I have been uploading a series of videos onto my new YouTube channel and heard from a friend that I should add a watermark so it’s easy for people to subscribe. What dos that mean and how do I do that on YouTube? First off, congrats on joining the world of YouTube. Having a channel
I have been uploading a series of videos onto my new YouTube channel and heard from a friend that I should add a watermark so it’s easy for people to subscribe. What dos that mean and how do I do that on YouTube?
First off, congrats on joining the world of YouTube. Having a channel is exactly the right way to go to build an audience and create loyalty. I have one of my own, unsurprisingly called AskDaveTaylor. Go ahead, click and subscribe! 🙂
Like a mini-World Wide Web, though, YouTube has its own search results and its own set of criteria for you maximizing views and popularity of both your channel and individual videos. Generally this is known as YouTube SEO (search engine optimization) and even YouTube has information about it, like this interesting tutorial on Why Branding Matters on YouTube.
If you go through that tutorial, you will indeed see that a watermark is considered one of your best strategies for creating that loyal fan base, and the idea’s simple: you upload a little graphic that then shows up on the lower right of all your videos, sort of like how TV channels now brand their content on screen, and if a subscriber clicks on it, they go to your list of videos. If someone who isn’t a subscriber clicks, they get to subscribe. Easy!
Even better, once you have it set up, it shows up on every video you have automatically and also appears on any new videos you upload without any additional work on your part. Probably the biggest win of all, actually. Set and forget.
All of this can be done through Creator Studio, which you can access from any page on YouTube. Just click on your tiny face icon on the top right:
Once you’re in Creator Studio — and I really hope you’ve been to this area before! — look on the left side for “Channel”, then click on it to open up the choices therein:
As the pointy-hand shows, you’ll want to choose “Branding” from the list.
Once you do, it’ll explain a bit about what’s going on:
The fun, of course, is on clicking “Add a watermark”, so do so.
Now you’ll get a bit more information about specific image file formats, etc:
Not hugely helpful, really, as there are no recommended dimensions and just a minimal detail about the max file size being 1MB (which is pretty small!). I have a graphic I’m going to work with that’s the approximate dimensions of a banner graphic, so I’ll proceed by clicking “Choose File” and selecting it.
You can see, it’s pretty small. To proceed, click “Save”.
And don’t worry if you don’t have the perfect graphic: once you get the hang of it, YouTube makes it quite easy to try a bunch of different watermark graphics to find one that works well for your videos.
Now you can specify exactly how the watermark should appear on your videos:
By default, the graphic will show up on all your videos for the entire duration of the video except it won’t actually start until 5 seconds into the video. You can change that if you want. Well, a little bit:
Looks good? Click on “Update” and you’re good to go.
Here’s how my first pass at the watermark turned out:
Can you see it on the lower right?
Yeah. Me neither. It’s pretty darn small!
To learn more, I went on to YouTube and looked at what other YouTubers are doing for their watermarks. Here are a representative sample, all shown larger than life size so you can see them in detail:
In the end, I decided on using a small square graphic that worked a whole lot better. Here’s my new watermark:
How does it look on a video? Well, this is where I invite you to check out my YouTube channel (askdavetaylor) and, while you’re at it, subscribe.
Done. And that’s how it’s done. Good luck, and good luck creating a useful watermark for your own branding efforts!
I have followed tutorial videos as well as your step by step guide but despite you tube saying successfully saved, there’s no watermark showing. It’s driving me nuts! Can you help??
Here’s one of my videos.
https://youtu.be/I2EP_sb1168
Are you checking for the watermark on your mobile, or on a desktop computer accessing YouTube via a web browser, Dave?
I have tried a 800 by 800 and a 580 by 580 square and still views small like your first video.
Check this too: https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/72431