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How do I upload a video to YouTube?

Okay, I made a short video of my dog chasing his tail and want to upload it to YouTube so I can get millions of views and maybe get a guest shot on Conan or Tosh2.0. How do I upload my movie to YouTube?


Dave's Answer:

Hmm... what are the odds? YouTube has millions of videos uploaded on a daily basis, so unless your dog is staggeringly cute or wacky, I have to say that odds aren't great you'll be hitting the big time. Then again, who am I to prognosticate? Look at the top dozen videos on YouTube and half of them see to be random goofiness or something wacky or cute kids (or animals) doing something silly or embarrassing.

Seriously, YouTube is the perfect place to upload a funny video. Just make sure it's less than fifteen minutes long and not, um, inappropriate or overly crude.

Generally speaking, YouTube is quite easy to work with so you shouldn't have any sort of problems uploading your video. Here are the steps required...

Of course, the first step is to go to YouTube and sign in. Once you go there, look on the top right to see if you're logged in:

upload video youtube 1

You can see I'm not logged in because, well, it says "Log In". Once you are logged in, it shows your YouTube account name instead:

upload video youtube 2

If you don't have an account, sign up for one. It's easy and free.

Once you've logged in, click on the "Upload" link on the top right to move to the spot where you can actually specify the file you want to upload to YouTube:

upload video youtube 3

Have a ".MOV" movie file on your computer? No worries, just drag and drop the file onto the Web browser in the specified place:

upload video youtube 4

It immediately begins the upload process, which can take rather a while...

upload video youtube 5

Eventually it finishes up then starts to build thumbnails:

upload video youtube 6

Don't just sit and stare at that, however. Scroll down and start filling out the individual fields, and pay attention to them: good keywords and a good description are the main ways you're going to have people find your video when they do searches:

upload video youtube 7

You can see here that for the demo video I uploaded, I used as many relevant keywords as possible, then wrote a description that hopefully would pique people's interest.

Once I click on "Save" to save the additional information, YouTube wraps up the configuration and shares a live URL you can disseminate to friends and family:

upload video youtube 8

Finally, you can click thru - to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUmHlgHVzG0 -- and see it live on YouTube. It looks like this:

upload video youtube 9

Stay tuned, I'll be posting more articles on how to embed a YouTube video ont a Web page (like this one) and how to share a YouTube video with Facebook friends at the click of a mouse.


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Categorized: Computer and Internet Basics , Twitter, LinkedIn and Social Network Help   (Article 9883, Written by )
Tagged: publicity, video upload, viral video, youtube, youtube upload
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Reader Comments To Date:

Starbucks coffee cup I do have a lot to say, and questions of my own for that matter, but first I'd like to say thank you, Dave, for all your helpful information by buying you a cup of coffee!
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