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

Have you ever watched a YouTube ad knowing full well that it's an ad, but it's so well done that you don't mind sitting and watching the entire thing? Yep, me too. So today on 

, we speak to one of those companies who does this really well and they are going to be sharing tips and tricks on how to keep an audience engaged. Let's learn from them.

We know that one of the best ways to keep your YouTube channel growing is to build a very engaged audience. The problem that we most of us face is that we launch a video, we think we did a good job, but we look at our retention graph and realize the audience has left really, really early on.

So, you have to wonder how do these companies get that engagement to the point where viewers actually want to hit that subscribe button or buy their product. I’m joined by Rob Towne, Director of Performance Marketing at 

 to understand how can a video titled ‘

How to Use a Raw Egg to Determine if Your Mattress is Awful

’ got 182 million views. In this episode you will learn:

Why storytelling is at the heart of a great YouTube ad

Why you need to identify your audience before you start advertising to them

How your audience is a collective with many needs and requirements

Subscribe to TubeTalk: The Video Marketing Podcast!

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

How to Make a YouTube Ad That's Good Enough to Watch: Full Transcript

Liron Segev: Rob you're on YouTube, but your guys sell mattresses. What's going up? Tell us about your channel.

Rob Towne: So I joined Purple about a year plus ago, and the YouTube channel had 100K subscribers when I came on board, now it’s up to 175,000. And even to me that was surprising because I come from a background of LinkedIn advertising for B2B companies and things like that. But the fact that Purple's found such success with what they're doing on YouTube, I think we've done a great job of using that as an opportunity to both entertain and educate.

And mattress is a noisy space. So people are always talking about it's comfortable or whatnot. But what we're doing there is we're trying to entertain and show people how ours is different from all the rest.

Liron Segev: All right. So for those who don't know what the Purple brand is, how would you describe that?

Rob Towne: So the Purple brand and the way that we express ourselves, we don't take ourselves too seriously. We have a lot of fun with it. I mean, there's decades of innovation and rocket science that into the actual product itself. We have medical patents that have been used by the co-founders before they moved over and started Purple as a direct to consumer company. But in essence, it's the idea that sleep doesn't have to be something that you dread. You don't have to wake up in pain every morning.

And for a lot of people, they can improve their whole quality of life and their sleeping. People aren't just trying to go to bed and then wake up in the morning and do nothing. They have something that they're passionate about. So we just want to help people to be better at living those lives that they want to live their best life. And that's by bringing them a better opportunity to sleep on something that's different than anything they've ever experienced.

Liron Segev: Do mattresses and pillows have a place on YouTube? Because YouTube is all about GoPros, vlogging, foodies and techies doing their thing, but a mattress company is essentially doing really, really well on the platform.

Rob Towne: So that's really exciting for us. And so we think that for anybody who's looking on YouTube, whatever they're into, our audience is anyone who sleeps because we can just give them a better experience in life.

Liron Segev: And essentially that's pretty much everybody.

Rob Towne: Yeah, exactly. And so we've seen that people love our videos. In a pre-roll situation, anyone can skip after five seconds but our average watch time is over a minute. People are actually enjoying what we're putting in front of them.

We have over a billion minutes watched on YouTube, and so it's an exciting place to be where we see people aren't just watching it and skipping it. They're watching it for a continued duration. They're subscribing to our channel and they're sharing it with their friends. So we have a lot of earned views on top of the paid views.

Liron Segev: It's not your typical content that you would expect to find on YouTube. And yet the content is so appealing. People are not only watching, but they're also subscribing. So down to good old content, content, content, content.

Rob Towne: Exactly. And I can't say enough about the team that we have that's so creative and works really hard to put out these videos that are amazing and incredible. We've collaborated with other production studios in the past. We've been flying out to different cities to do shoots on-site and really it comes down to the creative direction and what we're going to put out there.

Our writers, our videographers, the great acting talent that goes behind it has really helped us to be in a position where we're not just telling our story and we're not just talking about the technology, but we're giving people something that they enjoy and they're going to come back for more.

Liron Segev: So take us through that process if you can, from the time that somebody comes up with an idea, what do you guys do to flesh it out to see whether it's worthwhile doing?

Rob Towne: That's a great question. Any of our products before their launch, there's a lot of research that goes into them. I mean we're looking at competitors out there, we're seeing what's on the market and what's not on the market. We're seeing where there's frustrations where people are saying, oh, for instance, if you've got a pillow, people love that feeling of turning the pillow over and finding the cool side of the pillow.

Well, what if both sides were always cool and they never heat it up? Like how can we solve some of these issues for people so that they never have to worry about it again? And then once we have that idea, we get our research involved and then we start to take different materials testing.

We're flying internationally, pulling in textile samples, building in our lab, everything that we produce, we have 900 plus employees, just in the state of Utah where we're manufacturing a lot of stuff. We're innovating in our labs so R&D is a huge part of what we do. And so we take it from an idea to some conceptualization and testing and then we put it in front of customers and we do some in-home product use because a mattress or a pillow or something isn't going to give you a full experience when you just sit or lay on it for a minute in the store, you've got to actually experience it for weeks on end in your home.

And so we put it out in front of people. If they give feedback, we tweak it, we improve it until we get to the point that we're very proud of this product that we're putting out. We're very confident that it's going to be successful. And from then on it's just about awareness and helping people know that we've got something.

Liron Segev: Speaking of the awareness part, now that you've got the product, you have confidence, you want more people to be aware of it, what's the next step to get it onto the YouTube, into advertising, into in front of people?

Rob Towne: I think any company needs to really look at what type of impact they're having. Well, first know who your audience is. If you don't know who your audience is and you're speaking to the wrong demographic, then you're not going to get anywhere. But once you know who your audience is, they still are not a single individual. There's still a collective and there's a lot of different purposes that people have in their lives. What emotion strikes them most? What benefits and features are going to matter most to them?

So we found, for instance, if we're looking at just our mattress line of products, there is a huge consideration in across device tracking of the different things. But when we're looking at across spouse conversion tracking, that gets even harder.

So we consider that somebody is in the market for a mattress, but it might be the male of the household who ends up making a purchase. Well, that's being highly influenced by a female who's in the house. So we're strategically guiding our message towards that her. She's really essential in the buying process and we need to make sure that we're speaking to her.

And so from our evolution of growing as a company, from a single Kickstarter to where we are today, we need to keep that in mind in our messaging that we're making sure we're hitting the right target audience and that we're bringing them the right message.

Liron Segev: Do you work with influencers? Do you work with people that are out there that have got audiences that you maybe you want to tap into those audiences? What's your process around that?

Rob Towne: Yeah, 100%. We love working with all of the influencers because they know their audience best. They've reached out to people in very authentic ways and so because our product might take a little bit of understanding, it's unlike anything out there on the market. They're able to tell the story a little bit more than we can if we just give somebody a 15, 31 minute video kind of advertisement.

We want people who can authentically speak about their experience. Then we'll work with them to be able to tell the story of what makes sense best for them. I was talking to somebody earlier and saying, for some they're just doing a house tour and they're talking about improving the room. For others they're very adventurous. They're riding dirt bikes and mountain bikes and they'll take their old mattress and tow it behind a pickup truck in the grass and then talk about it in their own way.

We just love to be that kind of brand that's easy to work with and we're not going to dictate the story. You know your audience best. You know your content best. We're going to trust you to tell that as long as it's a brand safe, family friendly type of way, we'll let you kind of go in the direction that makes sense.

Liron Segev: And that's perfect. Being authentic is number one in any advertising place.

Rob Towne: It's just super easy for the audience to see through when you're not being authentic.

Liron Segev: You've got some guidelines for influencers being family-friendly in line with your brands and what you expect that you would be safe to watch. But they know their audience, and you let them serve out that content that makes the most sense. And some of it's going to work really well. Some of it maybe not so much as you expected, but it's about learning, adapting and rinse and repeat until you get it right.

Rob Towne: And there are some times where I would totally not expect something to work out the way that it does, but I'm so excited when I can allow a creator, somebody who's already on YouTube to just run with an idea. They bring it to us and we talk about a little bit and I'll say, listen, I couldn't have thought of anything that was as good as you just came up with right now. Go for it. We'll see how the results look. And more often than not, it surprises me as having very positive return on investment.

Liron Segev: And how do you track that return on investment? Is it from an affiliate link or do you look at video views? What are your metrics?

Rob Towne: Yeah, I mean depending on who we're working with and what type of a deal we've negotiated, we'll have an affiliate situation where somebody can continue to earn revenue years on after. I mean that's a great thing about YouTube is it's evergreen. So when we get an affiliate link into the description and somebody chats about that in their video, they just say, hey, look at the link in the description for the best deal. That can just go on and they keep on getting these royalty checks month after month after month.

For others, they'll be more interested in taking an upfront type of deal and we'll say, how about we work with you, if you're the right size, you're the right brand and we'll outfit your family or you and your spouse with a good set of products.

And then we work with them on that set and for us then we just kind of measure the cost of those goods against what type of sales, revenue and profitability we have. In some cases, we have to work with a lot of small creators to get a lot of small progress. Sometimes we'll work with a large creator where there's a higher level of investment. Obviously, we have a higher return that we expect on that higher investment. And the biggest thing for us is not just number of subscribers but it's the engagement. Are those users going to actually listen to you and take some type of action off of it?

We don't expect you to be like a salesperson in a mattress store because that's what we're trying to avoid. We're trying to fix that broken system. But if somebody's listening to you and they're really qualified audience, then they'll just guide themselves through the rest of the process.

Liron Segev: Totally, totally love it. If people want more information, where should they be looking out? What's your website? What's your YouTube channel?

 you can find all of our latest products. If you look on YouTube for the brand Purple, 

. I mean it's really exciting to have over a billion views and so many videos out there with millions and millions of views. So if anyone wants to go check it out, subscribe, we'd love to hit 200,000 it was great mile mark for us to hit the milestone of 100,000. So we're just really excited where we are.

Liron Segev: A lot of it is very, very funny. People watch it for the entertainment value and it's absolutely amazing. Definitely go check out the website. Definitely go check out the YouTube, hit that subscribe button and then thank you for hanging out with us on TubeTalk.

Rob Towne: Thank you so much. It's been great being here.

Want to know how to create ads and other branded content on YouTube that really connects with your audience? Find out on this week's TubeTalk.

How to Make a YouTube Ad That's Good Enough to Watch: TubeTalk 189 with Rob Towne of Purple

YouTube has introduced some brand new audience settings that require you, the video creator, to tell your viewers whether or not your content is made for kids. If you don't set this up properly under the 

, you could see your channel terminated and, worse, receive a fine of over $42,000. So let's avoid all of that by checking out this beginner’s guide.

Starting from now and moving into 2020 you are responsible for labeling your YouTube video content as made for kids or not. You can either set this at a channel level or for each video you upload to YouTube. If you don't do this YouTube may automatically label your content. So let's get ahead of the game.

How to Label Your YouTube Content as 'Made for Kids' - Or Not

Click on your profile logo from any YouTube page and go into the YouTube Studio link.

In the YouTube Creator Studio dashboard, click on 'Settings' to display a pop-up, then click on 'Channel' followed by the 'Advanced Settings' tab at the top.

This 'Audience' section of your channel settings is where you can set whether or not all of your existing videos and future videos are made for kids.

As stated in the wording, you are now legally required to comply with COPPA and other laws so you can't just ignore these settings. If you set your channel to yes, the channel is made for kids a brief overview of what features won't be available to you are listed.

If you choose the bottom option you will need to select whether or not each video is made for kids when you upload it to YouTube.

You can set individual videos as made for kids or not, and this will override the channel settings. To do this:

Go to the 'Video' section of the Creator Studio.

Click the checkbox next to each video you want to adjust and then click 'Edit' from the toolbar to display a drop-down of options and then select 'Audience.'

You'll get two options at this point so you can choose the appropriate label for the selected videos whether or not they are made for kids.

If you need to get more information about the video before you label it you can click on it to go to video details for that specific video and about halfway down the screen you will see the saying Audience Settings. You will also see an additional option to age restrict the video for an adult audience.

As already mentioned, when you upload new content to YouTube you will also have the chance to label your content as made for kids or not, which will again override your channel default, if required. This appears on the first details page of the new upload workflow towards the bottom of the screen.

Mobile Settings for YouTube 'Made for Kids' Videos

If you are a mobile YouTuber, as of time of writing, there doesn't appear to be a way to select a ‘Made for Kids’ setting at a channel level on a mobile device. But you can still do it for individual videos through the Creator Studio app on both Android and IOS.

Tap on the menu in the top left-hand corne

Go to ‘Videos’, then tap on the video you want to review.

You will then see a pencil icon towards the top right, tap on that, choose ‘Advanced Settings’ at the top and you should find the ‘Audience’ setting on this screen.

If you upload a video to YouTube via the mobile app you do not have any option to set the audience for the video and it will just direct you to the Creators Studio app.

However, if you want to post a live stream from the mobile app you can set the audience. Currently, this all feels a little clunky so expect YouTube to refine this experience for mobile YouTubers. And, just to confirm, if you live stream onto YouTube from a desktop computer you will also have the option to set your audience made for kids, or not.

Why All the New Rules Around ‘Made for Kids’ Content on YouTube?

The reason you have to confirm your audience settings on YouTube now is because the platform was fined $180M by the Federal Trade Commission for violating the children's online privacy and protection act in the US. From now on any videos marked as ‘Made for Kids' on YouTube will not show personalized ads to the viewer because they won't be collecting any data from the viewer as they watch the video. Because it's presumably for children under the age of 13.

And through all of these settings YouTube is making sure that you as the video creator are responsible for determining whether the content is made for kids. Now as of the time of writing this story is still developing and we don't want to go too much into detail in this beginner’s guide. So to get right up to date with everything that's happening with this story check out this 

The big question you are probably asking right now is, what is classified as made for kids? Here are the current broad guidelines:

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.

And whether the video includes songs, stories, or poems that appeal to children.

Now we appreciate this is not a catch-all list, especially for gaming channels. But information surrounding this at the moment is a little thin on the ground. YouTube have only guidelines and they suggest to you to seek legal advice.

In future videos we plan to show you examples of channels and videos that are classed as made for kids. So subscribe to 

 and make sure to click on our notification bell so you don't miss any of our content.

The key thing for you now as a video creator is to be aware of these settings and to the best of your current knowledge set them as appropriately as you can.

And perhaps, most importantly of all, don't panic. This is going to be a learning curve for everybody. YouTube, video creators, and viewers. It's going to take some time to adjust. The last thing that we want to happen to you is to be caught cold by these settings or to quit YouTube completely because your too afraid of what it might mean for your channel.

Overwhelmed by the new YouTube rules about kid's content? Check out our quick and easy beginner's guide to protecting your YouTube channel under COPPA.

How To Protect Your YouTube Channel Under COPPA [Beginner's Guide]

has clarified the rules around kid’s content on YouTube

 because there has been huge confusion and chaos-inducing panic for a lot of creators as they just don't understand what content is appropriate for children or not. A new document tries to explain it and we're going to look through it right now.

FTC, COPPA & YouTube: What is it All About?

To very quickly summarize, YouTube has been collecting data on children under the age of 13, which violates the Children's Online Privacy and Protection Act in the U.S. As a result, the FTC has fined YouTube. And now we as video creators must all decide whether or not our content is made for kids. We have a growing 

 that go into all sorts of details about this issue so please check them out.

, how do I know if my channel is directed to children? Let’s cover what I think are the important points and expand on them.

For example, YouTube and Google agreed to create a mechanism so that channel owners can designate when the videos they upload to YouTube are, to use the words of COPPA, directed to children. The purpose of this requirement is to make sure that both YouTube and channel owners, or content creators, are complying with the law. That mechanism is this audience setting that you can set at either a channel level or by individual video, on whether or not your content is made for kids.

You can't avoid these settings, even if you don't live in the U.S. because your content may be viewed by children in the U.S. and YouTube's sneakily added the wording "and/or other laws" in there as well, just to cover every country, every planet, ever solar system, every galaxy in the entire universe.

Now up until a couple of months ago, I, along with every single person watching this video, had no idea who or what COPPA is. So, to briefly explain, passed by Congress in 1998, the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act is a federal law that protects the privacy of children under 13.

COPPA's foundational principle is one that most people can agree on. Parents - not kids, companies, platforms, or content creators - should be in control when it comes to information collected from children online. The FTC, that's the Federal Trade Commission, enforces the law through the COPPA rule. In general, COPPA requires operators of commercial websites and online services, that are directed to children, to provide notice and obtain variable parental consents.

In general, COPPA requires operators of commercial websites and online services, that are directed to children, to provide notice and obtain variable parental consent, before they collect personal information from kids under 13.

Under COPPA, personal information also covers what are called "persistent identifiers". Behind the scenes code that recognizes a user over time and across different sites or online services. That could be an IP address or a cookie when it's used to serve targeted ads.

Now on the face of it, that would seem pretty self-evident and relatively easy to implement even on a platform the size of YouTube because YouTube for years has clearly stated in their Terms of Service that in order to use YouTube and sign in to the platform, you must be over the age of 13. However, the information YouTube has been providing to potential brands and advertisers has been somewhat contradictory.

According to evidence provided by the FTC, Google presented the following information to toy manufacturers Mattel and Hasbro; 93% of tweens visit YouTube, it's a favorite website of those aged between 2 and 12, it's today's leader in reaching 6 to 11-year-olds. It would appear that YouTube must have been collecting the data somewhere as the FTC states, YouTube actively marked itself as a top destination for kids in presentations to makers of popular children's products and brands.

So you've got an idea of what COPPA is and the fact that the FTC enforces this and why they have a big beef with YouTube because YouTube has been telling advertisers exactly why their platform is so popular with children. But what does any of this have to do with you?

YouTube Creators and the COPPA Guidelines

COPPA applies in the same way it would if a channel owner had it's own website or app. If a channel owner uploads content to a platform like YouTube, the channel might meet the definition of a website or an online service covered by COPPA depending on the nature of the content and the information collected.

Or to put it another way, to begin with, you are a video content creator. But you need a platform to distribute your content on, and that's where YouTube comes in to play. But once you start using YouTube, you are taking advantage of all of their features and tools and the identifiers they use to collect information on the internet.

That might be cookies, and once you put your hand in that cookie jar and you discover that there are children under the age of 13 in there, that's where the FTC comes in to play. You're the FTC, this is a cookie from YouTube. And now it's game over. That's $170 million fine right there. And this is where YouTube doesn’t want to pay any more fines.

Which is why this terrifying number of $42,530 keeps cropping up. That's the maximum penalty the FTC can levy on you for every single video on your channel that violates COPPA. So you as an individual need to understand what content makes it directed to children and so far, we haven't really got any help from YouTube. They've said get legal advice, but who can afford that? So here is some information from the FTC themselves:

How YouTube channel owners can determine if their content is directed to children

Under COPPA, the FTC confirms that there is “no one-size-fits-all answer about what makes a site directed to children.” Phew, thank you for saying that, you've at least acknowledged that it is very difficult to determine what is kid’s content for the individual. But they can offer some guidance.

To be clear, your content isn't considered directed to children just because some children may see it.

And we'll come back to that a little later because there is more information coming out about audience guidance with content. However, if your intended audience is kids under 13, you're covered by COPPA and have to honor the Rule's requirements. The Rules set out additional factors the FTC will consider in determining whether your content is child-directed.

The subject matter, visual content, the use of animated characters or child-oriented activities and incentives, the kind of music or other audio content, the age of models, the presence of child celebrities or celebrities who appeal to children, language or other characteristics on the site, whether advertising that promotes or appears on the site is directed to children, and competent and reliable empirical evidence about the age of the audience.

These seem a bit broad and not just leveled towards YouTube which still makes it all a bit vague. And with that general vagueness and confusion in mind, the FTC are delighted to share some general rules of thumb that are as follows:

First, unless you're affirmatively targeting kids, there are many subject matter categories where you don't have to worry about COPPA. For example, if your videos are about traditionally adult activities like employment, finances, politics, homeownership, home improvement, or travel, you're probably not covered unless your content is geared towards kids. The same would be true for videos aimed at high school or college students. On the other hand, if your content includes traditional children's pastimes or activities, it may be child-directed.

Second, just because your video has bright colors, or animated characters, doesn't mean you're automatically covered by COPPA. While many animated shows are directed at kids, the FTC recognizes there can be animated programming that appeals to everyone.

vidIQ created an animated series of videos

. One on Steve Dotto, the other one on Ohana Adventures. They were animated, but were they directed at kids or does it depend on the subject matter? PrestonPlayz was one of those animated videos, he's into gaming and perhaps a younger audience. Would that have appealed to kids? Or video creators? Again, it still leads to a lot of unanswered questions.

This next example might be the most simple and concrete one to understand. But at the same time, worryingly reveals the level of sophistication that might be used by the FTC to determine whether or not your content is appropriate for children. For example, many content creators explicitly stated in the about section of their YouTube channel, that their intended audience was children under 13.

I've already innocently joked about this in other videos that just by putting a disclaimer on the screen saying that the content is not appropriate for under 13s wouldn't wash with the FTC. But apparently sticking that in your about section of your channel is absolutely fine.

If a content creator uses certain keywords in their metadata, tags and title descriptions, then the videos are more likely to be found by a certain target audience. For example, if you include ‘Barbie Doll’ in the video title, then it's likely to be found by girls between the ages of maybe 4 and 13 at a rough guess. But does that mean that creators might be banned from using certain keywords that might appeal to children under the age of 13? Surely not.

Take NerdSync's example of "Why the Ducktales Song sticks in your head". That song is still stuck in my head, 30 years after I watched the original cartoon. NerdSync's video on it, is a deep educational insight into why that is. I don't think that video would necessarily appeal to children under the age of 13 because it's for the retro version of the cartoon and it's so complex that it might be boring for kids. But it uses Ducktails as a keyword, so this gets very confusing, and very cloudy in its judgment the moment you un-peel a layer of any of these examples.

Is Your YouTube Content ‘Made for Kids’? Ask Your Audience

And if all of these examples do fail to give you an answer on your content, the FTC suggests that you indirectly canvas your audience. It might help to consider how others view your content and content similar to yours.

For example, has your channel been reviewed on sites that evaluate kid’s content? Is your channel, or channels like yours, mentioned in blogs for parents or young children or in media articles about child-directed content? Have you surveyed your users or is there other empirical evidence about the age of your audience?

I've got an issue with surveying your audience because YouTube is going to remove all of the tools that allow you to do that on your channel such as comments and the community tab and notifications, false subscribers. It's a "Catch 22" situation to be honest.

I would also venture to say that the vast majority of channels never get the privilege of being featured on blogs or reviewed by websites. So is that a bit of an insight into who the FTC is going to go after? Those being larger channels, well established, probably already know who their target audience is but are creating content regardless of the rules and regulations.

The more and more I read of this and dive into the FTC, COPPA, YouTube rabbit hole, the more I feel as if everything I say to you is my interpretation of what's out there. And I don't feel as if any of it is true fact, and to be honest, I think until we start to see concrete examples in 2020 of channels being affected by this, we're all trying to go forward with 30 maybe 40% of the actual information that we need. We'll continue to do content on this but man, this is hard stuff. And I think a lot of channels are in for some rude awakenings. But on the other hand, it could turn into a complete red herring and affect far fewer channels than we expect.

I think it all hinges on the gaming area of YouTube. A huge area with lots of creators really worried about whether gaming content is classed as children's' content. That's going to be the litmus test I think. What happens in that area.

I want to return to the topic of the audience now. YouTube asks a very simple question to the video creator. Is your content made for kids or not? As we've shown in the examples here and research that we've all been doing, the answer is a lot more complicated and broad for most channels. Take Dude Perfect as a highlight example. Their content of trick shots appeals to both an audience young and old. I can enjoy it as much as a seven-year-old child. Just in slightly different ways. So what is the answer for Dude Perfect? YouTube give you a very binary choice but, according to COPPA, there's a lot more leeway in how you as a channel creator can interpret that question. And answer it.

In a frequently asked section on the FTC website, they say COPPA only covers information collected online from children. It does not cover information collected from adults that may pertain to children. Thus COPPA is not triggered by an adult uploading photos of children on a general audience site or in a non-child directed portion of a mixed audience website.

Non-child portion of a mixed audience website? Normal YouTube where you have to be over the age of 13 to sign up. Doesn't that mean that most of the content in that area of YouTube should, by definition, be mixed audience anyway? I genuinely don't know the answer to that. I would probably have to speak to a lawyer, one such as Ian Corzine who I have to give all of the credit for again for much of what I'm talking about here.

And I will also say just as a general YouTube strategy, all he's doing right now is making content on COPPA, the FTC. He's a social media lawyer channel at large covering many topics but because this is such a powerful trend right now he is doubling down on this content. And profiting from hundreds of thousands of views. It's a clear example of when YouTube decides that you are the ambassador or the fore leader for something ironically that's really giving YouTube a hammering right now, you should continue to make content on that subject. This is exactly what Ian is doing so do make sure to check out the channel. Really worth investing some time in there.

The FTC has clarified some aspects of the new COPPA ruling about your YouTube channel including how to determine whether your content is directed towards children.

Is Your YouTube Content Made for Children? New FTC COPPA Rules

How are the new FTC and COPPA rulings going to affect your YouTube journey? Are you going to get your channel in order and continue to eat, sleep, create, and repeat or are you so terrified at the possible consequences for you personally that you're going to stop YouTube and even delete your channel? With that question being asked, there may be a third option.

There's a rule called COPPA that the FTC enforce and YouTube have been found by the FTC to have been breaking that rule. They've been hit with a huge fine and now they're asking all video creators to sort out their content into ‘Made for Kids’ or not. If you don't do this, you face a potential channel termination and fines personally liable to you. For more information about COPPA, take a look at our 

Done with YouTube? How to Delete Your Channel

If you are still reeling from the new COPPA ruling for YouTube creators you may be considering 'hiding' your channel while you decide your strategy. We tell you why this isn't the best idea.

How to Make a YouTube Ad That's Good Enough to Watch: TubeTalk 189 with Rob T...

Liron Segev

How To Protect Your YouTube Channel Under COPPA [Beginner's Guide]

Rob Wilson

Is Your YouTube Content Made for Children? New FTC COPPA Rules

Rob Wilson

How to 'Hide' Your YouTube Channel From the FTC and COPPA... But Should You?

Rob Wilson

How Likely Are You to Receive a $42,530 Fine Under YouTube's FTC COPPA Rules?

Rob Wilson

vidIQ for YouTube: Firefox Extension is Now Live for All Users!

Rob Wilson

How We Grew the vidIQ YouTube Channel to 450K Subscribers: TubeTalk 194: Rob ...

Liron Segev

4 Common Mistakes YouTubers Make (And How to Correct Them FAST!)

Liron Segev

Advanced Video Strategies for Building an Authentic Personal Brand: TubeTalk ...

Liron Segev

Online Video 2020: Tips and Predictions from vidIQ

Carla Marshall