YouTube Thumbnails: Text or No Text?

[Furry Gurus]

Perhaps I should try and keep text to between one and four words. Maybe that is the way to go moving forward.

I think it will be an big improvement

 

[RedFox]

Don't compare yourself to an established channel, because they are that, established and already well known, they don't need to worry about getting viewers in because they already have their set of followers.

It's something you want to experiment with, a catchy, funny thumbnail with no text will grab more attention than a boring, dull thumbnail with text, it depends on how attractive the thumbnail is already, adding text might bring it over the "hey click me" mark.

 

[Kevin Muldoon]

Don't compare yourself to an established channel, because they are that, established and already well known, they don't need to worry about getting viewers in because they already have their set of followers.

It's something you want to experiment with, a catchy, funny thumbnail with no text will grab more attention than a boring, dull thumbnail with text, it depends on how attractive the thumbnail is already, adding text might bring it over the "hey click me" mark.

Sorry, but I do not agree with that. Successful YouTubers worry about click throughs and traffic just as much as us, if not more so. You cannot say that how they handle thumbnails is irrelevant because they already have a following. If anything, what they do is much more relevant as they receive more traffic and are therefore in a position to gather more data from any case studies they do on thumbnails.

I do agree with you that I should experiment with my thumbnails, but I do believe that we can learn a lot as to what works and what doesn't by examining how top YouTubers do it

 

[Furry Gurus]

Sorry, but I do not agree with that. Successful YouTubers worry about click throughs and traffic just as much as us, if not more so. You cannot say that how they handle thumbnails is irrelevant because they already have a following. If anything, what they do is much more relevant as they receive more traffic and are therefore in a position to gather more data from any case studies they do on thumbnails.

I do agree with you that I should experiment with my thumbnails, but I do believe that we can learn a lot as to what works and what doesn't by examining how top YouTubers do it

Their focus does lie somewhere else though. They want their subscribers to click on their videos where we want random people who don't know us to click, which is different I think. But I agree that they do care, since it is their job...

 

[Kevin Muldoon]

Their focus does lie somewhere else though. They want their subscribers to click on their videos where we want random people who don't know us to click, which is different I think. But I agree that they do care, since it is their job...

You're saying that as if they are content with the subscribers they have. Most of the YouTubers I subscribe to that have 10,000 subscribers talk about aiming for 50,000. The ones that have 100,000 talk about one day reaching one million. The ones that reach one million talk about aiming for two million. Bottom line, they are all trying to attract new subscribers. They want people to click on their thumbnails too. If anything, they don't care too much about existing subscribers as they are already subscribed. In that respect, we are all in the same boat.

 

[Furry Gurus]

You're saying that as if they are content with the subscribers they have. Most of the YouTubers I subscribe to that have 10,000 subscribers talk about aiming for 50,000. The ones that have 100,000 talk about one day reaching one million. The ones that reach one million talk about aiming for two million. Bottom line, they are all trying to attract new subscribers. They want people to click on their thumbnails too. If anything, they don't care too much about existing subscribers as they are already subscribed. In that respect, we are all in the same boat.

ok, i agree at least I hope to increase my 77 subscribers as well

 

[Adam_Fitz]

yeah for me it depends, If the thumbnail is jsut me sitting there, ill try put in a bit of text or a logo or something
but for stuff like tutorials i try not to so the focus is on what it looks like

 

[RedFox]

You're saying that as if they are content with the subscribers they have. Most of the YouTubers I subscribe to that have 10,000 subscribers talk about aiming for 50,000. The ones that have 100,000 talk about one day reaching one million. The ones that reach one million talk about aiming for two million. Bottom line, they are all trying to attract new subscribers. They want people to click on their thumbnails too. If anything, they don't care too much about existing subscribers as they are already subscribed. In that respect, we are all in the same boat.

That still doesn't mean they need to worry about thumbnails and other aspects as much as us, as I mentioned earlier they are already established and due to search algorithms, most at the "large" mark are already growing organically, through search ranks (thanks to the fact they're probably getting better watch time), and word of mouth, and social media.

Their journey from 1 Million to 2 Million is not as much as an adventure as a small channels 0 to 1000, you can't compare a large channel and say they're on the same boat as us, we're new, they're the regulars, they don't need to worry about how their thumbnails look as much as us, they can put very little time into their thumbnails and still see the same results and get a decent return.

 

[Ian W.]

It varies. Sometimes it's necessary, others it isn't. Also I guess it kinda depends on what type of videos you do

 

[Squeal Cat]

That still doesn't mean they need to worry about thumbnails and other aspects as much as us, as I mentioned earlier they are already established and due to search algorithms, most at the "large" mark are already growing organically, through search ranks (thanks to the fact they're probably getting better watch time), and word of mouth, and social media.

Their journey from 1 Million to 2 Million is not as much as an adventure as a small channels 0 to 1000, you can't compare a large channel and say they're on the same boat as us, we're new, they're the regulars, they don't need to worry about how their thumbnails look as much as us, they can put very little time into their thumbnails and still see the same results and get a decent return.

Those big Youtubers are too big to fail. They can upload a picture of a turd on their channel and they still get millions of views.

That's the difference between small Youtubers and big Youtubers. The small ones needs the attention of people who are searching for videos. The big ones doesn't need to, if a random viewer stumbles upon that thumbnail, they just think, oh it's PewDiePie