Chapter 2

The Basics of YouTube

In the simplest sense, YouTube is a website designed for sharing video. Before YouTube's founding in 2005, posting and sharing a video online was difficult: The bandwidth and storage needed to stream video were expensive, and many copyright risks were involved in letting people upload whatever they wanted. Because YouTube was willing to absorb the costs and ignore the risks, it provided the infrastructure for users to upload and view as much video as they wanted, for free. This proposition turned out to be a popular one.

Google acquired YouTube in 2006, and YouTube's growth continued. As of 2014, users watch more than 6 billion hours of video per month, and more than 300 hours of video are uploaded every minute.

Let us say that last part again: 300 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute.

Given that amount of content, you, as an individual, could never watch everything that's available on YouTube. For every minute of video you watch, you're 300 hours behind. For every work of genius, such as “Cat in a Shark Costume Chases a Duck While Riding a Roomba,” YouTube has literally tens of thousands of poorly shot, poorly edited videos of family vacations, dance recitals, and bad jokes that could possibly be of interest only to the uploader. This chapter serves as your (essential) guide to finding the good parts while skipping the bad. (Hey, it's a tough job, but somebody had to do it, and that somebody was us.) We help you navigate the YouTube interface, establish an account, and start looking ahead to planning a channel. If you're new to YouTube or you need to dig a bit deeper as a user, this is the chapter for you.

What You'll Find on YouTube

You'll find, in a word, videos on YouTube. You'll find, in several words, just about anything on YouTube. We would say that you'll find anything you can imagine, but even we never would have imagined that anyone would make a 10-hour loop of the Nyan Cat meme video, and we definitely wouldn't have imagined that it would have been viewed over 39 million times. The best way to describe what's on YouTube may be to start with the categories YouTube lists on its home page.

Managing your identity

Your entire YouTube experience is driven by whether YouTube knows who you are. It doesn't use any magic to figure that out. Instead, YouTube simply determines whether you're logged in or logged out. When you log in, YouTube can make video recommendations based on your viewing behavior. In other words, after YouTube knows what you like, it does its best to bring more of that great video content to you.

YouTube and its parent Google are in the advertising business and are not promoting online video for the betterment of mankind. (Though some channels on YouTube actually help achieve that goal.) By understanding your viewing behavior when you're logged in, YouTube and Google are able to serve better and more relevant ads to you. That's good for them, for the advertiser, and for the viewer. Sure, most people don't like ads, but YouTube is truly trying to do a better job of targeting ads. (Chapter 13 covers this topic in more detail.)

As you can see in this chapter and throughout the book, you need to be logged in to do most of the important things on YouTube. Sure, you can watch videos without being logged in, but you'll miss a good part of the experience. You need a Google account to log in, and we show you how to set up one of those a little later in this chapter. You also have the option of creating a YouTube channel that goes with your Google account.

You don't need a YouTube channel to log in to YouTube, just a Google account. Having a channel though, as you'll soon find out, will help you organize your YouTube viewing without having to create any videos.

Navigating the home page

The home page of YouTube (www.youtube.com) is a fickle beast. It was once the fount of discovery for YouTube users. If you were looking for new content, the home page was the place to be. Over the years, though, YouTube changed the home page experience. Many changes have been tied to the company's desire to know its users. Users who are logged in with accounts and who have a history of using YouTube see videos that might appeal to them based on past usage. New users and those not logged in see the things that are currently most popular on the site.

The logged-in experience

As long as you're logged in to YouTube when you watch videos, the site is busily keeping track of everything you see and trying to form an idea about what kind of videos you like. This information dynamically drives the home page you see, and YouTube tries to show you videos that it thinks you'll like. Your home page will come to be dominated by material that is similar to material you've watched in the past.

Here's a quick tour of what you're likely to see when you log on to www.youtube.com after you create an account. (Again, we tell you more about creating an account later in this chapter.) Take a look at Figure 2-1 to see how a YouTube home page looks when you log in, and then read the descriptions in the following list:

The logged-out experience

When you arrive at YouTube before you've taken the trouble to create an account, you see the pure, innocent YouTube of the viewer with no viewing history. Treasure this moment, this innocence, this pure instant of seeing the site as it is. You'll soon be a jaded viewer, with a viewing history filled with reminders of the hours spent watching One Direction videos. Have a look at Figure 2-2 to see what YouTube looks like to the user who is logged out.

Figure 2-2: The logged-out YouTube home page.

On the left side of the screen, you see a list of links to the Best of YouTube channels. These verticals, as they're called, are the primary content divisions on YouTube. Verticals are sort of like the sections of a newspaper. Like a newspaper, YouTube is organized into sections so that you can find the type of content you want to watch. You can subscribe to any of these verticals like it's a normal user channel.

The programming on YouTube is divided into verticals. (Anywhere else, these content divisions would be called genres.) Verticals are all a combination of YouTube native content (content produced by regular YouTube users) and content produced by traditional media companies like CNN and The Onion. One amazing aspect of YouTube is that individuals can still manage to have a voice just as loud as the major media players (which is one fundamental point of this book).

It's time to see what the verticals have to offer:

You can get a look at the home page without all the baggage of your past video views at any time. That way, you'll be sure to see (unfiltered) what's trending on the site. Just put your browser in a private browsing mode, such as Chrome's incognito browsing, and you'll see the YouTube home page with new eyes. You'll see which videos are hot on the site without any of the context of your past browsing.

In Apple's Safari browser and Mozilla Firefox, incognito browsing is called private browsing. In Internet Explorer, it's called InPrivate browsing.

Watching a video

The reason that most people visit YouTube is to watch videos. That should probably be one of the first things you do when you arrive. After familiarizing yourself with the home page, try clicking on a video. You're taken to a Watch page, which should look a lot like the one shown in Figure 2-3.

The Watch page is, first and foremost, for viewing videos, but it has a number of other functions as well. You'll want to be familiar with a number of elements on this page:

Figure 2-3: The Watch page.

That's the birds-eye view. The next few sections take a closer look at some of these features in a bit more detail.

The YouTube algorithm, the mysterious piece of code that is responsible for guessing what you want to watch next, is uncannily effective a lot of the time. The suggested videos have the ability to suck you into what is known as the YouTube spiral, in which you can potentially lose hours of your life clicking on video after video and eventually end up watching infomercials from the mid-1980s with no clear idea how you got there.

The player

The most noticeable item on the Watch page is the video player. As with most video players, the YouTube version has a number of controls ranging along the along the bottom. Here's an overview of what each control does:

The video info section

Directly below the video player, you'll find a bunch of information about the video that we usually call the video info. You can see a lot of data about each video there, as you can see in Figure 2-4.

Figure 2-4: The video info section.

Here's a list of the most important information to pay attention to in the video info:

Figure 2-5: Sharing videos.

Working with a YouTube Account

There are a number of reasons you'd want to open a YouTube account. Though the logged-out experience is interesting, you need an account to subscribe to channels, create playlists, comment on videos, and generally become part of the YouTube community. Not to mention, you need an account to launch your channel where you will upload videos, run ads on those videos, and generate some revenue.

Be aware that signing up for a YouTube account means signing up for a Google account. Google owns YouTube, and recently, Google has been busy unifying its products under a single login, allowing you to use one username and password to log in to its complementary services like Gmail, Google Drive, Calendar, and Maps in addition to your new YouTube account. You'll also create an account for Google's almost universally unpopular social network, Google+. This Google+ integration has been a big deal at Google in the past couple of years, and Google+ has slowly infiltrated many of Google's most popular offerings. This has caused some unhappiness among longtime YouTubers, but for the new user, it shouldn't be too much of a burden.

Getting an account

One of the first things you notice when you arrive on the YouTube home page is the Sign In button in the upper-right corner of the screen. Google and YouTube want you logged in so it can monitor your viewing habits and provide more focused video recommendations and — ultimately — relevant advertising. If you already have a Google account and you want to use that account to house your channel, you can. If you're creating a new channel, it may make sense to create a new Google account to go with it.

You're going to be using this channel as your business and, as someone once said, “You should never mix business and pleasure.” Though not always 100 percent true — many people have jobs they truly enjoy — this statement definitely applies in this case. If you take all the principles in this book to heart, and have a bit of luck, your channel could become very popular. You'll then be in the unenviable position of running your new online video business in your personal email account, and you'll be stuck with the job of sifting through the guilt-inducing emails from your mother, the advertisement for the big sale at the store where you bought a gift for your ex once (like 12 years ago), and, of course, stuff that might actually be important. Rather than deal with that hassle, just go ahead and start a new account. It's free.

Follow these steps to get a Google account you can use on YouTube:

1. Click the blue Sign In button.

   Doing so takes you to the Google login screen, shown in Figure 2-6, where you can log in or create a new account.

   Last time we checked, the big blue Sign In button was in the upper-right corner of the screen, but be aware that YouTube, like all other websites, tends to redesign things and move buttons around from time to time.

   If you already have a Google account, you may already be logged in. If you're creating a new account to go with a new channel, it may help to use a private browsing mode in your web browser to avoid confusing Google.

2. Click the Create an Account link below the Username and Password fields.

   Doing so takes you to the Create Your Google Account page.

3. Fill in the necessary information.

   The fields shown in Figure 2-7 are much what you'd expect, but here's a description of each item anyway:

   • Name: This is the name that will be associated with your account. You can use your real name here, or a made-up name that has something to do with your account. Just be aware that the name will function as the public face of your channel, so sophomoric attempts at humor are probably not the way to go. Note that creating a new account here automatically creates a new (linked) Google+ account.
   • Your current address: We like Gmail, so create a new Gmail address when setting a new account rather than using your current email address. It will make all your YouTube work easier. Below this field is a link that offers the option to create a new Gmail account.
   • Password: You've probably done the Create a Password and Confirm Your Password song-and-dance a thousand times before, so we won't offer any advice other than to recommend that you follow the sound password tips that Google offers during this process.
   • Birthday: No ifs, ands, or buts — you need to choose a birthday. You may not wish to show your real age, what with YouTube largely being a young person's game, but we're also not going to encourage you to lie.

     If you're going to be a smart aleck and decide to give the age of your channel rather than your own age, make the age at least 18. Some content on YouTube has age restrictions, and giving your channel a birthday that makes it less than 18 years old can come back to bite you.

   • Gender: Gender is truly up to you. It's a sensitive subject these days, so we're not going to joke about it here. Personally, when we're creating business accounts, we usually choose Other, because we think of the channels as an inanimate object.
   • Mobile phone: A mobile phone number is required for identity confirmation and account recovery processes. (You use account recovery when you've forgotten your password.)
   • Prove you're not a robot: Prove that you're a human by typing in the alphanumeric code that's shown in the image. Google does what it can to prevent computer programs (known as robots or ‘bots) from setting up accounts.
   • Set your location: Google's terms and conditions for YouTube are dictated by country. When we think of the Internet, we don't necessarily consider borders, but it's especially important for video rights.
   • Agree to Google's terms and services agreement: This is the requisite “fine print.” We'll leave it to you and your legal representation to decide whether you're comfortable with it.
   • Email: If you've chosen to set up new Gmail email address, you'll be asked to provide an alternative email, also for security and recovery. If you're using your current email, then this field won't appear.

   

   Figure 2-6: The Google login screen.

   

   Figure 2-7: Google wants all your details before you're granted an account.

4. Click Next Step.

   If Google doesn't recognize your phone number or your current or alternative email address, you'll need to verify your account via text message or a voice call. You're given the choice on a page like the one shown in Figure 2-8. If it does recognize you, it will ask you to set up a Google+ profile. If that's the case, you don't need to verify and you may proceed directly to Step 7.

5. Choose your verification method and then click Continue.

   Whichever method you choose — Voice Call or Text Message (SMS) — Google manages to get a verification code sent your way.

6. In the Enter Verification Code text field, enter the code that was sent to you (see Figure 2-9) and then click Continue.

   The next screen requires that you create a Google+ account. This is not optional. Google has had trouble attracting users to its social network, Google+, and this is how it generates user interest — by requiring users of its more popular services to have a Google+ account as well. There's no getting out of it, so don't even try.

   

   Figure 2-8: Verify your account by text message or phone call.

   

   Figure 2-9: Enter your verification code.

7. Click Next Step to optionally create a public Google+ profile, as shown in Figure 2-10.

   Google displays a lovely Welcome screen, addressed to you personally. You can add an account picture by clicking the Add a Photo link. Note that you don't need to create a public profile, but YouTube management is bit easier if you do. Click the Create Your Profile button if you want a Google+ profile; otherwise, click the No Thanks button.

8. After admiring Google's warm and human touch (Figure 2-11), click the Back to YouTube button to wend your way back to YouTube.

Logging on to your YouTube account

If you have completed all the steps to set up your YouTube account, including clicking that Back to YouTube button to close out the process, you should be logged in to the YouTube site automatically. If that doesn't happen, the first thing you get to do is log in with the account you created using these steps:

Figure 2-10: Signing up for Google+.

Figure 2-11: Welcome to Google!

1. Click the Sign In button at the top of the YouTube main screen.

   You're taken once again to the Google Sign In screen (refer to Figure 2-4) and prompted to enter your account details.

2. Sign in with the email address and password that you used when creating your account.

   You're in! You'll see a blue banner across the top that says “You are now registered with YouTube!”

At this point, you're logged into YouTube, but don't yet have your channel set up. We'll cover that in the next section.

Creating a YouTube Channel

Building a channel is what you came here to do, and now it's time to get to it. You can do the work to establish your channel after you've logged in to YouTube with a Google account. After that's done, follow these steps to get your channel off the ground:

1. Log in to YouTube, and click your channel icon in the top right to bring up the Creator Studio and YouTube Settings pull-down menu.
2. Click the Gear icon.

   You're taken straight to the Account Settings Overview screen.

   In most Google products, this Gear icon means “settings.”

   You should now be looking at a simple overview of your account information, similar to the one shown in Figure 2-12.

3. To create your channel, click the Create a channel link next to your email address.

   Doing so opens the Use YouTube As dialog box, shown in Figure 2-13, which prompts you to choose a channel name.

4. Decide on a channel name.

   Your choices are to go with the name associated with your Google+ account for your channel — click the OK button in the Use YouTube As dialog box to do that — or to choose a custom name. Most readers of this book are hoping to make a business of their YouTube channel, so you'll probably want to choose a custom name.

   

   Figure 2-12: Creating a channel.

   

   Figure 2-13: The Use YouTube As dialog box.

5. (Optional) To choose a custom name, click the link labeled To Use a Business or Other Name, Click Here.

   Sometimes it's okay to use your real name for your channel. If your content will be personality based (a vlog based around you, for example), this can work just fine. See the nearby sidebar, “Choosing a channel name,” for more insight on picking a good channel name.

6. (Optional) Enter your custom channel name into the Create a New Channel dialog box, as shown in Figure 2-14.
7. Choose a category for your channel from the drop-down menu below the channel name.

   Your (rather limited) choices here are pretty much what you'd expect:

   • Product or Brand
   • Company, Institution, or Organization
   • Arts, Entertainment, or Sports
   • Other

   

   Figure 2-14: Choose your channel name, and make it a good one.

   Choosing a channel name

   Take a reflective pause before you choose a username or channel name or other identifying criteria you want as your public face for the whole YouTube world. An overhasty decision here could end up being one that you regret later. Many a creator has made the mistake of beginning to upload videos to what they thought would remain a low-key, personal channel, only to have that channel take off in popularity, at which point they begin to feel trapped in a channel named after their cat. (Okay, just to be clear, this wouldn't be a problem if the channel is actually about your cat). The Google+ integration actually makes changing the channel name on the fly pretty easy and painless, even after the fact. The channel URL, however, is a different story, and you'll learn about that later in this chapter.

   Keep the following advice in mind when making your reflections:

   Don't rush into anything. You should think hard about this decision. Though it seems like a light one, it really can impact the success of your channel in the long run if you choose a bad name.

   • Try to relate the name to your content. Are you creating a channel about video games? Try to work a gaming term into your title. If you plan to create fitness-related content, try to integrate workout or sports terms.
   • Avoid profanity, vulgarity, and inside jokes. Though you may find it hilarious to name your channel Dadfarts, a name like that will necessarily limit your market. It's hard to predict what path your videos might take on their way out into the world, and a sophomoric name (or a downright obscene one) might deter your viewers from sharing your video. Note: You want people to share your videos!
   • Make the name catchy. Your channel name needs to be memorable. People love puns, rhyming, and alliteration, but don't try to integrate all three. That might be a little much.
   • Make it easy to spell. People need to be able to find your channel, and choosing a word that's difficult to spell can prevent people from finding you. Do not see this as a felicitous opportunity to create a recondite channel name thronged with abstruse vocabulary that will confuse and confound your potential viewers.
   • Make it easy for people to talk about. When you think you've hit on the perfect name, try reading it aloud a few times and make sure you can pronounce it. You want to have a channel name that people can talk about and make themselves understood. The best test for this is to call a friend on the phone and direct her to your channel. If you can tell your friend the channel name and she can get there without your having to spell it, you've got a usable name on your hands.
   • Make sure the name is available and that you won't be confused with another business on YouTube or elsewhere. You should search the web in general and YouTube specifically to make sure your brilliant channel name isn't already in use elsewhere. You should also ensure that the URL you prefer is available. YouTube's allocation of URLs is not automatic, and you choose your custom URL in a later step. So, even if your channel name is available, your custom URL may not be available. Check this in advance, or else it can turn into a real problem.

   After you've chosen a channel name and a category, YouTube notes that you're also creating another Google+ account, this one in the name of your channel.

   You can assign verticals or genres to each video individually when you upload it. For more about that process, check out Chapter 9.

8. Agree to the terms and conditions for Google+ accounts by selecting the check box.

   You'll also get a new Google+ page by default. You don't have to do anything with this, but it's a good place to share some of your YouTube and social media activity if you have a following there.

9. Click the Done button.

You are now the proud owner of a channel with no content and a boring default layout. (Check out Figure 2-15 to see what we mean.) You'll notice in the upper-right corner that the name has changed from your Google account name to your brand-spanking-new channel name. But all that is covered in Chapter 3. You have even more account setup tasks to complete.

Figure 2-15: The default channel layout, which is boring.

Verifying Your YouTube Channel

Before you get around to beautifying your channel and making it your own, you need to verify your channel to prove that you're a real human being and not some kind of Internet robot who has created this channel for nefarious purposes. Several steps are involved in verifying your account:

1. Log in to YouTube and click your channel icon in the top right to bring up the Creator Studio and YouTube Settings pull-down menu.
2. Click the Gear icon.
3. Doing so takes you to the Account Settings Overview page.

   Click the View Additional Features link (refer to Figure 2-12).

   A long list of features appears, but you're interested in the Verify feature — you need to verify again before you can move on.

4. Click the Verify button.

   The Account Verification page appears, spelling out that account verification is a two-step process. The first step of the verification asks for your country location and asks you to specify how you want to receive a verification code, as shown in Figure 2-16.

   

   Figure 2-16: Verification, Step 1.

5. Specify your country location, choose a verification method, and then click Next.

   You can receive a verification code by text message or voice call. Since you needed a mobile number to sign up for your basic Google account, you'll probably choose Text Message, but if you want the pleasure of listening to an automated phone system, you can opt for the voice call. Just pick an option and click Next, which takes you to Step 2, as shown in Figure 2-17. Whichever delivery method you choose, you'll soon receive a numeric code.

6. Enter your verification code and then click Submit.

   You move on to a screen with a satisfying check mark that informs you that you're verified.

7. Click Continue.

   You are now verified! You're returned to the Additional Features page, where this whole verification thing began.

This simple verification unlocks a number of features within your YouTube account, many of which now have green dots next to them on the Additional Features page. We list only a few of the new abilities you've just unlocked for your channel:

Figure 2-17: Verification, Step 2.

• Longer videos: You can now upload videos more than 15 minutes long.
• External annotations: Links to outside websites can now be placed in your videos. (For more on how to do this, check out Chapter 10.)
• Custom thumbnails: You can now upload custom images to act as the thumbnail for your video. (Chapter 9 also has more on custom thumbnails.)
• Unlisted and private videos: Ever wanted to grant limited access to your videos to a chosen few? Now you can. (More on this neat feature in — you guessed it — Chapter 9.)

Setting Up a Custom Channel URL

By default, YouTube assigns your channel an ugly, random, and completely unmemorable URL. (URL, short for Uniform Resource Locator, is a fancy name for a web address.) You'd do well to replace this ugly URL with one that supports your branding and helps viewers remember your channel. Just note that, to update the URL, your channel must be in good standing. In some cases, YouTube may make you wait for 30 days to create a new channel name. (Not sure what “in good standing” means? Check out Chapter 9.)

Anyway, here's how you get the customizing process started:

1. Log in to YouTube and click your channel icon in the top right to bring up the Creator Studio and YouTube Settings pulldown menu.
2. Click the Gear icon.

   You're taken straight to the Account Settings Overview screen.

3. Click the Advanced link located right below your new channel name.

   You progress to the advanced channel settings, which you can see in Figure 2-18. In the Channel Settings section, you see the randomly generated URL.

4. Under the Channel Settings heading, click the Create Custom URL link.

   Doing so takes you to a page that prompts you to choose a new, custom channel URL, as shown in Figure 2-19.

5. Choose a custom channel URL.

You get only one chance at this, so get it right. If you screw it up and choose a channel URL you hate, you need to delete your channel and start over.

Figure 2-18: Advanced settings, featuring the confusing random URL.

Figure 2-19: Creating a custom URL.

Since you followed the advice earlier in this chapter and checked to make sure your URL was available before you chose your channel name (right? right?), you can just enter the name of your channel and you'll be all set up with a nice, clean URL that matches your channel — something like http://www.youtube.com/user/mychannelname.

Joining the YouTube Partner Program

It's possible to make money on YouTube. If you're really successful, producing content for YouTube could be your full-time, exciting job. But don't run to the bank yet, because you're going to need to create a great channel, fill it with wickedly good content, build a passionate community of fans — and join the YouTube Partner Program.

The YouTube Partner Program is a formalized way of helping content creators (which usually goes hand-in-hand with channel owners because they're often one and the same) make money several ways:

Though the monetary aspect of the YouTube Partner Program is the primary driver for most creators, YouTube also provides some support for content generation though places like YouTube Spaces, special studios built just for YouTube creators and advertisers around the world. Check it out at https://www.youtube.com/yt/space.

Our recommendation is to not rush into the partner program right away. Focus on your channel, content, and community, which you learn about in detail in this book. With all that in place, you can check out Chapter 14 to get the revenue engine humming.