Intro
As you can probably guess, I’m not a big fan of the YouTube “latest update” notification. Ok, so it is nice to have the latest version available at all times. But what I don’t like is that when I click on it, I get a page full of video previews and ads without any indication what the new content will be. It also doesn’t seem to work very well with mobile devices: when you scroll down in the page, jumping from one video to another breaks the flow and makes it hard for me to understand what has just happened.
The new video ad format offers a great way to present your own content – which is something we don’t currently offer – but it does leave some space for improvement.
How to Submit a Video on YouTube
This post will give you a simple (and rather painless) way to submit a video to YouTube. It is not an official YouTube submission form or anything like that, but it is a decent way to get started. You don’t need any technical knowledge or any special equipment — only a laptop and a webcam:
First, you need to download the YouTube iOS app (available free from the App Store). The application will allow you to capture videos and also allows you to upload them. Next, navigate to the “Settings” tab in the app and tap on “Ads”. This brings up your YouTube ad creative. Shoot some video of your product (use the app’s microphone and record whatever comes out), then tap on “Upload Video”. Once it opens, go through the process of uploading your video clip until it ends successfully.
How to Enhance Your YouTube Channel
Today we’re updating our guide for YouTube creators who want to get their videos up in the search results. It includes a whole list of useful tips for increasing the visibility of your videos on search.
We’ve been writing about this issue for a while now and we think it is important to highlight so that you can use the tools we’ve outlined as well as make any necessary changes to your channel.
## Top Tips For YouTube Search **If you are already posting on YouTube, there are some great ways you can make sure your videos get noticed** First and foremost, make sure that your video title is descriptive and user friendly (i.e., something people will be taking time to read). remember, people go to search results not just to see what they are looking for, but also what other eyes have not seen before. We try our best to keep a clean, simple look on our channel so that viewers can easily find what they’re looking for, but this does not mean that we don't want users searching for- or discovering new videos! **If you are using AdWords or other paid advertising services **to drive traffic to your channel, consider using Google AMP (Google AMP is also an open source project). AMP generates data from search queries from all over the web and pushes it directly into Google Search Results pages (so if anyone searches for "buy yer t-shirt now" in their browser there's a good chance it'll show up in Google Search Results). They do this by using JavaScript to track user history so quickly queries can be identified on the basis of where they came from - which makes them more relevant than simply showing top results when users type in keywords like "t-shirt." If you have added third party metrics into your analytics dashboard (Google Analytics), you can use these as a metric of what people are actually clicking on: i.e., if someone searches "buy yer t-shirt now" from their browser and then comes back several times within 1 hour of watching one of your videos, those three visits all count towards them being considered "watching" that video...and therefore getting into Google Search Results! The following video shows how easy it is to add third party metrics in Google Analytics: https://youtu.be/XGVWnBZHnKY?t=1m37s ## Various Automation & Tools ------------- If you have automated some aspects of
How to Choose the Right Videos for your Channel
What is the best way to make your videos interesting?
YouTube recently updated their algorithm to cut down on the number of videos being recommended. You’re going to want to make sure you have a variety of videos on your channel, as different topics can be more appealing than others. As a result of this update, some channels have received only 85% of their views in the last month.
This is definitely a problem that you can fix yourself by making more videos, but it is worth considering if you are already up and running with YouTube. If you haven’t already done so, start creating new videos and don’t worry too much about which ones are popular right now. Just go for something that has enough content and relevance, so that people will stick around if they like it. Of course, this won’t be as effective if your channel is not growing or if the content isn’t very engaging — but there are ways around these issues too (which we’ll talk about later!).
*If you are wondering how long it would take for someone to watch your video after you add it and how long their attention would last (assuming they watch only one video), here is an interesting article on the topic: http://www.businessinsider.com/how-long-does-watching-video-make-you-attracted-to-a-personitys-face-.html
Conclusion
I’m not sure how many of you are aware that there is a YouTube channel called “Latest Update”, which is a bunch of videos uploaded every day. The channel itself is pretty small (about 40 videos in all), but the traffic it generates and the amount of people who subscribe to it is immense — and over the years has become the most popular channel on Youtube, with more than a million subscribers.
The channel was created by Dave Silcox about 4 years ago, around the time that Youtube decided to allow channels to upload anything they want without having to register. Dave has been pretty secretive about his identity — he doesn’t even have a Twitter account. But I believe he is an American, originally from Oklahoma. I don’t know much about him or his background beyond what little I can glean from this post on Hacker News:
I stumbled upon “Latest Update” because of a series of very interesting articles posted on Hacker News by someone called “dburka”. It seemed like an interesting way to get exposure for my startup yet again and I thought it would be fun to start posting videos on there.
As you can see, “Latest Update” has managed to increase its subscriber base well beyond 10k in only 4 years!
When I first started uploading videos, I didn’t know much about how Youtube worked or the basics of video marketing at all. It turns out that those days aren’t quite over yet though:
I was curious if anybody had done any research into YouTube revenue before making their own subscription plan (as opposed to buying ads). So far as I can tell, no other company has ever experimented with doing so successfully. And yes, as you can see from this chart below provided by Yelp , Google views are A LOT bigger than just Youtube views:
Youtube monetization (since 2008) vs Google Adsense revenue for search engines (2008-2013)
This graph shows me what it might look like if you were able to make money off YouTube without depending on ads; but also where the line between ad-based revenue and subscription based revenue lies — at this point it seems like there really isn’t one:
I don’t know anything about Dave Silcox other than what little I read here; but he seems like a nice guy and seems like he might be great at monetizing his channel effectively (from what little else we