I asked members of my mailing list to send me their channels to review and on the form I asked them to write down what they struggled with the most on YouTube and nearly every single one of the 700 plus who applied wrote something that was telling me they couldn't actually see what the biggest problem they had with their channel was so now myself and Aaron who's been helping film Booth clients grow are going to review some of these Brave applicants who sent in their channels and enable you and them to spot the warning signs of
this gigantic problem that will stop your Channel Growing in 2023 if you don't fix it so this first channel we're going to look at is from Caitlyn and she's got a cooking channel um she wrote in her form that her biggest struggle right now is a view count and she said I'm having some videos Peak at 40 but others are reaching 100 plus look there's a lot of different reasons why some videos get more views than others but we're just going to look at one thing in particular now to help you solve this Aaron yes
I've got this image on screen this is one of Caitlyn's thumbnails in terms of this video what do you think the most important thing for the viewer is to see the end result of the food and what do you think as a result of that the biggest problem with this image is that stopping it getting clicks well it's getting covered up by text and colors so it doesn't really show off the food the way you would want it to that's it it's simplest form that is one of your biggest problems you've got on your Channel
right now in all of your thumbnails you're covering the thing the viewer cares about so the simplest way to fix this is to do what this lady's doing the Domestic Geek so Aaron is there anything that sort of you find appealing about the domestic Geeks I mean I'm instantly like my mouth is watering right especially with all the different um you know iced coffees and milkshakes but it's just showing you with like a simple clean image and you know nice and vibrant colors what the result is going to be I'm instantly hungry any other thoughts
on uh Caitlyn's thumbnails showing result is probably stronger than showing the process because this one has like more ingredients on it than other things so um really finding a way to show off a hero of your thumbnail so of what people are going to be clicking on but if we use an example of this image here instead of showing the house you're showing the bricks and no one's going to buy a house based on the bricks so perfect point there Aaron all right so there's one more thing we just want to touch on and it's
your titles um what do you think is a problem with the title like this well the thing for me is they feel a little bit search based which makes sense in a way but if you really want people to quickly you know see a thumbnail that's striking and then click on a title is you want to add in some kind of intrigue or something that's a little more powerful than just like here's four recipes you really want to draw them in with something like incredibly tasty or super unique or the secret to the best cakes
or something like that yeah so what we've got here we want to be keeping our targets below 50 characters if possible so you've got four tasty breakfast recipes which is a good start and then you've made it really specific using Pillsbury dough now what if they're like ah I'm not really interested in Pillsbury day but they should be and actually in the video If you showed them how to use it they might be super interested in it so you kind of have to break down objections viewers might have to clicking on your content and make
sure that you're not including anything that might put them off so four tasty breakfast recipes your kids will love if that was your avatars and if they had kids that's the sort of title that would be enough everything else that came across especially full dishes episode two where you've put episode two in that's gonna kill the video of everyone who hasn't seen episode one okay so next up we have MC Metro and they said the problem was this I always feel I have a healthy subscriber count however it's not necessarily proportional to the Views so
let's have a look at the channel to see if we can establish how we can help with this so Aaron the second you land on this channel what do you think they could do to get more of their subscribers to come back to their content well really kind of figuring out how to make what you're showing off look nice again it comes back to that hero that we were talking about like these in a way look just like toys whereas you know if you really get in there and figure out like a nice angle with
a nice background you can show it off in a way that looks a lot more impressive because these people are obsessed with mini trains anyway so that's what you want to show off yeah so I would think about it like this what to your viewers is the most interesting and fascinating thing about model Railways now I'm going to take a complete guess here Aaron I'm going to get you to take a guess too actually Aaron you guessed first what do you think the most interesting thing to people who like model Railways is how realistic they
can look yeah so to me I kind of feel like maybe they love the tiny little details on a train or on a house that make it look super real so the first thing you should be doing when you're coming up with a new thumbnail is researching and looking at other people's thumbnails within your Niche or maybe even outside it too so I did a little bit of an explore and I found a channel who's really doing well uh they're called play London so how to pronounce that but this guy you know 70 000 views
on a Model Railway video that's that's pretty impressive stuff sticks out to you about these thumbnails Aaron it looks incredibly realistic the one on the top right I'm like is that even is it fake is it tiny the one below it as well I'm like that just looks like a station until you see the person on the right you know it's it's also incredibly realistic which is really powerful with diorama building yeah I I would click on that as someone who has no interest in this Niche because I can't quite make out if it's real
or not and again it goes back to photography here so this this image in particular they've taken this shot with their backgrounds blurred out which makes it look even more realistic right this could be a Hilltop so I think they have really picked up nicely on what the viewers care about and again no no real text on these images it's they're very very simple and you're you know putting some effects and and things on the images but also I think have a play with your lighting as well and and bring up the brightness slightly so
that these things stick out a little bit more so next up we have Nikita and he said his problem is attracting new viewers because his Niche is fairly small and limited let's start with the first thing that you can probably get more views with Aaron is there anything that jumps out straight away yeah I mean depending on the angle you want to take you're going again for something that's quite Niche obviously Lord of the Rings is something that is kind of getting popular with the Amazon show coming out but there are other things about beer
brewing that are probably even wider uh form of Interest right something like Oktoberfest or another beer brewing Festival is gonna bring in more people with the relevant interest compared to Lord of the Rings yeah so I think you've made the right choice in that you've tried to Target a trend here but the wrong choice in the is law of the Rings associated with beer that much going back and looking at your ideas there are some that work here but I think you've taken a bit of a wild card approach here with the lord of the
ring ones I think you should be looking at these other channels so we've got this one called claw hammer and they get quite a lot of views on their videos you know 165 000 in a month is a lot Aaron is there any sort of pattern that you notice straight away which is helping them get those sort of views yeah I mean the thumbnails are quite clear and quite simple you know obviously they're going to the extreme into like expired beers dangerous to drink barely legal but on top of that again we're coming back to
that hero in the thumbnail right it's showing off the brew that you're going to be talking about so you tend to find extremes always do well on YouTube Brewing the strongest Homebrew allowable by law you wanna know what happens right and a few things fire up in your mind like what does someone drink it like how strong is it would I be able to drink that and that makes the thumbnail and title really intriguing and highly clickable so these guys have got some fun ideas I think your channel is very much targeted to the people
who are already very very interested and that always makes your audience a little bit smaller Aaron if you're going to redesign five things I wish I knew before I started Brewing as a thumbnail and that's a strong title yeah what do you think you'd put in it either something that is super obvious that everyone does when they start brewing or something that is very clearly a mistake um and then have something like some text or an arrow pointing at it saying like don't do this or something like that and I think I just want to
talk to you about the thumbnail design is Aaron what does your eye notice as soon as you see this what's the first thing that sticks out to you um things yeah and what is the first thing do you think that should stick out to someone in a video about Brewing brewing equipment or hops something like that yeah something related to the thing they care about that is visually clear so maybe this here maybe this thing here you've covered how do we get around using text if we wanted to stick with this so it doesn't stick
out first and stop us from seeing the things that we should actually notice well like I said something like arrows can really help making texts just a little bit smaller um but generally like having the thing that is actually relevant be either in the middle of the frame or a focal point somewhere so really we wouldn't be able to show much of your face here but like this is the interesting bit here so it's getting used to sort of design and photography again one of the things to keep in mind as well is like if
something's really small in the corner it might not immediately be obvious what it is to me those could be coffee beans and I would be like yeah sure but they're not right and you want to make that clear I thought they were coffee beans as well actually okay so this next channel is Tim and it's been an interesting problem he said he had or a struggle he said his biggest struggle was on camera presence and I say it's not on camera Presence at all Tim you are a street photography Channel Aaron as a street photography
Channel what do we need to see in these thumbnails street photography and as much as these are amazing images right it doesn't give us the contact as to what it is um a lot of the photos just are like reflections of things and you know things through glass or in the rain but if you want to show off street photography it's great to have that context rather than having London or Bristol as a word having you know London at night or Bristol streets or whatever it is in the image is really going to help you
get that across more I know that your style is a bit more abstract but look here it's from Jason vong five prices street photography tips so he's got this thumbnail uh where the guy in the orange jackets contrasting it looks like a street in its simplest form I found another one as well that I thought was really clear street photography this is from someone called Pierre and scope by is most viewed here you know five must know street photography tips he's in the street on the floor so one thing I think you should try is
this you don't necessarily need to leave your sort of abstract style but in this latest video how to use Reflections to add depth and layers Aaron what would you do if that was you well so I probably either not use text or have it in a way that's a little bit more meaningful and then make it more obvious that it's a reflection because I can see it but I don't know if it's clear to anyone else who is looking at this with you know less of a photography background it looks amazing but I don't know
what I'm looking at necessarily Aaron anything you want to add on the titles yeah I mean as you can kind of tell right that almost all of these are being cut off which probably means they're a little bit long again really rather than just leading with street photography or you want to build a question in the mind of the person seeing your thumbnail in titles so again something that is size something short that really like emphasizes the point you're talking about secret to amazing Street night photography or something along those lines it's going to be
more powerful than street photography at night in London yeah you're kind of like saying exactly what it's about we need a bit more Intrigue there so then our final Channel biggest struggle here was how to break through the 10K views faster per video If you want to get more views faster you need more clicks guess what we're going to be looking at right now I wonder if it's titles and thumbnails it is the biggest Blocker on YouTube hopefully by now you're starting to see a pattern as a viewer Aaron what are the problems with these
thumbnails so this is about kite surfing right and people who love kite surfing love the action of it the feeling of it you know the wind and the waves and the season really showing much of that action text is covering things there's you know bits and pieces different pictures in one image I want to see just like you on a kite surfboard is that what it's called having the best time of your life because that's the thing people want to connect to when they're not kitesurfing right as opposed to someone walking on a beach that's
not necessarily relevant as much to that person so this is a thumbnail yeah uh or just type in kite surfing on Google these images you're selling people the dream that's why you need to show them the thing that they love and at the moment it's just too clogged up especially this one in particular this is committing a crime I call the inside joke so if you put something in your thumbnail image that the viewer will only understand once they've watched your video it's not helpful to get a click so you've got Morpheus but why is
he in the thumbnail I think get rid of him get rid of all the text have just this nice shot of you kite surfing maybe pump the saturation up a little bit and play with the contrast and you're gonna break way more views so then let's have a look at the titles here as well keep your hair dry while kiting uh again is a title that feels long and has a whole chunk that isn't necessarily relevant or building that Intrigue you know kinds of interesting transition in three steps might just be enough on its own
I still feel like there might be a more powerful way of really getting people to be like oh I want to click on this because it's something that they recognize or something that makes it feel like you know something they don't but yeah again like is keeping your hair dryer just about getting wet or not so keeping your hair dry is is going to be a term for not falling in okay this is about kite surfing transitions you can do that mean you won't fall off you could probably just show a comparison and I talk
about these thumbnails a lot because it's so powerful left hand side of the screen show the thing they shouldn't be doing with the cross right hand side show the thing they should be doing or the left hand side could even just be you on the kiteboard trying to get back on soaking wet and the one on the other side is you having a great time with dry hair if you say keep your hair dry it doesn't necessarily instantly mean that much unless that is a term within the niche that everyone understands what about the new
people who don't thank you so much to our brave applicants you all will be sent 100 as a thank you and if you want to sign up for my next Channel review video and get the ability to have your questions answered and exclusive content then check out the link below but more importantly make 2023 the year you take your thumbnails to the next level because it really is one of the ultimate reasons channels don't grow but also you want to be making sure that the experience you give your viewers once they hit play absolutely blows
them away how the heck do you do that well there are three really powerful tools any YouTuber no matter how small can use and you can learn what they are in only 7 minutes and 34 seconds simply by watching this video here next
