For years, many have considered YouTube notifications both a blessing and a curse. For viewers, notifications help inform them when content comes out from their favorite creators. But for many creators who rely on this notification system, it’s been a little shaky for the past couple of years. YouTube have finally acknowledged this and are doing something to improve it.

A quick reminder of how notifications work. When a viewer subscribes to channel, a bell icon appears that gives that new subscriber the chance to personalize their notifications from that channel. Yes, I know it still seems a little daft to subscribe to a channel and then have to tap the ‘All’ option to make sure you get notifications, but that's the YouTube world we live in. That is why you will see many creators asking their viewers to not only subscribe to their channel but click on the notification bell as well.

Once you've helped your viewers jump through all of these hoops to get their notifications, is there any way that you, as a video creator, can help YouTube in distributing those notifications to those viewers? Yes!

YouTube have recently released two videos on the subject . The first video gives you a YouTube viewers perspective, explaining how to make sure your account and devices are set up so that you should receive those YouTube notifications. You can watch that video 

The second video from the Creator Insider channel talks a little more about the process of sending notifications, and this is the golden piece of information. And this sounds so simple, and it makes me wonder why I didn't think of this before!

One Simple Trick to Get More YouTube Views from Subscribers!

There are millions of video creators publishing tens of millions of videos on YouTube every single day which results in billions of notifications. And when do you think most of those videos are published? On the hour. In the video, they only showed this graph for a snippet of a second, but it illustrates when notifications are sent out by YouTube, and as you can see, there are massive spikes on the hour and presumably many spikes on the half hour.

It's also interesting to note how the overall volume shrinks to almost nothing during what I assume are the early hours of the morning. Now, of course, I am not suggesting that you publish your videos at 3:00 a.m. in the morning because everybody's asleep. But, what I am suggesting is that you test publishing videos at slightly unusual times. For example, if you usually publish your videos at 7:00 a.m. in the morning, try publishing them at say, 6:53am.

First of all, if we use YouTube’s graph as evidence, the notification of a published video has a much better chance of reaching subscribers instantly rather than getting stuck in a huge notifications spike on the system.

Secondly, let's say that a subscriber gets lots of notifications on the hour, wouldn't you prefer to have yours at six or seven minutes earlier to ensure you’re top of the list?

And finally, don't forget that YouTube allows creators to schedule videos at 15 minute intervals, so if you publish your video at a time such as 22 minutes or 53 minutes past the hour, you're slotting your video's go live time into a pocket of quieter notification traffic.

A video's initial view velocity can be crucial to the long-term success of that content. If you get a wave of subscribers flooding your video in the first couple of hours with views and watch time, that will send positive signals to YouTube who should then, in turn, share your content more broadly.

So now you know not to post videos on the hour, but what hour of the day should you be posting your videos? Well it just so happens that vidIQ has the perfect tool to help you. It analyzes your subscribers activities and suggests when is the best time to post your content on YouTube along with a dozen other tools that will help you reach research YouTube, analyze videos, audit your own YouTube channel, and take actual steps that will help grow your channel.

If you want to take your YouTube channel to the next level then make sure to download vidIQ. It will help you research YouTube, analyze videos, audit your own channel, and take actionable steps 

Red subscribers box, black notifications bar with bells, and white views box with YouTube icons

Did you know there's one very simple (and kind of obvious trick) that could get you more YouTube views from your subscribers?

How to Get More Views on YouTube From Your Subscribers

Life as YouTube's largest solo video creator has been a rollercoaster for PewDiePie. Overall interest in his channel has waned, with the exception of occasional controversies, but we all know why this apparent decline has happened. It's because the passion shown towards his race to be the 

most subscribed to channel on YouTube against T-Series

 has dwarfed all the other things PewDiePie's done in the past.

We all knew this story would come to an end and it abruptly did when PewDiePie asked his audience to stop the 'Subscribe to PewDiePie' meme. But what effect did that have for PewDiePie? Yup, interest fell through the floor. T-Series became the subscriber king and we all moved on.

, he did go into a tiny bit of detail about his analytics but we thought we'd take a closer look because, in reality, is PewDiePie better off today than he was a year ago?

Let's start off with this golden nugget of data. PewDiePie's video about his analytics, is, after seven days with seven million views, already performing better than his average video, which is expected to get six and a half million views after 28 days.

Oh, how did he get that data, Rob, I hear you ask? And what on earth is this tool? I want it. I'm glad you asked because it's now time for the VidIQ shameless plug claxon. In the new YouTube Creator Studio, if you view one of your videos, YouTube will display the expected high and low end of views your average video is expected to get. It's good for seeing if a particular video's done well for your channel. But we decided to take that concept a monumental leap forward with our 

 which tracks the performance of any video on YouTube during its first 28 days and compares it to the video's channel average, your channel average, or any channel on YouTube's average.

With this tool, we can see how an average video performs on PewDiePie's channel. And since he posts every single day, we've got plenty of videos to look at. What you will find is that PewDiePie is remarkably consistent with one or two exceptions, every video gets between five and 10 million views.

Occasionally, a video may over perform its average, but very, very rarely will you find a dud on the channel. But obviously, it leads to a question that all video creators get asked. PewDiePie has nearly 97 million subscribers and yet, each video only gets between five and six and a half million views. That's less than 10% of his potential subscribers watching his content and not all of those views would be subscribers.

What would help, at this point, is if we could compare PewDiePie's video view velocity against another channel's stats. Let’s pick T series! That channel seems to have much more unpredictable results with views after 28 days, averaging between 475,000 and 900,000 views. T-Series may be the most subscribed to independent channel on YouTube (and by independent, I mean independent from YouTube, so not YouTube Music).

But, on average, less than 1% of T Series’ channel subscribers will watch each video. Now of course, this is offset by the fact that T-Series publish several videos a day and some of their videos get hundreds of millions of views, which helps boost the numbers. But what you can argue here is that PewDiePie has a loyal, consistent audience because they know what to expect from every single video. In contrast, T-Series, by nature of its eclectic music and movie content, is very much a pick and choose what you fancy type of channel.

Now I'm not going to argue about which is the better type of channel to have, it just represents different generations of the YouTube platform. On the one hand, you have the individual video content creator, the personality versus the big movie label, big content, lots to see brand channel.

Mr Beast: Twice as Many Average Video Views than T Series or PewDiePie

But what about the channel that achieves both? Lots of subscribers and an amazing number of views for the size of a channel - we've got just the example. Each video on Mr Beast’s YouTube channel averages, and let me just say that again, averages 13 to 16 and a half million views. But the incredible thing is that this channel is just, and I'll say this again in relative terms, just 21 million subscribers. It has a quarter of the subscribers of either PewDiePie or T-Series, yet averages at least twice as many views per video.

If we dive into a bit of a detail. Each video on Mr. Beast's channel seems to actually increase in velocity after 24 hours, almost as if millions of subscribers get notifications, flood the video with views, which sends positive signals to YouTube, who, in turn, share the video out to an even wider audience.

In contrast, PewDiePie's videos follow the much more traditional route of sharp initial velocity before tailing off after three and seven days. And when you look at the channels side by side, look at how even after seven days, Mr. Beast videos still have upward velocity and momentum, whereas PewDiePie and T-Series average videos completely flatten out, like many videos do on YouTube. That's a sign of YouTube continuing to push all of Mr. Beast's videos on browse pages and suggested videos, long after the videos have gone live.

So, is PewDiePie any worse off today than he was a year ago? Well, the stats do speak for themselves. In May 2018, PewDiePie's channel got 218 million views. In May 2019, PewDiePie's channel got 334 million views, an increase of 53%. PewDiePie, I think you're doing just fine. As are T-Series, who are getting along just fine, but you know what? Mr. Beast might be doing just a little bit better.

YouTube video analytics graph showing 7-day view comparison with channel average views

PewDiePie thinks his YouTube channel might be dying. Let's investigate by comparing his average video view count against T Series and Mr Beast.

PewDiePie's YouTube Analytics (Featuring T Series and Mr Beast)

When you are logged in to YouTube you should see your profile logo in the top right hand corner. Click this and then go to settings. From here, you need to click on the "view additional features" link which will then show you all of the YouTube features that are available and whether or not you have access to them.

As we can see, currently this test channel does not have access to features such as custom thumbnails. But fear not because there are no views, subscriber, or watchtime requirements to use this tool. All you need to do is verify your YouTube account. And, you can do that from this very screen.

Next to your profile logo and channel name at the top, you will find a blue "Verify" button. Click that to start the process. To verify your YouTube account, Google will send you a verification code to a phone number either through an automated voice or text message which you can choose on this screen. Do note that you can only verify two YouTube accounts per phone number per year.

Once you've put your phone number in, click "Submit" and you should see this screen that asks you for that verification code. Whichever solution you decide to use, you should almost instantly get a ping on your phone. In this example, I requested a text message which sent me the verification code. Now, all you need to do is go back to your computer, input the 6-digit verification code, click "Submit" and that will verify your account which instantly gives you access to YouTube tools such as adding custom thumbnails to your videos.

 are not the only feature you will unlock when you verify your YouTube account. You'll also be able to upload videos of longer than 15 minutes and on a desktop computer, live stream from your account. In order to do that on a mobile device, you will need 1,000 subscribers.

There are, of course, many more YouTube features you can unlock such as custom URLs, monetization, and merchandising. Click on the video below which will tell you everything you need to know. But, the features that you unlock when you verify your account are the bedrock of any successful channel, especially custom thumbnails. So, there's no reason not to do that right now.

Red rounded rectangle with white checkmark on vidIQ blue background icon

If you've just started a new YouTube channel you'll need to get it verified so you can unlock some core features. We show you how.

How to Verify Your YouTube Channel & Unlock Basic Features

As YouTube educators, what matters most to us is what matters to viewers. For videos, that's usually the thumbnail, the title, and perhaps the description. But do 

 matter anymore? Should you spend extra time tagging your content on YouTube?

Video tags are keywords that help viewers find your content. They're most helpful when a video's topic is commonly misspelled. Think of words like "entrepreneur," "Nicaragua," or "handkerchief" – terms you might butcher at a spelling bee. For each video, YouTube gives you 500 characters of space to create tags. They can be single words or small phrases.

Are Keyword Tags Important for YouTube Rankings?

While there are lots of theories around tags and how to use them, they're actually quite simple. Just use words and phrases that describe your video. YouTube will use the tags, alongside your description and title, to suggest your video to viewers.

Today, YouTube says tags help the algorithm understand what content is about. But it also says 

"tags play a minimal role in your video's discovery."

So for now, it looks like tags aren't as many creators thought.

And there's more evidence that tags don't impact rankings. In Q&A session on the Google support forum [find link], a member of the YouTube search and discovery team said to focus on other things. He encouraged creators to make good thumbnails and write good titles and descriptions. But video tags? Not so much.

Testing the YouTube Algorithm With Keyword Tags

YouTube is the second-largest search engine in the world, but if you type enough gibberish, it's not going to give you any results. Put in a highly searched term, though, and you'll find what you need. Searching ‘vidIQ’ shows our channel, its videos, and content from creators who've mentioned us.

So here's an idea. Let's create a unique digital tracker and see if YouTube can find it. We'll use ‘

’ as the search term, which is just vidIQ spelled backward, plus a few numbers. 

This phrase will go in all sorts of metadata, including the title, descriptions, translated titles, comments, and channel tags. Wherever YouTube might index a search term, we want to insert ‘

’ there and see if it appears on YouTube search.

To give YouTube a fair chance of finding 

, we added it into our channel and its videos for one month. After analyzing the results, using 

as a tag didn't make us more discoverable.

 to make the video appear on YouTube search pages. We added 

to a video title and were able to search for it within 10 minutes. Using 

 in a video description produced a similar but less impactful result.

To learn more about video tags, YouTube metadata, and how our experiment went, watch the video below:

What Does This YouTube Keyword Tag Test Prove?

First, we'll admit this isn't a highly scientific way to test video tags in the algorithm. We tested this in a very binary way. There was only one search term tested, and it appears on one channel and maybe a couple of videos. YouTube deals with common words and phrases. They can be matched across millions, if not billions, of videos. But in isolation, this test does reveal some interesting results:

YouTube is always checking the titles and descriptions of videos.

 Whenever you change them, they appear in search results almost instantly. 

Tags have been important to many creators for a long time. After all, we at vidIQ have tools that help you add tags to videos. Now YouTube is making tags less relevant. As a creator, that's something you need to know.

That said, adding relevant tags still only takes a few seconds with the right tool. vidIQ's 

 automatically suggests the best tags for your video based on your topic — so even if tags play a smaller role than they used to, you're not leaving any discoverability on the table.

tags are under the wider umbrella of keyword research – and that is still critical.

 Use these keyword tips to rank number one on YouTube.

Red YouTube play button surrounded by black question mark tags on blue background.

YouTube keyword tags. Do they matter? Should you use them? Will they make your videos rank better in search? We take a deep dive into the answers.

Will YouTube Keyword Tags Help You Rank Higher in Search? [Case Study]

You’re probably reading this blog post (and watching the above video) because you want to grow your YouTube channel. And in order to do that, you need to know what's happening at YouTube. So we decided to ask them for the latest information on the updates.

Tom Leung is the Director of Product Management at YouTube. He's one of the top people responsible for many of the things that we use as video creators, such as the upload process, YouTube analytics, the mobile application, and many more. On top of all of this, Tom is one of the hosts of 

, the YouTube channel run by YouTube employees, and a fantastic resource for us video creators. The channel releases news about what tools are coming out, and takes a deep dive into existing tools to help us learn and understand how the YouTube universe works. If you haven't already subscribed to that channel, I recommend you do so now.

YouTube is going through a huge transition, changing from the Classic Studio to the Beta Studio. Some of you love it, some of you hate it. But ultimately, we'll all be using it by the end of 2019. At least, we think so. And that was one of the many questions I put to Tom, during our livestream interview. If you want to watch the full livestream, which was about an hour, check out the video link here.

What YouTube Creators Can Expect from the New Creator Studio

 Can you tell us more about the new beta upload flow? (you can see the new process in my ‘

How To Upload a Video to YouTube in the New Creator Studio

 The new flow process is only available to a small percentage of users right but it will be available to more in the coming weeks. I feel like it's a much cleaner, more organized flow. The Classic uploads flow was built in a very different time for YouTube. The new uploads flow now represents the YouTube of now and where we envision us going. It should support best practices, so they're not like, little tricks of the trade, but it's just part of how it works.

 Is it still one screen? Or is it, would it be more like a wizard?

 It'll probably be more of a step-step experience. We want to have a really good upload flow, that does everything that the old one did, and maybe a little bit more. And then, over time, But the good news is, because the new uploads flow is built on the new tech stack, it will allow us to add extra features way faster. With the old uploads flow, we wouldn't be able to do any of that stuff.

 A/B thumbnail testing. Is it happening, and when?

 Short answer is it is in active exploration. But the caveat is, a lot of things are in active exploration. And maybe only a third of those things make it to you know, broad production. But I personally would love to see it.

 Impressions and click-through rate. Is it coming to the mobile app?

 We have been very focused on making the studio beta as good as we can. That's the same organization that also is responsible for the mobile app. I do anticipate that towards the end of this year, you'll start to see us be able to spend more of our resources on the mobile app. And certainly next year. I think it's only a matter of time before impressions, and that kind of stuff comes to mobile. It's just a question of when.

 Will there ever be a way to insert cards and end screens in the mobile app?

 I wouldn't rule it out. I would also say that, when it comes to the mobile app, I think we're going to prioritize things that we imagine creators have to do on the go. And you could argue, maybe they would add end screens on the go. They would definitely want to check their analytics on the go. They would most likely want to maybe engage more productively with comments on the go. And they may also want to be alerted, and know about any issues with their channel, on the go. And I would probably prioritize those types of things before mobile end screen insertion.

 One here about comments. Why can't we simply, with one click, delete all comments held for review? So I think that's almost like trying to remove spam, and everything, in one click.

 I have asked for the same exact feature. Because on Creator Insider, there's so many negative comments, which are a pain to moderate so, I think that will happen. The challenge there is that the team that owns comments have a lot of other stuff going on. They want to improve the viewer experience for comments. They want to improve the quality of the spam filter. They want to make it more easy for people to find relevant comments. But I agree with you, that would be a great feature. And it does align with one of the Studio Beta's missions, which is to really make your critical user journeys as easy as possible.

 Some people say that it's not a unified experience for comments. So people are asking of a way to put all of these comments in one place to better manage them.

 I will tell you this. That the same organization that would do the comment unification, is also the one that would do the clear all experience, and filtering comments by subscribers? Same team, so the quick answer is yes.

 Has a target date been set for the end of the Classic Studio?

 Yes - I would be surprised if people were using Classic as their default experience you know, by the end of this year. The big milestone will be when we remove the escape hatch from Studio Beta into Classic. We will definitely be very clear when that is going away. That's not gonna happen in the next couple of months, for sure. But it will happen. And I would not be surprised if it happens you know, towards the end of this year.

Get Used to New YouTube Creator Studio Now

I think the most interesting points that I got from the interview is that the Classic Studio, as good as it has been, is on its last technological legs. Even if YouTube wanted to introduce new features, that technology just cannot support it. Yes, there is gonna be a difficult transition period, but to be fair to YouTube, they've given us now about a year's crossover time. And I think that's a fair amount for us video creators.

The mobile creator studio app, on the other hand, has taken a bit of a beating, because the same team works on both. So, if you want any more mobile apps, you may have to wait until the new Studio is fit and ready. And now that Tom works on his own YouTube channel, he can appreciate some of the creative struggles that we have, such as with the spam comments.

Even if you don't want to, start using the Creator Studio. There are some fantastic analytics on there, and I think the channel management is improving now that the upload workflow is available to some creators like us. If you don't do it now, in six months, you’re going to be caught out.

If you want to take your YouTube channel to the next level and 

 then make sure to download vidIQ. It will help you research YouTube, analyze videos, audit your own channel, and take actionable steps 

YouTube logo with text "THE FUTURE?" on a blue tech background and vidIQ branding

We spoke to YouTube about the new Creator Studio and other features that the platform may be rolling out over the coming months.

YouTube Update - What To Expect in the New Creator Studio!

More people watch YouTube on mobile than they do on desktop, and the way mobile works is becoming even more sophisticated. I'm sure you've seen this feature whereby it auto plays a video before you even tap on it. Now usually this is a good thing. I don't mind YouTube suggesting me new content because that's the way to discover new creators that you've never seen before on the platform.

However there are times when YouTube suggests something far too often, and there are times when they suggest something that's completely opposite to your preferences. And until now you've never been really able to tell YouTube, stop! I don't want to see this. Well YouTube has finally given you that sort of control. Here’s how:

As you browse through content on the Home Page of the YouTube Mobile App, tap the three dots button to the right, and you'll be presented with this new option, ‘Don't Recommend Channel.

If you change your mind, tap on the ‘Undo’ option

Now let's be clear what that means. YouTube say that once this option is selected that channel's video content will not be suggested to you. But it still means the channel and its contents will appear to you in the subscription feed, if you have subscribed to the channel. The channel's videos will also appear in search. You can still find the channel and watch the video content. And their content might still be visible if it is trending on YouTube.

So I think what this basically is, is a channel mute button. If you do say you're not interested in that channels content you're going to have to do the work to find it once again. Oh, and do me a favor, I know you like to test out these tutorials, just don't do it on our channel please. But, just in case you do tap the, Don't recommend channel option, by accident this can be rescued by immediately tapping the Undo option.

And while we're on the subject, YouTube has added more recommendation tools. As you browse through the app you may see at the top of the screen quick topic shortcuts. The options that you see here are based on your existing personalized suggestions and are meant to help you find what you are looking for faster.

That content could be, videos relating to the one your watching, videos published by the channel your watching, or other topics which may be of interest to you. And of course, as you browse through all of this weird and wonderful stuff you will always have the option to tell YouTube you're not interested in that channels content. Except for us. You're not allowed to tap this option when it comes to vidIQ. This is not reverse psychology. Don't press it, for us. I think, I think I got the message through, yeah?

You may also start to see information boxes appear under videos when YouTube is trying to suggest content to you that viewers with similar interest to you have watched. Yep, that is indeed how much YouTube knows about what you watch, and what they expect you to watch next.

Controlling YouTube Recommendations on Desktop

Now so far, we've exclusively looked at mobile, but what about desktop? Well you can click on the three dots next to a video and tell YouTube you're not interested in that video. But you can go even further by clicking on the ‘Tell us why?’, and from here you can say you're not interested in the channel itself. The chances are you will be using these tools a lot to tailor your YouTube preferences.

But what if you want to clear all of this and start all over again, without actually creating a new YouTube account? Well you can point your browser to myactivity.google.com/myactivity click on, Other Google activity, and scroll down to, YouTube 'Not interested' feedback, which you can reset.

What are your thoughts on the YouTube recommendation engine? Is it sending content you want to watch, or is it still as bad as it has been in the past?

YouTube recommended videos with red prohibition symbols over multiple thumbnails and titles.

Want to know how to control the content YouTube recommends to you? We have the complete guide for 2020!

How to Control YouTube Recommendations - Complete Guide!

Is this going to be another video about when PewDiePie reaches 100,000,000 subscribers? It's not, no. But he is getting close, and I'd thought I'd dust off the old cobwebs on this thing and get it up and running again. But what is interesting is the speed at which these subscribers are coming in to PewDiePie channel once again.

It's almost like that thing we were talking about for the first six months of the year. Just so happens we've got a cool VidIQ tool to show you what we mean. These are the weekly subscriber counts for PewDiePie's channel since he started the year, and during that 

 they were off the charts, pretty much a million subs per week.

Then PewDiePie himself asked the community to end the subscriber meme as he called it. T-Series overtook PewDiePie and he went back to his regular subscriber numbers. But in the last month, those subscriber number have risen once again. Going from around abut 25,000 subscribers a day to around 45,000 subscribers per day. But this time we're not just looking at subscribers, we're looking at something that's far more valuable to the video creator themselves. And that is views.

Our tool can show you that as well, the weekly number of views on PewDiePie's channel this year so far. And there is no consistency here, with the only spike representing PewDiePie's 

, which went viral. What's far more fascinating here, is the last month worth of views, that have accumulated into more than anything PewDiePie was getting during that great subscriber battle. Now, this sort of evidence leads me to two conclusions. Firstly, during the subscriber battle between T-Series and PewDiePie, people were just creating YouTube accounts and subscribing to PewDiePie, without watching any of his content. Almost as if they were sub-bots. Did I just say that out loud? And secondly, PewDiePie has more or less tripled his daily view count in a space of just two months. And that's what's got our attention. How can a YouTube channel that's already one of the biggest in the world, effectively double it's view count seemingly overnight.

PewDiePie & Minecraft: Generating New Wave of Subscribers

Yes, ladies and gentleman, boys and girls, children of all ages, especially nine year olds, PewDiePie has returned to his roots - the game that kick started his YouTube career. Minecraft. And this blast into the past has already proven to be very lucrative.

As we can see using another VidIQ tool. It shows the view performance of the PewDiePie video below verses the channel average. And after one day, the video performed worse than the average PewDiePie video. But it didn't take long to reverse that trend. By day seven it was performing above expectation, and after a month it was almost double what PewDiePie would usually expect from one of his videos on his channel.

And when you think about it, that makes total sense. Remember millions, potentially tens of millions of people subscribed to PewDiePie's channel for that original Minecraft content. And do you know what a lot of people still do on YouTube a decade later? They search for Minecraft. And who is at the top of that search term right now? Yeah, that's right. It's PewDiePie. And according to our VidIQ research tool, he is the top creator for the keyword right now. Meaning he has the most videos on the first page of Minecraft search for YouTube.

Now, PewDiePie isn't usually one to strategically go after keywords, or try to rank videos for certain topics. And that's not because he doesn't know how to, he just doesn't care and doesn't have to. These are the videos PewDiePie was making a month ago. Which are, well, whatever PewDiePie wants to make. And those videos range from anywhere between 4,000,000 views to 9,000,000 views. Yeah, exactly. Who cares about strategy when you're that successful with every single video that you make?

But, for the last month, PewDiePie has made nothing but Minecraft videos. And every single one of them is getting more than 10,000,000 views. Essentially PewDiePie has embraced the most basic principal in the YouTube playbook. Focus on a topic, and deliver that to your audience with every single video that you make. The double down concept. But again, I don't think PewDiePie is actively pursuing this strategy because he wants more subscribers, or more viewers, or indeed more money from the ad sales on the videos. I think he's just playing Minecraft because he wants to play Minecraft again.

Now in the last month, PewDiePie has made around about 25 videos on the topic of Minecraft. Each of them getting at least 10,000,000 views. So lets put that into perspective. At least 250,000,000 views being plowed into a topic. That has had quite a ripple effect on Minecraft as a search term.

Back to our VidIQ tools once again, where we can see what video tags creators are using. And in a very rare occurrence, for PewDiePie's return to Minecraft gaming, he actually used some tags. One of those tags was Minecraft, and when we click it, our keyword inspector is launched, showing you the trend of that keyword over time. And, right now, Minecraft is trending more than it ever has done, in the last 365 days.

The pivot point for this surge in popularity, was the second half of June. Any guesses for when PewDiePie's first Minecraft video was? Yeah, I'm afraid there's no prizes for this. I've told told you in the first 10 seconds of this video. It's the 21st of June. This is not a coincidence. This will also explain why some of your favorite YouTubers have suddenly returned to Minecraft, or started dabbling in it, jumping on the wave of a returning trend in this case. And I'm not going to lie to you, folks, that's exactly what we are doing right now. Jumping on a trend.

I think it's fair to say PewDiePie has had a very positive impact on the popularity of Minecraft this summer. And what makes all of this even more interesting, is the demise of YouTube's other great gaming institution. Fortnite. For the first time in 18 months, more people are searching for Minecraft than they are for Fortnite. And we're not just talking about search volume here. Fortnite has been in decline in terms of revenue and hours watched on streaming platforms, such as Twitch.

Now in the grand scheme of the gaming universe, this isn't too much of a surprise to me. Games have a limited lifecycle. And, for Fortnite to be at the top of the gaming universe for the last 18 months, two years, is testament to how well that game has done. After all, it did pretty much define the Battle Royale genre, and there are lots of competitors who want to muscle in on that piece of the pie. But when it comes to Minecraft, it has durability on a whole different level. It didn't just define it's genre, it created it in the first place, and is accessible to all ages.

Admittedly, this is a tiny sample size, but when PewDiePie jumped back into the Minecraft topic, he also did a Fortnite collaboration video with Jacksepticeye, a gaming channel with more than 22,000,000 subscribers. The Minecraft video you see next to it got nearly 8,000,000 more views. When two of YouTube's most prominent video creators with a combined subscriber base of more than 120,000,000 subscribers put together a video on Fortnite which performs three times worse than a video on Minecraft, then you know Fortnite's in a bit of trouble.

But terminal? Well, Minecraft has gone through similar trend recessions, and has been declining overall for years. But it still has a warm place in gamers hearts. None more so than PewDiePie's. As for when he hits 1000,000,000 subscribers, well if does carry on creating Minecraft videos, I'm going for August the 12th. What do you think?

Man wearing Minecraft helmet next to vidIQ logo and rising green bar graph with red arrow

PewDiePie has returned to making Minecraft videos on YouTube, and it’s having a dramatic effect on his channel as he nears the 100 million subscriber mark.

PewDiePie Nears 100M YouTube Subscribers with Minecraft Push

First off, let’s confirm how you access the ‘Notifications’ feature on YouTube:

When you are logged into YouTube, you should see your channel logo in the top right hand corner of most YouTube screens, if you click on that, you have the option to go to YouTube Studio.

Click on the ‘Videos’ tab, this will show you the video details.

Click on ‘Advanced’. Scroll down to the bottom of this screen, and you'll see the following option: ‘Publish to the Subscription feed and allow notifications to subscribers’. To clarify what that means, your subscribers will see this video in their Subscription feed and will receive notifications if eligible. This is always defaulted on, as you would expect, so if you want to stop this from happening when the video goes public, untick this box, and save the change.

Notifications have already been sent out for public videos, so for a private or unlisted videos.

The Difference Between Unlisted & Public Video YouTube Notifications

I know you've got a burning question you want to ask. What's the difference between a unlisted video and a public video that doesn't send out notifications? Good question.

Unlisted videos are those that are only designed to be found through a shared link, they don't appear in search results, and they don't appear on your channel page either. Public videos, on the other hand, are totally transparent and visible, they can be found through search and appear on your channel.

Some rare reasons why you might need to do this is for your channel trailer. You want it to be discoverable on YouTube, but you don't want to notify your subscribers because it's not required. Or, you might have some sort of Easter egg or secret game you're playing with your audience which they need to find, but obviously you don't want to notify them that the video exists.

And now let's go back to our question, what is the maximum number of notifications a viewer will see from a single channel in 24 hours?

So if you intend to upload multiple videos, maybe five or 10 a day, for whatever reason, and you only want to make sure that the most important videos reach your audience, then you can use that checkbox to untick the ones which you don't think are as valuable.

Notification settings banner with YouTube and vidIQ icons on blue tech background

Did you know there is a limit to the number of video uploads and livestream notifications a viewer can receive from a single YouTube channel in a 24-hour period? Find out more.

How to Control YouTube Notifications YOU Send to Subscribers

There used to be a time where you could only make money through YouTube from AdSense, and you would have to generate any other income, such as affiliate links, brand deals, and merchandising, off-platform.

But YouTube has got a lot more sophisticated in the last couple of years, now giving you several options to make money officially through them. On top of that, YouTube have recently announced some upgrades, as well as some facts and figures about how you can make money on YouTube.

Now, just before we go into the details, there is something that you video creators do need to bear in mind. All of these tools are part of the 

, which means you need 1,000 subscribers, 4,000 hours of Watch Time, and have applied and been accepted into the program. If you haven't yet got there, please watch the following video which is full of tips, tricks, and advice to help you get there.

How to Make Money on YouTube through the Partner Program

If you have reached that target and you have been accepted into the YouTube Partner Program and you have monetized your content, congratulations, but at this point, you're probably feeling a little bit like this. Oh, is that all I get?

Now, don't get me wrong, there is absolutely nothing wrong with earning money from the adverts on your videos, but you don't earn that much compared to what you could potentially be earning from other income sources, and of all of the income sources you have control over, AdSense is probably the least reliable.

With changes in CPM, changes in season, and the demonetization of videos from YouTube, you have almost zero control over any of this, so by all means, have AdSense running in the background as a nice bit of extra cash, but start to think bigger with these YouTube tools.

Super chats allow viewers to make a financial donation to a channel and then have their message prioritized in their livestream chats and during YouTube Premier chats. The best thing about this feature is that it's pretty much available to all monetized channels as long as it's available in your country. To find out whether you're eligible for Super Chats and to turn them on:

Click on the Monetization link on the left hand navigation bar in the new Creator Studio

Click on the Live Chat tab at the top on the page

On this screen, if eligible, you should see a simple Super Chat toggle to turn this feature on.

Now, we here at vidIQ do live-streams every single week, and we occasionally get Super Chats from you, the awesome community. Thank you very much for that. And YouTube recently said this about Super Chats, and the numbers, to be honest, are mind-boggling:

There are now over 90,000 channels who have received Super Chats with some streams earning more than $400 per minute.

Super Chat is now the number one revenue stream on YouTube for nearly 20,000 channels - an increase of over 65% over last year!

The simplest way to explain this is that Super Chats come from your biggest fans because they feel involved in your journey. They are part of your community. They feel invested in you, and through the medium of the livestreams that they're watching, they want to give something back to you.

Now, live-streams may get a fraction of the views that your video on-demand content might get, but those people watching your live-streams are your most dedicated followers, and if I, the video creator, make sure that these livestreams are all about the audience, that's where Super Chats can really work.

And the funny thing is, here at vidIQ, we do live-streams every Tuesday where we audit your channels. It's all about you, but we actively discourage people from sending us Super Chats, because we don't want to favor people who have sent us money and audit their channels. We wanna do it for free, but people still send us Super Chats as a way of saying thank you. That's the power of the Super Chat.

Now, of course, there is a personal/content barrier to entry. In order to get Super Chats, you need to do livestreams. Now, if you're a gaming channel, this is very easy to do. You just start screen recording a game that you're playing on and livestream to your audience and talk to them as you're doing it, but if you're new to livestreaming and you're not a gamer, just be honest with your audience.

Post in your Community tab that you're gonna do a hangout session or a Q&A or you're gonna look at important questions that have been asked on your videos and try and answer them. Make sure that, when you go live, you're talking to your audience, so being a little unplanned is not a bad thing, and just enjoy the experience. Live-streams can be crazy things, but once you get used to them, they are fantastic, and at the end of that journey, you have Super Chats to financially support you. Incredible stuff, do try it.

With the Super Chat tool already highly successful, YouTube announced a new feature called Super Stickers. This will allow fans to purchase animated stickers during livestreams and Premiers to show their favorite creators just how much they enjoy their content.

Stickers will come in a variety of designs across different languages and categories, such as gaming, fashion, beauty, sports, music, food, and more.

Generate Revenue on YouTube by Selling Merchandise

I'm sure you've seen the merch carousel that's now directly baked into YouTube channels that allows you to buy merch directly from the video watch page. The requirements for offering this feature are a little stiffer. Being in the YouTube Partner Program is the prerequisite, of course, and for this, you will need more than 10,000 YouTube subscribers and have zero Community Guidelines Strikes. To set this functionality up:

Go to the Monetization screen in the new Creator Studio

Click on the Merchandise tab and then toggle on the Display Merchandise option.

Set up merch items from the merch store you intend to use.

There are many YouTube channels that have built entire financial empires out of merchandising, and as you grow your channel and build your community, you will start to develop brands and slogans and characters that people might want to get a piece of in terms of merchandise. Being able to sell your stuff officially through the YouTube platform is pretty awesome. However, the drawback to date has been only one available merch provider, Tee Spring, but the good news is YouTube recently announced five new supported vendors, and those are Crowdmade, Don't Forget To Be Awesome, Fanjoy, Represent, and Rooster Teeth. We recently featured Crowdmade on TubeTalk and you can read more about them and 

how to make money from selling merchandise on YouTube

How to Make Money from YouTube Channel Memberships

YouTube Channel Memberships allow viewers to join your channel through monthly recurring payments. In return they get membership-only perks like badges, emojis, and other goods you offer, like exclusive live-streams, extra videos, and even discounts on merch. The eligibility requirements are pretty strict for this one.

You need 30,000 subscribers, be over the age of 18, be located in a country where channel membership tools are available, agree to the terms of service of the feature, and have zero strikes on your channel. Even then, you might not be eligible, as it's still rolling out.

Now, of all of the monetization roots you can go down, memberships probably requires the most effort from you. Super Chats are pretty much taken care of by YouTube. You don't have to do anything for them. In terms of merchandising, you can pick one image and create dozens of items from it and have a shop set up within the hour, but with channel membership, you are making a commitment to your audience to create exclusive content for them. So, think about the creative juices and the time, energy, and resources you're going to have to put into your channel members.

Think back to when you were first starting your channel and you were committing to a video schedule, whether it be once a week or once a day. Well, channel memberships is like that, but on an entirely new scale. You need to make a commitment to those channel members to provide what you're promising, because they're paying for it.

With all that being said, recently, YouTube have massively upgraded this tool with one of the most requested features, membership levels. With levels, creators can now set up five different price points for channel membership, each with varying perks. This is how the Fine Brothers are using membership levels on their React channel, going all the way up to $30 a month. According to YouTube, this has increased revenue from their channel memberships by 600%!

 And to access our full suite of tools to elevate your YouTube channel to new heights, 

Man wearing pixelated sunglasses holding play money with YouTube 2019 updates icon.

YouTube recently announced even more ways that creators can generate revenue from their video content. Find out if you can take advantage of the new features via the YouTube Partner Program.

Rob Wilson

Posts Written By Rob Wilson

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