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

Did you know you can restrict certain ads so they don't run against your videos if you have monetized your channel? Many creators aren’t aware of this feature, but it comes in handy when you want to keep your channel controversy-free.

Right now, political campaigns and religious beliefs are two of the most heavily debated topics on the internet. There’s a 2020 presidential election approaching in the U.S., and year-round, religious debates float from one corner of the internet to the next. By blocking such ads, you can stop awkward, sometimes off-putting messages from reaching your viewers.

Want to restrict these ads right now? Here’s what you need to do.

How to Block Unwanted Ads on Your YouTube Videos

 account.
2. Once you’re in, select ‘Blocking Controls’ from the left menu.
3. In the expanded menu below ‘Blocking Controls’, click ‘YouTube Host’.
4. In the new page that opens, click the ‘Sensitive Categories’ block in the middle of the screen.
5. Next, you'll see a list of ad topics. Disable the ones you don’t want to see by switching the toggle button from ‘Allowed’ to ‘Blocked’.

Want a visual rundown of these instructions? Watch our video tutorial for helpful screenshots highlighting exactly where to click:

From drugs and supplements to get rich quick schemes, the list of ads you can block or allow is pretty long. Scroll to the bottom, and you’ll even see which ads may appear on YouTube videos that are already ad-restricted, such as alcohol and gambling.

If you want, you get really granular and block specific websites from advertising on your channel. To do that, return to the previous page and click ‘Advertiser URLs’ in the middle of the screen. From here, you can type in any URL and block ads that lead to those websites.

Lastly, you can restrict entire advertising categories on your channel. Simply return to the previous page, click ‘General Categories’, and explore all the topics you’d like to block. There are layers upon layers to choose from, so you have tons of customization options here. For example, you can click ‘Beauty & Personal Care’, and that brings up another list of topics to consider. You could end up disabling ads about deodorant, shaving cream, toothpaste, or whatever you’d like to eliminate, as shown below:

What to Consider Before Blocking YouTube Advertisers

As you explore your AdSense account, keep in mind that restricting or allowing certain ads is a balancing act. Of course, it makes sense to restrict advertisers when you don't like what they’re promoting. But at the same time, you don't want to under-monetize your videos to keep one advertiser away. Just remember to handle your selections with care!

In addition to that, here are some extra things to know:

- If you’ve joined a multichannel network (MCN), you may not be able to block ads via AdSense. Instead, contact the network directly.
- Be careful when blocking entire ad categories. You may accidentally restrict ads you’re perfectly happy with.
- If you decide to block an ad category, bookmark the AdSense website, and set a reminder to check those categories in a few months. You don’t want to lose tons of money by accident!

Placing ads on your videos may seem like an easy, innocent thing. However, we sometimes forget the consequences of this practice. We know ads can earn creators money, but in the long run, no one knows which ads will play. If you have strong ethical beliefs and don’t want to see these ads, do what you feel is right - even if that means turning them off.

If you want to take your YouTube channel to the next level and get more views on YouTube then make sure to 

. Join over 1 million other users and use vidIQ to help you research YouTube, analyze videos, audit your own channel, and take actionable steps to succeed.  ​ ​ ​

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.

Tired of seeing cringey political messages and other sensitive ads on your videos? Block them from your channel in five easy steps.

How to Block Unwanted Ads on Your YouTube Content

Creators think they have to always be in front of the camera to be successful on YouTube, but that's not always the case. On this week's episode, I chat with Jessica Hatch, the CEO of Gone To The Snow Dogs, a phenomenal channel where the main "stars" are her dogs!

 so clearly Jessica has figured out what her audience wants and how to use the YouTube algorithm in her favor. On today's episode you will learn:

Can you share too much with your audience?

The Analytics that you should be focused on

Recreating content that already works is a great strategy

 to listen to Jessica's advice, and don't forget to give her social channels a follow!

What to do When You're Feeling Stressed as a YouTuber

Creator Burnout is a very real thing, and on this 

, four YouTubers will be discussing their journey and what happens when its time to take a break.

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. Don't forget to 

 to TubeTalk on your favorite podcast app so you never miss an episode!

You can also find the complete list of all the 

Did you know? You don't even have to appear in front of the camera to be a successful YouTube creator. Find out more in this week's episode of vidIQ's TubeTalk podcast.

Why You Don't Need to Be On Camera to Be a YouTube Sensation

Halloween is one of the biggest and most celebrated tentpole events of the year, and thousands of creators have already been publishing content around the topic on YouTube. There are still major opportunities to create videos about the holiday - but what keywords and terms have YouTube users been searching for around this event in the last 30 days? Let's dive in.

If you plan on a Halloween inspired video then you need to know what keywords YouTube viewers are searching for. You should also know when they are searching for that content so you can maximize your video’s viewing potential. Using the invaluable 

, we can confirm that the following are the most searched for Halloween keywords and phrases on YouTube right now:

When are Viewers Searching for Halloween Content on YouTube?

YouTube is an extraordinary place to find content on almost any subject under the sun. But interest in that content is often seasonal, especially when it comes to tentpole or holiday events.

, interest from YouTube viewers in Halloween starts to peak around the end of August, and lasts right through to the beginning of November. No big surprises there of course but a good strategy would be to publish 2 to 4 weeks ahead of October 31st to attracts those views and engagements.

Don’t forget that tentpole content is evergreen so if you’ve published any Halloween 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 Halloween Content on YouTube

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

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

Top 10 Halloween Costume Keywords: YouTube

If you want an idea of the type of Halloween costume ideas that YouTube viewers love, take a look at this upload, published by CloeCouture in October 2016. To date, it has generated over 30M views, and is generating over 2.5K views per hour at time of writing:

Top 10 Halloween Food Keywords on YouTube

Halloween content around party food, snacks, and treats is also a total winner with viewers (and creators) on YouTube. Here are the top keywords in this category:

King of the food channels, Tasty, uploaded this 17:51 minute video a week before Halloween 2018 which attracted 12.3M views. 2 weeks before Halloween 2019, it is generated an amazing 4,000 views per hour.

Top 10 Halloween Makeup Keywords on YouTube

Halloween is perhaps the one time of the year where anyone, young or old, male or female, can go to town with a painted face. Makeup tutorials are big business on YouTube, and those how to’s that focus on Halloween wildly popular. The most searched for keywords are:

To prove how evergreen Halloween makeup tutorials are on YouTube, this was published in October 2017, has garnered nearly 42M views, and is right now generating 4.5K new views per hour:

Halloween is just around the corner! Here are the most searched keywords on YouTube around this spooky tentpole event.

Top 15 Halloween Keywords on YouTube

Given the mass appeal of Roblox, it's no wonder so many YouTubers want to make this content their bread and butter. But how do you grow a Roblox channel, especially when there are already so many YouTubers covering this game? Take a read of the steps you should take, or watch the following video for advice:

How to Grow a Roblox YouTube Channel: Content Ideas

Step one for growing a Roblox channel is to think really hard about your strategy. Sadly, just you alone playing Roblox and uploading that footage to YouTube probably won't cut it if you're just starting out. Instead, you need to be focused on the Roblox community at large, and how you can bring some extra value to it.

This could be a short video about your top five Roblox games, or you could do some in-depth reviews of Roblox games that are currently trending. Better yet, you could review brand new games that nobody's quite discovered yet. Now, these new games might not always trend, but if they do, you'll be one of the first to the party. And it's still a win-win because if they don't trend, you’ll still build some good faith within the community.

The person who made that game is going to be pretty excited that somebody liked it enough to take the time to make some videos around it, and this could be a great way to make some new connections and some new friends, which is always important.

Of course, Roblox also offers a very unique opportunity around how-to videos, because if you know how to create a game in Roblox, then you could create an entire channel around that to benefit others. Just like top Roblox creator 

Once you've determined the type of content you're going to make to help get discovered, it's time to do that general YouTube research. For example, what type of thumbnails generally play well for the Roblox audience? What kind of content is getting views?

As a creator, you'll always need to be on the lookout for specific games and challenges as you look to test different types of content on your channel. This is a natural next step when trying to come up with new ideas.

Learn From (But Don’t Copy) Your Competitors

Because Roblox is a hugely popular game on YouTube, you’re going to have some competition. Step two is to determine who your competitors are and what they’re covering in the world of Roblox right now. Handily, vidIQ’s ‘

’ is a great resource for doing just that.

If you have vidIQ installed, you can find the ‘Competitor’ tool n the left-hand column of YouTube Studio. Once you've chosen your competitors, and I would recommend you choose competitors that are closer to your channel in size, you can determine how their content is doing. You can filter by content that was uploaded within a certain timeframe, and also by view count. 

 on how to get the most out of our ‘Competitor’ tool.

Double Down on the Roblox Content That’s Actually Working For You

Step three for growing your Roblox channel is going to be to double down on the content that's working and not to be afraid to move on from the content that's not. For a new channel playing something as massive as Roblox, we recommend making 80% of your videos those high-value videos - the how-tos, the reviews, the tutorials - and the other 20% spending time testing out new ideas.

Perhaps those new ideas could include a let's-play of you and your favorite Roblox game, or you could even schedule a Roblox livestream. Whatever the case may be, you should always set aside some time in your upload schedule to test out new ideas, because one of those could really take off for you.

Let's not forget another important aspect to all of this is going to be to keep your eye on the prize. Roblox is by no means a small gaming niche, 

so if you're going to be playing Roblox on your Roblox channel, it is super critical that you only play Roblox on your Roblox channel.

 But since Roblox is a game full of games, that shouldn't be too difficult.

We’d also advise that if you have a favorite Roblox game that itself has its own very large community, you can apply all the strategies we've discussed today to that one game as a way to start your channel. This would be a best-case scenario for growing a new Roblox channel if in fact, that game has enough content and a big enough community to keep you busy for a long time.

Then, eventually, as you grow, it will be possible to niche out a little bit and explore different types of Roblox games within the community. Remember, Dead Zone got so big that it eventually spun off into its own standalone game. And their community has gotten so active that they're creating mods and maps and all kinds of stuff and sharing it with one another.

Want To Get More Views on YouTube as a Gaming Channel?

If you want to take your YouTube gaming 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 to success. 

 and learn how to launch a successful YouTube Channel in just 30 days.

Everyone and their dog might be playing Roblox on YouTube, but it's not too late to start your own successful channel about the game.

How to Grow Your Roblox Channel on YouTube

But before we talk about short videos of 60 seconds or less and how that could change YouTube forever, let’s do a quick test. To see if you have YouTube’s latest short-video feature, follow these steps:

Take out your phone and go to the YouTube app.

Watch any video, perhaps the first one you see.

Scroll down past the video description, comments, advertisements, and suggested videos. What do you notice?

Here at vidIQ, we’re seeing something we’ve never seen before on YouTube, and it looks something like this:

’, is YouTube’s way of testing short video on its app. Back in 2019, the platform announced the test on its support page, claiming it was “running an experiment to display vertical videos, under 30 seconds, alongside YouTube Stories on mobile.” And of course, YouTube would be “looking forward to feedback” about this new feature.

Well, we’ve had some time to test this new shelf, and yes, we do have some feedback! The feature is still new, but our early assessment is that it could drive video discovery. We’ve got tons of questions swirling around in our heads about this, such as, “

Can you get a million views if your short video appears on this shelf?

What’s the future of short video on YouTube?

Now that we’ve tested the feature, we have some answers and predictions to share. But before we do that, watch our latest video explaining YouTube’s short video shelf:’

First of all, let us explain why this new feature interests the experts at vidIQ. Typically, successful channels get most of their views from YouTube’s recommendation algorithm. This means the viewer doesn’t do any work to find new videos. Instead, YouTube is actively promoting more content to watch. As a creator, this is exactly what you want because it’s essentially free advertising.

Now, here’s where things get interesting. As we’ve always understood, having a high click-through rate and 

 on your video increases the chance of YouTube suggesting it to viewers. That’s the Playbook creators have lived by for over 15 years: make compelling, click-worthy thumbnails, and once users reach the video watch page, encourage them to stay for as long as possible.

But how do short videos factor into the equation? If YouTube is displaying those in a place where they get watched over and over again, does that translate to viral content? We don’t know the answer for sure, but already we’re seeing short videos with hundreds of thousands of views sitting on YouTube’s new shelf.

Shockingly, the channels posting these videos aren’t always large YouTube powerhouses. Some have less than 5,000 subscribers, which is interesting to say the least.

How Short Video Currently Works on YouTube

OK, let’s dive into the short video shelf itself. To quickly summarize, here’s what you can expect when it comes to short video on YouTube:

The 'Short Videos and Stories' shelf appears on Watch pages in the YouTube mobile app - usually after the first suggested video, which is prime real estate for suggested content.

Each video is vertical and 60 seconds or less in length.

The videos don’t have custom thumbnails and instead use a random freeze frame.

When you watch a short video, you're funneled into a TikTok-style play format that keeps moving onto the next video.

You can't rewind or fast forward, but you can scroll to the next video.

You can engage with short videos via comments, likes, and shares.

Any video can potentially appear on the shelf and earn a channel hundreds of thousands, if not millions of views.

Now, let’s clarify a few of these points. First of all, any video on the shelf displaying a video length is a full YouTube video, not a YouTube Story. You can tell the difference between the two by looking at the control icons. 

 will always have less buttons to tap than a full YouTube video.

So that's the first piece of good news: YouTube videos and Stories will appear on the shelf together. You don't need to be eligible to post YouTube Stories, which require tens of thousands of subscribers, to have your videos appear on the shelf.

Lastly, instead of testing videos under 30 seconds, YouTube has expanded the limit to 60 seconds.

Some Short Videos Are Getting Massive Views on YouTube

Is it true you can get millions of views on a short video? Let’s do an experiment using one of the most popular YouTubers on the planet, 

. His videos typically get 30 million views in their first week, so let's peruse the suggested videos below his content.

The first thing we noticed was an advertisement - fair enough. Then a MrBeast gaming video, which is to be expected. And then, we finally reached the short video shelf to find this:

Underneath one of MrBeast’s videos, the first short video suggestion is “

”. This video belongs to Matematike Fizike, a channel with 1.96K subscribers. And guess what? Despite this channel’s size, its short video is doing extremely well. It has more than 14,000 likes, 1,500 comments, and over a quarter of a million views, thanks to some exposure from MrBeast’s fanbase.

Now just think about that for a second. A channel with 1,900 subscribers is being suggested on MrBeast videos that get tens of millions of views. That’s an insane opportunity to grow a channel. And as we kept investigating the random short videos on YouTube’s new shelf, we started to notice some patterns:

Channel size was irrelevant. A video from a channel with one subscriber was just as likely to appear on the shelf as a video from a million-subscriber fanbase.

Videos on the shelf always ended up being the most popular video on the creator's channel.

To sum things up, we don't think previously popular videos are ending up on the shelf. I think they’re popular now simply because they’re on the shelf, which YouTube seems to populate at random.

Short Videos vs. Longer Videos on YouTube

All this information around short videos leaves us, and likely some creators, with a big question: Should YouTubers forget everything they’ve learned about the platform? Instead of making longer videos with amazing thumbnails, should they make short videos with no thumbnails to target this highly discoverable shelf and get more views? To be honest, we don’t know the answer.

On the one hand, it seems like a lucrative opportunity for creators when it comes to video competition. Up until now, it didn't matter how long your video was or what aspect ratio it was filmed in. Each video had the same chance of finding itself in the suggested videos section.

On the other hand, few creators are making content like this on YouTube. Therefore, if you wanted to, you’d have a nice shot at dominating - or at least appearing on - the short video shelf. There’s less competition because a tiny fraction of YouTube videos meet the vertical, 60-second requirement.

We thought that might change or at least even out when YouTube introduced vertical video in 2018. Heck, we made a video about it and everything:

OK, back to short videos. Imagine this for a moment: Suppose we at vidIQ made a video about how to get 

 (which we have). If we made a regular landscape video, we'd be competing against every other video on that topic - potentially millions. But what if we made our video less than 60 seconds, in vertical format? How many videos do you think we'd compete against then? Thousands, maybe even hundreds? Doesn't that sound really tempting?

Let’s dig deeper. As an example, vidIQ is currently on the Watch page of a video titled "How to Get Your First 1,000 Subscribers." And all the suggested videos are what you’d expect - more YouTube growth videos from a familiar set of creators. But consider this: Wouldn't it be fantastic if videos with similar topics appeared on the short video shelf too?

Unfortunately, this is where our confusion begins. Underneath the "How to Get Your First 1,000 Subscribers" video, we noticed some things that make the short video shelf hard to tame, predict, or understand:

The shelf has YouTube Stories about literally anything. In one pass, we saw a video about the Samsung Galaxy Note, Jeff Bezos, and babies. Nothing related to getting 1,000 subscribers.

YouTube Stories don’t make use of titles, descriptions, video tags, or other metadata to help you get discovered.

The short video shelf, at least in my case, suggests the same videos over and over again.

So, there it is: With such a spotty selection process, we’re not seeing many ways for creators to strategically get a video on the shelf.

Because of the reasons mentioned above, our instinct says that you shouldn’t start pumping out short videos. It’s hard to target YouTube’s new shelf, so creating a bunch of vertical, 60-second videos may be a waste of time. However, it doesn’t hurt to test the feature in case YouTube prioritizes short videos.

Personally, we don't think the short video shelf fits within the current YouTube app. And I also don't think users should have to watch a video in the app to get to the shelf. Right now, it's buried too deeply within the current setup.

Instead, this shelf for short videos could be the last testing phase before YouTube unleashes a TikTok-style feature. It’s rumored to be in development, so I wouldn't be surprised if YouTube released a standalone app for short videos in the future. I’m probably 99.9% wrong, but if we're right, you heard it here first!

Having said all that, YouTube’s short video shelf is in a valuable location on the app. If you can make your videos appear there regularly, the sky’s the limit.

 then make sure to download vidIQ for more subscriber insights. Join over 1 million other users and use vidIQ to help you research YouTube, analyze videos, audit your own channel, and take actionable steps 

Have you seen anything new on YouTube lately? Perhaps a brand new shelf for short videos under 60 seconds? We definitely have, so... let’s investigate!

Can You Get 1 Million YouTube Views By Making Short Videos?

Are you ready to quit YouTube because you're finding it too stressful to appease the algorithm? What happens when you walk away from your channel to recalibrate - will your channel die?

Creator Burnout is a very real thing, and on this episode of TubeTalk, four YouTubers will be discussing their journey and what happens when its time to take a break. Join vidIQ expert creators Rob Wilson, Dan Carson and I, along with special guest 

Do you play to the algorithm or creativity?

Can you step away from YouTube and what will happen to your channel?

Quality over Quantity: Is one better than the other?

How much do comments and social media negativity play into the creator just wanting to give up?

If you're a YouTuber that's feeling stressed and is possibly on the verge of quitting, please take a listen to this week's TubeTalk podcast for some great advice.

How to Block Unwanted Ads on Your YouTube Content

Lydia Sweatt

Why You Don't Need to Be On Camera to Be a YouTube Sensation

Liron Segev

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