More production companies than ever are perusing online videos for new talent, gang. Taking advantage of this situation could be one of the most important steps you make into your future:
by Eric Ravenscraft
You don’t need a huge production budget to make YouTube videos. As the site’s grown in popularity, though, you’re much more likely to get noticed with better quality. Fortunately, YouTube itself has plenty of tools to help stand out and make videos worth watching.
Learn YouTube Best Practices with Creator Academy
Ever since YouTube came on the scene, many people assumed that all they have to do is do something funny on camera, upload, and then become an internet star. While this can occasionally happen through dumb luck, most producers have to work hard behind the scenes to make it happen. YouTube’s Creator Academy has a wealth of guides that teach you about all the nuts and bolts your favorite YouTuber doesn’t mention.
This is actually putting the cart before the horse a bit, since we haven’t even gotten to making videos. However, it’s worth mentioning first because it gives a good overview of what all a successful YouTube channel entails. Here are just a few of the lessons:
- The art of getting viewers: These lessons explain how (and why) to upload branding images to your channel page, custom thumbnails for videos, channel trailers, and more.
- Grow your audience: This collection deals with how videos will be distributed to your subscribers, how to cross link with annotations, and how to organize your videos with playlists and sections.
- Earn money: Advertising brings its own mess of complications. Throwing a video on YouTube and randomly sticking ads isn’t as easy as it sounds. These lessons will help explain how YouTube’s ad tools work and how to make the best use of them.
If all of that sounds a little too much like a second job: good. YouTube is an amazing platform for sharing videos with friends, family, or building a massive worldwide audience alike. However, it can be a very involved process if you really want to make a job of it. And chances are someone out there is going to do the same thing you want to do who is willing to go through all this work. So before you get started, decide what type of YouTube producer you want to be. That will help inform which tools you need and how many of these lessons you can skip.
Make Basic Edits with the YouTube Video Editor
Unless you’re uploading raw footage from your cell phone, you’ll need some kind of video editor to turn those shots into a proper video. While there are more powerful video editors out there, YouTube’s built in editor offers the basics without downloading any extra software. You don’t even need to manage your video library. Simply upload your videos as private and you can start cutting them together