it would be difficult for me to decide if I think a well written title or a well designed thumbnail is more important when creating a Youtube video. On the one hand, the title of the video is what will actually capture a viewer and get them to click on a video. On the other hand, a thumbnail that stands out in the search results will be what gets the viewer to read your title in the first place. In any case you should take creating thumbnails and titles for your videos very seriously while youtube is getting better and better at recommending screen capture moments in your video and auto generating pretty good thumbnails. I still think it's worth putting a little extra effort into it. In fact, according to Youtube, 90% of the best performing videos on Youtube have custom thumbnails. Now, I'm not exactly sure what they consider best performing, but these are their words, not mine. You want to include at least a little text and possibly use some photo editing software to highlight importa...

nt parts so that viewers will notice we personally use Photoshop as part of our creative cloud suite to edit our thumbnails. But there are plenty of free options like Gimp or Photo P online. Alternatively, there are a ton of apps out there for your phone or tablet that are more than powerful enough to put, you know, text on a thumbnail and upload it to Youtube, teaching you. Graphic design from the ground up is way beyond the scope of this course. Once you feel comfortable navigating the photo editing software of your choice here are just a few tips to help you optimize your thumbnails for youtube one. Include yourself in your thumbnails. If there's one thing our Youtube Manager made abundantly clear in all of our consultations, it's that thumbnails with people outperform those with only graphics. In the early days of our Youtube career, we would design a completely original thumbnail for each and every one of our videos with vector art as it turns out. That's not the best way to attract attention from new viewers include yourself and ideally the subject of your video in the thumbnail. In the case of our instant pot review a simple counter up shot with the appliance and your face would be ideal for our is college worth it video maybe just a selfie in front of your school would do the trick. Overlay a shortened version of your title on your thumbnail, ideally only use three words or less remember that most people are viewing your video on mobile devices and it's entirely possible that your entire thumbnail that you put all this time into takes up less than an inch of real estate on their screen. The thumbnails that catch my eye the most use high contrast big bold lettering for our woodworking project, you might overlay the words no power tools or my first project or easy cutting board. If I personally saw bold letters in a thumbnail saying no power tools. My interest would be piqued enough to at least read the title, which would tell me exactly what to expect in the video, avoid Clickbait thumbnails, although a thumbnail with a half dressed woman in a bikini might get you more initial clicks when the video doesn't include that imagery as it would be against of Youtube's terms of service Anyway, you'll lose watch time and the video will stop being suggested because people are clicking away as you'll learn later in the grow your channel section subscribers don't really matter views don't really matter. Watch time is what youtube values the most not to mention if you want to make money on youtube, your thumbnails, titles and content should all be advertiser friendly in Youtube's words meaning they don't use sexual imagery, profanity, violence or drugs use high resolution images. Youtube recommends that your thumbnails be at least 12 80 by 720 pixels. But we personally always just set up our Photoshop for 1920 by 10 80 that has always worked well across all devices. Once your photo editing skills improve a little bit, try to include some depth in your thumbnail. Good thumbnail will have a foreground middle ground and background in our case. Most of our backgrounds are captures from the video itself and then the middle ground is the text and then the foreground is the subject. So if we took our instant pot review example the background would be the kitchen. The middle ground would be our text that said instant pot review, and then the foreground would be the instant pot itself and our face so that the viewer knows exactly who and what the video is about.

buy this class

$00

Buy Class

Sale Ends Soon!

starting under

$13/month*

Unlock this classplus 2000+ more >

79.7K Students

99% Recommend this Class

00 Student Work

0 Video lessons in HD
00h 00m of class content
Exclusive bonus content
Lifetime access, anywhere, anytime
Streaming access on desktop and mobile browsers
Download and offline access with class purchase
Offline sync with our iPhone & iPad apps
100% satisfaction guarantee

Philip Ebiner

Professional video & course creator, photographer & teacher to 1mil+ students; 10+ years experience with 1000+ videos.

2,000+ classes ranging from fundamentals to advanced techniques.

Create a Thumbnail

Create a Thumbnail

Lesson Info

37. Create a Thumbnail

Lessons

Introduction to YouTube Marketing

Why YouTube is Perfect for Marketers

The Direct Sale Funnel

The Soft Sales Funnel

The Email Marketing Funnel

Subscriber Sales Funnel

Ad Revenue Funnel

Promotion Funnel

Bonus lesson: Laying the groundwork for good design

Quiz - Chapter 2

Get More Views with Better SEO

Types of Videos to Make

Why Subscribers Matter & How to Get More

How to Add Links to Your Website

Calls to Action

Internal Linking

Quiz - Chapter 3

Types of YouTube Ads

The Quick and Easy Way to Create a YouTube Ad

Advanced YouTube Ads - Part 1

Advanced YouTube Ads - Part 2

Advanced YouTube Ads - Part 3

Advanced YouTube Ads - Part 4

Quiz - Chapter 4

Intro to Digital Marketing YouTube Lessons

Start Your Channel

Channel Art and Profile Icon

Channel Description and Links

Featured Channels

Customizing Your Channel

Channel Trailer

Channel Status and Features

Exporting a Video - Settings Reccomendations

Choose a Title

Write Your Description

Add Tags