed alongside hundreds of others. Using high-contrast colors can help your image stand out. Consider using colors that are complementary or that contrast sharply with YouTube’s default red, black, and white color scheme.

Thumbnails that feature human faces—especially ones that show strong emotions—tend to get higher engagement. Whether it’s excitement, surprise, or curiosity, showing a human expression can create an instant connection with potential viewers.

One great trick for building brand recognition is to use a consistent style for all your thumbnails. This could include specific color schemes, text placement, or the use of your logo in a corner. Over time, viewers will come to recognize your videos at a glance, making it more likely they’ll click on your content.

For example, this is how the vidIQ channel home page looks at first glance. As you can see, there is homogeneity in the way we use our creators faces and other graphical elements across videos./

While designing thumbnails can be fun, it’s wise to avoid a few traps. Here are some common mistakes that you should avoid at all costs:

: Never use clickbait or misleading images that have nothing to do with your video’s content. This will only frustrate viewers, hurt your channel’s reputation, and lead to a high bounce rate—something YouTube’s algorithm won’t like.

: You don’t want to clutter your thumbnail with unnecessary text. Keep it short and to the point. Let the title of your video do the talking, and use text on your thumbnail sparingly.

: More than half of YouTube’s traffic comes from mobile devices, so always ensure your thumbnails are legible on small screens. If you’re adding text, make sure it’s large and bold enough to read easily on a smartphone.

: A blurry or pixelated thumbnail can significantly reduce your video’s chances of getting clicked. Always use high-resolution images, and if you’re unsure, err on the side of larger file sizes (

Tips for Testing and Optimizing Thumbnails

If you’re not sure which thumbnail design will work best, don’t be afraid to experiment. YouTube allows you to change thumbnails even after your video has been published. Here are some tips for testing and optimizing your thumbnails over time:

: Try switching between different thumbnails on the same video and track their performance in 

. This way, you can identify which design drives more clicks.

 of your videos. A higher CTR means more people are engaging with your content, which helps boost your visibility in YouTube’s algorithm.

: Beyond the CTR, also look at how long people are watching your video. If your audience is dropping off quickly after clicking, your thumbnail might not accurately represent your content. 

 for optimizing, testing, and comparing different thumbnail options for the same video by using the above metrics. 

According to YouTube, 90% of the best-performing videos use custom thumbnails.

 In 2024, making it on YouTube involves more than just creating great content—you need to package it well, starting with your thumbnail. Understanding the 

 and following design best practices will set you on the path to success. 

Whether you’re just starting or looking to level up your YouTube game, getting your thumbnail right is a crucial step to increasing your views, engagement, and subscriber count. 

Now it’s time to create that killer thumbnail

Learn the correct YouTube thumbnail measurements for 2024 and how to optimize them for the best quality and viewer engagement!

YouTube Thumbnail Measurements: The Right Size for 2024

Feeling entitled to views and subscribers. Ultimately, for a lot of creators, it's that mindset that causes them to fail when they first start their YouTube channels.

After six, nine, twelve months, they realized that it's harder than they think to get 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 hours of watch time, and to monetize their YouTube channels because I think those people would assume they deserved to be seen by YouTube audience. They also assume that they deserved to be paid for their work.

13 Massive Mistakes You Are Making as a YouTube Creator

In case you're wondering why we creating this post and video, it’s because we asked on Twitter what were your biggest YouTube mistakes and you responded en masse, so we thought we would discuss some of those. Which brings me on to the first of the mistakes you are probably making, even if they think you aren’t:

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">❓🤔▶️What is one <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/YouTube?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#YouTube</a> mistake you will never do again?</p>&mdash; vidIQ 📈🚀🎉 (@vidIQ) <a href="https://twitter.com/vidIQ/status/1221920272577527809?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 27, 2020</a></blockquote>

Mistake #1 Thinking You Deserve Immediate Success on YouTube

Until you prove your value first to your audience, and then to YouTube, I'm sorry to say it but you are entitled to absolutely nothing. Remember, this is a free platform. You get to speak to a global audience and impact their lives, but you've got to do that first before you deserve any reward.

Of course, it would be fantastic if YouTube was a completely level playing field, and everybody would enjoy the success that they deserve, depending on the content that they create.

But there will be some creators who have a viral moment with appalling content, while others slave away creating magnificent pieces of work that never get seen by the audience that deserves to see it.

Unfortunately, that is YouTube, but the moment you assume that you should get this or that or this creator shouldn't get this because your content is better is the moment where you've lost the mindset of YouTube and who should be rewarded for the content - it's your audience first and then you.

Mistake #2 Deleting Content from Your Channel

I've never been a fan of this and there are two principle reasons why:

First of all, you're damaging the metrics on your channel. If you delete a video it removes all of the views and all of the watch time. Which is especially important for people working towards monetization. Secondly, don't be embarrassed about the content that you've already got on your channel.

If you look at channels such as MrBeast, you can see the hundreds of terrible videos he put out on his channel before he was a success. So it's wonderful and fascinating to see the progress of a creator who went from nothing, and is now a YouTube megastar.

I've said this before and I've stressed it heavily in the 

 which of course you can check out, the first tech upgrade should be audio. You can get away with slightly dodgy visuals, or lighting that's not quite right, but when the audio is off, it is just so grating and annoying to the audience that it will make them switch off more than anything else.

I use a Rode Video Micro which cost me $60, and I still use it today and it significantly improves my video audio. You can read more about 

getting the best audio quality for your videos here

This is an interesting one because it's often a symptom of a channel that either lacks focus or has too much self-indulgence. You’re creating a series of videos towards a particular audience, and then you decide to do something a little bit different. And that little bit different video takes off on your channel. And you're left with a decision whether or not to try and capitalize on that successful video, or continue to target your audience that you were trying to engage with in the first place.

Suddenly you go from becoming a travel channel to a beauty channel, or a financial channel to a laptop review channel. We came across an example where a channel was doing all of this business and financial advice and they randomly did a review on a cheap laptop from Costco. And this video got far more views than anything else on the channel. 7,000 views versus the average which might be a few hundred. What do you do in that situation?

Ultimately this is all to do with focus. Finding your niche, going two inches wide a mile deep, on a particular topic, and building an audience through consistency. Which naturally leads us to the topic of inconsistency.

This can come in many different shapes and sizes. I think we've already talked about topic inconsistencies. But for a lot of creators, it's the inconsistency of video output. This is why it's good to have some sort of schedule in the back of your mind. Whether you stick to it religiously, by posting on the same day of the week, at the same time, or by telling your audience that you will publish a couple of several videos a week. But maybe not sticking to a strict schedule.

The truth is for a lot of creators, YouTube should take up a certain portion of your time, versus the rest of your life, but the lines often become blurred. Whether you're on a roll, or because you're super passionate about the videos that you're creating, you spend more and more time on YouTube, but there's only a certain amount of YouTube adrenaline that you can run off, before you get burnt out. Or life gets in the way and you need to take a break. So that's why I never recommend running at 100% YouTube capacity all the time.

If you do create five videos in a week, that's great. Maybe publish four of those and save one for later on when you do need to take a break.

Mistake #6 - Leaving YouTube for an Extended Break

We've seen this phenomenon occur several times with channels, when we've been auditing them on the 

, every Tuesdays at 11 o'clock, Pacific Standard Time (sorry for the plug there.)

There are channels that have tens of thousands of subscribers. And the most recent videos are getting barely a couple of hundred views. And when we scroll through their list of videos, six, seven years ago the videos they were making were getting tens of thousands of views but unfortunately the channel took a significant break, and in that time the landscape of YouTube has changed radically.

This often happens with tutorial channels that were some of the first on the platform, providing answers to questions that hadn't been yet asked on YouTube. And there weren't enough channels providing answers. So even with questionable thumbnails, and content that wasn't brilliant, because the competition was so few and far between at that time, these channels were able to clean up. Now with far more sophisticated creators, who are really savvy with their production values, and enticing thumbnails, they're finding that they just can't compete anymore.

There is a really fine balancing act here for video creators and their channels. Absolutely if you need to take a break from the platform and do life stuff, I'm never going to tell a creator not to do that. But at the same time, YouTube, from a purely algorithmic point of view, hates procrastinators or channels that are not providing the content that they want to serve to an audience. And YouTube will go and find that content from another creator.

Granted we're talking about channels that haven't created anything for two, three, four years at this point. If you're going to have a break for a month or a week you're probably going to be okay. But, doing a hard stop on your channel, and then coming back in a few years time and expecting the same traction, I'm afraid that's just not going to be the case.

Mistake #7- Starting to Create Content too Late

And then there are those on the flip side of this YouTube mistake that are cursing about not starting early on YouTube. First of all, if you're beating yourself up because you think you've missed the boat because you want to start now but you had no intention of doing so years ago, don't beat yourself up. This is the same as blaming yourself for not buying Bitcoin when it was uber cheap, or right now not starting on the byte social media platform. Because who knows how that's going to turn out in the future.

It is how decisively you act on whether or not you want to start a YouTube channel, as opposed to when you first think about when you should've started a channel. I guess I will say this, if you've been watching YouTube videos for a year or two, and you've been thinking about starting a channel over that course of time, yes that is a mistake. If you want to start a travel channel, and you've been thinking about it for a couple of weeks, there's probably been 500 video creators or more who have started their travel vlog, and they're stealing your potential audience.

I would always encourage this, whether or not you think you're ready, start YouTube. Because you will learn a hell of a lot through experience. Right now, somebody is going to start their YouTube channel today, and by the end of the year, they're going to have a million subscribers. I can guarantee that.

Yeah you're right, this is probably the oldest YouTube mistake in the book. And I'm glad a couple of people recognized this, as an error in their ways. Watch this video for why:

Mistake #9 - Trying to Imitate Other Creators

When a viewer watches content on YouTube, and subscribes to a channel they usually do it because they have some sort of connection with the creator and it is content that they can't get anywhere else. So if your plan is to try and mimic an already well-established channel, the viewer is going to simply ask the question, why should I follow you? Why should I be interested in your content, if I can get it from somewhere else, with a more well-established channel, who probably does better content than you, if you're trying to imitate them?

Now I'm not going to sit here and point to you and just say be yourself, because as soon as you press a record button, for me at least, there's a different kind of pressure as if you're on stage. You can't help but change your identity in a certain way, because you feel as if you need to please an audience that's behind that camera.

It is so difficult for some people, and I count myself in this set, who can be natural in front of the camera. I don't know what it is, it's like putting on a different hat. Talking to an inanimate object feels so alien even now after all the videos that I've done. And I think that probably more comes through, in the editing that I do, I still feel a bit stiff on camera, but when I get into the editing suite, and I'm able to put that story together, that's where I feel my best creative personal real me qualities come through.

I think some of you will be able to pick up the internal struggle that I have in my head, whenever I talk in front of the camera. But I am so glad that I continue to do it every single day and challenge myself to be me on camera.

Mistake #10 - Trusting Just One Social Video Platform

Yeah yeah, all right. Nice little dig at Google and YouTube there, but I guess behind this mistake, there is a certain element of truth. Because if you put all of your eggs on one social media basket, all it takes is for YouTube to flick a switch, like they have done with the Adpocalypse, and 

, to see your channel, your audience, your potential business fall through the floor.

That is why in the long run it is important to diversify your skills, your reach, your brand so to speak. I know people hate this word, your presence on the internet can't just be restricted to one platform which has in effect total control over the destiny of your success.

I've chosen this one as an example of a mistake a lot of creators make when they simply don't listen to specific advice. Instead, they keep asking the same general questions to whoever is listening: How do I grow my channel? How do I get more subscribers? How do I get more views? Who on Earth can answer that question?

My guess is even if I wrote a 5000-word essay answer to those general questions, those people would ignore all of the advice and then two or three months down the line they would ask exactly the same question. How do I grow my channel?

Creators - do the research, do a bit of learning. Understand the analytics. Drill down into click-through rates, watch time, why some thumbnails work better than others, and then start to ask those specific questions of educators like us.

Because we love specific questions that we can really drill down into, and have discussions about. These broad questions are just an example of somebody, who I think again wants to get 1000 subscribers 4000 hours of watch time, and monetize their content without truly understanding the fundamentals of what being a content creator is.

And yes I know the irony is not lost on me that half the videos that we and other YouTube growth experts put out on YouTube are titled How To Get More Views and How To Get More Subscribers and How To Grow Your Channel. Those are the things that creators are searching for on YouTube, and we've got to get ourselves in front of those creators to try and educate them in a much more focused way.

Mistake #12 - Listening to the Wrong People

There are lots of people who come up with crazy zany ideas, some that are treading precariously along the terms of service of YouTube. My advice generally would be is if the strategy is going to get you quick views and subscribers, or hack your way to success, then it's probably advice you want to treat with caution.

If people are promoting organic ways to grow an audience over a period of time which never guarantee short term success, because you got to work hard as a video creator, then I think those are the type of people you want to listen to. Because they've gone through the journey themselves.

I always try to position myself, not as a YouTube growth expert who must be heard and followed to have success on their channel. There are huge gaps in my knowledge on YouTube. I find it difficult to advise on music channels. I don't know how vloggers can get in front of the camera, and be so personable and tell stories in the way that they do. But those channels fascinate me along with the entire YouTube platform.

And I am passionate about having the opportunity to spread my message and impact others on the YouTube platform which we see in the comments often. I and the rest of the vidIQ team, can share our experiences openly and honestly and you take value from it, then that's enough for me. And there's nothing wrong with listening to everybody's advice, testing it and seeing if it works because for different YouTube channels, and for different audiences, not everything works.

There are many routes on YouTube to that destination called success. And I like to think that here at vidIQ, what we do is put down road signs that help point you in the right direction. How you get there is entirely up to you and we will take a fraction of a percent of the success when you get there.

Mistake #13 - Not Allowing Yourself to Make Mistakes

Who said there's anything wrong with making mistakes? I almost feel as if a lot of people who want to start a YouTube channel, have to be of the mindset that their content has to be perfect to begin with. And they'll never start a channel because of that.

Evan Carmichael probably puts this best. I asked him what is the best tip for a person starting out on YouTube, and his simple advice was, "Expect to suck". But there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. Because if you don't start somewhere, then you're never going to start, and everybody has to go through a YouTube journey.

As we've already said, some creators just have it, the X-Factor. Jennelle Eliana is a perfect example of a creator who was able to jump onto YouTube and just start making amazing content and that connected with a wide audience instantly.

But I certainly didn't enjoy that success when I first started. A couple a dozen people watched my first few videos, and it's taken me almost a decade to get to where I am today and that's taken 1500 videos plus. I make mistakes all of the time. It's taken me a good six hours to film this in front of camera, because I still continue to fluff up my lines. And no doubt in the future I will continue to make mistakes. I will make videos that I think are going to perform really well, and they'd never get off the ground. And you just have to experience those things as well on the YouTube platform.

I say this all the time and I'm going to say it again. The one thing that trumps all of the advice that you can get all of the technology you can purchase and anything else that comes from an external source is your experience. The more videos you create, the more videos you upload to YouTube, and the more you analyze the analytics and engage with your community, the better you will become as a video creator. And you will do it far faster if you are the one exposing yourself to all of the things that YouTube can bring into your creative landscape.

Start somewhere, look back on the content that you've made, and see where there are pain points, blockers, bottlenecks things you need to address. And aim to improve them by a couple of percent with every new video that you make. In the short term from video to video, you may not see the progress. But then when you look back on your videos from six months ago, you will see the radical changes and improvements that you've experienced and your audience will definitely connect with that. And those were some of your YouTube mistakes. Keep making them, embrace them, aim to do better next time.

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 

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.

As video creators, we all make mistakes on our YouTube journeys, and here are some of yours.

13 MISTAKES New YouTubers Like YOU Make - and How To Avoid Them

If you want the largest YouTube creators to see your content, then officially mention them. It could result in millions of views for your videos. So how do you do that?

As always, we will start on the YouTube Homepage. Click on your profile logo in the top right-hand corner and go to the YouTube studio.

From the Dashboard, click on the Videos tab to the left and then click the Edit icon for a video you have uploaded to your channel.

For example, we interviewed a video creator for 

, and instead of just mentioning the creator by name, we mentioned her by a YouTube channel.

Start with the @ character and once that starts to type out a name, YouTube will attempt to autocomplete.

You can include spaces too if the channel has them and eventually you should find the creator you are looking for.

When you click the channel that will convert the text into an official channel mention, and you can do this both in your video title, video description and community posts as well.

This is how that mention will look on a desktop screen. The creator's name is highlighted in blue, and when you click on the Mention, it jumps you straight to their channel, whoever it's in the title of a description.

And it's a similar setup through the YouTube app, a blue clickable link that takes you directly to the creator's channel. However, it must be noted that the Creator Studio app is not set up to insert mentions just yet as it advises you to type them out on a computer.

So YouTube mentions are very easy to implement into your videos, and we've had monumental success with them. But there are a lot of things just under the surface that you need to consider.

First of all, and this is guaranteed to annoy at least half of our audience, __you can only give or receive a YouTube mention if you have over 1,000 subscribers. __

Second of all, you have to consider that nobody is actually searching for a channel's name in this way, even if it is 

. Having said that, YouTube mentions can be a fantastic way of capturing a creator's attention because they receive a notification whenever they get mentioned through a video title description or community post.

And that's the nuts and bolts of how to use YouTube mentions. How might you use them inventively in your content? I will say this, if you do want to capture the creator's attention in the right way, provide value in your video or your content.

Don't do it as a way to try and get a shout out from the creator because that's very unlikely to happen. Sorry.

Have you heard of YouTube Mentions? They allow you to tag other channels on the platform and we show you how.

How to Get More YouTube Views With Shoutouts to MrBeast, PewDiePie or vidIQ!

We always welcome a good sneak behind the curtains of YouTube. Luckily for us, a recent video from 

 is absolutely packed with information about how YouTube search and discovery works with regards to content.

The 19:22 minute video takes a deep dive into how YouTube discovers your videos and returns the results to viewers. You can watch the full video here, and read the show notes below:

YouTube’s goal for the homepage is to make it a “one-stop shop” where a viewer can find whatever they want to watch. Many users don’t have a goal in mind when they come in via the home page, so YouTube offers up a variety of results.

YouTube looks at two things to help them do that. One of those things is what it knows about the viewer and the history of what types of videos and channels they've watched before. Plus actions like do they watch long videos or short videos?

The other thing that can really influence the recommendations on the homepage is the performance of the video. When YouTube shows a video on the home page, it’s looking to see if viewers click on it, and how long do they watch, plus how well it is performing on average relative to other videos that it might also be showing to similar viewers.

So, often users come to the home page as casual viewers who are not quite sure what they want to watch. YouTube will offer a diverse set of options, such as videos from your past watch history, videos from channels you subscribe to, and videos that were popular with similar audiences. It presents a variety of content to make sure that people can find at least something that they're going to want to watch.

These options that feature on the watch page try to help the viewer find another video to watch next after the one they're currently watching. It’s different from the homepage because YouTube now has some sense of context for that viewer as they've already started to watch a video.

Unlike the content on the homepage, YouTube will now show videos that are related topically or from the same channel to try to help serve those viewers who want to continue watching the same sort of thing.

But also like the homepage, YouTube will also look at personalization and try to recommend videos that may not be exactly the same topic because one of the things that viewers have told YouTube through their behavior is that sometimes they want to change the channel.

For example, a viewer might be watching a music video or getting updated on their latest vlogger, but then once they watch that content, they want to try something different. And so YouTube again offers up a variety of videos so that no matter what type of user it is, whether they're looking to go deeper or switch contexts, that there're some results there for them.

So, on YouTube, the home page and watch next is how the majority of viewers on YouTube discover new videos.

What Happens When a Creator’s Content Performance Drops

The YouTube team confirmed that one of the most common questions they get asked is about why they see a decrease in the amount of viewership they're getting from either suggested viewers or from the home page.

They also confirmed that suggested traffic has been steadily going up over time, so there's no system-wide issue they have seen where traffic to suggested is dropping. However, what changes constantly about suggested videos are the rankings.

These rankings are updated constantly. __YouTube collects over 80 billion bits of information, or feedback from its audience every day, and it feeds that right back into the system so that it can know which videos are engaging and satisfying the viewers on each suggested list. __

When YouTube confirms the rankings are changing, it means that the viewer’s interests are changing over time, rather than any major changes in the algorithm. Also, rankings are different for every viewer, so YouTube is trying to optimize the results they serve up for each viewer to give them what they're going to want the most.

Creators should understand the reasons behind changes in traffic, and the three main reasons are supply, demand, and personalization:

 is basically how much interest is there out there in whatever a topic you're covering or whatever type of video you're making? And this can change significantly over time of course.

 is how much of a specific type of content is being uploaded by other creators. In the video, YouTube confirmed that there are 500 hours of video being uploaded every minute, and the types of videos that are being uploaded is constantly changing as creators come up with new ideas or more creators start producing videos about a similar topic. So the competitive landscape is changing over time and that can influence how your video performs relative to other videos that the viewer might be interested in watching.

 YouTube rankings are different for every user because the platform is trying to give every user what they want and viewers' tastes change. You can't really optimize your videos for a traffic source or a surface, but you can for your audience.

So if you really want your viewers to continue watching your videos, one strategy is making really consistent content or even a series. That way, if those videos start being watched together, they're topically related and they attract the same type of viewer, so they're very likely going to come up next to each other in watch next.

In the video, the team state that a pattern they are seeing around performance is around thumbnails. Right now the homepage thumbnails are much larger than the ones that appear in suggested. And that can actually lead to different performance depending on where the users are browsing from. The YouTube team has seen examples where a thumbnail works really well on the home page but is less effective in suggested, possibly because it's just harder to see what's going on.

That has a knock-on effect for the viewer because maybe now they don’t understand what the video is about so they scroll by in suggested. Whereas on the home page, when they see that big thumbnail they're more engaged.

One tip from the video is that YouTube encourages creators to look at their thumbnails at different sizes and see what it looks like in the suggested feed, especially on mobile. Do a little mockup and make sure that you've optimized so it'll work at both sizes. That's something you could do if you're not getting as much traffic from suggested.

Did you know that YouTube collects over 80 billion bits of information about user behavior on the platform every single day? That feedback helps determine how videos get discovered by viewers.

How Do YouTube Videos Actually Get Discovered by Viewers?

We are always talking about how you can get more views on your YouTube channel if you have a better understanding of your 

. But access to that data hasn’t been possible to do away from a desktop - until now.

Understanding YouTube Analytics - Mobile Version!

The first thing you will need to do is to make sure your iOS or Android version of the Creator Studio app is fully up-to-date. To do this, go to either the Android Play Store or Apple App Store, search for ‘YouTube Studio’, and if it isn't up-to-date right now, you should get an option to update it from this screen.

Now open up the Creator Studio app from the Dashboard screen

Tap on ‘View More’ for channel analytics

Then tap on the ‘Discovery’ tab to show you the screen Impressions and click-through rate for your entire channel over the last 28 days.

Even the full desktop Creator Studio doesn't show you this side-by-side comparison, which can be useful to review as a snapshot of how impressions affect your click-through rate.

You can tap on each of the graphs to go into detail and the impressions will show you growth or decline over the last 28 days.

The dropdown filter allows you to refine your results to the last seven days but unfortunately not to the last 48 hours or 60 minutes so it isn't quite realtime, an advantage you do get through the desktop version.

As well as channel impressions and click-through rates, you can view the same analytics on a video-by-video basis.

Go to the ‘Video’ section of the Creator Studio app and select the video you want to view

You'll see the same Discovery tab at the top of the screen which will show you impressions and click-through rates for that one video.

Now for a quick explanation of these two analytics:

 are the number of times your thumbnail is seen on YouTube. You want as many impressions as possible because that's basically free advertising for your content.

 is the number of times a person clicks on a thumbnail when it's seen. For example, if you get a hundred impressions and 10 people click on those thumbnails, that is a click-through rate of 10% and that would be considered very high and very good.

YouTube has finally made some vital analytics data available on its mobile app. We show you how to find these insights and how understanding them will help your channel grow.

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