The Intricate Art of YouTube Success

Each time you open one door and step into a new level, you find more locked doors waiting.

Uploading a Video is the Easiest Part

It may sound surprising, but uploading a video is the simplest part of the process. You have an idea, perhaps an interesting game, you study comments, run it through analysis tools, read articles and reviews, set up your background, hit record, and within minutes, you have a video. Surprisingly, this is where the real work begins.

The Title

The first crucial step. A good title is important not just for viewers but also for search engines. If you miss the mark with the title, no one may ever find your video. Your chances improve if you feature a game by Magnus Carlsen since many will search for his name. However, thousands of others will do the same, and your video may end up on the thousandth page, effectively getting lost. Titles with hooks like "How to," or "You Must See This," can help. For example, "You Must See How Magnus Carlsen Sacrificed the Queen..."

The Thumbnail

People judge with their eyes. When you browse YouTube, you see dozens of thumbnails. Yours needs to be unique, instantly recognizable, and stylish so that viewers who have seen your previous videos immediately know it's yours. Creating a thumbnail and coming up with a title can take an hour, even though recording the video takes only ten minutes. Don't forget the intro. It needs to be engaging, which can take longer to create than the video itself. But the hardest part is yet to come.

Publishing Time and Day

In the Czech Republic, publishing in the morning is usually fine. But if you're creating content in English with a global audience, timing is critical. Imagine NSS publishing a thousand articles an hour. You'd only see the ones NSS highlights and might miss others, no matter how good they are. Similarly, you need to publish at times when your main audience is awake. YouTube provides data on your audience's location, so use this to schedule your videos for maximum reach.

Hitting the Right Start

You need to capture interest in the first few hours after publishing. During this period, YouTube assesses your video's engagement: likes, watch time, shares, and new subscribers. YouTube relies on ads and needs to promote videos people want to watch, so this initial period is crucial for your video's success.

The Most Important Metric: Impressions

The number of times YouTube suggests your video to viewers is crucial. The more it's suggested, the better the chances someone will watch it. For example, the Czech YouTube channel Robert a Petr šachy gets over 1.5 million monthly impressions, while my channel, RoyalChess, started with 5-10-20-50 thousand impressions. We still get about ten times fewer impressions than Robert a Petr šachy, and this number largely determines your fate on YouTube.

Why It Doesn’t End with the Video

You need to actively promote your video. Share it on social media, have friends share it, and build a network of people who will help propagate it. On Robert a Petr šachy, we rely on our two Facebook pages. On Royal Chess, we share across dozens of chess pages and have friends in South Africa and India who help us. This network grows daily, and we owe them a big thank you. This article itself helps promote the video. Each click tells YouTube the video deserves more views.

The Key Takeaway

You mustn't give up. Keep making videos even if you don't have as many fans as you'd hoped. It's a test YouTube puts you through. Only those who persist will ultimately succeed.

If you mess up any of these steps, your video might drown unnoticed...

In Conclusion

It's summer, a slower news season. I'm heading to Greece for a vacation this Saturday, so I thought a light, yet possibly intriguing article about the fascinating and brutal world of YouTube would be fitting. Remember, making a video is the easy part; the hard work starts afterward.

Have a wonderful summer.

By the way, we now have over 17,000 fans on Royal Chess, and I hope we reach 20,000 by the end of August and 100,000 by this time next year!