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

Valentine's Day is just weeks away and millions of viewers will be turning to YouTube for ideas around dinners, desserts, and decor as well as inspiration for gifts and ways to treat their other half.

Of course, this offers a massive opportunity for creators to publish the exact content viewers will be looking for. Let's take a look at the top keywords and terms around Valentine’s that users on YouTube have been searching for in the past 30 days.

If your strategy is to upload content about Valentine’s Day then you need to confirm the keywords users are searching for. We did our research using the invaluable 

, and the following are the most searched for Valentine’s keywords and phrases on YouTube right now:

When are Viewers Searching for Valentine's Content on YouTube?

Of course, as a creator, you should also know when people are searching for Valentine’s Day content so you can maximize your video’s viewing potential. As with any tentpole or holiday event, interest is often specifically seasonal.

, interest from viewers in Valentine’s Day starts to peak around the end of December and lasts right through to the beginning of March. No breaking news there of course but a great strategy would be to publish 2 to 4 weeks ahead of February 14th to attract those views and engagements.

Don’t forget that tentpole content is evergreen so if you’ve published any Valentine’s Day clips on YouTube in the past, and you believe the videos are still relevant, 

update your titles and custom thumbnails to see if can leverage the interest in the content

 that always comes this way this time of year.

Finding Opportunities to Create Valentine's Content on YouTube

When viewers are searching for content on YouTube, it’s usually with a specific topic or question in mind. They want an answer for something they’ve gone searching for, and will use a core keyword as a kickoff point for more ideas.

A look at most-searched-for keywords brings up a lot of search intent around Valentine’s Day decor, so let’s take a deeper dive into what viewers are interested in around this category:

Top 10 Valentine's Day Decor Keywords: YouTube

If you want an idea of the type of Valentine’s decor inspo that YouTube viewers love, take a look at this upload, published by IDunnGoddess on January 30th 2016. It has generated over 7.8M views to date:

Top 10 Valentine's Day Treats Keywords on YouTube

Valentine’s Day content about gifts and treats is also a total winner with viewers (and creators and publishers) on YouTube. Here are the top keywords in this category:

MissRemiAshten uploaded this 9:41 minute video a couple of days before Valentine’s Day 2016 which has attracted just under a million views to date:

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.

Valentine's Day is nearly upon us ❤️ Here are the most searched for keywords on YouTube around this romantic tentpole event.

Top 15 Valentine's Day Keywords on YouTube

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

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

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

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

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

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

Key to 100 YouTube Subscribers: Audience Trust

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

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

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

#1 Kick Off Your YouTube Channel with Enough Content

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

#2 Be Consistent and Focused from the Start

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How to Get Your First 100 Subscribers on YouTube

In November 2019, YouTube made platform-shaking changes that affected every channel. Suddenly every creator and publisher had to acknowledge whether their library of videos were 'made for kids' or not.

If you are out of the loop, you can quickly catch up by reading our '

11 Things You Need to Know About COPPA and Kid's Content on YouTube

Part of the announcement was confirmation of the type of video content that YouTube considered made for, and consumed by, children under 13. Creators are now asked to indicate whether their channel or videos are subject to the following guidelines:

What is the subject matter of your video?

Whether children are your intended audience for the video

Whether the video includes child actors or models

Whether the video includes characters, celebrities or toys that appeal to children, including animated characters or cartoon figures.

Whether the language of the video is intended for children to understand

Whether the video includes activities that appeal to children

Whether the video includes songs, stories, or poems that appeal to children

The 7 Types of 'Made for Kids' Content on YouTube

Although there are many channels who are publishing content that's not necessarily created directly for a young audience, those videos are being watched by a younger audience. That's a fine line that millions of channels are now struggling with. One thing we do know for sure is the kind of content that very clearly 

 fall within the new guidelines. Let's take a look at each of the seven categories with examples.

#1 What is the Subject Matter of the Video?

While education is a life long pursuit, many of us past of the age of 13 know our colors so wouldn't independently watch a video about that - especially if the learning mode was via the medium of ice cream and soccer balls.

Given that this channel is called 'Kid's Camp' and the topic is learning the names of different colors, this is a perfect example of an educational video made especially for younger children.

#2 Whether Children are Your Intended Audience for the Video

While many of us carry our love of fairy tales and other bedtime stories into adulthood, the vast majority of this content on YouTube is aimed at young children.

This video from the 'Fairy Tales and Stories for Kids' YouTube channel uses simple animation to tell the story of Rapunzel, and is also clearly labelled as kid-focused content.

#3 Whether the Video Includes Child Actors or Models

While this one can be a little trickier (there's a lot of TV and movie content on YouTube that includes child actors for example), children themselves are often the main focus of a video clip and that's what the new COPPA rules are picking up on.

Children like to watch other children pretend play or act out stories that they can either join along with or watch passively. We went with a very clear example of a child in front of the camera with the ubiquitous Ryan of Ryan Toy's Review and other franchises.

Ryan has always been the main focus of any video his channel publishes so this is a slam-dunk example of the use of a child in the content.

#4 Whether the Video Includes Characters, Celebrities or Toys That Appeal to Children including Animated Characters or Cartoon Figures

Kids content on YouTube is one of the top 10 most-popular verticals and we've seen hundreds of thousands of channels launch over the past few years that have leveraged the interest in the topic.

With pretend play, unboxing, and even slime videos using characters, celebrities, or toys that appeal to children generating millions of views, it's easy to see why YouTube has confirmed this type of content falls squarely in the 'made for kids' content category.

#5 Whether the Language of the Video is Intended for Children to Understand

Did you know that some American children are 

Whether that's true or not, we know that the language used in the 'Peppa Pig' videos 

 absolutely intended for children to understand. Think about whether your own videos do if you're unsure whether they should be classed as made specifically for children or not.

#6 Whether the Video Includes Activities That Appeal to Children

Of course we were always going to include 'Baby Shark' as an example somewhere, and it actually perfectly illustrates the concept of including activities that appeal to children.

Repeat after me now - "doo doo doo doo doo doo, doo doo doo doo doo doo, doo doo doo doo doo doo, Baby shark!"

#7 Whether the Video Includes Songs, Stories or Poems That Appeal to Children

Nursery rhyme videos are the perfect storm of content that appeals to young kids. With their bouncy mix of music and colorful images, it's hard to imagine a genre that appeals to children more.

We're not saying that the longer-form clips of this type of content have been used to entertain kids for hours on end. But we're not saying that they haven't been either. YouTube and the FTC know that babies and toddlers are lapping this kind of stuff up which is why it's being excluded from the new rules around data collection.

Do you know the 7 very specific types of content that YouTube now considers 'Made for Kids' under the new COPPA rules? We break them down.

The 7 Types of 'Made for Kids' Content on YouTube Under #COPPA

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Video That Went Unintentionally Viral on YouTube

One of those videos in that series was this:

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

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

How to Download a YouTube video 2019: New Method

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How the Video Title Got us into Trouble With YouTube

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Do Clickbait Videos Attract More Views on YouTube?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Top 15 Valentine's Day Keywords on YouTube

Carla Marshall

How to Get Your First 100 Subscribers on YouTube

Rob Wilson

The 7 Types of 'Made for Kids' Content on YouTube Under #COPPA

Carla Marshall

Did We Clickbait YouTube? [An Unintentional Case Study]

Rob Wilson

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

Rob Wilson

6 Killer Productivity Tips for YouTube Success in 2020: TubeTalk 197 with Rac...

Liron Segev

How Much YouTube Paid Me for Doing ABSOLUTELY NOTHING!

Rob Wilson

YouTube Viewer Applause: Could THIS Make you MORE MONEY FASTER?

Rob Wilson

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

Rob Wilson

Everything You Wanted to Know About Working with an MCN: TubeTalk 198 with Sh...

Liron Segev