Soholaunch hosts tutorial videos on youtube, and we have uncovered several tips if you’re planning to host your videos on youtube as well. To save you from frustration with youtube, which can be finicky, we have the following advice:
Youtube’s features don’t unlock immediately
Some features like monetizing videos or custom thumbnails didn’t show up for our channel until after we verified it and had a good track record. Even then, youtube unlocked them randomly. You don’t receive any kind of message that they will be unlocked soon. In fact, you don’t receive any notice that they even activated. They just show up in the channel settings one day.
Make playlists early on
It’s a good idea to plan your video playlists ahead of time. Creating playlists early lets you apply them to videos as soon as you upload them. Otherwise, you may never do it and your channel will become an endless list of videos, which makes it hard to find the right information. After you create the playlist, it will be available in a drop-down menu on each video’s settings page.
It is ideal if you arrange videos on your site like your playlists on youtube. There will be consistency if your visitors navigate off your site to watch the videos on youtube.com instead.
Uploads take a while
Don’t be in any rush for videos to upload. Plan for uploads to take a while. Even 5 minute videos can be surprising how long they take. Don’t blame your internet provider and boost up your internet plan. My hunch is that youtube doesn’t provide a whole lot of bandwidth on their end for the upload.
So keep the browser window open, and don’t give up. Wait for it to finish. If your video is time sensitive, keep the long upload time in mind.
Custom thumbnails also take a while
Like I mentioned in tip #1, you may not have the option to create custom thumbnails for your videos at first. This is a shock when you’re used to seeing so many clever thumbnails throughout youtube. When you upload a video, you’ll only get a few screenshots to use for a thumbnail. Youtube selects these automatically.
Don’t waste your time searching high and low for the button to upload a custom thumbnail. It’s not there. A good way to check if the option is available to you is to go into the “Channel Settings.” If the custom thumbnails feature looks greyed out or disabled, it means you don’t have the option. You probably need to build up a longer track record before youtube unlocks it for you.
Until then, select the best looking screenshot that youtube gives you. The good news is that once custom thumbnails are enabled, you can go back and add your own thumbnails to videos where you had to use the default screenshots. Read more about thumbnails.
Keep video titles consistent
Make your videos' titles consistent to keep content organized. Say, for example, you have multiple videos about one topic. Viewers may get confused if each video has a unique title, even though they're about the same thing. Instead, consider repeating a few keywords in the titles to alert viewers that the videos are part of a group.
If you have multiple products, perhaps keep the product’s name in the titles: “Green Widgets: Applying them to your car seat”, “Green Widgets: Applying them to upholstery.” This lets everyone see at a glance if the video is about the product they have. Along with playlists, this practice categorizes your videos nicely.