YouTube Shorts: Everything YOU Want To Know!
YouTube Shorts: Everything YOU Want To Know!
YouTube Shorts: Everything YOU Want To Know!
- Can you monetize YouTube Shorts? No. Well... (upbeat music) Back again, folks, what- Oh, hang on, the tripod clearly hasn't been set up properly. (beep) Ah (groans), let's try this again. Hello, everybody, I'm back in the chair. You might call it the YouTube confessional chair, since these videos are all about you, the questions that you have about a particular topic, and me sharing my thoughts along with you. And today, we're talking all about YouTube Shorts, so let's just get straight into
it. Can you use cards and end screens for Shorts, or will it exclude them from getting featured? So because a YouTube Short right now is a regular video when you upload it, you can add end screens and interactive cards, and if somebody watches it through the regular YouTube player, they will appear, but if they watch it as a YouTube Short, you are right, those will not be featured, so I wouldn't recommend trying to add them into your content 'cause it's just gonna get confusing for y ou and your
viewers if you're trying to reference something as an end screen or a card, and it's not actually there on the YouTube Short. Do Shorts have to be recorded from a phone? Absolutely not. Yes, you can use the YouTube Shorts camera feature when it's available, but I've certainly already uploaded a lot of Shorts videos from my desktop computer, and they have appeared as YouTube Shorts. Do subscribers from YouTube Shorts count? Let's find out. (sighs) Let's go check those anal ytics on my
computer. It's the same chair. So I assume this question relates to whether subscribers gained from YouTube Shorts videos go towards YouTube monetization. We can have a look on our YouTube Shorts channel here, and where we currently have 1,278 subscribers, and if I click on the monetization link in the YouTube Studio it tells me that we have 1,280 subscribers that are contributing towards the monetization, so we've already met that requirement. So, yeah, it lo oks as if subscribers do count. As
for watch time, that's an entirely different matter. (sighs) Shouldn't be doing this, I tell you. Pushing this chair around, gonna do my back in. I've got 700,000 subscribers, I'm the talent of this channel. Should have people to do this. Dan, come over here, come over here, move this chair! How to use tags and where to put them? My simple advice is, when it comes to YouTube Shorts, don't even bother thinking about YouTube tags. I haven't used the actual Shorts camera tool yet, but I would
imagine YouTube is not putting the tag box anywhere in that workflow to allow you to advertise, so you'd have to do it manually through the YouTube studio. If you really want to use tags, then do a search on YouTube, use the vidIQ tool to copy those tags from the most popular videos, and slot them in your video if you want to, but just explaining that sounds like too much work when it comes to Shorts. It's all about the content and a li ttle bit about the title. What is the shortest duration for
a YouTube Short video? Fascinating question. Take a look at this. No! Now, I thought I was being really cute here with the world's shortest YouTube Short, but when I checked the analytics for this video, not a single view came from the traffic source of Shorts, so there must be a minimum cutoff to go along with the maximum of 60 seconds. I'll tell you what though, this might be a world record for audience retention. That rig ht there, that's why I've got 700,000 subscribers. Savage numbers. Now I
must admit I haven't done any precise tests to find out what the minimum YouTube Short length is. I have seen some YouTube Shorts of seven seconds, and I'm guessing the cutoff is probably around about five seconds. My advice is, if you do any weird and wonderful tests with YouTube Shorts, go to the Featured Section of your channel if you've added the Shorts section, and if it appears on there, then it does qualif y as a YouTube Short. How to make a Short of already existing YouTube videos which
are horizontal. Looks like you're an ASMR channel, so that is the perfect type of content to repurpose into short, satisfying clips. What I would do is take the horizontal video, put it into a vertical format, then maybe crop the sides so you're focusing on the central important part of the video. if you can do that, and then, with the letter boxing at the top and the bottom, I would add maybe some ba ckground colors and some text to accentuate, maybe, what you're trying to describe, especially
in ASMR, where you can probably use a little bit of text. Is it really even worth it to make a Short, especially as a small channel? Well, YouTube is pretty competitive already, especially in the long-form content space. YouTube Shorts are a new thing, so there is ground to be grabbed here as there is less competition, but it's very quickly filling up. As for small channels making Shorts t o grow, take a look at this example. This channel started posting nothing but Minecraft Shorts, and now
these are raking in millions of views. They had less than 50 subscribers at the beginning of July, less than 1,000 subscribers in late October, but now they have over 100,000 subscribers (arrow pings) and more than 30 million views. If that's not a convincing enough story for small channels, I don't really know what is. When will it roll out to other countries? Well, technicall y, YouTube Shorts is now available to everybody. Doesn't matter how many views or subscribers you have, if you make a
video of less than 60 seconds in a roughly vertical format, then it could be considered a Short. As for when we all get this new YouTube Shorts camera tool in the YouTube app, don't know, probably in the new year. Here's an example of how Shorts are working for a channel that's already been on YouTube for a while. This channel has 4,000 subscribers, they upload Shor ts every day with a mix of long content, and they have 1.2 million views on one of the Shorts. Do you need any more evidence than
that? Why are subs from YouTube Shorts being deducted? I've seen quite a few people comment about this, and it doesn't look as if there's any way to prove it in the YouTube analytics, because it doesn't show the sudden rise and then sudden drop. YouTube just seems to level these out. The honest answer right now is, I don't know. It could be a glitch in h ow YouTube is grabbing subscribers from the Shorts area of the YouTube ecosphere. Or let me put it this way. It is not in YouTube's interests at
all to remove legitimate subscribers from your channel or from the viewers who have subscribed to your channel, nobody wins, so for now, unless there's any more concrete evidence, I will put this down to YouTube working out the kinks on a brand new tool that's been released to hundreds of thousands of creators, and millions, if not billions o f views right now. Can you monetize YouTube Shorts? No. Well... so if you make a vertical video of under 60 seconds, that means it qualifies as a YouTube
Short, and it can be played on the YouTube Shorts player, and if it's played in that area, it doesn't get monetized. However, it is also a regular video, so if somebody watches a video through the desktop or the normal area of the YouTube app, then it can be monetized. We've done an entire video about this already, so do check it out over here. Why is the Stories feature a thing when you can just upload YouTube Shorts? I agree with you 100%. I have no idea. YouTube, you need to help
establish what is a normal YouTube video, a YouTube Short, and a YouTube Stories, because it feels like Stories are gonna die an absolute death. Actually, there is one way I do use YouTube Stories right now, and that is for Q&A, because you can directly respond to comments through videos, and the question appears on-sc reen. But beyond that, YouTube Stories and YouTube Shorts are really confusing as two things trying to compete in the same video platform. More of a suggestion than a question. I'd
love it if Shorts were not included in the last 10 video section of my analytics on mobile. And I agree with you 100%. YouTube, are you listening? Stop mixing YouTube Shorts, YouTube live streams, and YouTube videos in comparisons. Cheers. Why am I talking to my shirt? Can you upload your Tik Tok videos, or will there be a copyright ban because of the audio? There's two questions there. Yes, you can upload your Tik Tok content to YouTube since it is your content. I'm not sure how happy YouTube
are with our little Tik Tok logo appearing in the top left or right hand corner of a lot of the Shorts, but there you are. As for audio and copyrights, well, YouTube Shorts follows the same copyright content ID system as normal YouTube videos, so if you were to upload this video to YouTube regul arly, and it would get a copyright claim or strike, exactly the same thing is going to happen in YouTube Shorts. YouTube is more robust with their copyright in general, so yeah, you are treading a fine
line with the copyright scenarios there. What is the ideal time duration for the Shorts to go viral? Well, if we all knew the answer to how to go viral, then every piece of content would be super successful. YouTube generally recommend that the video should be about 15 seconds, but I think they're saying that because that's going to be the length of the video when you use the Shorts camera feature, when it's available. But I've seen videos of up to a minute going viral. Dan certainly proved this
with one of his Minecraft videos. And so try not to think about the ideal time, try to think about how you're going to engage your audience at the very beginning of the Short, and keep them engaged throughout whatever the length of the video is. Fun fact, the oldest Your Mum joke was discovered on a three-and-a-half-thousand-year-old Babylonian tablet. I'm not sure why this question got in here, but DiamondDew 721, I've got a question for you here. Was that tablet an iSlate? (playful music) How
long exactly does it take for a Short to feature in the Shorts tab? General experience tends to suggest that it doesn't matter when you post a Short, so the best time to upload doesn't really apply because YouTube can pick up the Short at any time, and it feel s as if, usually, the video takes off, if it's going to, after 24, 48, or 72 hours. But in saying all of this, we've also got examples of where Shorts take off after weeks. Dan, again, is a perfect example of this. He posted a YouTube
Short that did nothing for about three weeks, and then all of a sudden, whoosh, hundreds of thousands of views. That is the chaotic nature of Shorts right now. What different aspect ratios can you use for your YouTube Shorts? So, you can go as wide as a square video, that would be, for example, 1080 by 1080. As for width or thin YouTube Shorts, we actually did a video on this, you can check it out over here, where I tried to make a video that was, I think, 4000 pixels by 160, which YouTube did
accept, but it didn't appear on the YouTube Shorts shelf. Generally, in terms of aspect ratio, I'm gonna recommend no video wider than square, because it won't be considered as a Short, and nothing that's thinner than your standard mobi le phone. So you're looking at, what would that be? 9 by 16, or 1080 by 1920 in resolution. If I make a Short video using my editing software, will it be counted as a Short? This is the same question as what type of device to use to make your Short. It's
irrelevant. As long as the video is less than 60 seconds and is in that vertical video format, you could make it on a red camera using Adobe Premier Pro. It's still gonna be a Short. Is it advised to make thumbnails for YouT ube Shorts? If you don't, then it doesn't fit with the theme of your YouTube channel, but if you do, then it will not come up in the Shorts section since the thumbnails aren't vertical. Hope that makes sense. Yeah, so I think what you're saying there is that you're worried
that if you do make a thumbnail for the video that you want to be a Short, it won't appear as a Short because it has a thumbnail. That doesn't matter, the thumbnail doesn't change whether or not it appears as a Y ouTube Short, and yes, if you want to keep the theme and branding of your channel, then maybe you want to add a thumbnail to the Shorts because, remember, a YouTube Short can be viewed as a regular video as well. Bit of a balancing act here. Thumbnails mean a lot less on YouTube
Shorts, and so you're putting in extra time and effort when it might not be necessary. I'll let you decide on that one. How do I know if my video appears on the Shorts video feed? Well, as I've alread y said, you can check whether it qualifies by adding that Shorts video section to your channel. If your videos that appear in that section and the video qualifies, to find out whether or not that video is being served on that Shorts shelf, you wanna go to your analytics, and for a particular video
that you want to be a Short, check the analytics, whether it be the real-time ones or going into more details, and it will tell you there if any views are coming from the traffic source of Shorts. Not so much a question as a comment. It seems to me that click-through rate affects whether or not your video will get shown on the Shorts shelf. Every time one of my Shorts drops below a click-through rate of 2%, I notice the views suddenly stop coming from Shorts. I can neither confirm nor deny
this, but thanks for the heads-up. Why doesn't it work for me? I have uploaded more than 20 Shorts, but there's no results for any of the videos. Okay, I never promised success . I offered you all an opportunity. Put simply, YouTube Shorts are a new video platform, and that means there is a big rush for people to capitalize on this area. And you've already seen in some of the examples in this video that some small channels are really benefiting, but it doesn't mean that all channels are going to
benefit. This is a playground right now, and we're all testing. If I'm honest, the Shorts that we've made on our Shorts channel, haven't really been that successful . We've not had any viral videos. Some of them have done okay, but I think that's helped by the huge 700,000 subscribers we have on this channel that are filtering over to that other Shorts channel. Don't come in with expectations of success. See it more as an opportunity to experiment. And just to add some more stats, more than half
of you said that YouTube Shorts have made no difference to your channels, but twice as many creators said that their channels were growing faster as a r esult of Shorts, as opposed to growing slower. Make of that what you will. What's the point of YouTube Shorts when you can just post a short video without tagging the word Short in it. So I think this goes back to the confusion as to whether or not you need to include #Short in the title or the description for the video to qualify as a YouTube
Short. As far as I'm aware, you don't need to add this to the video, and we've tested this on our channels, and it doesn't seem to matter wh ether or not it's there. Some people swear by the fact that if they include #Shorts in a title or description, the video gets more Shorts views. Now on this topic, I do have one more source that's worth reading. Shaun McKnight, a well-connected creator with contacts within YouTube said the following in a Facebook post. "The placement of #Shorts in the title
or description does not signal the new Shorts Search and Discovery AI, it is for internal tracking at YouTube only. Including th e hashtag does not affect the performance of a Short in any way." Okay, make of that what you will. What makes Shorts so random? Had one Short rake near 10,000 views, and another nothing. I think you're describing YouTube Shorts right now. It's chaos, and it's kind of fun and frustrating at the same time, fun in the sense that, right now, pretty much anyone can start
making YouTube Shorts and blow up very, very quickly, but the formula to do that hasn't quite been created and perfe cted. But the problem is, once it has been perfected, those really savvy creators are gonna start to dominate YouTube Shorts, just like they have done in Tik Tok and regular YouTube. What I would say, and this follows common YouTube logic, whatever was in that 10,000 view video, expand on it, double down on that content. I tried the thing you said to me in the previous post, making
tutorials, but it hasn't worked. What should I make as YouTube Shorts for computer software tutorials? I think that is going to be a problem for now with lots of educational type of content. It doesn't quite fit the short-form Tik Tok mold just yet, but in the same token, I think Tik Tok has evolved to start embracing and accepting all of these other types of channels that are more educational rather than entertainment, and comedy, and music. You've gotta think of YouTube Shorts as a baby right
now. It's still learning, and it can only do certain things, like serve up nothing but Minec raft videos to you so that all of the channels making Minecraft videos in Shorts have been really successful. Yes, you can tell I'm a little bit better about that. But ultimately, I think the search and discovery engine behind YouTube Shorts will be able to serve up to people really useful educational content, which hopefully includes yours, but you might just have to bide your time, but you can now build
up a library of content so that you are one of the YouTube Shorts dominant areas of content for computer software. Can YouTube Shorts negatively impact your channel view retention, click-through rate, subscribers, and so on? So you've already seen that pole over there, which seems to suggest that more people are benefiting from this than being negatively impacted. On our own channel, to be honest, we've not seen any real difference when we have posted YouTube Shorts, but again, I'm also going to
refer to that source of information. "Nobody within YouTube is willi ng to say that uploading Shorts exclusively to your primary channel will have a negative effect on your channel overall. In fact, to be safe, they strongly recommend you create a separate channel for Shorts for now." Phew, bet you weren't expecting that bombshell 18 minutes into the video, were you? I'm a new channel, I want to post long content, but you, Rob, me, said I can grow using Shorts. What will I do once I need to feed
my audience with long-form content? So it kind of feels as if you want to benefit from the potential of growing fast with YouTube Shorts and then leverage that into long-form content, and it may be that you're trying to have your cake and eat it, although when you think about it, you would always want to have a cake and eat it. Why would you just want it and look at it? It doesn't make any sense, that turn of phrase. I think you're just gonna have to experiment with this. What I do know is that
channels that have grown very rapidly with s hort-form content through YouTube Shorts and got hundreds of thousands of subscribers, when they do long-form content, the subscribers really don't respond well to it, and I don't know if that's necessarily a problem with the creator, more how YouTube has introduced Shorts to the platform, because long-form content and short-form content are two very different beasts, and when you're wanting to watch this Tik Tok-style content, it's very different
watching and viewing habits to l ong-form content. So I think that's more of a blame to be placed on YouTube rather than yourself. I mean, imagine if you're on Tik Tok, and you're there because you want that short-form content, and you're following all of these creators to get 15-second clips, and then all of a sudden Tik Tok introduces this feature where creators can make longer form content. Who's gonna wanna to follow all of- (equipment screeches lightly) Oh, yeah, Tik Tok have just decided to
do that, haven't the
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