Here are some technical information that can help you to begin your own YouTube channel, publicise it, and gradually nurture it as a source of passive income
Which is the largest search engine after Google?
Which is the second most visited website in the world?
Which is the second most popular social media platform?
Answers to all these questions are YouTube. More than 500 hours of videos are being uploaded to YouTube every minute. These statics (April 2020) provides more than enough testimony to the popularity and significance of YouTube as a medium of communication.
Globally all prominent brands utilise YouTube to promote their products, services, and brand value. Art, literature, music, movie, health, food, cookery, business, entertainment, exercise, teaching, learning, research – just name the field – you have brilliant displays in this magical space.
How to begin a YouTube channel to promote your business? How to popularise it and make it a source of passive income etc. are some of the topics mentioned in this article.
What is YouTube
YouTube is a video-sharing website under the ownership of Google, apart from that it is the second-largest social media platform, the second most visited website. The popularity of YouTube is increasing very fast and it has become an undeniable option as a media of digital marketing.
There are three types of consumers of YouTube, viewers, creators, and advertisers. Each one of them has different interests. Viewers watch videos on YouTube to get information, and as a means of entertainment. Creators make and upload videos to YouTube to express their views or to share their knowledge. In this process, video creators get paid for some advertisements displayed on their channels. Advertisers pay to YouTube to show their advertisements. YouTube sets its policies and guidelines to serve the best interests of each of these users.
A specialized sequence of computer-implementable instructions is called algorithms. Algorithms are controlling policies and guidelines set up by YouTube. Here, human intervention is kept to a minimal level by deploying artificial intelligence and machine learning to control the implementation of policies, guidelines, and the rules so they are meticulously implemented on YouTube.
Create an account
The first step to begin a YouTube channel is to have a Google account. You may use personal e-mail id or the business e-mail id for this purpose. It is advisable to choose the “To manage my business” option if you intended to use the channel for business communication.
Log-in to YouTube using the google account and create a new channel. As you are going to use the channel for business purposes, create it as a brand account. The advantage of brand accounts is that multiple people can manage it. Choose a suitable name that is short and aptly describe the purpose of your channel.
Publish video and popularise the channel
Once the channel is ready you may prepare the video for uploading. The first step here is to add a suitable title for the video. The title requires to be short and reflecting the subject handled in the video. After the title, there is a description, include searchable keywords in the description. Then there is the tags section, add your video keywords in this section to make it more search-friendly.
Then comes the thumbnail image, which is as important as a cover page to a book. This is the primary visual that attracts the viewers to the video. Use clear and good quality thumbnail images. YouTube suggests a 1280×720 pixel size and 72 dpi resolution as the specifications of a thumbnail image so that it will be displayed correctly across different devices. Close-up images of people are generally very effective as thumbnails. While uploading videos YouTube will suggest some thumbnail from the video itself but it is desirable to prepare and use separate images as thumbnails.
Adding titles, descriptions, and tags in the videos not only enhances searchability but it will also heighten the chance of algorithms that suggest the video based on the interests of viewers. So it is important to provide accurate and apt titles, descriptions, and tags to every video suitable to its content. Giving misleading information may attract more viewers initially but in the long run, it will give a negative impact on the popularity of the channel.
YouTube cards appear as the blocks of text displayed over the video, this can be added in the videos to interact with the viewers. Also, a card can lead the users to specific playlists, other videos, or another website, etc. Viewer polls can also be conducted using YouTube cards. Cards can be inserted at any point of time in the video. Based on the valuable feedbacks available through cards, the content of future videos can be planned by the creator. YouTube cards can be effectively utilized to improve the popularity of the channel.
Subscribers to a YouTube channel is similar to a repeat customer of a shop. Every video upload will be intimated to subscribers. The number of subscribers is a determining factor for how the algorithms rate the channel.
Uploading videos at regular intervals is a good practice to increase the credibility of the channel and improve the watch time and subscribers of a channel. Plan a schedule for video upload considering the subject of your channel and the target audience, and then adhere to the schedule. For example, It is better to choose the publishing time of a video program targeting school children at the weekend.
Another factor deciding the value of a channel is it’s “public watch hour”. This is the total amount of time in aggregate that viewers spend viewing your videos. Videos topping in this metric result in higher overall viewing sessions and will be favourites of YouTube algorithms. Information about all the above aspects deciding channel’s popularity will be available in the analytics section of YouTube.
Make money from YouTube
Once the channel becomes popular, you can apply for the “YouTube Participation Programme” (YPP). There are certain conditions to apply for YPP. 1) Channel should have 4000 Public Watch Hours. 2) Channel should be operational for the last 12 months 3) Should have at least 1000 subscribers. 4) Channel/content must adhere to the YouTube Partner Program Policies and terms of service of YouTube. After getting the YPP application approved you can start a Google AdSense account and start collecting money for the advertisement shown on your channel or when premier customers view your channel.
How to get more advertisements?
More advertisement on your channel means more money you get. Now let us see what are the factors encouraging advertisers to advertise on your videos. The easiest way to increase your advertising revenue is to create videos that can engage more people for more time.
Good quality audio and video recording increase the chance of people view your videos for more time. Pay attention to lighting and camera angle so that the overall quality of the video can be increased.
YouTube had published “advertiser-friendly content guidelines” read this and create videos accordingly so that there is more chance of your video to get its share of advertisement. Here we shall review some of the important guidelines in these guidelines.
A huge number of videos are uploaded into YouTube every minute this makes the manual rating by the YouTube difficult, in this context, the algorithm makes decisions about which video to be shown to which viewer and which are the videos that can be shown as a suggestion to a particular viewer. So a creator needs to add relevant titles, descriptions, and proper tags to every video.
Advertisers will not have much interest in some particular type of content if you are expecting advertisements it is better to avoid such topics. War, violence, nudity, and sexuality are some topics that are usually rated less for displaying advertisements.
Videos depicting drugs and intoxicating materials are being rated by YouTube as “limited advertisement category”. There is less chance of advertisements to be displayed in such kind of videos.
YouTube gives less rating to videos showing discrimination based on caste, creed, religion, and sex. If such content is beyond certain limit there are chances the video gets deleted from YouTube.
Make the gain
YouTube sets a beautiful system of displaying your messages and at the same time earn money by advertising form others. Many small and large companies use this system to their advantage.
Entrepreneurs earn good money by conducting channels on online tuition, yoga class, music class, and many other topics by utilizing the free service through YouTube. Some companies are uploading their product installation and demonstration videos on YouTube channels and help customers. Each business can use the services offered by YouTube in ways that are suitable to their style of operations. Find out your model and be successful.