Trust me, if you've been thinking about buying subscribers to grow your YouTube channel, this is going to save you a lot of pain. Because put simply, you don't want to do it. And this is the main reason why.

. You probably haven't read them, and that wouldn't surprise me because nobody ever reads them. Especially when they are this long. But if you have intentions of buying subscribers, then you may want to read Permissions and Restrictions section 6, which states that you are not allowed to do the following:

Cause or encourage any inaccurate measurements of genuine user engagement with the Service, including by paying people or providing them with incentives to increase a video's views, likes or dislikes, or to increase a channel's subscribers, or otherwise manipulate metrics.

So it doesn't matter where you bought your subscribers from, and it doesn’t matter how much they promise your subscribers are legitimate, and will genuinely watch your content. Ultimately, you have paid somebody to try and artificially grow your channel, and to manipulate YouTube's metrics, and that is against Terms of Service. And the buck stops there. YouTube are the gatekeepers, and if they find out what you've been doing, then your channel will most likely be suspended or terminated.

Why Buying Subscribers is So Bad For Your YouTube Channel

Now let's say for argument's sake that you do buy some subscribers and YouTube doesn't take down your channel. What are you actually going to get from those subscribers you paid for? Well it's kind of similar to sub4sub. And while we are on the subject of sub4sub, I hope that it won't come as a surprise to you to learn that this practice also falls under the fake engagement policy. Buying subscribers, sub4sub, you know it's wrong, don't do it.

Now let's put on my hypothetical hat for a second. Let's say you were on the other side of a fence, and somebody paid you to subscribe to a channel, and maybe watch a video. Once you've done what you were paid to do, you're under no obligation to watch any more of their content or to stay subscribed to their channel. You didn't choose to watch their content in the first place, there was a financial incentive. That's not really the relationship you want with your audience, is it? It's not a recipe for success.

Now, granted, that was hypothetical. But you know what I'm talking about, right? Nobody said YouTube was easy, and buying subscribers and indeed views makes it impossible, because your channel will be terminated. This is all blood, sweat, tears, and hopefully at the end of it, some success. But the important thing is, you need to do it organically. So no, this isn't a video on how to buy YouTube subscribers. This is a video on educating you why you shouldn't buy YouTube subscribers. And we hope you found it valuable. If you did, you may be on the cusp of subscribing to our 

. And if this little graphic down here helps push you over the edge, which is allowed by YouTube, then go ahead. And that's how you get subscribers the right way.

Hopefully. You did subscribe, right? Cheers. Now I know some of you at the back of the room are probably shouting at the top of your lungs, you've just told us not to buy subscribers, and yet you sell a YouTube tool that feels like a hack to me. Well let's address that point.

vidIQ software is certified directly by YouTube

, and that means we have to go through compliancy checks every year or two to make sure that our software isn't doing anything that it shouldn't. We follow Terms of Service on YouTube. And put simply, we are not a hack piece of software. There isn't a magic button in vidIQ that gives you more views and more subscribers.

What we do is signpost your journey. Point you in the right direction. Whether that be through researching YouTube, finding the right keywords to better serve your videos to the right audience, analyzing every single video on the platform to find out what's working for your competitors or what's successful for a particular channel, and how you can potentially follow that success. Auditing your own channel, going through all of those YouTube analytics and bringing the important ones to the surface with single clicks, and suggesting actions that will help fix problems on your channel and help you grow quicker.

Not necessarily help you grow by hacks, but by helping you grow organically. vidIQ is free to download. There is a link below. Make sure to check it out.

Now as we're on the topic of growing subscribers, there is one more gray area to take a look at. Giveaways. Can you encourage people to subscribe to your channel during a giveaway? You are allowed to hold a giveaway contest on YouTube, but there are lots of rules surrounding them and 

You and any third party may not manipulate metrics on the YouTube service, including numbers of views, likes, dislikes, or subscribers, such that those metrics fail to reflect genuine user engagement with the YouTube service.

I also spotted a Tweet from Team YouTube that says, "Giveaways are still allowed! What we don't allow is linking to sites that solely aim to drive up subscriptions or other engagement metrics like views or likes through external contests and other means. Since that's the case with this site, it violates our external links policy."

And what YouTube were talking about here was Gleam. This service helps users manage competitions by giving entrants multiple ways of entering a contest, such as following the user on Twitter, or subscribing to their YouTube channel, watching a video. But unfortunately, YouTube doesn't want you to do any of that anymore, because it manipulates their metrics.

So again, our advice would be to not use giveaways on YouTube that encourage the viewer to subscribe to a channel to enter the contest.

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 

Red icons with white +1 symbols representing social media likes and engagement.

So, you want to know how to buy subscribers to help grow your YouTube channel? Well, it's pretty simple. You don't!!!

Why You Shouldn't Buy YouTube Subscribers - EVER!

Just in case you didn’t know, YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world. Making it a magnet for educational and tutorial content, and for answering questions people are asking the internet.

Google of course, is the king of search. And if you do your YouTube titles, tags, descriptions right, you will discover just how much of a gold mine views from Google can be for your YouTube videos.

This very simple video on ‘How to Delete a YouTube Video’ has (at time of writing) over a quarter of a million views. Its part of an ever growing strategy that we've been working on over 2019:

Interestingly, this particular video has received over 90,000 views from external sources 60,000 views from Google Search directly. Just like topping the YouTube search rankings, topping the Google search rankings is prime internet real estate.

Google Key Moments: Helpful Timestamps for the Viewer

And so far Google has accommodated video either through video shelves, or through featured video snippets. But that's all about to change with an upgrade to Google search that's called ‘Key moments’. This feature works by identifying key anchor points on a video, and including them as links on the Google search page.

When Google returns a search result with Key Moments, it pops right out on the page. As well as being in the top of the video searches, the Key Moments creates an even bigger footprint, especially on mobile devices. I mean, basically, this is a search result you simply cannot ignore.

How to Activate Google Key Moments in Your YouTube Videos

So, now you know what Google Key Moments are, and potentially how powerful they could be, how do you get them to work for your YouTube videos? It's all to do with timestamps.

In your video description, or video comments, you can create time stamps by typing out hours, minutes and seconds separated by colon. As an example, we've added several time stamps to this video.

And, while they don't look any different here in the video manager page, to a viewer on a video watch page, they appear a blue clickable links. Which, when you click on them, take you to that timestamp in the video.

Now, timestamps as a YouTube feature are not new. They've been around for years, and video creators have been using them to chop up longer videos and also to provide an extra little bit of SEO in their video descriptions. But in the future, what Google search Key Moments are going to do is use those timestamps to create these chapters on the videos within Google Search.

So, if you haven't been using timestamps in the past, now is a perfect opportunity to start experimenting, because this could effectively be one of those land grab situations. Most videos don't have timestamps on them, so you have the opportunity to capitalize by adding timestamps to your videos now to potentially make them rank higher in Google Search and give you all of that prime internet real estate to get people to watch your content.

Especially for tutorial and educational video content, where people are asking questions and you are providing the exact answers they want.

How to Create Timestamps on a YouTube Video

To create a timestamp in a video description or a YouTube comment, type in seconds, minutes, and hours if required separated by colons to automatically create the timestamp link.

Type that exact time into the description box in the following format hour:minute:seconds such as 0:02:19 for 52 minutes and 19 seconds into the video

Leave a space after the time, and now type in a short description for that timestamp. For example, 0:02:19 - Key Moments in Google Search

Repeat this process, adding each timestamp and description to the description box

Make sure to put in some rich SEO text after it too. Remember that these are Key Moments and the potential viewer will want to know exactly what they are getting.

There are huge benefits to Google Search Key moments. And let's be honest, it doesn't take that long to create timestamps. Think of it as if you're writing an essay and you're just adding subheadings to your main title.

But, as a new YouTube/Google feature, you probably have questions that I also have questions about and I don't know the answers. So, let's discuss. As of time of recording, Key Moments seems to be a mobile-only feature. I'm not sure if there are any hard rules about the set up of timestamps either. In Pat Flynn's video, the timestamps were way down the description. But the word "timestamp" was included, along with hyphens next to the supporting timestamp text. However, on the Creator Insider video that announced this feature, there was no such formality.

And a big question to YouTube would be, if I am going to take the time and effort to create these timestamps, are you going to give me bonus points and maybe push me up the search rankings in both YouTube and Google? I suspect not. But, adding those keywords into the timestamps is only going to help your video description and your video overall. So, you might as well start doing it. With that in mind, we here at vidIQ are going to start including timestamps in every single video that we publish, including this one. So, check them out in the video description and in the pinned comments.

Google search logo with upward trending graph and YouTube views icon representing growth

There is a new feature rolling out on Google Search that could help you get more views on YouTube and it's all to do with Key Moments and timestamps.

New! Key Moments in Google Search: Visible Timestamps for YouTube Videos

If you are a video creator, you may have noticed that the YouTube tools you use to create your videos and check how well you're doing have undergone a radical change over the last six months. We’ve already brought you lots of news about the changes, but now we’ve talked to a YouTube expert about how the new Creator Studio (AKA YouTube Studio Beta) works.

During an hour-long special live stream on the 28th October 2019, we were joined by Tom Leung, Product Management Lead at YouTube. Tom’s team is focused on a number of products, including the Creator Studio, the Creator Studio mobile app, the uploads experience, and the channel management experience, as well as YouTube analytics. Tom is also part of the 

, which all YouTube creators should subscribe to!

In the live stream (video above) we touched on YouTube analytics, the dashboard, and video management. As of October 2019, the following is true about YouTube Studio Beta:

At some point in the near future, YouTube will drop the beta label and it'll just be known YouTube Studio.

The legacy product will continue to be referred to as Classic Studio, but that will fade off into the sunset over time.

Beta Studio is now the default experience for YouTube creators, although Classic Studio is still available.

YouTube has announced Classic Studio will probably be removed this year, but have promised advanced notice of this.

New YouTube Studio: Two Things Creators Need to Know

#1 If you are still defaulting to the Classic Studio - right now is the time to get used to YouTube Studio Beta. Creators who are active on the platform need to really learn the new dashboard because when the old one goes away it’s going to cause a world of pain.

#2 The sooner Classic Studio is retired, the sooner YouTube can add new features to Studio Beta because more resources will become available to do that. Tom mentioned that an updated mobile app, the ability to turn on dark mode, improved real-time analytics, and an upload checklist were all on YouTube’s to-do list in the future once Classic has been sunsetted.

Please watch the video for details of the new features in Studio Beta, and check in again as we focus on the new tools that YouTube is rolling out to creators.

YouTube Studio beta walkthrough tutorial with analytics and video management features

By now, all creators should have seen the New YouTube Studio (AKA Creator Beta Studio). But how can you get even more out of it? YouTube showed us in an exclusive live stream!

Exclusive! An Official Tour of the YouTube Studio Beta WITH YOUTUBE

ASMR. It is a huge topic on YouTube, generating Billions of views, with many creators wanting to get into this space. But how do you do that? We found a channel that's growing fast, and they have the perfect strategy.

ASMR stands for autonomous sensory meridian response or auto sensory meridian response. It's an experience characterized by static-like tingling, and it is a cultural phenomenon on YouTube. So if you are a video creator who's been thinking about doing ASMR, stop thinking and start acting. Or whispering, in this case.

Now, I know what you might be saying at this point. I've seen ASMR, but the competition is so fierce. There are so many channels out there, how can I start a YouTube channel today and expect to have any success in this topic on YouTube? Well, the channel we are looking at today did just that.

 started an ASMR YouTube channel just a few months ago in the middle of 2019, and after 30 videos, they already have nearly 2,000 subscribers and tens of thousands of views. We're going to look at how they achieved this. Let's have a look at some of the fundamentals as to why this channel is already successful before looking at the topic of ASMR.

ASMR Success on YouTube: Standout Custom Thumbnails

First of all, take a look at the channel thumbnails. They all have rich, vibrant colors, and the saturation is definitely being upped in each of these videos so that the colors really shine through. These are the type of thumbnails that make you stop swiping or scrolling through a feed because they just catch your attention.

And there are some subtle consistencies throughout each of these videos. I'm not talking about the logo, which could probably do with a bit of work, but the red lipstick, and the action of placing food towards those lips in an eating motion. You see that through every single thumbnail. These are the type of thumbnails that you could mix in with lots of other ASMR channels, but you would always know that these thumbnails come from ASMR Mag UK.

ASMR Success on YouTube: Best Titles & Descriptions

Another consistency that you see throughout all of the videos is the titling strategy. Look at the first two or three words of every single video. And they always start the same ASMR Eating or ASMR Eating Edible. This video creator is telling YouTube every single time exactly what their video is about, very plainly and very clearly. And that helps YouTube serve this content to the right audience time and time again. And you can see that through the views.

This channel has 1,700 subscribers, but each video is hitting that mark or a little beyond because the content is so consistent. This creator has dialed in their audience perfectly with ASMR Eating or Eating Edibles.

Now, this SEO richness is reinforced throughout the metadata - on the channel and for the videos. In the description, the creator continues to talk about ASMR Edibles, but not only that, the creator talks about what's in it for the viewer. What's in it for you, not what's in it for the creator. And a lot of people make that mistake of being a little too self-indulgent about what they want and what they want to get out of a channel, rather than the value that they're giving to their audience. In the video descriptions, it's the same type of thing. Always reinforcing the keywords they want to use.

And although tags aren't that important these days, it's clear that this creator has done their research into the ASMR keyword topic, and includes all of those words wherever they can in some of the titles, descriptions, and tags, the channel description. It's all about the consistency of content.

What you'll also notice is there is also a very consistent video length. The creator seems to be aiming for a sweet spot between eight and twelve minutes. And generally speaking, the advice is to make longer videos and create more watch time. But obviously, you need to appreciate your audience. Through me doing this process myself I'm understanding that ASMR appeals to a more relaxed, slow-paced type of video. Hence why this video is going on longer than usual.

But for this creator, each video is almost exactly the same length. So again, the viewer knows exactly what they're getting into every time they see one of her videos and click into it.

So those are several foundations of a solid channel, which any video creator would be proud of. But for this channel, this is where the magic happens. When you start to read the video titles, and you look at the thumbnails, something doesn't add up. It makes you stop for a second and go, how on earth can you eat a Coca-Cola bottle, or spanners and tools, or a Starbucks coffee cup, an iPhone 11?

All these things the creator talks about are very nonedible somewhat impossible items to eat. So how on earth does this person achieve this? As a viewer, you have me intrigued and you've earned my click.

But the big question is, do these videos deliver the valued prize in the title and the thumbnail? Well, as you can see from the views, and the continued growth of the channel, the answer very much is yes, because this creator's unique superpower on YouTube is to create edible versions of these items. Of course, it goes without saying that people want to watch good content. But when you can provide not only good content but something completely unique, in a very popular topic, that is a winning combination.

ASMR: How to Combine With Other YouTube Trends

And then beyond all of what we've already talked about so far, the video creator is trend warping. How can you take the topic of ASMR and combine it with the most popular smartphone release of the year, the iPhone 11? Well, 

! That is a very unique skill, and it is being expertly executed. Now on this particular occasion, the video didn't go viral, but the creator is giving themselves the best opportunity of doing that, and potentially in the future.

They've tried to do this with the Pixel 4 and Frozen 2, as both of those big releases loom. It's only going to take one of these videos to and a huge audience is going to see this content, and the channel will grow very, very rapidly.

For a channel that is so young at this point, less than six months old, it is incredible to see the channel focus, the discipline, to create videos on one topic. And this is a niche within ASMR. Making items and then eating them, with the audience watching. And the creator is already very farsighted because they added two other ASMR channels. They want to create silos within this topic. They have a channel about eating general foods, and another one for sleep relaxation.

Now those channels are very small right now, but as I've already said, it just requires one of these channels to blow up, and then the views will circulate through all of the channels very rapidly, and very effectively. The key to this success so far is the focus, and if they continue with this channel focus, they will get big rewards very soon. The channel right now is growing at over 500 subscribers per month. A third of its size.

Don't be surprised if this time next year they have tens of thousands of subscribers. And you can do the same in any topic if you follow those fundamental strategies.

Person holding YouTube logo behind microphone against blue background with icons

Is it possible to be successful with a brand new YouTube channel that uploads content around something so popular as ASMR? The answer is yes, and we show you why and how.

How to Start an ASMR Channel on YouTube [Real Life Case Study]

If you've uploaded a video to YouTube, but you realize you've made a mistake, and you need to trim something out, this is the quickest and easiest way to do it without having to re-upload the entire video. Let's do this.

How to Trim Videos with YouTube's Video Editor

We will start, as always, on any YouTube page. Click on your profile picture in the top right-hand corner of the screen, and then go to the YouTube Studio. This will display the main studio dashboard screen, and from here, you want the videos section from the left-hand navigation panel.

When you mouse over any video in this list, a few icon options will appear, and you want to click on the edit video icon (the one that looks like a pen).

Once you're in the video details page, you may notice some new options down the left-hand side. The video editor is one of these new options.

Click on this, and it will take you to the YouTube video editor, which at the time of recording, seems to default to dark mode, like this:

Let's show you a few key controls first. You've got the Undo and Redo buttons on the top left, discard and save options in the top right, along with a quick keyboard shortcut guide. And over to the right-hand side, you have your zoom slider, so you can focus right in on the spot where you need to trim your YouTube video.

Now let's trim a video. Please watch the video above for visual instructions. Place the playhead at the starting point of where you want to trim, and click the trim button to the left. Note that when you do this, the editor seems to zoom all the way out again, so you may need to zoom back in. You can still click and drag the playhead if you wish.

When you have your starting point, click the split button at the very bottom of the screen. The playhead line will thicken, at which point you can click and drag to create a split of content that you wish to remove from your video.

Now a really important point next, this X button does not execute the split, it cancels the split you have just created. To create the actual split, you will need to click the Preview button at the bottom of the screen. The split section of the video will now be shaded out, and you can preview how your video is going to look on the video player above.

You can continue to edit the video as you see fit, adding more trims if you wish. The most important thing to remember is that none of this is saved until you click the Save button the top right-hand corner of the video editor. And by clicking the three dots next to the Save button, you also have a couple of extra options, including saving the edited video as a completely new YouTube video.

Now, ever since YouTube announced the new studio, I've been wanting to make this video all in the new editor, but to be quite honest, it hasn't been ready for a long time, and it still isn't, if truth be told. What I've shown you in this video is how to trim your videos, but you can also add blur effects, you can add audio music, and add end screens.

The problem at the moment is that a lot of these things aren't baked into the new editor, and take you off onto a new screen, which isn't ideal.

Now, a couple of things to note about this editor. If you make changes and then save them, it will take YouTube a little while to process those changes, and in the meantime, viewers will still be able to see the old version of the video. So if you do desperately need to get rid of something, you might want to set it to private or unlisted while you make the changes.

Also, if you have any copyright issues with the video, this video editor is not the place to try and fix them. YouTube has a 

built-in copyright claims tools that are far more efficient and could remove the claim completely

, meaning that you can remonetize your video, but if you do it through here, it's just going to cause chaos.

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.

Video editing interface with cut tool icon highlighting trimming a clip on timeline.

Learn how to trim any video you've already uploaded to YouTube with the platform's built-in video editor.

How to Trim Videos with YouTube's Video Editor [2020 Method]

Did you know that more than one person can manage a YouTube channel? And I'm going to show you exactly how to set those different roles up.

But first, there's an important distinction to make here, there are two types of channels. Personal YouTube channels, and brand accounts. Let's start with the personal channels first.

From most YouTube screens, click on your profile image in the top right-hand corner, and go to the YouTube studio.

From the new YouTube studio screen, you want to click on the settings button in the bottom left-hand corner.

And from this pop-up, you should see a permissions tab to the left. This will show you who has access to your YouTube channel To invite a new manager, click on the invite button in the top right-hand corner and type out email addresses to invite them to manage your channel.

Below that is an access drop-down which gives you four options. These access levels pretty much explain themselves. So, do make sure you trust the person you are inviting to your channel to do what these permissions give them access to. And just to clarify, since it's not 100% obvious here, __editor and above access means that these managers can upload videos to your YouTube channel. __

Once you are satisfied with your selection, click done, and the invitee should receive an email that they can accept within 30 days to become a manager of your YouTube channel.

On the same permissions page, you can update the access rights a manager has, by clicking on their current role. From this drop-down, you can also remove them as a manager from your YouTube channel completely.

That's how to add managers for personal accounts. But what about brand accounts? Well, first of all, you have to convert your YouTube channel into a brand account. And we've done a full tutorial on how to do this and the benefits of doing so. Take a watch now:

Let's take a look at how you add managers for a brand account:

We will start in the YouTube studio this time. But when you go to settings, you won't find a permissions tab on the left-hand side. Instead, you must go to the channel tab, followed by advanced settings at the top of this section, then down the bottom of this screen, you will want to choose manage your YouTube account.

From this screen, click on the add or remove managers link, and then click on the manage permissions button from this screen.

Now the next screen depends on what role you have on the channel. And it will give what you can actually do on this screen.

Those with owner access have full access to the YouTube channel, and can also change the permission of other managers on the channel. Managers have full access to the YouTube channel, while communication managers appear to be a bit redundant, as they have no access to YouTube at all.

I think in this instance, channel moderators would be classed as communication managers.

And of course, in the top right-hand corner of the permissions pop-up screen, you can invite new managers through email, and set up their permissions here as well from the drop-down.

The Difference Between YouTube Management Roles

Now a couple more tidbits to add to what you've already learned here. Managers on personal accounts can add and remove others. They are similar to owners in brand accounts. Yes, I know this gets a little bit complicated.

Also, managers for personal accounts cannot yet access the live control room, and they cannot access the personal account through the mobile studio app.

And one more thing for all types of channels, for the person who is invited to be a manager of a channel, make sure that you check the email is from YouTube before you click any links. There are all sorts of 

, make sure you don't fall for foul of one.

YouTube user roles icons showing owner, manager, editor, viewer, and added user

Did you know that more than one person can manage a YouTube channel, and that you can assign different permissions and roles depending on your needs? We show you how.

How to Add, Edit and Remove YouTube Channel Managers & Owners

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.

YouTube video titled "The Moment @MrBeast, @Mark Rober" with 1.8M views by vidIQ

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!

YouTube descriptions, what have they ever done for your video? Well, they could be doing a lot more, if you actually wrote something worthwhile in them, but the truth is most YouTubers don’t, so here are a couple of tips and tricks to help you write better YouTube video descriptions. First, let's go through the hierarchy of importance:

The most important hook you have to pull in the viewer, is the 

. That's going to stop them from swiping or scrolling through the videos that are suggested to them.

, which provides some clarity for the video,

 to find out just how important tags are)

So when it comes to marketing your video, make sure you put most of your time, energy and resources into the thumbnail and the title. But the description does have its uses, and we'll start with the beginning of your description.

7 Ways to Optimise Your YouTube Description Right Now

There’s something that I want to stress at this point. If you see huge channels not paying any attention to video descriptions and not writing anything in them, that doesn't mean that you should do exactly the same thing. Those super-channels have already made it on YouTube, and they can do whatever they like. But when you're a smaller channel, trying to grow, making a good description is one of those marginal gains that gives you one or two percent more reasons to click on your video, as opposed to another, similar video of a channel of a similar size.

1. Use the Right Keywords to be Found in Search

There are two reasons why the beginning of your description is important. First of all, YouTube scrapes those descriptions for keywords, and it may help your video appear in Search. The higher those keywords are in the description, the more likely they are to be found by YouTube.

Second of all, when people are searching through video content, they will see a snippet of your description, roughly the first 140 characters, so think of your description as a Tweet when you first start to write it. If you're not sure how to start your description, a good idea is to more or less repeat your title.

You've no doubt put in a lot of effort into your title, and included as many keywords in there as possible, so if you put that in your description, and then maybe riff on the title a little bit, add a question in there, or a few more keywords, that's a good starting point for your video description.

The next thing you want to do is to include a subscribe link to your channel somewhere near the top of the description. Think of it as a point of sale. Your viewer could be on the edge of subscribing to your channel, and they just need a little bit of encouragement, and seeing a subscribe link in your video description may persuade them to do just that.

And you can make it even easier for them with this little subscriber hack. Simply copy and paste your channel home page, and then add this bit of code to the end of it - ?sub_confirmation=1. When people click on it, it will give them an automatic pop-up to subscribe to your channel. This does only work on desktop computers, but on a mobile it will still tune in to your channel page, where your viewer may subscribe to you.

Next comes a paragraph where you can go into more detail about your video content. Again, this is where you want to be using as many keywords as possible, so that YouTube can identify your content with as many associated terms as possible, which helps you in Search.

This doesn't mean keyword stuffing, where you're simply adding tags to your video description, that's against Terms of Service. But it may mean you're writing natural sentences, with a bit of repetition of those keywords. If you want a good example of this, check out the video description of the video at the top of the post.

The next thing you can do which can be really helpful to viewers, especially on longer videos, is to use time stamps. Time stamps are very easy to create and work on both YouTube descriptions and YouTube comments. All you need to do is create a time with a colon, for example, if you put in 1:53, that creates a link that when you click or tap on it, it takes you to one minute 53 in the video.

Now, as I say, if you've got longer videos, then this can be a great way to break up the video, and it gives you another opportunity to include keywords in your video description. And, once again, if you look in the above video description, you'll see some examples of this.

Next, there's nothing wrong with earning a little bit of extra cash from your YouTube videos, from non-YouTube tools, and that includes affiliate links in your video description. As long as you follow the rules. To quickly explain affiliate links, these are links to products and services that you create, that if the viewer clicks on them and buys something from those sites, you will earn a little bit of commission.

A simple example of this might be including an affiliate's gear guide so you're telling all of your viewers the type of camera, lighting, and other things that you use in your videos, and it gives them the opportunity to buy exactly what you use, and you earn a little bit from that. But as a disclaimer, let me stress this. Make sure you check out all of the YouTube Community Guidelines on how to use affiliate links and sell products and services on your videos, because you don't want to get in trouble, and have a strike put against your channel.

Now it is likely that you'll want to include these affiliate links among many other things in all of your videos, and so that's where you can start to use upload defaults. You'll find this under Settings in the new Creator Studio, and there is a section called Upload defaults.

Essentially, Upload defaults is all of the stuff that you want to include in every single video, so it will appear below everything else that we've already talked about. As a good example, if you go to the bottom of our video description and work your way up, you will see lots of things that come from our upload defaults.

For us, it's a case of answering commonly-asked questions, such as who vidIQ are, whether we support multiple languages, how can we download vidIQ, and videos that may help you understand how to use our tools. We also include social media links in there, so that we can communicate with our audience, whether they're on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and tell them when we have new content on any of those platforms. Head on over to Upload defaults and start to amend yours.

If you want to include hashtags in your video above your title, you need to add those hashtags to your video description. You can use a maximum of three, and they will appear as blue words above your videos. Find out more about YouTube hashtags here:.

Something else to remember about video descriptions. If you change one of your video descriptions, it's not going to transform your channel overnight. This is a long-term game plan, you're trying to stack the deck in your favor. Constantly reinforcing the keywords that you use, including links to other videos in your description, and other playlists that send your viewers on a feedback loop throughout all of your content. You want to make it as easy as possible for your viewers to find your content, and then stay in your own little corner of YouTube, and that's helped through not only video descriptions, but cards and also endscreens.

Man thinking about YouTube video text with vidIQ branding and green arrow pointing up

Attention YouTubers - how much value are you getting out of your descriptions? It could be a whole lot more if you follow our tips, tricks and hacks!

YouTube Descriptions: 7 Essential Tips, Tricks, and Hacks

Welcome to the start of your future. Welcome to a world of self-discovery, creativity, influence, impact, stress (sometimes), fulfillment, and maybe even a career.

It's never too late to start a YouTube channel, but the longer you wait the harder it will be to grow. This video will help guide you through the reasons, the mindset, the strategies and the basic analytics of growing a YouTube channel from absolutely nothing.

 - Should I start a YouTube channel in 2019?

 - How to grow a channel with 0 views and 0 subscribers

 - How to grow your channel with a YouTube strategy

 - How to grow your channel by generating ideas

 - How to grow your channel by understanding analytics

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 

Man showing okay sign next to YouTube logo with green sprout and starter guide text

Want to start and grow a YouTube channel in 2019? This is your complete starter guide!

How to Start a YouTube Channel: The Ultimate Guide!

With the recent passing of Article 13 as part of the EU copyright reform law, many a video creators are asking themselves, “Could Article 13 kill YouTube?”

We’re hardly copyright experts here at vidIQ, but we clearly have a vested interest in how Article 13 will be interpreted and enforced in the coming months and years.

Here’s what we know so far, and where you can learn more about Article 13 and #SaveYourInternet.

Article 13 is part of European copyright legislation created with the intent to protect creators and their online content.

At the basis of Article 13 is the question, “Who has copyright ownership?”

What does Article 13 mean for video creators around the globe? Here’s what we know so far, and where you can learn more about Article 13 and #SaveYourInternet

YouTube Tips & Tricks