How to Create an ACTUAL Effective Thumbnail?

There has been a lot of ambiguity in the creator space when it comes to understanding thumbnail. So today I will explain all that I have learned in the past 8 years of doing YouTube, from working w the biggest creators like CarryMinati to scaling Aevy to 500k+ Subscribers and 20m+ views a month.

Before we go further, let me show you just how much difference a good thumbnail can make.

The grey shaded area depicts the viewership trajectory of our average YouTube video, and the blue line shows the performance of this particular video. You can clearly see from the graph that our video's performance was average at best. Until I switched the the thumbnail and allowed this the video to fly all the way to almost a MILLION VIEWS.

So lets dive in. If you have followed me for a while you will understand I call my thumbnails and titles as "packaging". The reason behind it is I actually think of my videos as a product.

Picture this: You go to a super markets. You pick up your trolley and go down the aisle, at some point a product catches your eye, you stop & check the product out, maybe even check the ingredients before finally making your decisions. But what made you stop? It was the packaging of the product. Thumbnails (IMHO) work similarly. Each thumbnail is a packaging for a product that you are putting on the shelves of the YouTube supermarket. So how exactly do you go about thumbnail creation?

Understand that it's not a DESIGN contest. It's actually a storytelling contest.

Take a look at the post above. Same content. Same Title. Same channel. Not even posted on a different timeframe. But the difference is NIGHT and DAY.

I believe this is because of the story both Thumbnail and title are telling. On left hand side, thumbnail is able to clearly align itself with the title (Sad title, sad content, therefore sad face). Where as on the right, it's not the same (Sad content, sad title, but smiling face).

Same case with the title. On the left title is again aligned very well with the story (The story here is of desperation). No caps in the title, which shows no effort has been taken to post this video and confirms the story of desperation. Also goes to show that in the world of ALL CAPS TITLES and !!!!! marks, this video doesn't want to be seen, which ironically makes you want to click on it even more.

Although this in an outlier example, still shows how much value a good thumbnail makes.

Ultimately the Packaging tells a narrative, the game is to pick the one that works.

If you are a newbie, you can stop reading here. These basic changes in your strategy will probably give you a good momentum. But if you are someone who is running a decent size channel, here are some tips for you.

As I said previously, I view each of my video as a UNIQUE product that I am putting out-there. And what is the first step when creating a product? Understanding your TG. Each video has a new (many times overlapping) target audience.

So ask yourself,

Who is this video your are creating for?

What kind of YT videos does your Ideal consumer consume?

What are the thumbnails of those videos?

And what kind of approach do you want to take?

Do you want to stand out by Creating a very different vibe of the thumbnail.

Or

Fit in by creating thumbnails that have some resemblance to other creators' thumbnails.

Once you have answered all of these questions, you will know exactly what kind of thumbnail you need to create.

If you are a DECENT SIZE CHANNEL, You can stop reading here. If you are someone who earns a living through your YouTube channel or plans to launch a new business through it, Here are some tips for you.

Understand a narrative cannot be pushed (job the the thumbnail) if it doesn't exist in the video itself. What do I mean by that? YouTube soon will be releasing a A/B Thumbnail testing feature where it will tell you which thumbnail performs better. But the Metric won't be CTR BUT Watch-Time. What does that mean? If a thumbnail makes you click, but then you click off quickly. Algorithm will think you are clickbaiting (a bit too hard) and there fore won't promote it as aggresivly. On the other hand if the thumbnail gets you to click but makes you watch longer, then the video will get pushed even harder.

In short:-

Thumbnail gets Less clicks w less watch time = less views.

Thumbnail gets more clicks w less watch time = less/avg views.

Thumbnail gets more clicks w More watchtime = Video blows up.

So if you are click baiting (which you should be) make sure the narrative that is being pushed actually supports the video. If I click on a video that's about space, and it turns out you are talking about gaming, that's bad click bait. So make sure the video content is aligns perfectly well with the packaging otherwise you are bound to fail.