Check Out My Thumbnails

BrettTaylorYT

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I’m unsure if my thumbnails are very good. I personally like them, but I feel like they’re missing something/just not clickable. Same with my titles. Titles I really struggle with I can’t think of good titles. Any suggestions? What do you think of my video titles and thumbnails?
 

Oscelle

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Hey Brett. So I say this on all of my reviews but everything I say on this is just my opinion and not law so if you disagree with anything that I put here, feel free to ignore it and do what you think is best; it's your channel after all, so your final decision is the one that really matters. With that being said, let's get into the review.

Thumbnails: Would I personally click onto your thumbnails? No. Why? Well it's because the predominant feeling that I get when I look at your thumbnails is confusion, I don't know what is going on in the thumbnail and I don't have any idea how that might even start to represent the video aside from the video just confusing me. I think with most things on YouTube, our actions are based upon our reaction to a stimulus (the thumbnail, title etc.) and that reaction is based on how we feel when we see something. And because when someone is using YouTube they are only going to look at your thumbnail and title for a couple of seconds which means that you only have a couple of seconds to make them feel strong enough emotions to click onto your video.

I think the most important emotion that you want to invoke is intrigue because if someone is intrigued by your thumbnail and title, chances are that they will click on your video, if they aren't they probably won't (unless they already have an invested interest in your content). Now as I said before when I looked at your thumbnails the main thing I came out with was confusion, which although it seems similar to me being intrigued, it's almost the polar opposite. Although both don't give you the whole story of what your video is about, veing intrigued draws you in and makes you want to know more whereas being confused kind of puts you off something. So the first thing I would work on is making a causal onlooker intrigued enough to want to click onto your video. In terms of emotion though, if you can invoke the viewer to feel intrigued but also couple that with another strong emotion (Happiness, Sadness, Anger etc.) that's going to draw them in even more and hopefully increase the likelihood that someone will click onto your thumbnail

So what do I think that you can do? Well first of all would be to make them simpler. I think the main point of confusion comes from the fact that there seems to be too much going on in the frame, meaning that I don't know where to look and if I'm causally scrolling through I'm not going to bother trying to decipher what is going on and I would just move on. I would also get rid of the text in the thumnails, I think that a picture says a thousand words so if you are using the right picture for your thumbnail then you won't need any text on the page at all. The other reason why I would ditch the text is because sometimes it isn't even possible to read what it is saying because either the colour of the text clashes with what you have put in the background or the position of the text is right underneath where YouTube puts the length of the video meaning that in both occasions that I can't read it so it's kind of redundant. I think the best thumbnail that you have made is the one for your Sims 4 video because it's simple but still conveys to me that it's going to be a funny video with you being in disbelief at it's climax (the only thing I don't like about it is the fact that you rotated the picture of your face so it is no longer portrait but that's just a personal thing really...) so if you used that as a sort of a start point and experimented with a few options for future videos you could always come back and see what people on here think about your new thumbnail designs.

Titles (Sorry I know this is long already...): You've kind of gone down the clickbaity route, which I guess works nowadays, I don't personally like it to the point that if i see anything with '(gone wrong)' or *not clickbait* or anything like that in I personally won't click on it, but the majority of people aren't like me and will click on it, which is why it works so well nowadays. I think regardless of which route you do choose to take I would say the same thing that I said for thumbnails applies for titles, you want to intrigue the onlooker not confuse them, having a title that is too long or too cluttered will cause confusion. I personally think that less is more (kind of like with the thumbnails) so I would just make it simple for example for the channel trailer I think 'Who is Brett Taylor?' is Better than 'Who is BRETT TAYLOR | Channel Trailer #2' because it's simpler and places more emphasis on the question in the title. I don't think your titles are bad. I think you just need to experiment and see what works for you. To be fair you could couple this in and ask for a joint review of both your upcoming titles and thumbnails to see what other people have to say about them.

I hope this all helps. As I said before, if you disagree with anything please feel free to ignore it and I wish you and your channel all the best in the future.
 
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You can definitely improve the thumbnails.

If you're going to include text, always consider using a good background colour in a text box so that it stands out as much as possible. Plain white / black text on an image makes it hard for people to read & before they take the time to decipher it, they've lost interest.

Using pictures is fine, but I would always include some kind of relevant text, questions are always a handy way to draw interest, etc. & always have the text on a contrasting background to help it stand out.

The titles seem ok, could always try and include some kind of draw on top of what you have. For example, "I got a drone!" is cool, tells me what you've done... but it doesn't tell me what your video is offering me. Is it a review? Cool footage? Unexpected event (where you could use something like "you'll never believe what happens"), etc.

Try to include 1 part of the title which says what the video is about, and another which says what's in it for the audience.
 

PMW

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Not bad honestly but I would work on a few of them thats have alot of things going on. It can confuse the person looking at it
 
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Hi,
Do you mind telling me the software you used? I like how it was cleanly edited.
 

BrettTaylorYT

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Hi,
Do you mind telling me the software you used? I like how it was cleanly edited.
Yeah! No problem. I use Photoshop CC. I am subscribed to Adobe’s Photography plan ($10 a month) and I use Adobe bridge to upload my images and do small edits through that, then I send it over to Photoshop and edit it through there by combining the 2 (or more) images, adding blending techniques, and voila lol