YouTube coach reveals: Mistakes SMALL YouTubers ALWAYS make!

Thumbnails

Have you ever had that video that you put hours and hours in.
You created an amazing video.
Release it, you thought: “This is going to be it, this is going to blow my channel”.
And then crickets ….

But it’s an amazing video, how can that be?
Well … how do viewers know that it is an amazing video?
You have to tell them that!

If you go to the supermarket and see a candybar that looks disgusting on the packaging, would you even consider eating it?
Your thumbnail is the packaging, your video should look delicious to eat.

It took you 2 hours of research, 2 writing the script, 2 hours to film the video, 1 day of editing. … but how much time did you spend on the thumbnail?
If it’s literally is the only thing that stands between a view and not?
A thumbnail can take me 2-4 hours to make.

Not taking thumbnails seriously and not spending enough time on your thumbnail is MONUMENTAL beginner mistake.

The only way to make good thumbnails for every video is to first make the thumbnail, before recording the video.
If you can’t make a good thumbnail, you don’t record the video.

Biggest thumbnail mistake, EVER

Now we are on the topic of thumbnails, here is the biggest mistake I see beginner creators make: they make their thumbnails too complicated.

Because, but how long do you think that viewers spend on the YouTube homepage to decide what they are going to watch next?
How many thumbnails are competing for your attention?
20 or so, including mr beast.
It sounds harsh, but the ones that are hard to understand are not clicked on.

Try to stick to 3 to 4 objects in thumbnails.
And things like puns or inside jokes, take too long to get for viewers.
you have 1 second to grab viewers attention, make it count.

Here is the absolute golden nugget:
Go to YouTube’s homepage and start taking screenshots of thumbnails you’d like to click on and note down WHY you want to click on them.
If you start collecting thumbnails, you will notice that after a while your brain gets programmed to think in a certain way about thumbnails.
This is exactly the knowledge you need to apply to your own thumbnails.

If you don’t know HOW to make thumbnails, you can let someone on fiverr do it for you.
I can also recommend to check out my Thumbnail Secrets video training, in which I teach you step-by-step how to make a clickable thumbnail.

How often do you watch YouTube?

It really helps your views when you know what works on YouTube.
What is trending, who do the big famous creators do?
But how can you know what works if you don’t spend a lot of time on YouTube.
This is the next mistake.

If you are spending time on YouTube you behave as a viewer.
Just like with thumbnails, your own behavior on videos of others can tell you a lot about the behavior of viewers on your content.
You start to think from the perspective of the viewer.
Not only “why do I click”, but also “why do I abandon a video”.

Audience retention graphs tell where viewers leave a video.
In one of my videos I lost 19% of my audience, because I said 3 words, that indicated to viewers I’m wasting their time.

That is almost a fifth of viewers that took me blood sweat and tears to make them click on my amazing thumbnail.
19% that never will reach the end of the video.
19% that will never click over to other videos.
19% could make the difference between a viral video and not.
Only to throw it away because of 3 stupid little words.

What were those 3 words?
“Hello I’m Dexxter”.

This also applies to bumpers b.t.w.
Bumpers are those animated presentation things at the beginning of a video.
Why would you as a viewer want to watch that?
You don’t, in other words: you are wasting viewers’ time.

My golden rule is: get to the point of the video within 10 seconds.

Audience retention graphs

That’s the next mistake: creators not looking at audience retention graphs.
Because it literally tells creators what viewers REALLY think of your videos.
Is it boring? They click away!
Is it exciting? They rewind!

When you have a high drop-off in the beginning that can mean 2 things:

you didn’t deliver upon the promise and expectation of title and thumbnail
don’t get to the point quickly enough.

A good metric to shoot for is the average percentage viewed at 30 seconds.

80% good
70% ok
less than 70 needs improvement

Remember my 10 second rule?
The best average percentage viewed at 30 seconds are videos that start delivering value from the first second.

Broad content

Imagine this:
You are browsing on YouTube for a good video.
It takes ages to find something mildly interesting.
You click on that video and it turns out to be amazing!
Finally!
You want to see more like that.
So you subscribe to that channel.

But the first upload you get served is something completely different than you subscribed to.
How likely are you to watch that?
Probably not.

A lot of beginner creators think: “I upload whatever I like”.
But broad content is a growth killer for a small YouTube channel.
Because it’s often not what viewers want to see.

When you are serious about YouTube and want to take it to the next level, take a look at my video training program: Viral Strategy.
The program takes you step-by-step through the process of getting views, subscribers and going viral.

For new creators I included a module that guides you step-by-step through the process of starting, creating and setting up a YouTube channel.