Big Hugs for my Best Friend

Send this cute card with a big hug to your best friend voice by Dan Jovanovic http://www.fiverr.com/danjovanovic

A Big Virtual Hug From Me To You

Send a big virtual hug to some-one who needs a hug or just because. . .

April 2014 Earnings from my best Youtube Videos

Not a great month as earnings were a little down to $742.48 from $788.77

April 2014 Youtube earnings

The biggest reason for this drop is the decline of one of my best youtube videos. In March the video had 180,000 views and grossed $124, but by April this had dropped to 113,000 views and grossed just $54, that's sad :( 

Funny Cat Youtube Earnings

I don't know why this is, but it's been on a gradual decline since last year, maybe they all just run out of steam eventually.

The strange thing is that although the views were down around 30%, earnings were down a whole lot more than that.

 

What happened in April?

• Over Lay Videos - Last month I explained that I had chosen a video to overlay over all 200 of my videos in the last 10 seconds of play.

I chose one of my best youtube videos, donkey, as it has a good CPC (cost per click) strange that donkey birthday is worth more than simply happy birthday! 

 I overlayed donkey video in mid March, views didn't shoot up straight away, but it's been more of a snow ball effect as you can see from the statistics to the left. I'm going to let it run for another month and then replace it with something else and see what happened to the statistics, will they drop to previous levels, or will they stay elevated?

What worked in April?

• Grumpy Cat worked well for me in April. Despite only being uploaded in March, it was my top paying video for April, making $97.

• April was free content month. By looking back in my archives to find how I could make free content with what I already had, I managed to upload 12 new videos without spending a penny on voice overs or animations. Here's the best performing upload from April, Funny Monkey Card!

  What's Happening Next Month?

• I'm going to run a little test, taking quite a popular video, I've added closed cations to it and will monitor what effect that has on the viewings and income.

• I have discovered through analytics that around 50,000 monthly views come from a site called 123greetings. They have taken a couple of my videos and added them to their own site, which has generated a fair bit for me. I can not add YouTube videos to the site my self, but I can start a studio profile with my best youtube videos to help promote my channel, more about that next time.

If you have any suggestions, views or comments, please leave them below, it's lovely to hear from you...
  

How I get more views on Youtube

I get many questions about how I get youtube views, so here is my guide based on my experience so far

Increasing your youtube video views is a bit of a 'dark art', there is no one thing that will guarantee your video gets shed loads of views but there are some rules I always try and stick too to to maximize the view potential

Cash in on Key words - the search engines need to find your videos and therefore you need to put some thought into how they will find you on Youtube. You need to choose keywords and phrases (known as tags) that people search for, but also be careful not to use something too generic. In the following video I chose the keyword phrase 'Happy Birthday Lyrics' Birthday or happy birthday have too much competition to rank well for, but 'Happy Birthday Lyrics' has a decent amount of monthly searches and not too much competition. You can use something like the Google adwords keyword planner to get some idea of good phrases to use

In the above video I used my keyword phrase with in the title, the description, video tags and also in the closed caption text I uploaded.

Great Title - Youtube will automatically name your video with the file name, this is BAD. you need to change it, video.mp4 doesn't rank too well with the search engines. Ensure you use a relevant annd catchy title, and be sure to get that keyword phrase in.

 

Description - You need something in here, write as much as you can, information about the video. If you're doing a 'How to' video write down all the instructions in here. Make sure you get your keyword phrase in here again, a couple of times naturally, Not too much otherwise the search engines will think your spamming.

Transcribe videos (Closed Captions) - these are like subtitles for your video, specifically for people with hearing difficulties. They're also used by the search engines, so be sure to add your script in here. 

Get the click with a great thumbnail - SO you've done all the above and your video has come up on page 1 of the search YEY. But what makes some-one click on it? The answer is a good thumbnail picture. Youtube will randomly select a thumbnail for your video, but it may be rubbish.  So you can either choose from 1 of 3 that Youtube selects for you or upload your own. Make sure it's a clear thumbnail, relevant to the topic and compels the viewer to click on it. Cute kittens and dogs work pretty well, like the video below. But make sure your thumbnail is relevent, if you trick viewers into clicking on a video then they'll only click away if they are dissappointed and this will effect your rankings.

Annotations/call to action - Annotations are a great way of getting a little more out of your viewers. They are little pop up notes on your videos, You can ask for subscribers, share or comments or link to another video.

Great 'sharable' content - it goes with out saying that if your video is rubbish then no-one will be watching it to the end. So make sure that your video is interesting and holds the viewers interest until the end. Also the more shareable it is the better, as I think think is one of the most important factors in getting sustained views.

Build subscribers - Your most loyal fan base are your subscribers. Your new uploads will appear on their feeds. So it makes sense to get as large a fan base as possible. This is going to happen organically, DO NOT be tempted to buy subscribers, and 'black hat' techniques that attempt to fool the search engines will at some time or another come back to bite you on the bum. The best way to get subscribers, apart from producing fab videos, is interacting with other peoples videos. Subscribe to them and leave a comment.

Use social media such as Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest. You'll find the vast majority of your video traffic does come from Youtube, However Facebook contributes around 40,000 views a month to my stats which is not to be sniffed at. And you never know who's going to retweet you or share that Facebook status. It could be just the break you're looking for if it goes viral.

Check out the Competition - before you upload your video do a search and see what other related videos come up, which have lots of views. What titles and descriptions are they using? Can you figure out their tags?  

That's all the tips I can think of for now. Please leave a comment below and add your own tips and advice to get more youtube views, I'd love to hear from you

March 2014 Earnings from Funny Youtube Videos

My earnings for March were up some what to $788.77 from $648.81. 366,483 minutes watched up by 84,807

So a good month everything up (even dislikes)  due to 3 main events

• Uploading lots of new content, I uploaded 18 new funny youtube videos in March
• My Facebook page, went viral in Iran, I have no idea why, but it has generated extra traffic to my channel, and I'm not complaining :) 
• 1 particular video doing very well...I bring you Grumpy Cat... (again!)

If I could understand why some videos do so well and others don't I would be a very rich person! However anything with cats in seems to do OK, and this video has had shed loads of shares which all helps. 

Here's a comparison of 2 videos uploaded on the same day 22nd March. Grumpy Cat started with about 1500 views on the same day and kept on rising, while Singing Candles managed around 500 views and then dropped. They were uploaded less than 2 hours apart. 

I guess the learnings from this are to maximise the views on the video when launched

• Use social media
• Upload at a time when it will be seen by most, which apparently is a week day lunch time (Wednesday or Thursday) Although I guess the social media activity is more important that the actual video upload time

What worked this month?

• Verifying my account - I noticed on my account that it was not verified, no idea why, I wasn't even aware this required doing. Any how I have now duly verified my Youtube video account which has enabled me to post videos longer than 15 minutes. I don't think I'll be doing that any time soon, there's only so much  'Happy Birthday' one person can take! 
• Over Lay Videos - But more excitingly I can now overlay a video on top of all my others. I've decided to show this in the final 10 seconds of each video, in the hope that people will click onto the next video. Cunningly I chose a video that has a good pay per 1000 views. I will report back on that in a separate post.
• Deleting videos with a low retention rate - I weeded out a few more videos with an audience retention rate less than 50%, but my overall rate stayed at 69% still which is pretty good.
• Uploading new content -  goes with out saying, the more quality content the more views

What's Happening Next Month?

My main focus for April is to load new content for free, which I've been able to do by finishing half done projects and reusing voice overs in new animations. One of my fiverr.com partners has also taken to sending me some very good ideas and voice overs which is a great help. So I make sure he gets a link back in the video descriptions.

Finding out more about Closed Captions, this is adding text to the video which converts into subtitles. More opportunity for increasing  keyword search views I think!

That's the March up date, I'm a little behind so I'd better get on with April's update now, thank you for reading. Feel free to leave a comment or ask a question...

You Tube Broadcast Yourself Millionaires

I decided to learn from the masters of you tube broadcast yourself, all of the below channels have earned 1 million dollars (estimated annual earnings) from Youtube, so I've taken a peek around their channels to see just how they have become so successful. Here's what I found they had in common

• The vast majority of the creators are in their 20's
• Humour is an over riding factor
• Generally the more successful the channel the more subscribers (but not always)
• The most profitable versus subscribers seems to be the 2  disney review channels
• Almost all upload new content at least weekly and on a set day
• You don't necessarily need a theme, you can broadcast yourself about almost any thing on You Tube and people will watch it
• Most videos are pretty long 3-10 minutes on average, but some were 30 minutes or more
• Broadcasters have developed a strong brand, and many promote affiliate merchandise
• Every one has social media links
• Many were using in video programming function to feature another video  in the last 10 seconds
• Channel names don't seem to make much difference, there's some pretty random names out there

So here's the Youtube Millionaires List

 

• #40:  TimothyDeLaGhetto - $1 million - is an American Rapper, Comedian, Actor and videographer with 2.4 million subscribers and 556 million total video views) He joined Youtube in 2006 
 

• #39: SHAYTARDS - $1 million - Shay Carl Butler is an American vlogger and Youtube personailty with over 2 million subscribers (843m views)
 

• #38: Shane Dawson – $1 million 2.7 subscribers (1 billion views!!!) Shane is an American comedian and Vlogger

• #37: TheRadBrad – $1 million (774m views) and American gamer named the "King of the Youtube Walkthough" 2.6 million subscribers

• #36: ElRubiusOMG – $1.1 million (610m views) and 6.6 Million subs. I think most of the channel is in Spanish and to  be honest I've no idea what it's about!

• #35: Vsauce – $1.2 million (577 million views) 7 million subs. Michael Stevens is the founder of Vsauce answering questions about the universe and it's contents, such as "what if the moon was a disco ball"  and "where do deleted files go", I always wanted to know that!

• #34: PrankvsPrank – $1.3 million (638m views) 4.8 millions subscribers
  created by Jesse Wellens and his girlfriend Jeana who video themselves doing pranks on each other
 

• #33: EpicMealTime – $1.3 million (668m views) 6.2 million subs Canadian cooking channel specializing in high calorie meals, it's pretty funny too. Yum...
 

• #32: FPSRussia – $1.3 million (600m views) 4.9 million subs. Featuring the American born Kyle Myers the channel videos are about firearms and explosives
 

• #31: MichellePhan – $1.3 million (890m views) 6.1 million subs. Michelle's channel provides make up tutorials
 

• #30: TheDiamondMinecart – $1.4 million (400m views) 2 million subs. A channel dedicated to Mminecraft

•  #29: Potemi926 – $1.6 million (422m views) only 200,000 subs, 2 cute Japanese kid doing kids stuff, quite cute really

• #28: Vegetta777 – $1.6 million (586m views) 5 million subs. A Spanish gaming channel
• #27: WhiteBoy7thst – $1.7 million (590m views)  2.4 million subs Another gaming channel, but he does some quite funny sketches too

• #26: TheLonelyIsland – $1.7 million (1.4 billion vews) 5.7 Million subs
  The Lonely Island are Andy Samberg, Akiva Schaffer and Jorma Taccone. They've been making random  videos together since September of 2000. They met in Junior High

• #25: Sxephil – $1.7 million (1.2b views) 3.2 million subs. Philip DeFranco's videos are centered on current events, sex, politics and celebrity gossip in which he gives his ironic opinion

• #24: FreddieW – $1.8 million (980m views) 6.9 million subs, Freddie Wongs channel Rocket Jump produces short films with rad FX

• #23: SpeedyW03 – $2 million (731m views) 5.8 million subs, A gamimg channel that will make you laugh.

• #22: TheBajanCanadian – $2 million (574m views) 3.5 million subs, more Minecraft videos

• #21: HolaSoyGerman – $2 million (1.1b views) 17 million subscribers. Another Spanish channel, I couldn't really work out what this one was about, although he looks completely bonkers.

• #20: TheWillyRex – $2 million (1b views) 4.1 million subs, more Spanish and more Minecraft

• #19: Tobuscus – $2 million (940m views) 5.7 million subs Toby Turner is an American actor, comedian, musician, and internet personality. He also has a gaming channel and daily vlog.

• #18: TheFineBros – $2.2 million (1.4b views) 7.9 million subs. Bennie and Raffi Fine are brothers (funiiy enough) filmmakers who produce pretty funny react videos.

• #17: AdamThomasMoran – $2.2 million (614m views) 5.1 Million subs, it all looks Russian to me

• #16: SkyDoesMinecraft – $2.3 million (1.7b views) 9.6 million subs. More Minecraft

• #15: BoyceAvenue – $2.3 million (1.2b views) 5.5 million subs. They are actually a band, and pretty good too, how cool is that?

• #14: Nigahiga – $2.3 million (1.7b views) 12 million subs. Ryan Higa from Hawaii produces Youtube comedy videos

• #13: ERB – $2.4 million (893m views) 9.4 millios subs, but get this they only have 34 videos loaded!! ERB stands for Epic Rap Battles through out History

• #12: CaptainSparklez – $3.2 million (1.3b views) 7.3 million subs Jordan Maron is an American YouTube personality, also known as the username of his YouTube channel, CaptainSparklez. The channel was the fifth solo-gaming channel to reach 1 billion views

• #11: CollegeHumor – $3.3 million (2.3b views) 7 million subs and over 2000 videos. Funny and original videos from New York IAC/InterActiveCorp

• #10: RealAnnoyingOrange – $3.4 million (1.9b views) 3.7 million subs I have to admit apart from Pewdiepie this is the only one I'd heard of lol. Freshly squeezed comedy uploaded three times per week.

• #9: UberHaxorNova – $3.5 million (1.1b views) 2.3 million subs, more gaming

• #8: RayWilliamJohnson – $4 million (2.6b views) 10.8 million subs an American video blogger, producer, and actor best known for his YouTube series Equals Three, in which he provides commentary on viral videos

• #7: TobyGames – $4.2 million (1.6b views) 6.5 million subs. Toby Joe Turner, also known by his stage name Tobuscus, is an American actor, comedian, musician, and internet personality presenting a gaming channel

• #6: JennaMarbles – $4.3 million (1.4b views) 13.1 million subs. Jenna N. Mourey, more commonly known by her pseudonym Jenna Marbles, is an American entertainer and YouTube personality. She lives in Santa Monica, California, with her two dogs, Mr. Marbles and Kermit.Pretty funny, although she swears a lot!

• #5: BluCollection – $4.8 million (1.4b views) Only 680,000 subs, now that's a surprise
  Educational videos for toddlers, babies and children, no gaming in sight. I watched 1 of the videos a toy review, it was rubbish. I mean what's this about?

• #4: DisneyCollectorBR – $5 million (1.6b views) 1.2 million subs, another "Educational videos for toddlers, babies and children", but seems to be a review site for Disney related merchandise.

• #3: Smosh – $5.7 million (3.1b views)  17 million subs, Web based comedy duo uploading new content every Friday

• #2: BlueXephos – $6.7 million (2.4b views) 6.8 million subs AKA Yogcast a famous gaming channel.
• 
  
• #1: Pewdiepie – $7 million (3.7b views) Felix Arvid Ulf Kjellberg a Swedish gaming commentator, my son and 26 million subscribers say he's pretty good so who am I to argue

So what lessons can I draw from this

• I need a strong brand, a reoccurring theme that gets noticed
• Keep uploading new content
• Try my best to be recognized, shout outs and link backs
• I'm much older than most of these people, I should get more feedback from my kids! 
• Experiment with longer videos
• Theme videos on profitable key words...er like Disney!

 Check out my channel here I'd love your feedback

How do I upload a video to youtube?

In this blog, I'm going to explain what I do when I upload a video.

• How do I upload a video to you tube
• How do I optimize it for the search engines
• How do I ensure viewer engagement
• How to promote the video

First of all, if you don't have a you tube channel you need to create a Google account here, and then sign in to you tube with your Google account.

Uploading your Video

Go to your channel and click the upload button in the top right

You can either select files from your computer to upload, or drag and drop video files. You can select, from public, unlisted, private or scheduled. If you want your video to be found by any-one you should choose public.

Make sure your video is in one of the following formats before you upload it.

• .MOV
• .MPEG4
• .AVI
• .WMV
• .MPEGPS
• .FLV
• 3GPP
• WebM

Your video make take several minutes to upload, but you can make changes while it's doing this...

Optimizing for the Search Engines (Titles, Descriptions and Tags)

You tube needs to know what your video is about, you can tell it this by the words and phrases you use in your titles, tags and descriptions.

Type in your title, include your key words, my keyword phrase for this video was 'cute cat birthday' so incorporated this into the video title 'Cute Cat Singing Happy birthday to You '

Type in your description, you can add any links to your blog or website in the description that you might want to promote, and remember to use your key words or phrase at least once but not more than twice, otherwise it will look like spam.

Add your tags, these are the words or phrases that you want your video to be found for. You can use your own, or You tube will suggest some based on your video title. In this video my tags were - cute cat birthday, cute cat, birthday cat, happy birthday cat, cat singing happy birthday, persian kitten -  I might add some more later.

Viewer Engagement (Content, Thumb Nails and Annotations)

The little picture that shows up the searches is called a thumbnail. You need viewers to click on your thumb nail, so make sure it's a good one. It should be clear, enticing and relevant to your video. You tube will suggest some thumbnails for you, or you can simply upload a picture.

So your viewer has searched for your topic, found your video and clicked on your thumb nail, so how do you keep her there? Simple, great content, you make sure your content is engaging - keep it short, snappy and interesting.

Add annotations to your video, this is a little box that pops up and gives the viewer some information, such as a subcribe button or a link to another video or play list. Use these in the last 5-10 seconds of your video as a call to action.

Promote your Video

Add a message to your video, try to use your key word of phrase again, you can also choose to share on facebook, twitter and google+ if you have these linked to your you tube account.

Once your video is published you should promote it on your social media platforms where ever you can, naturally and with out spamming. I use Blogger, Pinterest, Twitter, Facebook and Google+, building up an audience on these platforms is a whole other story!

If you have playlist on your channel you can choose a playlist to add your video too, I chose Cute and funny animal birthday songs, this should get you some more views if you list your playlists on your channel

Your video is now ready to Publish, click Publish now. 

To recap

• How do I upload a video to you tube -  click upload and publish
• How do I optimize it for the search engines - use your key word in the title, description and tags
• How do I ensure viewer engagement - with great content and annotations
• How to promote the video - through social media, blogs and any way you can

Let me know how you got on. leave a comment below and feel free to post a link...:-)

February Youtube Earnings

Here's  my official earnings for February 2014, and before any-one asks, yes they are all declared to the taxman :-)

Total Adsense $824.62

$648.81 You Tube Video Songs Adsense earnings (276681 minutes watched)
$175.81 Website Adsense earnings

Snap Shot of Youtube Performance Analysis  Feb 2014

So in summary Youtube was up from January and the website was slightly down, but an overall increase in earnings of $67,which is  nearly 10%. I would like that improvement each month, which it needs to be if I'm going to hit the target of $12000 I've set for my self in 2014! (At the time of writing only $9971.19 to go!)

What did I do this month?

I have done a lot of keyword research over the last month, and now have a long list to work on. However I think it's the 'shareability' of the video that's actually more important, than keywords.
I had my most successful video launch this month, with Grumpy Cat making 15,000 views in the first week and $10.54.

• I completed the youtube creator academy and learned that audience retention rate (how long some-one watches you video for) and minutes watches are actually more important than views. Apparently videos with a retention rate above 60% are favored by You tube  and will promote channels that have good audience retention rates, something to bear in mind when creating new videos.
 

• I've deleted some videos that had a low retention rate (people watched less than 40% of the video), which has altered my overall retention rate from 63 to 69% very quickly.

• I made contact with a local company called 2 Yards Media who run Google+ courses, as I really don't understand Google+ but think it's probably quite important, and he's running one in May, so I hope to attend that and understand what circles and hangouts are.

• I spent some time looking at analytics and learnt that some keywords are much more valuable that others, talking tom video grosses $1.23 per 1000 views, whilst others, Donkey for example,  are much higher like $7 - guess which ones are worth promoting more!

Something weird happened this week, my face book page went viral in Iran, with 20,000 new likes over 5 days, no idea why, but it has increased the traffic to my website a fair bit so I think March will look pretty good.

Objectives for this month

• Create new You tube content from what I already have without spending anything extra
• Be active daily on Facebook and twitter

You Tube Paid for my new Car!!

I spend enough time on forums writing about how I make money on YouTube, I thought it's about time I started blogging about it. Especially as this week I took delivery of my new car, funded entirely through my Youtube earnings. 

OK, so it's not a Mercedes or Ferrari, but it's brand new, parked on my drive right now and I love it :o)


I am still somewhat bemused that I can earn money in my spare time with this rather enjoyable pass time of creating animated videos, but hey ho!

My journey into making money online began back in 2009, when chatting to a friend I came across a company called Sitesell, and started to build my own website  called Great happy Birthday Ideas. It wasn't until July 2010, after much learning and writing, I made my first 19p from the Google Adsense program, woohoo, how happy was I!!

Shortly after I started to upload little video birthday greetings to YouTube, simply as a way of promoting my website and bringing in some extra traffic. The following year I had an email from YouTube telling me my videos were doing well (We're they? I'd actually forgotten about them!) and would I like to come a YouTube partner and monetize them with the google adsense program. I followed the links and signed up, not really sure what they were talking about.

And look what happened next...

Now the first thing you'll notice is that it's not a reliable source of income, and I would not like to have to rely on it to pay the mortgage. But an income it is, I don't know how long it will last, or whether it will increase or decrease.

The purpose of this blog is to explain how I do it, if others can have some success from my experiences that that's great, I want to give something back. 

Every month I will publish my earnings, and tell you what I've been up to, what I've been trying, what worked and what didn't, along with any good websites I come across in the process.

Oh yes, and here's my channel here (Great Birthday ideas), I nearly forgot to tell you that lol.

I'd love to hear your comments, please feel free to leave below :o)