SECRET YouTube Thumbnail Formula (REALLY WORKS)

hey i've got a secret for you it's all about thumbnails show them what they're looking for i mean physically show them let's say the video's all about this water bottle that just happens to be on that side of me when i randomly grab stuff there you go water bottle let's say the video is about the water bottle that's the thumbnail along with the gobby kids outside that you can hear whilst i'm recording it's all about showing what's in the thumbnail right it is if the focus is here all about this water bottle in fact i can either make it even more of a thing and i can hide behind the thing that i am pointing at so you now know that the water bottle is the focus show the thing could put this over here now one youtuber that's very good at this is mr beast if he's putting a million orbeez in his back garden that's him sat in his orbeez if he's playing squid game there's the squid games if he's playing hide and seek if he's whatever he is showing you in the thumbnail even with minimal text what it is all about because it's a visual element if this video was all about cake then the thumbnail would be that cake if it's very specifically a chocolate strawberry cake or whatever it happens to be highly run so the thumbnail in itself could be a chocolate cake with the strawberries on it you don't even have to have any words it could be really focused in on just that specific cake or a very small arrow that just says cake or chocolate strawberry oreo happens to be if you're not able to show the thing on the thumbnail tell the thing on the thumbnail big bold words cheesecake it's a boy whatever you need to do i do fairly well with this because all of my content is tutorial based here so i can easily put how to make a thumbnail how to turn on restricted mode how to find whatever it needs to be so i can very easily have private mode private video upload video whatever it needs to be i'm telling you with big bold words and as you can see from the thumbnails here you can see a mile off the big words but tell it with minimal text and with maximum impact just because the title of your video is how to knit pearl alien tyre jumper with just one roll of you don't have to have every single one of those words on the thumbnail it could simply be best jumper knit fast wherever it needs to be i tend to suggest two to three words maximum have the biggest impact or if you can even lower it down on one and ask some form of question really why that kind of thing it builds an intrigue and makes people jump in on you faces now i use faces in mind a lot why because my videos are all about me teaching you something so if it's a secret or if it's shocking ah i use my face a lot and i normally zoom quite in why because there you can focus on this piece of text here faces help you with the emotion of the thing maybe you're sad done a whole video about me talking about my depression and building up my business that's a very sad video and the thumbnail's very sad link in the description if you want to go see it faces can emote faces can give you the excitement or the disappointment or the the heartbreaking tragedy of the content faces also have some kind of inbuilt response to our human brain all face and it kind of pulls you in now over time many people have taken advantage of this no doubt you've seen 50 billion thumbnails like this all of which no doubt i'll probably screen cap and use in my own thumbnails of future but faces can bring an emotional connection to the content can either make you laugh or just pull you to the text that it needs to be pointed at match the emotion to the topic if you're smiling and the whole video is about why i'm sad that i went to uni how i lost my my dad when i was younger whatever it needs to be the emotion is is mismatched it doesn't connect is it a shocking fact that you can get more views by using this tool shock you don't want to poke fun at something that isn't funny you don't want to be sad on something that's supposed to be exciting over saturation now i kind of cheat if you haven't noticed i've got a red background and a bluey purple background behind me and it's deliberately kind of 50 50. the reason for this is that if i was just in a boring room wait a second i'll turn off my lights it kind of looks weird and boring and grey now imagine this is the thumbnail it doesn't really have anything and it's not going to catch your eye turning it back on immediately you can see the difference immediately it colors the ball ring slightly more interesting if you want to know how i do this there is a video about my lighting down below but the advantage of this is that if i'm taking a screenshot of my face and then i'm turning it into the thumbnail when i over saturate the blue and the red now pops out now it's the same for anything you don't have to use your face and you don't have to use a screen cap from your own videos but if you over saturate the colors it pops out a bit more it could be a really nice red photo but if it's red then people will click on it a bit more go and have a look at some of the big boys if they took out the color grading it's it's a good enough design to thumbnail it's got all the good elements but the colors could be dead if you have a look at mr beast when he actually makes his videos he records them in flat color and then color grades them later i know linus tech tips does that as well remember that a good eighty percent of your views could come from a mobile phone so you need to pay attention to every inch of the thumbnail and every inch of the entire design process if you're using really tiny text and you're on mobile it's even smaller try and make a thumbnail at full scale and then shrink it down to even smaller can you still read what it is can you still have a look at that thumbnail and understand what that thing's supposed to be because if you're using the entire thumbnail and even on desktop you're only focusing on something that small say a pin right by the time it's shrunk into a mobile phone it's good that's why most of my thumbnails are really big and up here branding is your branding recognizable all of my thumbnails have my face and recently these colors around me so when you see the thumbnail even without reading the text hopefully you identify oh it's an allen video and then you click through philip defranco has his very set style him in the middle and pictures around him drama alert have that banner if you're able to look at a thumbnail not identify anything immediately in the h first half second go linus tech tips alan spicer vid iq whatever it needs to be that's the branding that you pull out and you accentuate if you're using one thumbnail style and another thumbnail style and something randomly different and then you copy somebody else but doesn't have your specific stamp on it something that clearly makes it you people might not realize it's your content people might think it's somebody else's if i started copying nick nimmin's thumbnails or roberto blake or going down the route of say a brian g johnson who has two poodles to feed then over time i might just get lost in that shuffle on that really good video that you saw you might just think i'm not in the mood for another nick video it's not a nick video it's a me video and you just whatever are you branding for your niche this sounds a bit weird but have a look at your rivals in the space and see what kind of things they are doing i don't mean copy them i mean see what's working well for them and understand why if you're a minecraft creator you'll know there's a specific minecraft style of genre that thumbnails run through i certainly know that i'm a destiny fan and destiny and first-person shooter kind of games have a very shouty style with the icons of the specific gun or the armor or it happens to be slammed on the screen the reason why you need to kind of familiarize yourself with those is because if you go wildly in the opposite direction you might actually confuse your audience you may have the advantage of looking at some of the larger youtubers and making your own similar style don't copy a similar style and then they go okay i know that that person does those videos and oh he does them too brilliant click click and then you might piggyback out of that until you start to develop your own style i'm still a youtube educator and my thumbnails stand out differently from my other youtube educators but i still use very similar techniques i make sure that the text is large i make sure that you can see what i am talking about the difference is i have a slightly different colored background on my thumbnails but you'd still be able to look at a nick nimmin thumbnail and a brian g johnson thumbnail a vid iq thumbnail and then one of mine and you know that we're all kind of youtube educators top bottom left right now i understand that this may look a little bit different on the camera compared to where i happen to be but please bear in mind with me that we in the western world read top to bottom left to right and therefore the youtube platform favors that western bias and so does our brain and our mind's eye so anything important have in the top the left or in the top corner of your thumbnails that's why most of the time i have a face that's over here and i'm pointing at text there or if i am using text then it's kind of crammed up here once again the camera's flipping me so i don't know if it's left or right or whatever it needs to be try to avoid the bottom right hand corner because there is a timestamp that loses you the ability to to see it on the search bars and if it's on the far right hand side it may even be covered up by playlist numbers and stuff like that so keep the important elements of your content on the left hand side of your thumbnail and that could be the core focus whether that is the text screaming at you telling you what you're doing or the whole picture of the cake or the whole picture of the bike whatever it needs to be okay so you've got them hooked that you've brought them in you've entertained them now you really need to retain them watch this video here for every fine detail of how to hook them keep them watching and watch this to start your youtube channel properly in 2022 and beyond