18 YouTube Settings That Ruin Small Channels (Fix These Now)

What if I told you that you just need to fix a few settings on your YouTube videos to show YouTube you're a genuine creator and that your content is worth promoting? Well, my name is Matt Parr. I've been running huge YouTube channels for the past 10 years, and in doing that, I've discovered which settings actually matter for growing on YouTube. So in this video, I want to show you a bunch of different settings that you should definitely look into for getting as many views, as many subscribers, and most importantly, making YouTube into a real business. Now, the first setting is your subscribe link. You might be saying, Matt, what are you talking about? Subscribe link? Can't people just click to subscribe to my channel? Yes, they definitely can. However, you can actually put this link in your video descriptions, and if they click it, it will open up a window that allows people to click if they want to subscribe to your channel. And that popup that happens when you use this link specifically will get you on average more subscribers. Now, as I mentioned on all my videos, subscribers really don't matter that much aside from having some social proof as well as having an existing audience for your videos to go to. So if you do upload good videos on YouTube, your subscribers will just let YouTube know it's a good video sooner than if you didn't have a lot of subscribers. So they are still nice to have even if they are mostly vanity metrics. And this is the subscribe link right here. If you just put this string of text and then put your channel, that will create your automatic subscribe link. I recommend putting it through a website like rebrandly.com that allows you to then create a shorter, better looking link that you can put in the description of your videos as well as if you ever share your channel externally, make sure to share this link instead of your direct channel link. That way people will get prompted to subscribe. And yes, that first setting was very basic. I'm going to show you a lot better ones. I just want to start with some of the fundamental ones. Another very fundamental one that you need to make sure that you're doing is our second setting, which is the ability to put custom thumbnails on your videos. By default, you can't do this unless you verify your YouTube channel, specifically a phone number with YouTube. Go to your YouTube Studio, click Settings, go to your Channel Settings, and then your Feature Eligibility section, and then go ahead and verify your phone number. You need to be using custom thumbnails, which are essentially cover images on your videos, because without them your channel will definitely suffer. Now the third setting is having a good-looking channel homepage. In order to do this, you go to your YouTube Studio and then go to Customize on the left side. And my recommendation is to put the following sections on your channel. You can add sections or delete them. I recommend adding a Popular Upload section because your most popular videos are that way for a reason. You want to be showing them first when people come to your channel so you can rack up more watch time and get people watching your channel more. You definitely want a Recent Upload section as well. And if you have any similar channels that are related to your channel, you can also put them in a Featured Channel section on your channel, but only if they're related. You don't want to to other niches because then it'll hurt your channels. If you want to see an example of this, just take a look at my channel page and feel free to copy me. Also, just make sure to have a good-looking channel art, which is a 2560 by 1440 image that you put as your YouTube channel banner. And remember, a very small portion of that will show on your channel's homepage, so keep that in mind as you're designing it. There's templates you can use to design it. I recommend just using Snappa. They have a nice built-in template. And make sure to have a nice-looking profile photo as well. Now, the fourth YouTube setting is one that is on by default, which could be hurting your average view durations, or how long people watch your videos. And obviously you want people watching your videos videos as long as possible. And that setting is called automatic chapters. Because let's say you were uploading a video about how much money YouTube has paid you, and then the first chapter on that video, it literally says $10 million. Why would anyone want to watch the rest of the video when that was literally just spoiled from that first chapter if they already know the conclusion? So if you're smart, what I recommend doing is putting manual chapters that build curiosity and keep people watching. For example, the first chapter of your video could be how much YouTube pays on average to creators, The next chapter could be how many views I got from YouTube, the next chapter, how many subscribers, and then the next chapter, how much YouTube actually paid me. But notice you're saying how much YouTube actually paid you. You're not giving away what's actually happening at that point. For example, in this video, if you look at the chapters, I'm not going to say the exact settings in every single chapter. I'm just going to put Setting 1, Setting 2, Setting 3. So you have to actually watch the video to get the information. So that way it's a win-win for both of us. Because even if I did just put the setting names as the actual chapters, people wouldn't know how to actually do the settings or which settings to go into and change everything. So they might walk away thinking they know what's going on, but it could be entirely different. Or it could talk about one setting, but then I say to turn the setting off. So you want to make it important that people watch your actual videos. Now, the 5th setting is the optimal time to post. If you go to your YouTube Studio, go to Analytics, and then go to your Audience tab, YouTube will actually show you when the majority of your audience is on YouTube. Then you want to post 2 to 3 hours before the maximum amount of people are on YouTube in your audience. Now, if you haven't posted any videos yet on YouTube, my recommendation is to stick to posting at peak times when people in your ideal audience is on YouTube. So for the majority of people, if you're going after a US audience, I would say between 5:00 and 7:00 PM Eastern Standard Time is a pretty good time to post. Now, the next setting is notifying all of your subscribers every time you upload videos. You might be saying, Matt, why would I not want every single one of my subscribers to know every time I post a new video? If you try a new video type that is different than most of the content that you do on your channel, I would then potentially recommend unchecking the box when you upload videos that says publish to subscription feeds. And notify subscribers. You only want to do that if you're posting within your niche. If you're posting outside of that, it may be better to start with a new fresh audience and let the video find the right audience eventually, instead of publishing it to your subscribers who are going to only watch a small percentage of your video, and they will likely click off very soon, therefore hurting the performance of that video and making it harder for that video to find the right audience. Now, for the majority of your videos, you should be publishing within your same niche anyway, so 99% of the time, keep that checked. Publishing to your subscription feed. But I just want to let you know about that if you ever experiment outside the narrow confines of your main niche. Now, setting number 7 is the kid content revenue killer. You might be like, Matt, what did you just say? Basically, when you upload videos, YouTube always asks you, is your content made for kids or not? And that's due to a law in the United States that you can't put targeted ads towards children. So YouTube has to specifically find out which content is for kids and which isn't. And a kid simply means anybody below the age of 13 years old. And for the majority of channels watching this, you probably don't make videos for kids. You just have to ask yourself, what is your intention when you make videos? So you usually want to leave that box unchecked because if you accidentally check that box, you'll lose comments, end screens, and the ability to monetize your channel properly. I want you to make as much money as possible from your channel. That's another reason you should honestly avoid kid content on YouTube. I have this guy Pete in my course who gets 10 million views a month with his kids channel, but he makes a couple hundred dollars a month from it. Whereas I know people who get similar amounts of views who make millions of dollars a year from their channel. So it's a huge difference and it's really important to focus on content for older audiences. And if you want to make this easy for yourself, go to your YouTube Studio, go to Settings, go to Upload Defaults, and then go to Advanced Settings. And then you can turn that on for your entire channel so you don't have to worry about checking it every single time you upload a new video. Now, this next setting is also very important because you've probably seen those spam comments on YouTube videos promoting some crypto nonsense or something like that. And there's a really easy way to avoid these types of comments on your videos and to avoid people potentially getting scammed in your comment sections, which could reflect badly on you. And that's to go into Settings, Community, and then Blocked Words, and then add in terms like WhatsApp, Telegram, crypto investment, binary options, or any other common scam phrases. You could also even put words like fake or scam or anything that could reflect badly on you and your channel. You definitely don't want that either. So think about protecting yourself and your channel as well as your community. And now I did a whole video about how to reply to YouTube comments the right way. Feel free to check it out because 99% of people reply to comments the wrong way. Now setting 9, 10, and 11 all work together, and I call this the branding triple stack. Setting number 9 is uploading a watermark watermark. If you go to that Customize tab in your settings, you can then go to Branding. That'll be shown in the bottom corner of your video. Set it to play through the whole video. That gives people one more chance to subscribe. Setting number 10 then is to go to Settings, Channel, and then Keywords, and then just put related keywords related to the type of channel that you're doing. I like to use my tool TubeMagic for this. Go to the Video Tags tool and then put in what your channel is about, and then copy those tags and put it as your channel keywords and tags. And then setting number 11 is to then write in those keywords in a very natural way in multiple different paragraphs that describe your actual channel, and that's within your description, which is also within the Customize tab. Just make sure to write it in natural sentences and use a bunch of those same words that we used within our channel keywords. Now, setting number 12 is to upload your videos initially as unlisted. This does several things for you. Number 1, it lets YouTube index the whole video, go through it, scan for anything that could potentially get the video demonetized or anything else. And then on top of that, it allows you to take that link, go to that tool TubeMagic, put it in the Warp Upload Optimizer, and then TubeMagic will give us a great set of titles that we can choose from. A description that's written in the exact way I recommend, and then also a set of tags that we can use on that specific video. Setting number 13 is setting the correct category for your videos. If you go back to your upload default settings, it allows you to choose a category for the videos that you're uploading. For example, for this channel, if I'm uploading how-to videos, I would select either How To and Style or Education. You just don't want your educational content being classified as an entertainment piece of content. Now, setting number 14 and 15, or what I like to call the session time double tap method that multiplies your revenue. So setting 14 is to add an end screen to a related video on your channel. You want to find the longest video on your channel that goes over the most amount of value that would be applicable to the viewers of all the other videos on your channel. For example, on this channel that talks about how to grow on YouTube and how to make money on YouTube, I made a comprehensive tutorial on this exact subject that is super long that I link to in the end screen of every single video that I upload. This gets your content tons of session time because if people go on to click to watch that video, you're keeping people on the platform and YouTube will give you all the views and subscribers that you could ever want. So very important to use end screens. And then this also ties into setting number 15, which is adding a related video if you upload YouTube Shorts. I personally don't do too much with YouTube Shorts. I really don't believe in them that much, especially if you want to make tons of money from YouTube. Yes, they're great for vanity metrics and for getting play buttons, but when it comes to making lots of money from YouTube, they really don't matter. Except if you do this next setting, which is to add a related video to that very long video on your channel. So make sure to add a related video anytime you upload YouTube Shorts. That way those Shorts are doing something as opposed to just being for vanity metrics. Setting number 16 is if you use any AI-generated visuals in your videos. This includes, for example, an AI avatar, or if you have people saying or doing things that they didn't actually do. If you just use AI for super minor stuff like one single image, maybe this doesn't matter as much. But if you're using AI in a huge way on your channel, I highly recommend selecting this box, your video includes AI-generated content. This will help YouTube index it better and it'll help you if YouTube ever requires this, you did the right thing, so then you can keep your channel long term. No, this will not impact the performance of your videos at all. I've uploaded videos with that box checked that have gotten millions of views. Setting number 17 is to make sure that you allow all ad types on your channel once you're monetized, and then also to go into ads of specific videos and add manual ad breaks throughout those videos. You can put automatic ad breaks as well. They don't always work perfectly, and it doesn't always put ads at the correct time in your videos. You want to be putting ads where people are likely going to be very tuned in at a specific moment in the video. So if you're about to reveal something very big, put an ad right before it. And also keep your ad space at least every 2 minutes throughout your video. And then setting number 18 is to verify that you're an actual human running your channel. There are certain feature eligibility requirements if you go to those settings on your channel that can only be unlocked once you've proven that you're a human. And you have two ways of going about doing this. Number one, you can upload your ID. To YouTube to verify that you are an actual person. Or number 2, and this is the method that I like to do, you can prove you're a human through channel history. Now, this typically takes around a month of uploading good content to your channel. And then once you do this, you get the ability to put links in the descriptions of your videos. This is super important if you want to monetize your channel as much as possible because you need to be linking to affiliate products or your own product to monetize to the next level. Now, while all of these settings are important, what is way more important than this if you really want to make YouTube into a business and you want to make as much money from YouTube as possible, it's really important that you do YouTube with the right strategy. What I mean by that is that you do YouTube in a way that YouTube actually allows, where you're not going to get banned and you can build a real business and monetize to the next level. And in this video right here, I'm going to show you exactly how I'm doing that right now, building faceless channels where I've never even shown my face, yet I've built a huge business out of doing it. So make sure to check out this video right here. My name is Matt Parr. Thanks for watching everyone, and I'll see you there.