Create Awesome YouTube Thumbnails

1. Class Intro: Hey there, my name is Alex and welcome to this Skillshare class about creating thumbnails for YouTube. So far I have created over 20 different classes and I taught or 40 thousand designers and students from around the world. Everything I know about Adobe XD, about social media and more. And in this class, as I said, we're going to explore different areas about YouTube, thumbnail creation. What you can do to up your game if you're already creating thumbnails for YouTube and what you can learn when you're just getting started. So we're going to get started with why our thumbnails important. We're going to cover that in a separate video. We're going to explore what some of the biggest YouTubers are There, are doing and how they are elevating their game. Then I'm going to show you my thumbnail strategy in how I plan my thumbnails according to my playlist and according to my audience interests. Because not all of my audience is interested in the same thing. So because I'm creating these different playlist, of course, these different players should have different thumbnail images. So that's what I'm explaining in that video. We are also going to talk about what works on YouTube and why, and what you should know if you're shooting up front for your YouTube thumbnails, how you position yourself, how you should light your scene, and what you should think about for later when you're creating templates in, for example, Adobe Photoshop or your favorite software. Then I'm going to take you to Adobe Photoshop. I'm going to show you some of my different examples about how I structure my thumbnail template and how I use and reuse them, how I save and upload to YouTube, and how you can do to NY template creation is really important when you're working for these YouTube thumbnails and how it's going to save you a bunch more. Then we're going to talk about how you can upload them to YouTube and how you can test to repeat, and how you can research these different things like keywords, how you can do AB testing, and what you can do to improve your thumbnail game even better. Because as you know, apart from the title and obviously a good video quality, it's important to have good Tonya. Your class project for this class is going to be to create a timeline using the tips and techniques you'll learn from this class. So without any further ado, let's get started. 2. Why are thumbnails important: Youtube thumbnails are really important because they are the connection point between you as a creator and a potential viewer who is browsing through YouTube. Thumbnails are really debt bridge between you and your potential subscriber and the potential viewer to your videos alongside the thumbnails titles are also really important. So having a really good thumbnail to attract potential viewers and then having the really good title as well. So those potential viewers can read what's a potentially in for damn, inside of your video is really what's going to convert majority of people to come and view your videos and having a good thumbnail entitle in combination is what's going to bring them in to your video. Having a really good content is obviously the key, but in having a good thumbnail and title is also really important because you want to attract as many potential viewers and subscribers as possible on YouTube. So this class is hopefully going to help you. Along with that, I'm going to help you analyze some of my thumbnails. I'm going to show you what I'm doing and I'm going to share with you some tips and techniques and shortcuts which are going to help you elevate your work in work much faster than ever before by having these templates which you can use and reuse many times for your YouTube thumbnails. 3. My YouTube thumbnail strategy: In this video, I'm going to show you my YouTube thumbnail strategy, what works for me and how I developed it. So you can do too. So here we are at my YouTube channel and you can see that there are many different thumbnails right here. Majority of them are really similar, but as you can see, there is a clear differentiation between them. Now, what I don't do really well at the moment, but I plan to do with the next update of my channel is to keep things more consistent. So you can see right here at the bottom, these are some of my older videos and they are really scattered around all of these different colors. These are quite good, but as you can see, there is a purple here, there is white here, there is a green here. So this is not really all that well when you are creating a consistent branding on YouTube and branding your channel consistently. So what I've done as of recent, you can scroll right here to the top and you can clearly see the differentiation here on these videos. Now, my channel is a little bit different than majority of the channels out there. Because if you are in a niche, for example, entertainment needs, then you can clearly have a consistent thumbnail strategy. What that means is you can have the same colors, you can have the same fonts, you can have the same images, but basically changed them from one video to the next. Just to differentiate those two videos, what I cannot do is because I am a designer and I'm creating different designs. Every single video, I cannot do that. But as you can see right here, for these ones, this is my designer money playlist, and it's all about designers making money online and in person. As you can see, videos from these, this series look exactly the same. I mean, thumbnails look exactly the same. So you can clearly know that. That's it. They have this white border around them. They have this designer money tag right here at the bottom left, and they have this clear of white text on a blue background. What that means for my viewers is whenever I upload this video, they know it's from this series because they can clearly differentiate this thumbnail from all of my other thumbnails. If we go back to here, you can see these images and these thumbnails. They are from my design tips playlist. And it's all about giving Designers Tips. How can they improve their careers? How can they improve their designs? How can they charge more and so on and so forth. And you can clearly see that all of these thumbnails look really similar and eats, once again to differentiate them from all my other videos and to tell my viewers and my subscribers than they are from this series called design tips. So if they are interested in this series, they can clearly see that those videos are inside of that series. And finally, if we take a look at these videos, these are from my playlist about website design in Adobe XD for travel agency, which is, of course I made. And you can also check it out if you're interested. But going back to it, you can see that these thumbnails are different ones again. And from all of these other videos for all of these other tutorials. So for example, discard horror effect, this button animation effect, and so on. Because these videos are different, I had to create different thumbnails to show off those videos, which is fine in my niche because designers are my target audience and they can clearly tell which designs interests them, which don't. But if they're interested in improving their careers and in earning more money, for example, then when they see these thumbnails, they can clearly tell what they are and where do they belong. So going back to my channel once again, you can see that there is variety right here. And if I go to my playlist, you can see in my playlist how all of this works. So you can clearly see that designer money intro. And if I view my full playlist right here, you can see when it opens that all of these videos have exactly the same structure, exactly the same consistency. So you can clearly see how all of them look like now, majority of them are just scheduled and only myself can see them at the moment. But if we scroll through, you can clearly see how they look like. If I go to my design tips right here and view full playlist. If we take you down to my older videos, you can see how they look like right here or so. All of them were consistent, but because I painted my wall in this blue color, which you can see right behind me. I wanted to incorporate that blue color because it's my favorite color as my brand color. And therefore, I created all of these thumbnails with this blue color. So you can see that all of these other ones have this white or nearly white background. But if we scroll all the way to the top where these new ones are. So right around here. Now here you can see this clear consistency. Even with this laptop, which is my laptop, I took a picture against this blue background. So therefore, all of them look consistent. And you can clearly see between this and this, how all of this looks like. But if I take you to my Adobe XD tutorials, which is this playlist. And if I show you how all of them look like until it loads, you can see that all of these videos look completely different. And therefore all of them need completely different cover images. And they are really different from these two playlist. So really depending of what you are creating on YouTube, what is your niche and who is your target audience, but you're trying to reach on YouTube. Therefore, you are going to pick your strategy. I'm just showing you my strategies and what works for me. And obviously because I created these different playlists and these different thumbnail images, there are different people watching different content on my channel. Adobe XD tutorials work the best and they have the majority of the views. While these two playlists, designer money and design tips, have a little bit less views then Adobe XD content. And I noticed that YouTube is pushing my Adobe XD tutorials much more because obviously there is a greater demand for those types of videos and therefore they are converting really well. But because I like creating this other content, for example, for a designer money and for a design tips. I like creating it because I think it's really important for designers and there is always an audience for a contact like dead. And because that's an evergreen content, it can be watched anytime in five years from now, ten years from now. It doesn't really matter because it's always going to be irrelevant. Therefore, I wanted to keep my thumbnail images consistent while with Adobe XD content because Adobe XD as a software is changing all the time, there are always new techniques and tips that you can show to your audience inside of Adobe XD and any software for that matter, whether you are creating tutorials for Photoshop or Sketch for free, my Adobe Illustrator, whatever you are doing, a software is always changing. So therefore, death tutorial might not be that relevant in, for example, two years time. But if you are creating evergreen content like those two playlist which are show you are. Therefore, those videos might end up being watched more in the future because once again, content does not get old because it's an evergreen quantity. 4. What works on YouTube and why: In this video, we are going to dive a little bit deeper into what works on YouTube as in terms of thumbnails and y. And I'm going to show you four different channels which I personally follow. You can see this for your favorite channels no matter what you are watching on YouTube and what are your favorites. So let's dig deep and I'm going to show you what I think are the key features of all of these different thumbnails. So the first channel we're going to take a look is Mr. Beast. And you can see they have 61 million subscribers. So one of the biggest channels out there. And you can clearly see that there is not much text on these thumbnail images, but just jimmy, who is Mr. Bass, what he is doing in that video or some simple click Beatty sort of stuff. Like this person wearing a McDonald's T-Shirt of working at McDonald's, which does not appear in the video. But it's all about offering people this much money. So they wanted to capture the reaction inside of this video, is sorry, inside of this thumbnail, just to show you what you can expect in this video. So is this a clickbait? Yes, it is to some point, but not really because they are delivering on that promise. You just cannot find that this particular person inside of that video. So they're using a stock image or they are taking the picture of one of their crew members dressed up as the McDonald's person, perhaps taking this image into Photoshop and creating a mock-up or something like that. But the whole point of the video is once you click inside and watch the video, you are going to see what they promised inside of the YouTube thumbnail. So that's really important. They are promising, they are delivering, they're just trying to attract you. Buy this eye-catching thumbnail to click on the video and actually to watch it. So that's the main takeaway. If you are trying to be clickbait, do it this way because you can see it obviously bays out because he has over 61 million subscribers, but tried to deliver what you actually promised. But if we go back to the design, once again, you can see that all of them are really simple. And obviously he's going to get a lot of views because he has a 61 million subscribers. But even if you don't have subscribers, makes sure that when you're creating these eye-catching thumbnails, to be honest and to be transparent. So you can see I broke into his house and left $50 thousand. But if we take a look right here, he does not appear as this burglary in the video, wearing this mask. But the point of the video is he broke into a house and left 50 k inside of the house, which he delivered. He just didn't war and this mosque. So once again, he doesn't have that much text inside of their thumbnail images. Basically, big faces, Smiley faces, shocked faces. This is what sells. And for example, I survived 24 hours straight in ice. He didn't really had this face. He just wanted to sell the effect. And you can see are 17, which is just a random number. I'm trying to get you to click inside. So the next channel is Marquez Brown Lee or ink PhD, which is a huge YouTuber all about technology. And you can see a really similar approach in his videos. He doesn't have really too much text, but because he's talking about technology products, that's what he is showing. So basically, whoever your audience is, remember from my thumbnails, obviously, I am just a tiny YouTuber. Compare it to these guys. But once again, methodology and techniques are exactly the same. Speak to your audience at the language that they will understand. In his example, you can see that he is showing products. So you can clearly see the new purple iPhone 12 and he's showing the new purple iPhone 12. It's really that simple, but it's eye-catching and it's really clear to see against this black or white background no matter what you are having on YouTube. And obviously because a lot of the people, majority of the people actually are going to watch this video on the mobile device. Having an eye-catching color inside of your thumbnail is really important, especially in this one, as you can see, because he's talking about the world's largest smartphone camera and he's showing the world's largest smartphone camera. So basically don't be quick Beatty. You are clickbait you do with the Mr. Beast way basically tried to make them click inside, but once they are inside, you are actually delivering at what you have promised. But just try to make that thumbnail image a little bit. I catchy. Back to these images. You can see that they are really different. Once again, go back to my example, because he's showing all of these different technology products, he has to have different thumbnail images. And because he's doing this retro Tech series with YouTube, you can see that these thumbnails right here are really different from these thumbnails. And that's the key differentiation. And that's what I showed you on my channel in the earlier video. If you are creating different content, it doesn't really matter. Basically just tell your viewers what they are into. Don't make the same thumbnails for them to expect. For example, in my case, it'll be easy tutorial and is just me talking about the design career and design tips. So let's go back to YouTube. And the next YouTuber is loan fox, which is basically all about the Dui, your products, your house, and how to make products for cheap, that they look expensive basically, that's his mantra. And you can see that his YouTube thumbnails are really different compared to these thumbnails and these thumbnails. And it's because he's showing various different products inside of his videos. And because his products are, for example, a chair or a room or something like this. Frame, image frame and this dresser. His thumbnails have to look a little bit different. And because his audience is basically these people who are browsing Pinterest for example, for inspiration. And because that audience is used to how images look on Pinterest, that's why he is creating thumbnails like these because he wants to show as much as possible inside of his thumbnails. So to an I, they might look cluttered, for example, these ones, you might not be able to see what they are, even though we're on the desktop on a really good monitor, perhaps you cannot see all of these details, but that's why he is using all caps inside of his description just to tell you what you can expect inside of. And those videos, you can obviously see reaction phases right here in these thumbnails. And obviously text, which is clear to see. So either black text on, against the white background or the other way around white text against a black background. And finally, I want to show you our top gear channel, which is really popular car channel from UK. And you can see what they are doing, basically the mixture of everything they are showing car. They're showing the text and they're showing some interesting. Go off a car like this, like this, like this, just to get you to click. Because if you see a car against the white background, for example, it might not be that interesting. Like it is a car going around the track. Once again, they're talking to their audience. And their audience really likes to see a car going around a truck rather than simply a car inside of the studio. If we go back to here, you can see that these are, for example, taking the inside of the studio. So they are showing the announcer and the car inside. So Chris Harris is the guy who is basically in front of the camera, and he is the presenter for top gear. But here because they are in a lockdown, they are in the studio. They're showing this split screen technique. So they're showing the car. He was talking about this car and they're showing him because he is the presenter. But if you scroll down, you can see there is this car on the black background. There is this car which is in the studio and it's not running. So once again, audience can easily tell what it is and what they can expect. So basically that's it. Those are just some of my examples. Take a look at your examples and the channels you like to follow. And you like to take a look and to listen and simply make sure to absorb what they are doing, right? And tried to replicate that onto your content. Just make sure to understand their audience is not your audience, even if you're in the same niche, because they are big channels, possibly they have audiences from around the world and various different interests. So just make sure to narrow down on what your audience is interested in and try to apply some of these tips and techniques. So once again, bright colors, clear to read texts, split-screen techniques, faces, no matter what you are doing, try to see what the big channels are doing in your niche and then try to replicate that on your own channel. 5. How to shoot and prepare your thumbnails: In this video, we are going to talk about how to shoot and prepare your thumbnails for design no matter which design software you are using. So if we take you right here, you can see that here is my thumbnail series. Then basically what you want to do and what you want to achieve is tried to stand in front of one color background. So that can be either white, black, yellow, pink, blue no matter which color you have and tried to take as many photos as you can with all of these different faces and facial expressions just to prepare and have all of those photos ready. Because that way you can achieve consistency on your channel like you saw on my channel, I'm starting to create that. And like you saw on all of those other channels from the previous video. So basically what you want is to take a series of different photos. You can plan your faces, you can run them down on a piece of paper and you can basically take as many of them as possible. If we take it back right here, you can see I have 152 items. Obviously it's doubled because I have this row images. And that's really important. If your camera can take raw images, make sure to take both RAW and JPEG. And then, for example, take those images to Adobe Lightroom, for example. And then if you make one change to the first image, for example, let's say that the blue background is not blue enough. You want it to be a little bit lighter than before, then you can simply apply that change and apply that change alone across all of your different images. And then simply batch, export them and they're all going to have exactly the same setting. But it's important to shoot in RAW because a row is going to allow you to make those changes. If you shoot just in JPEG or justice being g or whatever else format, then all those changes are going to be baked in, into your final image. And therefore, you're not going to be able to make those huge changes. So once again, going back to here and I'm going to open some of these images and they're going to look quite ridiculous. But they're really dare to prove the point. So you can see here I am making all of these different phases. So what you can see right here is it cannot take open this image. I have to open it in Adobe Photoshop or Adobe Lightroom because it's raw image. But nevertheless, you can clearly see if I scroll through all of these images is just me making all of these different faces and showing, for example, let's go with this one. Showing that hand-on aside. And perhaps this is why I like taking more of these images because in some of them I'm really pale, in some of them are really dark. And you can see some spots right here. These are from the nails in my wall because you can see that this painting right here, this picture and picture frame are right there. So that's why those are dare, because I really like to have my studio multiple to be, to be multiple choices. So that's why I had all of that there. So that's basically it for these images. And I have my laptop images right here. So if I open that one up, I use that laptop image inside of Adobe Photoshop. And I basically created a screen right inside of here. So I wanted to keep things consistent. And if I take you back to my YouTube channel, if I go back to my channel, if I go to videos, you can see that laptop image right here. I just added a couple of different logos around it because those are the topics which I'm talking about. And you can see that I have something inside of my screen. But if I take you back to this folder, you can see that all of these are blank and you cannot see anything inside of the screen. And basically what I tried to achieve right here is this blue background. And to have it be consistent with all of my other images that you saw on the channel? So basically why I did this is quite simple to save myself time because you have to always at least take a different thumbnail that what YouTube suggests you to do because when you upload your video to YouTube, you can pick from all of these different thumbnail images that YouTube suggests. But basically it's always the best idea to take your thumbnail separately. And by doing this approach, by doing majority of these images. At the same time, it's going to allow you to do just that. If you happen to have a green screen, it's even better. Because if you want to include the different images behind you, for example, I want to add a 100 and 0 are mountain behind me. I cannot do that at the moment because I have a real life background behind myself right now. But if I have a green screen behind myself, I can do all of these phases like this one, this one, this one, and then simply remove myself from that green screen and introduce all of these different backgrounds behind myself and then simply add text next to me. That's what we're going to explore in the next video. When I'm going to take you to Adobe Photoshop. If you don't have Photoshop, you can use something like Canvas or you can use Adobe XD, you can use Illustrator. You can use Affinity Designer no matter which tool you are using, just make sure if you are trying to cut yourself from that background, makes sure that the tool you are using has a pen tool or a feature which is going to be able to allow you to extract yourself from that background. 6. Creating and exporting your thumbnail: In this video, I'm going to show you how you can use Adobe Photoshop or any other software that has the ability for you to save templates, to use it, to create and these thumbnail images for YouTube. So I'm using Adobe Photoshop because I'm used to it. I'm using it always or over 15 years or so far. And I know all the shortcuts, I know all the tips and tricks, so I'm really familiar and used to it at this point. So that's why I'm using it on a daily basis. But as I said, you can use whatever software appeals to you and what you're most comfortable with. So let's jump inside of Adobe Photoshop and I'm going to simply show you some of my images and how I using them. So right here you can see that image which I showed you previously, and here it is. I just added Photoshop. I just added the home and eggs, the icons. And basically, this is how it looks, how it looks like. So what we have right here is really quite simple. So I have this image which is basically just a smart object, and I pasted this design inside. You can simply double-click inside and you can paste whatever you want inside of here. Hit Control. S is going to save and you can come back to here and edit. And as you can see, if I shut them off a half, many of these and I created different screens for each of them because I have different uses for them. Perhaps here I may be talking about wireframing in Adobe XD and on a piece of paper. So I might use this one. And for example here I might talk about photography and I might use this one. So this is just one of the examples. And of course, as I said previously in the previous videos, you can use examples which are going to work well for you and your niche and your videos. If we take a look at another one, this one, and write what I have right here is another mockup, but this is not mine. I used one I found online and I have this tax position in the center of this XD logo. And if I take you back to my channel, you can see some of these right here. So I'm using this one, for example. Then I'm using this one. I'm using this one and all of my older ones are using basically this exact same setup. And basically what this setup allows me to do is allows me to switch between this image and if I shut it off, I have my text layer x D layer. I have my iMac and a have all of these different circles in the background. So between this one and this one with this text, which basically allows me to position and add all of these different images inside and manipulate them. But just make sure if you are using this approach, Just not to put texts or sensitive important information in this top, sorry, bottom right corner of your thumbnail because that's where the timestamp is going to go and it's going to simply be hidden by your image. But let's use different image. And I'm going to show you these images which are showed you previously. So what I'm going to do is, for example, select one of these, Let's matter, no use. Let's use this one. Simply drag and drop it inside. It's going to place it as a smart object. And I'm going to use my Shift key and simply scale up to something like this. I'm going to position it right here. I'm going to right-click and rasterize layer and put it right here because I have this photo filter right here on top. Now you can notice debt if I hide this tax high my original image that we have, this spacing issue, what I'm going to do is simply select this area hit Shift F5. And basically with that I'm going to use the content of varietal hit, Okay? And it's going to simply fill in this space. But because now you can clearly see that this has been filled that can hit Control J to duplicate it. Then I can go to Filter Blur, Gaussian Blur, and simply select and for example, value that I think it's going to fit well, like, I don't know this one, for example, hit Okay, hit E on my keyboard for eraser tool, right-click and simply use one of these feather brushes. And I'm going to make it even bigger and simply delete the space around myself or around your subject, whatever you're trying to create right here. Now you can remember that we had these two spots which I explained previously are from my picture frames. So what I can do is use the spot healing brush tool. Simply click on that spot and it's going to remove both of them from my frame. And from then on, I can simply go ahead and add my text back inside. I can position it wherever I want. And because all of these elements are fully editable and you can simply jump in, select these, hit a on my keyboard, jumping right here and perhaps use this one because that's my shell color. And if I bring back my browser, you can see it right here. Perhaps he doesn't look all that blue on this screen, but basically it's this same color. If I want to highlight, I can hide it and simply have the text. And if I take you back, this, this, this, this, these two and this one, and this one as well are created using this exact same technique I just showed you in this video. So wherever you are using my technique or you are using your own technique, this is just to show you what's possible with templates. Because you can see in this one template, we have two different setups. And in that previous templates, I have majority of these mockups, which I can simply change the bending of the scene depending on the topic of the video and the mood I want to put my viewers in. Finally, I want to show you a bit more advanced approach. And this is the approach that I took for these videos are right here. So if I take you back, so these ones, these four and these four as well, which are a bit older. And you can see we're going from paper wireframe to wireframe to design and finally to animation. And if we take it back to here, this is what I've done right here. So we had the paper wireframe. We have the wireframe, we have the design. And finally we had a prototype. So you can see design and prototype change in just a bit, just to indicate to our viewers what is happening. We also have this text and here I'm breaking my own rule because here these videos are going to be cut off, as you can see by the timestamp right here. So you can see Adobe XD design and its cutoff. And basically here everything is cut off in the bottom right-hand corner of these videos and because of this timestamp, but I don't really care because viewers can tell from this. So website design number four, okay, so there are three before this video, Adobe XD protocol for example. So majority of my viewers are going to know what this is. But once again, if you have a broad audience like some of those channels which are showed you, for example, like Mr. Beast, MK, PhD, along Fox and all of those channels. Then perhaps it's a bit more wise to hide this text from this portion of your image. Because once again, it's going to be hidden by this time stamp. So how this is structured, basically exactly the same, just it has bit more elements or have my XD logo, have my images that you saw and I have my gradient fill, which if I hide it, it's going to show that everything is pure white. I just added that gradient right here at the bottom. So this text is going to stand out. And also these images and myself, everything is broken down into two basically. So you have this bottom part of your image and you have this top part. I also have a color picker, which is the element in the background. You cannot even see it. I have my component and I have my color and website design labels, which are all of these elements in the background that you can see. So basically, this is how I structure my images. Now in terms of exporting, you have many different options, but YouTube always recommends 1920 by 1080 because still majority of people out there are watching full HD videos. Majority of people don't have the capability of plane to K4 care or even six K or eight K yet. So they're still recommending for you to upload full HD images for your thumbnails. What that means is 1920 by 1080 is usually the dimension they are looking for because that image size is scaling well up and down. So both ways how that's going to look like once you start saving. So basically you're going to go right here to the File Save As, then choose your destination. For example, I want to choose this one. Then from here, choose JPEG, hit Save. And basically you want this to optimize at just below one megabyte in size. Of course, you can save your image, take it out, and then optimize it later. I'm using something called Riot on Windows and I'm going to show that in just a second. But basically when you're saving, hit Save, and basically that's it. Now, if I take you back to one of these images and if I fire up my riot, just to show you what I mean. And you can use something which is called image optimal on Mac, but on Windows it's called Riot. In both of them are free. I will leave the links in the PDF so you can check them out if you're interested. I really recommend this because it's going to load your videos much faster, is going to help YouTube optimize it much faster. Because once again, this is just what they recommend. It's not mandatory, but it's going to load much faster if your image is smaller, therefore, your SEO is going to be much better. So this is how it looks like. Here it is right here. So let's say that I want to optimize this image. And if I hover over it, you can see it's 349 in size. So 3.4 megabytes in size, simply drag and drop. I'm going to optimize it at 100%. Hit, Okay? And this is the initial image, this is the optimized image, and you can see how much it's optimized just before I place it into Photoshop. And then once you do, it's going to then be even better when you start saving it. Basically, from here on, you are going to simply take your image and then upload it to YouTube. And one more SEO trick I found is to name your cover images, these thumbnail images, to name them the same as your videos. Just add video artwork at the end. I found on some of these blogs from these big YouTubers that this is really going to help YouTube understand what you're trying to do with this image. They know it's the thumbnail image because that's where you uploaded obviously. But it's going to help it rank higher just because you gave it that name. So that's a short tip for you right there. 7. Create, test, repeat: Now that you took, edited, saved out, and uploaded your brand new thumbnail image to YouTube. I wish you all the luck in the conversion, but there are some things that you can do to help it out and to see if it converts. Well, you might noticed a few times on YouTube, YouTubers are actually changing their thumbnail images. Usually they are really similar, those thumbnail changes, but you can still noticed the change. And they're doing this just to AB test and to see which thumbnail image converts better. What that means is which thumbnail image brings in more views. And then the next. And how you can do that, you can use something called to Buddy. You don't have to, because that's the paid tool. You can use some of the YouTube methods and you can test it out that way. But to Buddy is basically the gold standard of what these YouTubers are using. There are also many other ones, but because I'm familiar with two-body, I'm just going to talk about that. And you can learn more about these other tools by simply going to YouTube. So if I take you back to my channel, we are in a video section, but if I go to Home section, what we have right here, if a judge, a designer at my channel trailer, we have this channel analytics. So what we have right here is total lifetime of views last 30 days, videos, and how many videos you've uploaded in the last 30 days. You have the stat so you can go day by day and see the views, subscribers, and videos. You can switch between these and you can compare stats right here between your channel and your videos. If I take you to the channel dashboard, you can see majority of these things right here in the Analytics, obviously because Google allows you to look at these analytics into a lot details. But having something like two buddies going to really help you out with all of these additional tools which YouTube does not provide. Tools like when you click right here and you have a two-body installed. You have dashboard, videos, live streams, playlist comments, and you can disable or enable comments. You can schedule comments. Somebody like that. Analytics, real-time analytics, extension tools. You have the keyword explorer, SEO Studio video topics planner tablets, so you can create tags in advanced, you can explore tags, copy and paste them. When is the best time to publish? By the minute click magnet, which basically, this is what we are talking about in these thumbnail videos, website tools, my account, community support, and so on. What we are right here are popular tools. So keyword explorer, you can basically explored the keywords which are going to work for your channel. We have the click magnet, which is quickly identify what content your audiences craving and learn what style of thumbnails will drive the most clicks. So you can use this class that you just took to understand the techniques behind these thumbnails, and especially for using Photoshop, some tips and tricks I did end up done in the past, not just for you to, but for my design products and for all these design courses. And basically use those tips and techniques in conjunction with the Tube Buddy to create the best possible converting Tomlin. Basically what's more is thumbnail generator. It can generate the thumbnail, but I don't recommend this. I always recommend for you to take your own images and to create your own thumbnails. Health Report basically get an overlook and held the performance of your channel, of your videos, get AB testing. So this is what I was talking about, the score which thumbnails, titles, tags, inscriptions, drive the most clicks and views to your videos. So test, optimize, improve. This is what's important and what's the key feature, in my opinion, of the Tube Buddy, because you can optimize these images and you can learn, for example, 20 people clicked in one hour when the majority of my audience is there and active on YouTube, 20 people clicked on this image, 30 people clicked on this image. So you can simply compare them day by day, and obviously can't come to the conclusion that the 30 people, one is the best one to have. And you're going to obviously pick that one. As in terms of the changes, they are not going to be that major. For example, like a showed you previously. And we can actually go back to Photoshop. And let's say that you are editing this one. Let's say that this is not converting that. Well, perhaps I want to bring those back in, hit a on my keyboard and perhaps use the black color. And perhaps, maybe I want to add something like a border. Perhaps until like this I can click V on my keyboard. Something like this. For example. He had a once again and I don't want any fill, but I want a stroke, white color for example. And I want the thickness of that stroke to be, I don't know, 20, for example, may be even better. I can hit a on my keyboard and come to this color because it told you it's my channel color. And then simply put it around and basically play around with these settings until you are happy with them and until you have something to show, then you can go back to here, upload, test and basically explore what works best. We have bold processing so you can upload many videos, you can upload N screens, you can upload tags and so on. Copper center if you're creating made for kids content, comment moderation. So you can basically include these key words and filter different comments. So it's going to work on a Medicaid background. You don't have to delete the spam comments, which happens all the time. Best-practice checks so you can check everything about that video analytics. So this is what I wanted to show you. If you have your competitor and let's face it, all of us have them, and I don't see them as competitors. I simply see them as other people on YouTube, believe it or not, because I think the competition is really healthy and I think that all of us should have competitors because that's what's going to drive us to change. Because we are here to serve our audiences and how best to serve them if we don't know what we need to change and competitors are going to allow us to see what we actually need to change about ourselves and about our content. So what we have right here is this Search explorer. I simply typed in Keller adverts because that's the guy creating Adobe XD content. And his channel is huge compared to mine, but it doesn't matter. I just want to explore the search traffic for this term. I want to see Keller Edwards Figma dimension, YouTube LinkedIn is true. This is what people are searching for. And I can also see common video tags. So killer AdWords, UI, UX. These are the tags that he is putting on his images. So we can see that he used this. Let's go with, yeah, let's go with this video because this is the Adobe XD tutorial, but he also used dimension, which is the 3D tools. So let's simply use that one. And what I can see right here, our video analytics for his video, he has one hundred and one hundred, ten hundred total views, which is in these views right here. 120 comments, likes, dislikes, creator suggested. So these are how many suggested is shown at the end of the video are from the same channel as the video. You are watching. An anchor tags. So I can click to load and it's going to show me where he is positioned in the search for each of these different tags. And what I can do is simply copy and I can create a new tag list. I have my Adobe XD course website design in Adobe XD, I can copy all the tags or I can simply select what I want. I don't want this one because you can see he used that title and I can simply copy to clipboard and I can place them wherever I want later. He has 95 percent SEOs, corso tags, entitle, and 20th 2018 description tags in total tech, characters, title words in description. So you can see all of these and basically you are given this SEO score. He shared it on Facebook and, and got six likes up votes on Reddit, non mentions. So I can click to search. And it's going to take me to Twitter if I just want to search, this one. Channel has this many views, this many subscribers, this many videos, best-practices saw high-risk thumbnail info cards added, n screen, added common pin. So he didn't been any comment and you can see it right here. Liked on Facebook captions added. So he didn't add any captions, comments hearted. So he did hearted. These comments as you can see right here. Chapters added, not so chapters are basically the parts of your video. And finally, we have the tag right here. So this is how you should use to buddy if you want to help your channel grow, not just for the thumbnails because this class is talking obviously about thumbnails. But if you want to improve your game in terms of the tags, in terms of the search game, SEO game. If you want to schedule your posts, if you want to schedule their videos on YouTube, if you want to grow your community, if you want to go live, I didn't even touch those tools about going live. If you want to explore the best possible keywords, practices about your videos, then I will highly recommend you check it out and I will leave the link in the PDF. But as you saw, I'm using it for AB testing and I'm using it to search these tags because from this research alone, you can clearly see what your competitors are doing. And you can simply adapt those keywords to basically talk about what you are talking in the video. And we are coming back to that first video where I mentioned be a clique better but be a good click Bader. And simply click bait about what already is inside of your video, not what isn't. 8. Your class project: Your class project for this class is to create a thumbnail for YouTube using the tips and techniques that you learned in this class, you can upload it to the class project section because I would really like to see what you guys can come up with in which needs you operate and for which needs you're creating your videos and how your thumbnails look like. You can use any one of these methods. You can use any one of these tips and techniques for inspiration. Just tell me in the description of your class project what it is about because we don't have titles on the class projects, but basically uploaded and shared with the shadowed with world because I'm sure that all of the other students, including myself, are going to be thrilled just to see what you guys can come up with. Also, make sure to let me know if you have any questions and also make sure to check out that PDF because all of the links which I mentioned and it is a lot are going to be linked in that PDF. So you can simply click on that link and go and check out what you are interested about. 9. Outro: Thank you for watching this class and I really hope you found some value in it. And I really hope that you are going to explore some of these tips and techniques and these tools which I mentioned to up your thumbnail creation game, just make sure to follow some of these rules really quickly. So if you are creating thumbnails of yourself, make sure to have sets of images taking up front because as you saw, it's going to allow you to create these thumbnails much more quickly if you have access to lighting like I have in the studio right here, and consistent lighting, which basically means that all of the lights are set up and that's it. You don't move them at all. You can take these thumbnails one at a time. But what I found through years of making these because I'm not on YouTube for many years. I'm on YouTube waiting for 2.5 years or something like that. But I'm creating these cover images and thumbnails for products and for these courses for many years in the past. And what I found is if you can create sets of images when you are there, basically, take our time, pick a time of the day or take a whole day just to create these thumbnail photos, which are then going to take into Photoshop or to your software editing of choice and simply added them there, play around with them there. If you are creating thumbnails like I did for my Adobe XD tutorials, for example. Then make sure to plan ahead and think about what you are going to create. In my case, I'm going to create a majority of my tutorials are for website design, but I also have tutorials for app designs. So what I want to do is to plan around and see where I can position those devices. So once again, as you saw in my general majority of devices are on the right-hand side of the screen. On the left-hand side of the screen is the text. Because on the right-hand side, especially on the bottom parts with the right-hand side, is the area which is going to be covered by the YouTube video time stamp. As you saw in my final example which I showed you, these thumbnail images can be extremely complex in terms of the layers which are going to find in them, in terms of the effects, for example, that gradient effect and all of those different thumbnail images can combine into really does Advanced think but don't overly complicated. Just keep it nice and simple. Did it that way. Because once again, I have many years of experience in Adobe Photoshop and creating all of these different elements. As I said, I have all 500 design products and I created these thumbnail images for each of them. So you can just imagine that experience now coming to YouTube. So all of this stuff is really easy for me. But if you're just getting started, don't overwhelm yourself. Just keep things nice and easy. Make sure that you are honest. Make sure if you are click baiting to clickbait in a nice way. So basically by 2 Mr. B's and did if you're doing some reactions, make sure that your face pops up right up front because that's what people want to see. They want to see reactions, they want to see faces. Basically people react to people the best way. Then when it comes the time to uploading as you saw, you can use to Buddy, to elevate your game, but you don't really have to. You can use YouTube integrated tools, which are great already. But if you want to step up your game, then you can use the two-body tools. And that's basically it for this class. Make sure to post your class projects because I cannot wait to see what you guys can come up with. And I'm looking forward to seeing you in some of my other classes. Thank you. And take care.