Congratulations everybody. You've all subscribed to PewDiePie and he has hit 100 million YouTube subscribers. And this is exactly when he finally did it.

Now, I've got to be honest with you. I didn't think we were going to be able to capture this landmark event because YouTube are supposed to abbreviate all subscriber counts over a thousand. Att the time of the announcement, PewDiePie's subscriber count was slugging along in the mid-ninety millions, and it didn't look as if he would hit 100 million until the end of the year.

That is, until he started playing Minecraft. Almost over night, PewDiePie doubled both his daily view, and daily sub count. He has now pumped half a billion views into the revitalized Minecraft topic on YouTube, which is currently more popular than Fortnite. That particular story deserves a video in it's own right, which we've already done, and you can watch it here.

But the good news is, for real-time subscriber counts, PewDiePie has made it before abbreviations have kicked in. All of which brings us back to the early hours of Sunday, August the 25th 2019. The day PewDiePie reached 100 million YouTube subscribers.

Let's slow things down to real time, and watch the very moment PewDiePie hit 100 million subscribers. Yep, you saw that right? A jump of 70 subscribers in a single second. No doubt caused by thousands of people clicking the subscribe button at exactly the same time, to try and be the 100 millionth PewDiePie subscriber. Though how anyone is ever going to prove that, is beyond me. Anyway, that is your official date and time recorded in history for all to see. But of course, no subscriber count ever stays static for long. Now, the actual relationship between PewDiePie and YouTube has been somewhat strained over the past couple of years, due to controversies on PewDiePie's channel. But credit where credit is due for YouTube, who tweeted out this 

More good news for you PewDiePie fans. While T-Series may have been the first YouTube channel to 100 million subscribers, PewDiePie is the fastest channel to 100 million subscribers. PewDiePie, Felix, 100 million congratulations on your success, on what must be the single greatest week of your entire life. You directly, or indirectly, have influenced a generation. Tens of millions of video creators, to pick up their camera, and share their message on YouTube. And this, in the last decade, has impacted the world in a way we've never seen before. You have led the way to this, so that we all know it's possible.

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 

Logo with a red square overlay on a black and white circular emblem above large black numbers on white background

PewDiePie just smashed through the 100 million mark to become the most-subscribed-to individual creator on YouTube ever! Read about the moment it happened.

PewDiePie: The Moment He Hit 100,000,000 YouTube Subscribers

Nobody likes nor wants to read sub4sub comments so here is how to block them from your channel.

Click on your YouTube profile picture in the top right hand corner of your screen

Click on ‘Settings’ in the left hand column

On the screen that pops up click on ‘Community’

You’ll see a screen that shows your channel moderators, people you've hidden from your channel, and a section at the bottom called ‘Blocked Words’

Add the list of keywords you want to block here

The Blocked words box works very much like video tags. You type in a word or phrase, press enter, and that will create the blocked word. You can use spaces as well to write complete phrases, such as, "Subscribe to me." You can remove blocked words by either clicking on the cross next to the phrase or by pressing the backspace key.

To help you get started, this is the list of blocked sub for sub words we use at vidIQ

You can also automatically place comments with sub4sub content, or other hashtags and links in them to be held for review. To view and review these comments, go to the ‘Comments’ page in the Creative Studio and you will see three tabs at the top.

 is YouTube's automated attempt to filter out comments such as, "Sub 4 sub?" Which sometimes it gets right, while other times it filters out completely legitimate comments.

 is where you will find those comments that have been weeded out from your blocked words list. Oh, and if you're wondering why some of our comments are blurred out, it's because they contain foul and abusive language, so feel free to add such words and phrases to your blocked list too.

You have several options on how you can deal with these comments, you can:

Permanently hide the user from your channel, so you never see any of their comments again

Now, while we're on the subject of comments, vidIQ has a cool little tool that allows you to create comment templates, so instead of typing the same response out many times, to the same question or the same comment, you can do a couple of clicks and it automatically places it in there for you. Saves me tons of time, every single day. And if you're wondering what that one tool is, it's all part of the vidIQ Chrome extension ⬇️

Stop sign warning against YouTube sub for sub exchange and spam comments.

Sub4Sub comments on YouTube are beyond annoying so here's a way to block them completely - for good!

How to Block & Remove Sub4Sub Comments on YouTube [Block List Included!]

As you may or may not know, PewDiePie smashed 100 million subscribers earlier this month and we were fortunate enough to capture the moment live. However, had this happened in September, that would not be possible as YouTube has confirmed it is shuttering public-facing exact subscriber counts for good.

I want you to search for your favorite channel on YouTube and tell me exactly how many subscribers they have right now. Depending on when you watch the video or read this post, you're going to get this answer or you're going to get this answer and that's called an abbreviated subcount.

To the shock of the whole YouTube community, YouTube announced these changes three months ago and now they have updated us all on how exactly they are going to work. To summarize; with the exception of channels under 1,000 subscribers whose subscriber count will always be displayed to the single digits, all channel subscriber counts will be rounded down, depending on how many subscribers the channel has.

For example, 1,234 subscribers becomes 1.23K subs. 123,456 subscribers becomes 123K subscribers. And yes, in the case of PewDiePie, even if he had 99,999,999 subscribers, it would show his counts as 99.9 million subscribers until he surpassed 100 million subscribers. Or at least something similar. YouTube have not yet made those changes, but they intend to make them over the month of September.

What You Need to Know About New YouTube Subscriber Counts

Now, those are the basics, but there are some really important questions that need to be answered. The first question is what about my channel? Am I never going to be able to see exactly how many subscribers I have? Well, that's actually a tricky one to answer, because yes, you will be able to see a subscriber count to the last digit in your Creator Studio dashboard.

But this count is usually delayed by at least 24 hours because, as you can see, it doesn't match up to the subcount we get for vidIQ on YouTube search pages. Those are, however, changes are going to impact YouTube users and video creators. For those changes also impact us. As part of these changes, third parties use YouTube's API Service, and that includes vidIQ, will also access these same public facing counts you see on YouTube. As of the time of recording, none of this has happened yet. So we can only make an educated guess, but it may be some of our tools begin showing some abbreviations, like this. But right now this a chicken and the egg situation until YouTube make the changes, our developers can't start their work on giving you the best data that's available to us.

And of course, subscriber counts represent a tiny part of the vidIQ Chrome extension, that will help you research YouTube, analyze any video on the platform, audit your own channel, and take actionable steps that will help grow your YouTube channel to even higher abbreviated subcounts. It is free to download and 

But on the other hand, some third party vendors live on real time subscriber counts. And they're going to be impacted massively. Abbreviated subcounts will kill the real time subscriber count cottage industry that FlareTV began almost a year to the day when they started following PewDiePie and T-Series' subcounts. It's still running today and has helped the channel grow by over two and half million subscribers. Going forward, no one will ever know quite how close these channels are to their next subscriber milestones.

So, why have YouTube done this? Well, they say that beyond creating more consistency, this addresses creator concerns about stress and wellbeing, specifically around tracking public subscriber counts in real time. Now my guess is that the majority of you are going to disagree with what YouTube is saying here. Subscriber counts have been around forever. It wasn't broken. Why are you fixing it? I love the gamification of hitting those targets.

And these are all valid points and when we did polls on this earlier in the year, around about 85% to 90% of you disagreed with what YouTube was planning to do with abbreviated subcounts. And YouTube know this is not a popular decision. In the same update, YouTube said, "While we know not everyone will agree with this update, we hope it's a positive step for the community, both those viewing and creating content."

We've not heard many voices in support of it, so anybody who does think it's a great idea, we'd love to start a constructive debate in the comments of the video above. As for my own personal opinion, I've got to be honest. I don't really like the change. I think the consistency argument doesn't really fly, because view counts can still be inconsistent throughout YouTube. And we're not seeing YouTube try to change them. And as an analytics geek myself, I think it's a shame that we're going to lose some purity in the data. These numbers have been accurately tracked to the single digit for years now. And we're going to lose those pages of history to these abbreviated counts.

And nobody's really going to know when the channels are hitting these huge landmarks until they've happened. Except for the video creator themselves and I think they're going to find it hard to share that data. Because they only get it from the channel analytics, which is delayed anyway.

However, I do understand the wellness argument of this change. This is the trend that social media platforms are going towards these days, with Instagram hiding likes. And I have to be honest, I personally haven't been negatively affected by real time subscriber counts. And there are those video creators who potentially have been. You think about the Tati Westbrook versus James Charles real time subscriber count and what happened there. There are real serious considerations of how this affects the mental wellbeing of video creators.

 then make sure to download vidIQ. Join over 1 million other users and use vidIQ to help you research YouTube, analyze videos, audit your own channel, and take actionable steps 

YouTube channel reaching 100 million subscribers milestone with vidIQ branding.

We knew it was coming but now YouTube has definitely confirmed that public-facing exact subscriber count numbers will shutter in September 2019.

YouTube Will Kill Exact Public Facing Subscriber Counts in September

Trust me, if you've been thinking about buying subscribers to grow your YouTube channel, this is going to save you a lot of pain. Because put simply, you don't want to do it. And this is the main reason why.

. You probably haven't read them, and that wouldn't surprise me because nobody ever reads them. Especially when they are this long. But if you have intentions of buying subscribers, then you may want to read Permissions and Restrictions section 6, which states that you are not allowed to do the following:

Cause or encourage any inaccurate measurements of genuine user engagement with the Service, including by paying people or providing them with incentives to increase a video's views, likes or dislikes, or to increase a channel's subscribers, or otherwise manipulate metrics.

So it doesn't matter where you bought your subscribers from, and it doesn’t matter how much they promise your subscribers are legitimate, and will genuinely watch your content. Ultimately, you have paid somebody to try and artificially grow your channel, and to manipulate YouTube's metrics, and that is against Terms of Service. And the buck stops there. YouTube are the gatekeepers, and if they find out what you've been doing, then your channel will most likely be suspended or terminated.

Why Buying Subscribers is So Bad For Your YouTube Channel

Now let's say for argument's sake that you do buy some subscribers and YouTube doesn't take down your channel. What are you actually going to get from those subscribers you paid for? Well it's kind of similar to sub4sub. And while we are on the subject of sub4sub, I hope that it won't come as a surprise to you to learn that this practice also falls under the fake engagement policy. Buying subscribers, sub4sub, you know it's wrong, don't do it.

Now let's put on my hypothetical hat for a second. Let's say you were on the other side of a fence, and somebody paid you to subscribe to a channel, and maybe watch a video. Once you've done what you were paid to do, you're under no obligation to watch any more of their content or to stay subscribed to their channel. You didn't choose to watch their content in the first place, there was a financial incentive. That's not really the relationship you want with your audience, is it? It's not a recipe for success.

Now, granted, that was hypothetical. But you know what I'm talking about, right? Nobody said YouTube was easy, and buying subscribers and indeed views makes it impossible, because your channel will be terminated. This is all blood, sweat, tears, and hopefully at the end of it, some success. But the important thing is, you need to do it organically. So no, this isn't a video on how to buy YouTube subscribers. This is a video on educating you why you shouldn't buy YouTube subscribers. And we hope you found it valuable. If you did, you may be on the cusp of subscribing to our 

. And if this little graphic down here helps push you over the edge, which is allowed by YouTube, then go ahead. And that's how you get subscribers the right way.

Hopefully. You did subscribe, right? Cheers. Now I know some of you at the back of the room are probably shouting at the top of your lungs, you've just told us not to buy subscribers, and yet you sell a YouTube tool that feels like a hack to me. Well let's address that point.

vidIQ software is certified directly by YouTube

, and that means we have to go through compliancy checks every year or two to make sure that our software isn't doing anything that it shouldn't. We follow Terms of Service on YouTube. And put simply, we are not a hack piece of software. There isn't a magic button in vidIQ that gives you more views and more subscribers.

What we do is signpost your journey. Point you in the right direction. Whether that be through researching YouTube, finding the right keywords to better serve your videos to the right audience, analyzing every single video on the platform to find out what's working for your competitors or what's successful for a particular channel, and how you can potentially follow that success. Auditing your own channel, going through all of those YouTube analytics and bringing the important ones to the surface with single clicks, and suggesting actions that will help fix problems on your channel and help you grow quicker.

Not necessarily help you grow by hacks, but by helping you grow organically. vidIQ is free to download. There is a link below. Make sure to check it out.

Now as we're on the topic of growing subscribers, there is one more gray area to take a look at. Giveaways. Can you encourage people to subscribe to your channel during a giveaway? You are allowed to hold a giveaway contest on YouTube, but there are lots of rules surrounding them and 

You and any third party may not manipulate metrics on the YouTube service, including numbers of views, likes, dislikes, or subscribers, such that those metrics fail to reflect genuine user engagement with the YouTube service.

I also spotted a Tweet from Team YouTube that says, "Giveaways are still allowed! What we don't allow is linking to sites that solely aim to drive up subscriptions or other engagement metrics like views or likes through external contests and other means. Since that's the case with this site, it violates our external links policy."

And what YouTube were talking about here was Gleam. This service helps users manage competitions by giving entrants multiple ways of entering a contest, such as following the user on Twitter, or subscribing to their YouTube channel, watching a video. But unfortunately, YouTube doesn't want you to do any of that anymore, because it manipulates their metrics.

So again, our advice would be to not use giveaways on YouTube that encourage the viewer to subscribe to a channel to enter the contest.

Red icons with white +1 symbols representing social media likes and engagement.

So, you want to know how to buy subscribers to help grow your YouTube channel? Well, it's pretty simple. You don't!!!

Why You Shouldn't Buy YouTube Subscribers - EVER!

So, it sounds like you've hit 1,000 subscribers, and 4,000 hours of watch time, and you've applied for and been accepted into the 

. Congratulations is in order. Let's give you a couple of tips to help you start earning some money from your video content.

How to Manage the Monetization of Your Content on YouTube

To be clear, this tutorial is not about how to unlock monetization on your channel. It's about how to manage the monetization of your content once you are in the YouTube Partner Program. To do this:

Click on your profile image in the top right-hand corner of the screen, and then click on the YouTube Studio link.

This is the new YouTube Creator Studio, and from here, you want to click on ‘Monetization’ from the left-hand navigation panel. (While there are several ways to earn money on YouTube, if you have just been accepted into the Partner Program, you will likely only have access to video advertising. For an in-depth look at super chats, merchandising, and memberships, 

Click on the ‘Video Advertising’ link, where you can confirm your current monetization status, as well as review and change your current settings.

Now if you want to essentially flip the big switch and turn monetization on for all of your future videos, go to ‘Settings’ on the left-hand navigation panel.

Then click on ‘Upload Defaults’, followed by the ‘Extras’ tab

At the bottom of this screen, you will see your video content advertisement options. By changing these settings, all future uploads on your YouTube channel will take these defaults.

However, if you want to change monetization settings on individual videos, you can do that too by going to the ‘Video’ section of the Creator Studio to see a list of all your videos.

One of the columns in this list shows the monetization status of each video, which you can quickly toggle on or off.

Once you make the change, don't forget to save it, and once you have saved it, a green dollar icon will display for that video if all is good.

If you want to tweak the advertising settings for each video, click on the video itself, and then click on the Monetization link on the left-hand navigation bar.

At the top of this screen, you have the option to turn on or off monetization for the individual video, and below that are the various ways you can advertise your content, from display ads to sponsored cards, non-skippable ads, and so on.

If your video is longer than 10 minutes, you'll have the additional options to put ads before, during, and after the video itself.

Now, let's check out one final important setting:

Again, in the Creator Studio, go to Settings, and this time, hover your mouse over ‘Other Settings’, and then click on ‘Advanced Channel’ settings.

As of time of recording, this throws you back into the classic Studio, and you want to make sure that this check box labeled Disable interest-based ads is unchecked.

If it's ticked, YouTube cannot target the viewer of your video with personalized ads based on their interest, and it may significantly reduce the ad revenue you receive from your videos.

Now then, just in case YouTube are watching, in the classic Studio, you used to be able to select multiple videos and then apply monetization changes to all of them, which was really handy. Alas in the new studio, that option is, well, no longer an option. Get it sorted please, YouTube.

Why Turn off Monetization on Any of Your YouTube Videos?

You may be asking the question "Why would I want to turn off monetization on any of my videos?" Well, there are special circumstances. For example, you probably don't want to put loads of adverts on your channel trailer, and if you are promoting a certain brand, you want to make sure that no competitors' adverts are appearing on those videos as well, so you might want to turn it off for them.

And if your video is for the community or it's for a charity, again, it might not be appropriate to include general random adverts.

Video monetization concept showing video icon pointing to dollar sign symbol

So you've been accepted into the YouTube Partner Program. Let's give you a couple of tips to help you start earning some money from your video content.

How To Monetize Your YouTube Videos In 2020 - Beginner Guide

Just in case you didn’t know, YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world. Making it a magnet for educational and tutorial content, and for answering questions people are asking the internet.

Google of course, is the king of search. And if you do your YouTube titles, tags, descriptions right, you will discover just how much of a gold mine views from Google can be for your YouTube videos.

This very simple video on ‘How to Delete a YouTube Video’ has (at time of writing) over a quarter of a million views. Its part of an ever growing strategy that we've been working on over 2019:

Interestingly, this particular video has received over 90,000 views from external sources 60,000 views from Google Search directly. Just like topping the YouTube search rankings, topping the Google search rankings is prime internet real estate.

Google Key Moments: Helpful Timestamps for the Viewer

And so far Google has accommodated video either through video shelves, or through featured video snippets. But that's all about to change with an upgrade to Google search that's called ‘Key moments’. This feature works by identifying key anchor points on a video, and including them as links on the Google search page.

When Google returns a search result with Key Moments, it pops right out on the page. As well as being in the top of the video searches, the Key Moments creates an even bigger footprint, especially on mobile devices. I mean, basically, this is a search result you simply cannot ignore.

How to Activate Google Key Moments in Your YouTube Videos

So, now you know what Google Key Moments are, and potentially how powerful they could be, how do you get them to work for your YouTube videos? It's all to do with timestamps.

In your video description, or video comments, you can create time stamps by typing out hours, minutes and seconds separated by colon. As an example, we've added several time stamps to this video.

And, while they don't look any different here in the video manager page, to a viewer on a video watch page, they appear a blue clickable links. Which, when you click on them, take you to that timestamp in the video.

Now, timestamps as a YouTube feature are not new. They've been around for years, and video creators have been using them to chop up longer videos and also to provide an extra little bit of SEO in their video descriptions. But in the future, what Google search Key Moments are going to do is use those timestamps to create these chapters on the videos within Google Search.

So, if you haven't been using timestamps in the past, now is a perfect opportunity to start experimenting, because this could effectively be one of those land grab situations. Most videos don't have timestamps on them, so you have the opportunity to capitalize by adding timestamps to your videos now to potentially make them rank higher in Google Search and give you all of that prime internet real estate to get people to watch your content.

Especially for tutorial and educational video content, where people are asking questions and you are providing the exact answers they want.

How to Create Timestamps on a YouTube Video

To create a timestamp in a video description or a YouTube comment, type in seconds, minutes, and hours if required separated by colons to automatically create the timestamp link.

Type that exact time into the description box in the following format hour:minute:seconds such as 0:02:19 for 52 minutes and 19 seconds into the video

Leave a space after the time, and now type in a short description for that timestamp. For example, 0:02:19 - Key Moments in Google Search

Repeat this process, adding each timestamp and description to the description box

Make sure to put in some rich SEO text after it too. Remember that these are Key Moments and the potential viewer will want to know exactly what they are getting.

There are huge benefits to Google Search Key moments. And let's be honest, it doesn't take that long to create timestamps. Think of it as if you're writing an essay and you're just adding subheadings to your main title.

But, as a new YouTube/Google feature, you probably have questions that I also have questions about and I don't know the answers. So, let's discuss. As of time of recording, Key Moments seems to be a mobile-only feature. I'm not sure if there are any hard rules about the set up of timestamps either. In Pat Flynn's video, the timestamps were way down the description. But the word "timestamp" was included, along with hyphens next to the supporting timestamp text. However, on the Creator Insider video that announced this feature, there was no such formality.

And a big question to YouTube would be, if I am going to take the time and effort to create these timestamps, are you going to give me bonus points and maybe push me up the search rankings in both YouTube and Google? I suspect not. But, adding those keywords into the timestamps is only going to help your video description and your video overall. So, you might as well start doing it. With that in mind, we here at vidIQ are going to start including timestamps in every single video that we publish, including this one. So, check them out in the video description and in the pinned comments.

Google search logo with upward trending graph and YouTube views icon representing growth

There is a new feature rolling out on Google Search that could help you get more views on YouTube and it's all to do with Key Moments and timestamps.

New! Key Moments in Google Search: Visible Timestamps for YouTube Videos

At vidIQ we often get asked the question, "What music do we use on our videos?" Well, we’ll tell you. Point your web browser to 

 and this will take you to YouTube's own growing stash of free music you can use in your videos. There are several filters you can use to drill down into a particular genre, mood, instrument, and all music duration. In case you’re wondering. ‘Arp Bounce’ is the exact music we use on all of our YouTube beginner's guide videos. The YouTube audio library is completely free, and anyone can use it and still monetize your YouTube content.

Referencing Music in Your YouTube Description

The one thing you need to be careful about is whether or not you need to reference the music in your video description. This is easily checked through the attribution filter in YouTube’s library. When you click on the tune, it will show you exactly what you need to copy and paste into the video description:

Free, Royalty-Free Music from Other Sources

Now, of course there are hundreds of services, both paid and free, off the YouTube platform that provide royalty free music. Although you're never 100 percent sure of where that music's coming from.

If you downloaded it from another YouTube video or a random website then it might not be royalty free and you could find yourself in very hot water later down the line. So, we always recommend getting your free music from the audio library on YouTube because you are guaranteed to be able to use it on the platform without any issues and be able to monetize your content. Oh and now would also seem like the perfect opportunity to let you know that you can also download loads of sound effects for free which you can filter by category and sound too!

Digital display of glowing musical notes with one note highlighted in orange light

What’s the easiest way to find music for free that you can actually use on YouTube without any copyright issues on your monetized content? Find out here!

How to Get The Best, Free Music For YouTube [Royalty Free!]

Have you ever noticed this message appear in your creator studio as you've been rummaging around your analytics?

Let's be honest, to the average creator that's a pretty scary message to encounter, as it almost suggests that you are personally responsible for some nefarious YouTube activities. Don't worry. This is not a personal attack on your channel. This message will have been received by every YouTuber in the Creator Studio over the last couple of days because it affects absolutely everyone.

In YouTube's own words they do "regularly verify the legitimacy "of accounts and actions on your channel." And that includes checking the validity of your subscribers. Now you might call this YouTube's version of channel auditing. Whatever you want to call this, it happens to some degree on YouTube every single day. That's why during the Pewdiepie versus T-Series subscriber race, you saw one of the channels lose thousands of subscribers in seconds. It's all to do with YouTube making sure that the numbers are alright.

Every three or four months, YouTube will do a massive purge of subscribers, or they will fix a problem with subscriber counts. Last December YouTube acknowledged they had an issue removing spam accounts, which led to a huge subscriber killing spree. We ourselves lost over 700 subscribers in that single purge. For the vast majority of channels, they will lose subscribers through accounts that either the user themselves has closed, or because YouTube have terminated them due to a policy violation. Nothing to do with you.

On the other hand, YouTube subscribers gained through artificial means, such as purchasing subscribers through a third party service, could be your fault, and as well as losing those subscribers, you may lose your entire channel. So if you're ever tempted to buy YouTube subscribers, don't do it. And this video will explain exactly why:

On the other side of the coin, you have to consider this. Your channel could be whiter than white, clean as a whistle, but ultimately you have no control over those subscribers. It could be that someone else is acting nefariously not in your best interest. So if you do ever notice anything suspicious happening on your channel, loads more subscribers but no increase in views, it might be better for you to contact YouTube first, if you can.

If you do ever want to scrutinize the subscriber numbers in more detail, in the new Creator Studio you can click the ‘see more’ link on you channel analytics, and then click on ‘subscriber source’ to see a full breakdown of all the subscribers you lose. You gain subscribers, you lose subscribers. Bada bing, bada boom. It's the life of a video creator.

Now, while you may notice a change in your subscriber counts because, let's face it, all video creators have an eagle eye on how many subscribers they've got. The public may never even notice a thing. That's because since September YouTube have been abbreviating subscriber counts to the public, depending on the size of your channel.

In our case, with hundreds of thousands of subscribers, our number increments every thousand. So you might not have even realized we lost 700 subscribers. And at the end of the day remember this. If YouTube is deleting subscribers from your channel, that's because those subscribers don't mean anything to your channel. They're illegal, illegitimate, not wanted by anyone.

Man frustrated with losing 700 YouTube subscribers, vidIQ logo in corner.

Have you noticed a drop in your YouTube subs and wondered what happened? We explain why the platform may have deleted a percentage of your subscribers lately.

Why Did YouTube Just Delete My Subscribers?

If you are a video creator, you may have noticed that the YouTube tools you use to create your videos and check how well you're doing have undergone a radical change over the last six months. We’ve already brought you lots of news about the changes, but now we’ve talked to a YouTube expert about how the new Creator Studio (AKA YouTube Studio Beta) works.

During an hour-long special live stream on the 28th October 2019, we were joined by Tom Leung, Product Management Lead at YouTube. Tom’s team is focused on a number of products, including the Creator Studio, the Creator Studio mobile app, the uploads experience, and the channel management experience, as well as YouTube analytics. Tom is also part of the 

, which all YouTube creators should subscribe to!

In the live stream (video above) we touched on YouTube analytics, the dashboard, and video management. As of October 2019, the following is true about YouTube Studio Beta:

At some point in the near future, YouTube will drop the beta label and it'll just be known YouTube Studio.

The legacy product will continue to be referred to as Classic Studio, but that will fade off into the sunset over time.

Beta Studio is now the default experience for YouTube creators, although Classic Studio is still available.

YouTube has announced Classic Studio will probably be removed this year, but have promised advanced notice of this.

New YouTube Studio: Two Things Creators Need to Know

#1 If you are still defaulting to the Classic Studio - right now is the time to get used to YouTube Studio Beta. Creators who are active on the platform need to really learn the new dashboard because when the old one goes away it’s going to cause a world of pain.

#2 The sooner Classic Studio is retired, the sooner YouTube can add new features to Studio Beta because more resources will become available to do that. Tom mentioned that an updated mobile app, the ability to turn on dark mode, improved real-time analytics, and an upload checklist were all on YouTube’s to-do list in the future once Classic has been sunsetted.

Please watch the video for details of the new features in Studio Beta, and check in again as we focus on the new tools that YouTube is rolling out to creators.

YouTube Studio beta walkthrough tutorial with analytics and video management features

By now, all creators should have seen the New YouTube Studio (AKA Creator Beta Studio). But how can you get even more out of it? YouTube showed us in an exclusive live stream!

Exclusive! An Official Tour of the YouTube Studio Beta WITH YOUTUBE

For over a year, YouTube has been running two analytics and video management platforms side by side. Those being the Classic YouTube Creator Studio and the New Beta Creator Studio. Up to now, creators have had access to both dashboards, but that’s going to change very soon.

 it plans to remove the Creator Studio Classic link from the left-hand menu bar, for about 1% of creators. Access will remain for the majority of creators until early next year. When the time comes, YouTube will notify each creator with two weeks in advance of when the change. So that's your fair warning. 1% of you reading this post are going to find you're locked out of the Classic Studio. But my guess is YouTube is picking channels that haven't used the Classic Creator Studio for a while anyway.

But for the rest of us, we’ll get two weeks’ notice that we’re losing the Classic Creator Studio. And my guess is, and this is just a hunch, I reckon YouTube want this completely done by March the 31st, before Brexit.

New YouTube Creator Studio: What’s Coming

In the update, YouTube has confirmed the new features that are coming, and going, from the Creator Studio. The following features are all exclusive to the New Creator Studio and will never appear in the Classic Studio:

Impressions and click-through rates at both the channel level and the video level, which update in hourly real-time, during the first 24 hours of a video's life.

There are new metrics that now tell you how many subscribers clicked on the notification bell for your channel.

There is a brand new upload workflow that consists of multiple screens, a new layout, and checklists.

There is a new comment filter tool that shows you comments you haven't responded to yet.

In the new video editor, you can save and edit a video as a new video or revert to your original video.

Copyright claims on your content will now appear in your video manager list, which you can click into, review, and dispute if you wish.

For a full preview guide, check out the video link below:

Now, even though the bulk of the Classic Studio will disappear, YouTube, by their own admission, haven't finished many of the tools in the new studio. That's why for a little while longer, you'll see features such as the end screens remain in their Classic mode, with this Return to the New Studio button. So along with end screens, you will find info cards, playlists, live events, the audio library, customized channels, live stream now, translations and transcriptions, status and features, and private video sharing.

You'll have to use your imagination for the following tools and screens as well, as YouTube hasn't yet ported them from Classic to New Studio. Those include the ability to upload multiple videos at once, easier options for sharing access for channel managers and importing notification cards on the dashboard, such as the ones you're probably going to get when YouTube tells you that you're about to lose the Classic Studio.

Now, I would ask for a moment of silence in remembrance of all of these tools and features that you will never see again, so say goodbye to the following:

The HD icon next to high definition videos on your video manager page in the YouTube Studio.

The ability to filter by the following in search:

Upload time, list of video IDs, tags, video length, videos that don't contain certain text.

The notification bell in the top right-hand corner.

Dashboard customization is also going, so you can't move around panels, which, to be honest, is a shame, as I would love this feature in the new dashboard which is far more useful. Comments directly from the dashboard are also saying a goodbye as well. And say goodbye to video statistics privacy settings and bulk changes to video syndication, although you can still do this on an individual basis.

YouTube Classic Studio end date announcement with vidIQ logo on blue background

Big news, video creators! YouTube has just made a huge announcement about the New Creator Studio. Find out what’s coming, what’s going, and when it’s going to happen.

Big YouTube Updates for 2020: What Creators Need to Know

ASMR. It is a huge topic on YouTube, generating Billions of views, with many creators wanting to get into this space. But how do you do that? We found a channel that's growing fast, and they have the perfect strategy.

ASMR stands for autonomous sensory meridian response or auto sensory meridian response. It's an experience characterized by static-like tingling, and it is a cultural phenomenon on YouTube. So if you are a video creator who's been thinking about doing ASMR, stop thinking and start acting. Or whispering, in this case.

Now, I know what you might be saying at this point. I've seen ASMR, but the competition is so fierce. There are so many channels out there, how can I start a YouTube channel today and expect to have any success in this topic on YouTube? Well, the channel we are looking at today did just that.

 started an ASMR YouTube channel just a few months ago in the middle of 2019, and after 30 videos, they already have nearly 2,000 subscribers and tens of thousands of views. We're going to look at how they achieved this. Let's have a look at some of the fundamentals as to why this channel is already successful before looking at the topic of ASMR.

ASMR Success on YouTube: Standout Custom Thumbnails

First of all, take a look at the channel thumbnails. They all have rich, vibrant colors, and the saturation is definitely being upped in each of these videos so that the colors really shine through. These are the type of thumbnails that make you stop swiping or scrolling through a feed because they just catch your attention.

And there are some subtle consistencies throughout each of these videos. I'm not talking about the logo, which could probably do with a bit of work, but the red lipstick, and the action of placing food towards those lips in an eating motion. You see that through every single thumbnail. These are the type of thumbnails that you could mix in with lots of other ASMR channels, but you would always know that these thumbnails come from ASMR Mag UK.

ASMR Success on YouTube: Best Titles & Descriptions

Another consistency that you see throughout all of the videos is the titling strategy. Look at the first two or three words of every single video. And they always start the same ASMR Eating or ASMR Eating Edible. This video creator is telling YouTube every single time exactly what their video is about, very plainly and very clearly. And that helps YouTube serve this content to the right audience time and time again. And you can see that through the views.

This channel has 1,700 subscribers, but each video is hitting that mark or a little beyond because the content is so consistent. This creator has dialed in their audience perfectly with ASMR Eating or Eating Edibles.

Now, this SEO richness is reinforced throughout the metadata - on the channel and for the videos. In the description, the creator continues to talk about ASMR Edibles, but not only that, the creator talks about what's in it for the viewer. What's in it for you, not what's in it for the creator. And a lot of people make that mistake of being a little too self-indulgent about what they want and what they want to get out of a channel, rather than the value that they're giving to their audience. In the video descriptions, it's the same type of thing. Always reinforcing the keywords they want to use.

And although tags aren't that important these days, it's clear that this creator has done their research into the ASMR keyword topic, and includes all of those words wherever they can in some of the titles, descriptions, and tags, the channel description. It's all about the consistency of content.

What you'll also notice is there is also a very consistent video length. The creator seems to be aiming for a sweet spot between eight and twelve minutes. And generally speaking, the advice is to make longer videos and create more watch time. But obviously, you need to appreciate your audience. Through me doing this process myself I'm understanding that ASMR appeals to a more relaxed, slow-paced type of video. Hence why this video is going on longer than usual.

But for this creator, each video is almost exactly the same length. So again, the viewer knows exactly what they're getting into every time they see one of her videos and click into it.

So those are several foundations of a solid channel, which any video creator would be proud of. But for this channel, this is where the magic happens. When you start to read the video titles, and you look at the thumbnails, something doesn't add up. It makes you stop for a second and go, how on earth can you eat a Coca-Cola bottle, or spanners and tools, or a Starbucks coffee cup, an iPhone 11?

All these things the creator talks about are very nonedible somewhat impossible items to eat. So how on earth does this person achieve this? As a viewer, you have me intrigued and you've earned my click.

But the big question is, do these videos deliver the valued prize in the title and the thumbnail? Well, as you can see from the views, and the continued growth of the channel, the answer very much is yes, because this creator's unique superpower on YouTube is to create edible versions of these items. Of course, it goes without saying that people want to watch good content. But when you can provide not only good content but something completely unique, in a very popular topic, that is a winning combination.

ASMR: How to Combine With Other YouTube Trends

And then beyond all of what we've already talked about so far, the video creator is trend warping. How can you take the topic of ASMR and combine it with the most popular smartphone release of the year, the iPhone 11? Well, 

! That is a very unique skill, and it is being expertly executed. Now on this particular occasion, the video didn't go viral, but the creator is giving themselves the best opportunity of doing that, and potentially in the future.

Is it possible to be successful with a brand new YouTube channel that uploads content around something so popular as ASMR? The answer is yes, and we show you why and how.

Rob Wilson

Posts Written By Rob Wilson