How do I make serious money on Youtube, the basics.
This is a simple step-by-step guide to help you get up and running making money from your videos on Youtube.
It's a commonly asked question, so here are they key things you need to know before you start.
Making money on Youtube is initially about monetising your content. There are other ways once you establish a fan base, but monetisation is what we're going to talk about.
Making money from your videos starts with partnering with Youtube and sharing the revenue generated by advertising placed over or before your videos. You will either get paid every time somebody clicks on an ad or every time somebody watches a video ad played through before your own video begins.
The amount you earn depends entirely on how much advertisers bid for your ad space, which depends entirely what the competition is for your ad space. I have been paid as little as 2 pence (about 3 cents) to as much as 8 pence per click/view. The 8 pence was a one-off, it's usually 3-4 pence.
The first thing you will need to do is become a youtube partner. You don't need anything special to get started, although there is no guarantee you will be accepted on the partner program. Many more people are being accepted nowadays, and you shouldn't have a problem.
Star here to verify your channel and scroll to the bottom to learn about monetising: http://www.youtube.com/yt/creators/creator-benefits.html
You will need a Google Asense account. Google own Youtube, and this is how you will be paid. Get one here: https://www.google.com/adsense/signup?gsessionid=mQohBcOnQ0fTNPTGdcPeEg
Be careful to make the application properly. Never try to trick Google or Youtube, they are cleverer than you and it will bite you in the bum later. Do it properly. Adsense accounts are often refused.
A crucial step is to connect your Youtube and adsense accounts. Many people wait months for the money to start appearing, as their content seems to be monetised...the two accounts MUST be connected or you will never see your money! Do it correctly just here: https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/72866?hl=en
Once you have this all setup, your videos will begin generating revenue. Once your revenue hits the threshold, which is £60 in the UK, it will be deposited in your bank the following month. There is no way of lowering the threshold. It's tricky to hit that every month, without a committed, long-term and considered effort.
Here are several keys to help you run a successful youtube channel:
1: Your niche. Don't begin a journey into creating content for youtube unless you are passionate about what you are doing. The novelty will soon where off and the impetus to make a few pennies won't last long! Do what you love.
2: Planning. Work out which keywords you are going to try and strategise towards. You can use this tool here to see what the search volume is like for keywords or phrases you are planning to capture an audience with: https://www.youtube.com/keyword_tool
3: Honesty. Don't bother trying to trick the search algorithms to capture an audience. There are a couple of reasons why this is a waste of time. Firstly, if you don't have enough confidence in the quality of your videos to describe them properly, are they really worth watching? Secondly, capturing the wrong audience who think they have found what they are looking for will harm your watch time.
4: Accuracy. Taking the honesty thing further, if you describe your videos accurately then the viewer clicking on the link is more likely to have found what they wanted. This means they are more likely to watch your film to the end. Youtube uses 'audience retention' statistics to determine how high up to place your video in the search results. The more people watch it to the end, the more visible it becomes.
5: Quality. This is the be all and end all. Youtube is full of billions of videos with very few views. Capture your audiences interest immediately with clarity and skill. Make sure that in those crucial first few senconds they have no doubt that they have found the video they want to watch.
6: Content. Be original, be unique. If you are seriously (seriously?) considering starting another minecraft channel, it's going to have to be phenomenal. It's going to have to offer something about minecraft that nobody knew, presented in a way that is utterly irresistible, entertaining, fun and completely original. Forget minecraft, the same can be said for ALL new channels.
7: Subscriptions. Use annotations and end cards to encourage viewers to like and subscribe. This is essential. If you have a fan base who already like your stuff, they will be the first to watch it, they'll boost the audience retention stats and pump it up the search listings!
8: Do the Youtube Creator Academy course, and follow every step, even if you think it's dull or not really necessary for you. It is. Do it. Do it here: http://creatoracademy.withgoogle.com/
9: Regularity and frequency. Make sure your subscribers can trust you with regular, frequent high quality content. Staying active regularly makes your site stand out to the search engines too, including google/youtube itself.
10: Now there are no get rich quick tips, but this one might just come under 'nifty little secrets' that not many people know about, so here's a Youtube gold nugget for you: Tweak your video titles daily. It's a drag, but my channel went from 800 views a day to 4,500 a day in two months by doing this, and I had less than fifty very 'niche' videos.
11: Look at successful channels, see what they're doing and take tips. Don't be put off by the big boys, aim high.
12. Don't bother hoping for a viral video, if it happens it happens, great, but focus on production of new stuff regularly.
THINK QUALITY, THINK QUANTITY, THINK LONG-TERM STRATEGY. THINK CONSTANT STRIVING TO IMPROVE AND GET BETTER. THINK NO COMPROMISE, THINK IF THEY CAN DO IT I CAN DO IT.
Showing posts with label How to make money on Youtube. Show all posts
Showing posts with label How to make money on Youtube. Show all posts
Monday, 17 March 2014
Monday, 25 November 2013
How to make a TV show on a low micro budget.
I must admit, I hesitate to share this stuff. I don't want to shatter any illusions. The setup we have at UCB for creating our main show, Jovis Bon-Hovis and the Creation Crew is a very good setup, multi camera shoot, great quality equipment, top notch lighting rigs with all the lighting you could ask for, sound-proofing, separate gallery with multiple monitors and facilities for remote live camera switching, high quality radio microphones and so much more!
On top of that, as anybody who understands production and production values will clearly see, we have various experts specializing in their own areas. We have somebody who knows all about lighting, and expert at editing, camera people and sound technicians, as well as myself being responsible for creating the content of the shows.
So the end result of our main Christian kids' TV show Jovis Bon-Hovis and the Creation Crew, although it is produced on an extremely tight budget, is nice and clean and polished.
Now compare that to the work I do in the home studio. I am having to face the reality that it is impossible to achieve the same kinds of results as one person working alone with very limited equipment. But the challenge is an exciting and inspiring one, to milk every last drop of potential out of the equipment and opportunities I have.
I don't feel I have done that yet, 20 years ago my setup would have seemed pretty dreamy to a budding producer; instant high definition movies edited live on screen at the click of a mouse at a cost many would find affordable. And I am certain that there are many ways I can improve on the productions I am attempting at the moment. I find myself pining for more lights, more space, more cameras, more people, but if I think about it, I don't imagine God will bless me with those things until He knows I have fulfilled the potential of everything He's given me so far.
So that's what I am going to do. I have every intention of producing a higher volume and broader range of Christian media, a Christian chat show, a family quiz, another children's show, more songs and kids music perhaps from other artists. But now is a time of honing and milking skills, and making the very best of what I have, so that when the time comes to move up a step, invest in more equipment, bring in some help and setup a more significant studio I will be ready to fully utilize it properly. I don't think that time is too far away, it 'feels' close at hand.
Anyway, I thought you may be interested in having a little look at the setup. In these pictures you can see the lighting arrangement, ordinary domestic lamps but with 100 watt halogen bulbs, pumping out a good amount of light. They were about £3 each at a charity shop, and the bulbs about £2 each. The backgrounds are cardboard boxes which had contained a TV, and the paints are my kids' poster paints. I ink the edges with an ordinary black marker.
The space I use is the garage, and it is extremely tight; it is still used as a garage and is shared with kids' bikes and tools! Quite a squash! My camera for home shoots is an ordinary digital video camera, a Sanyo Xacti. It is full HD, but not so good indoors. Lovely for outside in the bright light, but the colour balance seems to let it down on my little home set. You can pick one up on ebay for £30-£35.
So camera and lighting with bulbs would cost about £75. The tinfoil you can see shaped around the lamps is remarkably successful, I have simply curved and shaped the foil into a bowl shape and folded the foil several times to increase the thickness. Be sure to get baking foil and not wrapping foil to cope with intense heat from the bulbs. This intensifies the light and enables you to direct it.
On the ceiling you can see something that looks like tracing paper which softens and disperses some of the light, it's important that some of the main lights are dispersed like this. Try it both ways to get a taste for why and how it works. I was fortunate enough to be given a bit of colour neutral professional stuff, but tracing paper will do the job. So you'll have to spend a fiver on that. The most significant outlay will be the machine you use to edit because sadly there is a minimum standard you simply must purchase, otherwise you'll just tear your hair out when you can't edit. You can pick up a used machine which will just about handle HD editing for £200. Possibly less if you're canny, so come on, friends and neighbours???
There's a massive amount of software out there trying to grab your attention, including some very high-end stuff which has a very low yearly subscription called Lightworks. Amazing kit, but very top-end. Is that really what you need? I find Magix movie edit pro fast and easy, intuitive and fun and it cost me £29.
In a home studio you can get away with an old-fashioned hand-held mic, or a mic on a table or suspended from a rafter, radio tie-mics are very expensive. You'll also need some kind of usb preamp interface, to plug the mics into, which then runs into your pc enabling you to manage the sound. You can plug a mic into your pc directly of course, but...just don't! My mic cost me £19, and a preamp can cost anywhere from £12 upwards. Spend a little more if you can. I use the Saffire 6 usb, which came with an extremely good and immeasurably helpful 8 track sound recorder which I use very very often. I would recommend it, Ableton Live Light 8 Alesis edition, or whichever software you can get for cheap. You can edit the entire soundtrack for your movie with ease, and create music for it all on the same piece of software. Extremely helpful. Use a midi keyboard (£30) to make the whole music production process simpler, even if you don't play the piano it's just helpful to have this keyboard as an input device. Ideal for making a simple theme tune, background music which you will fully own the rights to enabling you to monetise your videos on Youtube.
So there you have it, a simple HD studio setup for aroud £400.
But before you prepare to hit the big time, let's have a look at the differences in what is achieved with the two different ways of producing, here's is an example of the $400 setup:
And here is an example of the tens of thousands setup with numerous experts hands:
The end!
On top of that, as anybody who understands production and production values will clearly see, we have various experts specializing in their own areas. We have somebody who knows all about lighting, and expert at editing, camera people and sound technicians, as well as myself being responsible for creating the content of the shows.
So the end result of our main Christian kids' TV show Jovis Bon-Hovis and the Creation Crew, although it is produced on an extremely tight budget, is nice and clean and polished.
Now compare that to the work I do in the home studio. I am having to face the reality that it is impossible to achieve the same kinds of results as one person working alone with very limited equipment. But the challenge is an exciting and inspiring one, to milk every last drop of potential out of the equipment and opportunities I have.
I don't feel I have done that yet, 20 years ago my setup would have seemed pretty dreamy to a budding producer; instant high definition movies edited live on screen at the click of a mouse at a cost many would find affordable. And I am certain that there are many ways I can improve on the productions I am attempting at the moment. I find myself pining for more lights, more space, more cameras, more people, but if I think about it, I don't imagine God will bless me with those things until He knows I have fulfilled the potential of everything He's given me so far.
So that's what I am going to do. I have every intention of producing a higher volume and broader range of Christian media, a Christian chat show, a family quiz, another children's show, more songs and kids music perhaps from other artists. But now is a time of honing and milking skills, and making the very best of what I have, so that when the time comes to move up a step, invest in more equipment, bring in some help and setup a more significant studio I will be ready to fully utilize it properly. I don't think that time is too far away, it 'feels' close at hand.
Anyway, I thought you may be interested in having a little look at the setup. In these pictures you can see the lighting arrangement, ordinary domestic lamps but with 100 watt halogen bulbs, pumping out a good amount of light. They were about £3 each at a charity shop, and the bulbs about £2 each. The backgrounds are cardboard boxes which had contained a TV, and the paints are my kids' poster paints. I ink the edges with an ordinary black marker.
The space I use is the garage, and it is extremely tight; it is still used as a garage and is shared with kids' bikes and tools! Quite a squash! My camera for home shoots is an ordinary digital video camera, a Sanyo Xacti. It is full HD, but not so good indoors. Lovely for outside in the bright light, but the colour balance seems to let it down on my little home set. You can pick one up on ebay for £30-£35.
So camera and lighting with bulbs would cost about £75. The tinfoil you can see shaped around the lamps is remarkably successful, I have simply curved and shaped the foil into a bowl shape and folded the foil several times to increase the thickness. Be sure to get baking foil and not wrapping foil to cope with intense heat from the bulbs. This intensifies the light and enables you to direct it.
On the ceiling you can see something that looks like tracing paper which softens and disperses some of the light, it's important that some of the main lights are dispersed like this. Try it both ways to get a taste for why and how it works. I was fortunate enough to be given a bit of colour neutral professional stuff, but tracing paper will do the job. So you'll have to spend a fiver on that. The most significant outlay will be the machine you use to edit because sadly there is a minimum standard you simply must purchase, otherwise you'll just tear your hair out when you can't edit. You can pick up a used machine which will just about handle HD editing for £200. Possibly less if you're canny, so come on, friends and neighbours???
There's a massive amount of software out there trying to grab your attention, including some very high-end stuff which has a very low yearly subscription called Lightworks. Amazing kit, but very top-end. Is that really what you need? I find Magix movie edit pro fast and easy, intuitive and fun and it cost me £29.
In a home studio you can get away with an old-fashioned hand-held mic, or a mic on a table or suspended from a rafter, radio tie-mics are very expensive. You'll also need some kind of usb preamp interface, to plug the mics into, which then runs into your pc enabling you to manage the sound. You can plug a mic into your pc directly of course, but...just don't! My mic cost me £19, and a preamp can cost anywhere from £12 upwards. Spend a little more if you can. I use the Saffire 6 usb, which came with an extremely good and immeasurably helpful 8 track sound recorder which I use very very often. I would recommend it, Ableton Live Light 8 Alesis edition, or whichever software you can get for cheap. You can edit the entire soundtrack for your movie with ease, and create music for it all on the same piece of software. Extremely helpful. Use a midi keyboard (£30) to make the whole music production process simpler, even if you don't play the piano it's just helpful to have this keyboard as an input device. Ideal for making a simple theme tune, background music which you will fully own the rights to enabling you to monetise your videos on Youtube.
So there you have it, a simple HD studio setup for aroud £400.
But before you prepare to hit the big time, let's have a look at the differences in what is achieved with the two different ways of producing, here's is an example of the $400 setup:
And here is an example of the tens of thousands setup with numerous experts hands:
The end!
Monday, 4 November 2013
How much money can I make putting videos on Youtube?
This question doesn't get any less relevant to the millions of wanna be Youtube stars out there who want to make a living from people telling them they are awesome, and by sitting in front of a computer all day. First of all, I'll give you a straight answer which you may be looking for, but please read on; it's not as simple as it may all appear.
You can expect to make about roughly somewhere between £1-£2 for every thousand monetised views you get on Youtube. In US dollars I guess that's $1.50-$3.00. But it's not an exact science, there are so many variables to take into consideration.
Firstly, getting those thousand views is extremely difficult. At first glance it may look as if all vids on youtube have several thousand/hundred thousand views, so a few bucks per vid is easy right? But how often do you go to page ten, page 100, page 1000 of the results, and see the many many MILLIONS of videos which have 3 views, 13 views, 19 views. The videos which have over a thousand and could earn you a buck are a drop in the ocean.
That said, don't give up! There are people who make a living from their youtube vids. I am starting to make some amount of money, enough that it's worth doing. The crucial thing is this; have you got good quality content which people will want to watch to the end? Are you able to produce such content consistently, regularly, and over a long period of time building up a significant body of work ongoing?
Do you have the time to put in to managing and promoting your channel? Don't bother doing this for a bit of cash on the side, it won't work. Once you get to the bit of cash on the side stage, you may as well keep going because you've probably broken the back of it!
Ask yourself, are you just another kid wanting to video himself playing Minecraft? Are you yet another teenager thinking that the world is somehow especially interested in you spouting teen wisdom in front of your webcam? If so, go away, have another think. If it feels easy, you're wasting your time. If you think just you as yourself are so ace and cool the world owes it to you to make you a star, go away. Come back when you've thought about this:
What do you have that nobody else has? What are you good at which is special to you? What do you love? What are you passionate about? Now think about how you can share that in a way nobody else has, which is engaging, enlightening, interesting and tight. Then go and learn about film editing.
If you are deadly serious and this is your career, it absolutely can be done, but it will take all the energy and commitment of any other career, with all the frustration, hard work, set-backs and frustrations. It is likely to be a couple of years before you start really 'getting it', and figure out how to bring everything together into a solid income and a lifestyle. Of course you may have a viral video that catapults you into international stardom overnight...oh wait, no you won't. Hard work and a good product, there is no easy fast buck, apart from a lottery. And you can't live your life hoping on that.
You can expect to make about roughly somewhere between £1-£2 for every thousand monetised views you get on Youtube. In US dollars I guess that's $1.50-$3.00. But it's not an exact science, there are so many variables to take into consideration.
Firstly, getting those thousand views is extremely difficult. At first glance it may look as if all vids on youtube have several thousand/hundred thousand views, so a few bucks per vid is easy right? But how often do you go to page ten, page 100, page 1000 of the results, and see the many many MILLIONS of videos which have 3 views, 13 views, 19 views. The videos which have over a thousand and could earn you a buck are a drop in the ocean.
That said, don't give up! There are people who make a living from their youtube vids. I am starting to make some amount of money, enough that it's worth doing. The crucial thing is this; have you got good quality content which people will want to watch to the end? Are you able to produce such content consistently, regularly, and over a long period of time building up a significant body of work ongoing?
Do you have the time to put in to managing and promoting your channel? Don't bother doing this for a bit of cash on the side, it won't work. Once you get to the bit of cash on the side stage, you may as well keep going because you've probably broken the back of it!
Ask yourself, are you just another kid wanting to video himself playing Minecraft? Are you yet another teenager thinking that the world is somehow especially interested in you spouting teen wisdom in front of your webcam? If so, go away, have another think. If it feels easy, you're wasting your time. If you think just you as yourself are so ace and cool the world owes it to you to make you a star, go away. Come back when you've thought about this:
What do you have that nobody else has? What are you good at which is special to you? What do you love? What are you passionate about? Now think about how you can share that in a way nobody else has, which is engaging, enlightening, interesting and tight. Then go and learn about film editing.
If you are deadly serious and this is your career, it absolutely can be done, but it will take all the energy and commitment of any other career, with all the frustration, hard work, set-backs and frustrations. It is likely to be a couple of years before you start really 'getting it', and figure out how to bring everything together into a solid income and a lifestyle. Of course you may have a viral video that catapults you into international stardom overnight...oh wait, no you won't. Hard work and a good product, there is no easy fast buck, apart from a lottery. And you can't live your life hoping on that.
Tuesday, 26 February 2013
How much money can I make putting adverts on my Youtube videos?
Wow, that's a tough question.
There are so many variables, so I'm going to try to answer it again in a slightly different way.
You may want the very basic information, so we'll get that out of the way first. Simply put, you will likely get between £1 and £2 in the UK for every thousand Youtube video views. I reckon that's about the same worldwide, so just convert to your currency and you'll get a very rough idea.
As I'm discovering though this is just a tiny portion of the battle, and unless you are really thinking of changing careers and becoming a producer for Youtube then it's not worth bothering, because the moment you stop uploading videos, editing you descriptions and managing your channel, your views could drop as if you'd never done any work.
People are constantly asking how to get more views on Youtube, as if there's some kind of secret way that you can trick Google into giving you lots of money. It sounds ridiculous when I put it like that doesn't it?
Well, you can get lots and lots of views on Youtube and I'll tell you how. Here's the simple formula, a plain truth, not a get rich quick scheme and I reckon pretty much all successful Youtube channels will agree with this:
If you don't like making films and editing, don't bother.
If you don't have much time to put in, don't bother.
If you want to do it quickly and easily, don't bother.
If you want to do it so everyone will tell you you're awesome, don't bother.
If you don't like learning and taking on board new skills, don't bother.
If you're not too fussed about quality and a path of continuing improvement, don't bother.
If you're not a creative person with bubbling ideas just waiting to get out, don't bother.
If none of the above apply to you then:
Choose something you love. If you love something, chances are others will love it too, and if your passion for it is real it will be contagious, and easy for you to maintain down the years. Yes, years.
Content is king, Youtube track how your video is watched. If too many people turn off too quickly or don't watch to the end, they are less likely to offer it as a search result. So you'll get less views. Make sure your video is interesting from the very start, to the very end.
Produce regularly, and upload regularly. Upload one video every Monday rather than four at a random point in the month.
Experiment with the titles of your videos, changing them and checking how your videos rank regularly will give you an idea of what works and what doesn't. On Google chrome, use 'ctrl shift n' to open a browser which will give you the same search results everyone else sees, so you don't get tailored results and a false impression of rankings.
Always fill up your descriptions with good explanations, interesting information and original content relevant to your channel and the specific video too.
Use annotations to encourage interaction such as 'please click like' and 'why not subscribe now?' and 'Please share with your friends and family on Facebook, Twitter etc.'
Take your channel seriously; 'Do not despise these small beginnings, for the Lord rejoices to see the work begin.' Zecharia 4:10. If you take your work seriously and do it from the heart, other people will take it seriously and take it to their hearts.
Choose your target market and stick to it. Google likes it's new toy Youtube, and ranks it very highly in the 'web' search results, not just the 'Video' search results. You will often see a Youtube video on page one of Google, whatever you search for. Choose your niche, and use this AWESOME tool to see which keywords you should be focussing on: http://www.google.com/trends/
Put your keywords in everything connected with your site, including the names of the custom thumbs you upload, the names of the raw video files you upload, the banners you upload and obviously liberally peppered around your video descriptions and channel descriptions, and not least the name of your channel!
TOP TIP: Keywords in video titles can be repeated twice, and are read as acceptable by Google for example: 'Christian kids songs, Jesus is amazing, song for Christian kids about amazing Jesus.' As we speak, this appears to strengthen the title of my videos and enhance search rankings. This could change at any time of course! And don't overdo it, sentences should be proper English (or whatever language you speak) and you keywords should make sense in the context you use them or it may be seen as spam and you'll have a long and sad road ahead of you if that happens. Back to square one!
Be careful not to be caught in a trap of constant networking and promotion in social networks. They are of some value, but set aside a sensible amount of time to manage your accounts. They are the internet equivalent of the pub. Sure, business does come along sometimes, but it's a bonus feature rather than the main game. Choose your favourite platforms, let's say your blog, twitter and Facebook, and spend an hour a day in total writing content for them. YOUR MOST VALUABLE TIME IS SPENT ON PRODUCTION, and your most valuable SEO is spent on Youtube. Remember, SEO is important but you will never trick anyone into subscribing or liking you. Manage your time properly and remember that you are a producer first, promoter close second.
Captions are searchable by Google. Videos with captions tend to rank better.
Don't spend money on advertising your channel, unless you are selling a product. Paying for views does not make financial sense unless you are selling something.
Always thumbs up comments you like, and reply quickly. Thumbs up and comment on your own video when you upload it.
In your channel settings/in video programming, make sure you set one of your videos to appear as an option to click, as well as a link to your channel.
Customise your channel with strong original and memorable branding.
If there is anything obvious I have missed, please contact me and I will include all good suggestions.
There are so many variables, so I'm going to try to answer it again in a slightly different way.
You may want the very basic information, so we'll get that out of the way first. Simply put, you will likely get between £1 and £2 in the UK for every thousand Youtube video views. I reckon that's about the same worldwide, so just convert to your currency and you'll get a very rough idea.
As I'm discovering though this is just a tiny portion of the battle, and unless you are really thinking of changing careers and becoming a producer for Youtube then it's not worth bothering, because the moment you stop uploading videos, editing you descriptions and managing your channel, your views could drop as if you'd never done any work.
People are constantly asking how to get more views on Youtube, as if there's some kind of secret way that you can trick Google into giving you lots of money. It sounds ridiculous when I put it like that doesn't it?
Well, you can get lots and lots of views on Youtube and I'll tell you how. Here's the simple formula, a plain truth, not a get rich quick scheme and I reckon pretty much all successful Youtube channels will agree with this:
If you don't like making films and editing, don't bother.
If you don't have much time to put in, don't bother.
If you want to do it quickly and easily, don't bother.
If you want to do it so everyone will tell you you're awesome, don't bother.
If you don't like learning and taking on board new skills, don't bother.
If you're not too fussed about quality and a path of continuing improvement, don't bother.
If you're not a creative person with bubbling ideas just waiting to get out, don't bother.
If none of the above apply to you then:
Choose something you love. If you love something, chances are others will love it too, and if your passion for it is real it will be contagious, and easy for you to maintain down the years. Yes, years.
Content is king, Youtube track how your video is watched. If too many people turn off too quickly or don't watch to the end, they are less likely to offer it as a search result. So you'll get less views. Make sure your video is interesting from the very start, to the very end.
Produce regularly, and upload regularly. Upload one video every Monday rather than four at a random point in the month.
Experiment with the titles of your videos, changing them and checking how your videos rank regularly will give you an idea of what works and what doesn't. On Google chrome, use 'ctrl shift n' to open a browser which will give you the same search results everyone else sees, so you don't get tailored results and a false impression of rankings.
Always fill up your descriptions with good explanations, interesting information and original content relevant to your channel and the specific video too.
Use annotations to encourage interaction such as 'please click like' and 'why not subscribe now?' and 'Please share with your friends and family on Facebook, Twitter etc.'
Take your channel seriously; 'Do not despise these small beginnings, for the Lord rejoices to see the work begin.' Zecharia 4:10. If you take your work seriously and do it from the heart, other people will take it seriously and take it to their hearts.
Choose your target market and stick to it. Google likes it's new toy Youtube, and ranks it very highly in the 'web' search results, not just the 'Video' search results. You will often see a Youtube video on page one of Google, whatever you search for. Choose your niche, and use this AWESOME tool to see which keywords you should be focussing on: http://www.google.com/trends/
Put your keywords in everything connected with your site, including the names of the custom thumbs you upload, the names of the raw video files you upload, the banners you upload and obviously liberally peppered around your video descriptions and channel descriptions, and not least the name of your channel!
TOP TIP: Keywords in video titles can be repeated twice, and are read as acceptable by Google for example: 'Christian kids songs, Jesus is amazing, song for Christian kids about amazing Jesus.' As we speak, this appears to strengthen the title of my videos and enhance search rankings. This could change at any time of course! And don't overdo it, sentences should be proper English (or whatever language you speak) and you keywords should make sense in the context you use them or it may be seen as spam and you'll have a long and sad road ahead of you if that happens. Back to square one!
Be careful not to be caught in a trap of constant networking and promotion in social networks. They are of some value, but set aside a sensible amount of time to manage your accounts. They are the internet equivalent of the pub. Sure, business does come along sometimes, but it's a bonus feature rather than the main game. Choose your favourite platforms, let's say your blog, twitter and Facebook, and spend an hour a day in total writing content for them. YOUR MOST VALUABLE TIME IS SPENT ON PRODUCTION, and your most valuable SEO is spent on Youtube. Remember, SEO is important but you will never trick anyone into subscribing or liking you. Manage your time properly and remember that you are a producer first, promoter close second.
Captions are searchable by Google. Videos with captions tend to rank better.
Don't spend money on advertising your channel, unless you are selling a product. Paying for views does not make financial sense unless you are selling something.
Always thumbs up comments you like, and reply quickly. Thumbs up and comment on your own video when you upload it.
In your channel settings/in video programming, make sure you set one of your videos to appear as an option to click, as well as a link to your channel.
Customise your channel with strong original and memorable branding.
If there is anything obvious I have missed, please contact me and I will include all good suggestions.
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